No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) Read Free

not today.  The story can wait.  You’re going to the med center.  Come on, let’s go.”  Sylvie started to pull her up, but stopped part way.
    “Your hands are shaking like a leaf!”  Sylvie stopped and sat down very slowly.  “Shiiiiit.  Um, Gail, I think you have something serious,” Sylvie said, her voice an octave higher.  “We need to get you to the med center.  You hear me, Gail?”
    Gail stared off into the distance, Sylvie ’s words passing through her mind without stopping.  Her hands, still lying in Sylvie’s, shivered and shook, like the tremors of the elderly.
    “This is serious, Gail.  You ’ve got a really bad fever, and you’ve got…  You’ve got…”  Sylvie sounded ready to cry.  “You’ve got the Shakes, Gail,” Sylvie said, her voice an unsteady whisper.  “Your hands are shaking.”  The Shakes?  The other bad diseases, such as polio, malaria and tuberculosis, had treatments and cures, but the Shakes still walked in people’s nightmares, incurable.  Gail couldn’t believe she had the Shakes.
    “Gail,” Sylvie said, again. “Gail, wake up!”  Nope, not right now.  Gail shivered, and burned, and shook.
    “Gail, come on, Gail.  Make the hands stop shaking.  This is a joke, right?  Just make the hands stop.”
    Oh Sylvie, Gail thought.  You ’re such a wonderful friend.
    Friends should share everything.
     
    (2)
    The first thing Gail noticed when she woke up was the glow.  She felt the glow even before she opened her eyes, a supernatural warmth surrounding her, bypassing her senses, impossible to miss, directly in her mind.  Not seeing, hearing or tasting, because there were no words for what she sensed, the glow a sense she never had, before.  A warm, bright, loud, delicious glow.
    Not quite all around her.  Mostly just on top of her and to the sides.  Not really one glow, but more like three, all right next to each other.
    Her body ached as if someone had run her through Van’s parents’ dust-caked wringer washing machine, and she had a pounding headache.  And she was hungry.  Hungry in her stomach, but also hungry in another way that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.  Hungry for something not quite food.  She realized she pulled on the glow in her faux hunger, tugging on it somehow, she didn’t understand how, but somehow.  Nothing was there to pull, though, and all she did was lick the cake batter from a clean beater.
    Something strange was happening here.  Really strange.
    Gail opened her eyes and realized she lay flat on her back in what appeared to be a hospital bed.  Three other women lay in bed with her, on top of her and beside her.  All three as naked as Gail.  She turned to the woman to her left, and right there, three inches from her own, was Sylvie’s tired, bedraggled, and very happy looking face.  Sylvie didn’t respond when Gail looked at her, or even joggled her.
    The woman on top of her appeared to be about the same age as Sylvie.  College age, like most of Gail’s acquaintances.  Gail didn’t place her for a moment, but then she did.  Melanie, the young clerk from the Lit, Arts and Sciences office.
    The third woman took much longer to place.  She was an older woman, maybe in her fifties or so, and her face was lined and sagging.  Her hair was a brilliant orange, except for the quarter inch of dark iron gray close to her scalp.  Her hair lay flat around her head, filthy and stringy, and soaked with sweat.
    The orange hair tipped Gail off.  That, and the presence of Melanie on top of her.  Gail had never seen the woman on her right without thick pancake makeup and blue eye shadow, but she figured it out anyway.  The witch bitch, Mrs. Grimm her ancient self, lay on a bed right next to her.  Naked.  As naked as Gail.  Holy crap!
    She was lying stark naked in a bed with two other women and the witch bitch, and none of them seemed to care about being naked.
    None of the other three seemed to care about