The Caretakers by William T. Delamar

Author:William T. Delamar [Delamar, William T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Simba and her crew didn’t show. Doug and Frank waited an hour past the appointment, had coffee, but said little to each other. Maybe that’s what Simba wanted. No dumbbell.

The weekend lasted forever. Doug wanted to go home, but with everything happening, he couldn’t. He agonized over what he had done to Bess. He had wounded her. He let the tension get the best of him, and it wasn’t getting better. Bess. The sweetest person he had ever known. She sat in the new chair and cried like a child. The other one was more comfortable gnawed at his heart.

Long halls, institutional colors, and an office prison—no outside air, no sky, no trees. Greed and thirst for power filled the corners like dust and he was letting it clog his mind. They were beating him. Boswell and the takers. It was Solstory all over again. Vultures picking on bones of the sick. He couldn’t lead them any more than he could teach a rock to swim.

Monday morning. Time to be fresh, not stale and dried out. He had to get out, almost ran to the parking garage. In his car, he felt some return to privacy, but at the exit to the parking garage, picketers pounded on his car. They were like an exclamation point to all the problems. He drove to a diner, well out of the center city area, and ordered bacon, waffles, and coffee. He breathed non-hospital air. He watched other people eat. He watched people walk past on the sidewalk. People from the normal world.

He wanted a normal life for Bess. He was failing her most of all. The waitress came over and took his empty plates, a message he should leave so someone else could take the booth. He ordered more coffee.

Finally, he cleared out and drove mechanically back to the parking lot. The picketers moved out of the way in slow motion. Then he saw her—the big aide from the fourth floor, the one who had brutalized Jean DeVries and Isabel Eaves. Kay had gotten her name for him. Clinker. Clinker Pottard. He had wondered if Clinker was a nickname. Hard name to forget. Here she stood in the middle of the drive, bumping her hip at him with her eyes half shut. She didn’t know how glad he was to see her. She rumbled and inched aside to the laughs and claps of the others. She bumped her huge behind at him when he drove past.

Doug ran all the way to the security office. Cliff was there.

“Get the police. Clinker Pottard’s in the parking lot. Jean DeVries and Isabel Eaves will press charges. So will the hospital.” Then, as Cliff was dialing, “Tell them to bring big guys. She’ll give them a hard time.”

He trotted down the hall and called back, “Let me know what happens.”

His pace suddenly slowed as though the sounds and odors were solid things that had to be pushed aside. The odors, some from medications, ranged from obnoxious to gagging.

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