Never Enough: Delos Series, 3B1 by Lindsay McKenna

Author:Lindsay McKenna [McKenna, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Anthology
ISBN: 9781929977222
Publisher: Blue Turtle Publishing
Published: 2017-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Matt curbed his smile as director Alani Phillips, a Hawaiian woman of fifty, led Dara down the highly polished, white-tile hall toward the medical examination room located near the rear of the Safe House building. The call an hour earlier had made Alani shriek with pleasure. A pediatrician coming? Oh! They had fifty mothers with children and all could use her services! He didn’t know who was smiling more: Dara, dressed in her white lab coat over her white linen pants and pink tee, the stethoscope looped around her slender neck, or Alani, whose black hair was up in a tight knot on top of her head. She was dressed in a colorful Hawaiian muumuu that came to her knees. She was about five feet seven inches tall, around a hundred and eighty pounds, apple-cheeked, just bursting with compassion and energy. Saying she was a human dynamo would be understating Alani’s enthusiasm and the caring that radiated around her like sunlight.

Matt loitered out near her office, which was located a few steps from the main reception area. Safe House was a place for abused women who had left their live-in mates or their husbands. The children came with them. There was a three-story barracks-like building out in back of the office complex that had apartments within it where the families lived. There was a large nursery near the medical examination room and beyond that, an airy dining room where the mothers and children had three square meals a day, plus snacks. He was impressed with this Safe House, having seen many of them around the world. His mother, Dilara, made a point of traveling to at least fifty of the eighteen-hundred Delos charities every year. And from age twelve onward, her children had often accompanied her on her travels. She wanted to show them the suffering in the world and that something positive could be done to help alleviate it. His mother always brought an entourage of people who could be resources and provide help for each director.

Looking around the bright, white-painted walls of the glass-enclosed office where Alani worked tirelessly, Matt was pleased to see everything was spotless and organized. His mother insisted upon a high level of cleanliness, wanting everything to be sanitary within the buildings as well as outside them. He had met the receptionist, Halia Parker, who had just graduated from college with a degree in social work. She was twenty-five, her smile shy, a true introvert, but her heart was open and she was very kind. Halia was the perfect person to greet a harried, threatened, beaten woman who came through that teak door carved with the Delos rising sun. The logo was a symbol of hope: light for a new day.

The place was busy, all the employees women. This was a safe haven for beaten and abused women who needed to be protected from the men who were abusing them, whether it was someone they lived with, someone they were married to, or a male family member, such as an uncle, grandfather, or cousin.

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