LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      October

      KYLE DAVENPORT STARED at the pasty-faced, middle-aged man in front of him. They sat in the makeshift conference corner of his office, on a pair of scuffed metal folding chairs pulled up to a Formica-topped table salvaged from a diner. Boxes of medical supplies and free samples lined the shelves on the wall beside them.

      Kyle clasped his hands on the tabletop. As the clinic’s director he usually spent more time on his administrative duties than he did interacting with patients, but he welcomed the chance to do so. Even when, like today, he had to play the heavy.

      “Harry,” he said. “Sounds like we have a problem here. Barbara tells me you haven’t been taking your meds.”

      The man gave him a cranky look. He brushed back a chunk of his badly cut gray hair and then inspected the fingerless wool gloves he wore. “Barbara’s a bully.”

      “She only wants to help you get better. If you don’t take your meds, Harry, you won’t get better.”

      “I hate the meds.”

      “I know. I’d hate taking ’em, too. But it’s the only way to make you improve. And if you don’t take ’em you’ll probably get worse. Keep this up and you’ll end up in the hospital.”

      They both knew Harry had no health coverage, which was why he came to the free clinic. He couldn’t afford another emergency-room visit like the one last spring. He hadn’t been able to afford that one.

      “Harry, help me out here. I know it’s a pain in the ass to take ’em three times a day. But Barbara can’t do anything for you if you ignore everything she says.”

      “She says too much. She’s always on my back. I’m going to start calling her Nurse Ratched.”

      Kyle tried not to grin, knowing he shouldn’t encourage the guy. But he couldn’t wait to tell Barbara about her new nickname. “I don’t think that’ll increase her level of friendliness, Harry.” He flattened his palms on the table and adopted a serious tone. “Look, buddy, I really need you to take those pills. Why don’t you try it for a week and we’ll take the rest as it comes, okay?”

      Harry shot him a defiant glare. “The meds,” he announced, “give me gas.”

      Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Oh, do they, now? Well, I can’t say I’d like that, either…It’s bad?”

      “You don’t want to know.” And that, apparently, settled the matter. Harry grasped the edge of the table and supported himself as he rose to his feet. He adjusted the ragged old tweed coat he wore 365 days a year, rain or shine, heat or snow. “Well. Guess I’ll be going now.”

      Kyle stood, too. “Hey, not so fast. I just had an idea. Hear me out?”

      The other man turned back, head tilted, expression doubtful.

      “There might be a solution,” Kyle said. “We’d have to talk to Barbara, but it might be possible to change your prescription. We could try to find something that isn’t so hard on your system.”

      “Like what?”

      “I don’t know. I’m not a nurse or doctor. But sometimes more than one med can treat the same problem.”

      Harry had his new bottle of meds by the time Melissa arrived for her weekly shift as a volunteer physician at the clinic. Through the doorway of his office Kyle heard Melissa greet Harry by name and the older man give her a cheerful, flirtatious response before leaving the clinic.

      Kyle tried to focus on his paperwork. He had plenty this week, and a long list of phone calls to make for the fall fund-raising drive.

      But he couldn’t concentrate. Never could on Wednesday afternoons, not since a certain hot summer night in July. He got that familiar, socked-in-the-gut feeling he had whenever he remembered it. Melissa, he thought, would be in to say hello any second.

      Right on cue, she stuck her head through the doorway. “Hey, Kyle. How’s it going today?”

      She wore her long white coat and a stethoscope looped around her neck. She always pulled her chocolate-brown hair back in a clasp at her nape; a few strands had escaped to graze her jaw. In one hand she held a clipboard; in the other, a half-eaten apple.

      He smiled, knowing his face looked just as friendly and calm and unruffled as hers. “Great. Not too busy with the walk-ins. You’ve got some appointments?”

      She glanced down at the clipboard. “That’s right.” She raised an eyebrow. “Mmm. I see Zita is scheduled for a visit. That should be colorful.”

      Zita, a.k.a. Susan Smith, was a recovering addict with a variety of physical ailments caused by years of hard living. She had an eccentric personality and a loud voice.

      “And a couple of new ones…” Melissa crunched on a bite of apple as she skimmed the notes. “Okay.” She swallowed and looked up at him.

      “How’s your week going?” Kyle asked.

      “Fine.” Her eyes met his and held them, but not for too long. Just long enough to show them both that everything was normal, routine, mundane, unremarkable. As it had been for the past five years. Just long enough to prove they weren’t avoiding eye contact. “My high-school chem teacher turned up in the E.R. last night.”

      “Nothing serious, I hope.”

      She shook her head. “Only a sprained ankle. Thought it might have been broken, but he was lucky. It was nice to talk to him—I hadn’t seen the man since graduation fifteen years ago.”

      Melissa, an exceptionally bright and hardworking

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