“Hey, did I get any mail?I’m supposed to have my father’s checks mailed directly to me.He don’t need it anymore because he’s in the nursing home.That’s another thing that Molly should bedoing, paying for him to be there since she put him in there.”One of them asked what checks that would be.“His monthly checks.The judge agreed with me about me having them since he was being taken care of, so I should be getting them mailed here.Since he put me here for some reason.”
“First of all, no, you don’t have any mail.Secondly, his Social Security checks won’t come here for you because they’re his and not yours.Since you’ve never worked a day in your life, I would imagine that you don’t have anything coming to you.Thirdly, and I can’t believe I have to say this to you, this isn’t a bank where you can just get checks and have them cashed for you.What good would it do you to have them mailed to you in the first place?Not that I think the judge even said that, but you’re not getting them mailed to you anywhere you might be.They don’t belong to you.”There was just no talking to some people, he thought when he spouted off things that he knew were true.“What person on earth would take their money from their own father and expect to get away with it?No one that I know.”
“Shows what you know.People do it all the time.They even get them coming to them when their benefactor dies.I’ve seen it firsthand.”He asked him who it was.He’d like to tell the judge about them.“No, I’m not telling you.That trick was played on me before, and I’m not falling for it again.”
“Whatever.Just don’t expect the checks to come here for you.They more than likely belong to the nursing home now that he’s staying in to offset some of the money required for him to be there.”He’d gone over this before and wasn’t going to repeat himself.Turning his back to the men standing there, he wondered why they were telling him lies.
The judge had said that he was going to get what was coming to him, and he couldn’t think of anything else more important than the money.Unless it was getting out of here, and that was looking slimmer by the day.He’d already been here for two weeks, and no one had come to visit him.Even his sons were avoiding him when he saw them in the general population.
That was another thing that he didn’t understand.Why was it called the general population?He knew that everyone who was anyone met in the big common room, but what did it have to do with someone being a general?The only people that seemed to be in charge were the guards, and they didn’t look like they were in charge of much.Everyone just walked around talking to one another or playing games.
He wanted to know, but not enough to talk to the guards again.They didn’t seem to know all that much, and he wasn’t going to engage with them again if he could help it.Hopefully, he’d get his checks soon, and they’d tell him about them.He wondered if they could hold them for some reason, and that would not be right.He needed that money so that he could have the extras like the rest of the people here did.He didn’t know what it would be, but he knew from the last time he’d been in prison that it could buy you a lot of shit that you could trade with.He laid his head down on the table when he was feeling exhausted again.
He had not been sleeping well since he’d been in this place.There was just too much noise going on during the nighttime hours that he would wake up every time he heard something.He was used to having a dark room when he was sleeping, so that wasn’t a problem; it was just the noise.One of them being that his roommate snored loudly and farted in his sleep.Sometimes the smell would be so bad that he’d gag.
The man was a pig, and anyone who would have to spend about ten minutes with him would know it.He wanted a different person to share his room with, or none at all.That would suit him just fine if he had a cell all to his own.That was another thing that Molly could make happen for him, and that was paying for him to have his own room.She was slacking on her duties to him, and he was starting to get pissed off about her.
When dinner was called, someone shook him awake.He did feel better after his nap and was glad to be able to stretch out when he wanted.He was getting too old to be sleeping like he’d been and his body was telling him in creaking up.When he stretched his arms up and over his head, he felt something in his back pull, and it made him sick, it was so painful.
“You all right, inmate?”He said that his name was William Toby.“You’re just another inmateto me.What’s wrong with you?”
“I pulled something in my back, and it hurts.”The guard asked if he needed medical assistance, and he said he’d be all right.“I can handle a few aches and pains.I’m just old, that’s all.”If he expected someone to tell him he was in the prime of his life, he was disappointed.People were just rude anymore, and he couldn’t stand to be around them.As soon as he had his tray, he thought of another thing that Molly should be doing for him.Getting him some meals that didn’t look like they had been made by a deranged person.All his food was touching, and he couldn’t stand that.
~*~
Kayce had two assistants working for him now.One of them was a nurse, the other was going to be his receptionist.He liked having just one or two people to work with, and he thought that they could get along well.His office was now ready for patients, and he was happy to see that they were using them as their doctor.
After seeing the infant, who was an hour old, he declared her healthy and made sure that her blood work was taken so that she could be released.He’d see her again in a couple of weeks, and he was well on his way to having patients of his own.He still helped out with the family, but he was all right with his own practice.Kayce had the best job in the world, he thought.Taking care of children.
After seeing one of his patients from the old place, he was ready to go home.But just as he was leaving, he was paged over the intercom system.Unsure what was going on, he made his way to the nurses’ station and picked up the phone.It was his brother Colby.
“I have a slight issue.One of the men on my route out has hooked himself with a fishing hook.What can I do to keep him from getting an infection while I bring him onto shore?I don’t know how he did it, other than he was fucking around and got it hooked into his wrist.”He asked where it was on his wrist.“I’ll send you a picture.I thought you might ask me that.”
When he received the picture, he told his brother to put his hand in ice and to get him to shore as soon as possible.It looked to him like it was close to the artery, and he didn’t want to take any chances of the man bleeding out before he could get a look at him.
“I’ll call you an ambulance to be where you dock as soon as I get off the phone with you.It might not be much, but I’d rather not take the chance like you said.”He thanked him.“Does this sort of thing happen much?I never thought that someone who would be out on the boat would be hurt.I guess I wasn’t thinking about all the things that could go wrong.”
“I’ve never had it happen before either.But like I said, he was fucking around, and he got himself hurt.The others with him are pissed off at him.Thankfully, not at me, but enough where they’re telling him that they’re not going to go to the hospital with him.They want to go back out to sea, and I’m going to take them.”Kayce asked him if he had a good first aid kit on board.“I do.I went top of the line with it so that if something came up, I’d be able to take care of it.But believe it or not, there isn’t any kind of shit in it for stupidity.”The two of them laughed hard about that.
“I’ll have the emergency room ready for him when they get here.I’m trying hard not to take any adults on but family.He’ll more than likely have his own doctor to look at it when they get him finished up here.”He said that he was calling his doctor now, and he should be there for him when he arrived.“That’s good.That way, he can tell him what an idiot he’d been in fucking around on a ship out to sea.”
“I know, right?When I get him dropped off, I’m going to have to clean the ship where he bled all over the place.He’s acting like it’s no big deal, so I have to wonder if he’s like this all the time.A showoff to his buddies.They seemed to be resigned to the fact that he’d been hurt.”He asked how many were on the boat with him.“Three, counting the man who is hurt.We should be on shore in about ten minutes.Give or take a couple.I can see the ambulance there now.Good job on getting them called.”
“I had a nurse do it for you.She said that she’s always wanted to go deep-sea fishing, so I told her about your business.”He thanked him again.“No worries.It’s the least I can do for you making work for the hospital.”When Kayce said he had to go, he put the phone on the receiver.Thanking thenurse for her help, she waved him off like it was an everyday thing to have to call an ambulance for a ship-to-shore kind of thing.
Going back to his office—he loved saying that—he filled out the paperwork on the newborn.Making a file for her, he put it with the other dozen or so new files that he’d made since opening up.Just as he was ready to go home for the day, Margaret came into his office and sat down.He watched her to see what was going on.
“We might have a problem in the lobby.”He nodded, waiting for more information.“You’re a lion, right?I mean, I should probably know that, but I’m making sure.You are a shifter anyway, right?”
“I’m a lion.What’s going on in the lobby that has you freaked out?”She told him.“So you don’t believe that he fell down and hurt himself.Has this person been in the offices before?I don’t mean here, but where you worked before?”
“He brought the little girl in mostly to the emergency room, but they were making noises of calling the police, and now he’s going to all the offices around town.You just happen to be new, and I’m thinking that he’s going to be hoping that you’re stupid.”She asked him if he was understanding what she was saying.
“Yes.You believe that he’s abusing the little girl and hopes that I won’t notice any other wounds on her body.I’m assuming that there are.”She nodded.“All right.Set them up in one of the rooms, and I’ll go see her.Do you know how she’s injured this time?”
“It looks like her ankle might be broken, and she has a split lip, too.It’s going to need stitches if I don’t miss my bet.I can get a tray ready for her when you see her.”He stood up when she did.“Be careful.He’s been known to take his frustrations out on whoever tells him that she’s been hurt by other means.I’m not saying you can’t handle yourself, but just be careful when you get him in the room with you.”
As soon as he was in the room with the man and the little girl, he could smell her pain.It wasn’t something that he could normally do, but it was as if he was tasting her pain through his body.As soon as he had a look at her ankle, he knew she was going to need to be casted.Telling the man that he had to x-ray her ankle for him to be sure, he started yelling about the cost.
