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

just barged right on in without even knocking.  She turned around again, stared at him, and noticed a tag on his white lab coat: Dr. Mendell.  He had dark brown hair just beginning to go gray, and a small widow’s peak.  He started a friendly smile, but Gail cut it off with a “Hey!” bark, at full Rickenbach volume.  Her hands went to her naked crotch and her naked tits, and found she didn’t have enough hands to cover what needed to be covered.
    “Don ’t you even knock?  What are you doing just barging in here?”
    “Focus Rickenbach, I ’m sure you have some questions, but I…”
    Gail cut him off again.
    “I’m not talking to anyone until I have some clothes on.  Do you always barge into some woman’s bedroom without warning?” Gail said, her panic and her headache letting loose her well-practiced Rickenbach temper on the unwary doctor.  Focus Rickenbach?  His words didn’t make any sense to her.
    Dr. Mendell flushed and turned away.  “Excuse me.  I ’ll see that you get some clothes immediately.”  He backed out the door and snapped an order.  “Nurse Dwight, get a robe for Focus Rickenbach, stat .”
    Focus Rickenbach.  Who the hell was this Focus Rickenbach?  Had he called her a Focus?  Gail ’s knees went wobbly underneath her.  She let herself sink down in the cushioned chair, the three stoned women still glowing happily in her mind, their treacherous glow sneaking in past all her senses.
    Focus Rickenbach?   He did mean her.
    The whole damn world had just gone south in a big hurry.
     

Coping
    (3)
    Dr. Mendell ’s office was a small room, completely filled by an oversized desk and two well-worn chairs.  Gail glanced around, using what she liked to think were her reporter’s instincts.  A bookcase held up a wall in the back corner next to the door, but she couldn’t find the usual collection of diplomas on any of the other walls.  Gail guessed this wasn’t Dr. Mendell’s primary office.  There was a normal black telephone on the desk, and an elegant pen and pencil stand, but little else.  A single window overlooked a small enclosed courtyard, with a couple of benches and a brick patio.
    Gail sat all by herself , attempting to ignore the stinging bright lights.  The place, overall, was the Detroit Transform Clinic.  Upstairs, she still sensed the glow of Sylvie, Melanie, and the witch bitch.  The nurses had come and dragged the three women off to separate rooms.  Kurt came in to stay with Sylvie, and some older guy who seemed to be the witch’s husband stayed with her now.  Gail sensed exactly what they were doing.  If the page-a-day calendar on Dr. Mendell’s desk was correct, she had been unconscious for almost an entire week.  No wonder she was famished.
    Being a Focus was disconcerting.  Walls, doors and privacy didn’t seem to matter at all to her strange new sense.  What’s more, her funny new sense seemed to be getting better.  When she first woke up, all she could make out was a giant blur.  Now she picked up details, enough to know the three women now did exactly what they so clearly wanted to do when they had been with her.  Gail’s cheeks burned red.  She wondered if Sylvie or the witch had any idea she could sense them so clearly.
    Or Melanie, for that matter.  Melanie wasn ’t married, and so they left her in a room by herself.  What Melanie did in there was definitely not something a person did where someone else could see.  Especially someone likely as conservative in her mores as Melanie.
    Damn it, where was Van?  They let Kurt in with Sylvie, and Grimm ’s husband in with her, but she wasn’t married to Van, so they stuck him outside in the waiting room.  So here she was by herself in the doctor’s office, and even Dr. Mendell wasn’t here.  Not that she was the least bit horny.  She hurt, she had a headache, she was starving, and she had this other annoying hunger nagging in the back of her mind.
    If this was what being a