An Arm and a Leg by Olive Balla Read Free Book Online Page B

phone first went dead, then pulsed with Muzak while the receptionist checked the doctor’s schedule. Her eyes drawn to the snotty tissues on the floor, Frankie chewed on her thumbnail. She winced when her teeth tore a sliver of nail too close to the quick and sucked at the resulting drop of red.
    The sight jerked her memory to the vision of Tim’s blood pouring from his marred face. To the thick redness pooling on the floorboard at his feet, and to her clothes drenched in it.
    “Hello, Miss O’Neil?”
    “I’m still here.”
    “You’re in luck. Doctor Demaris has had a cancellation for three tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Perfect. I’ll be there.” Frankie hung up and hugged herself.
    What would the therapist say when she told her about hearing voices? Would the expression on her face change from the standard I’d-like-to-help warmth into the wide-eyed, yikes-you’re-crazy stare?
    Frankie stood in her entryway and cried. She had no one with whom to share her fears. No one to just be there for her. She had only herself to depend on. And now even that was beginning to look shaky.
    Words like crazy , cracked , and wack-o floated through her mind.
    “Dammit,” she said to the cosmos. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

Chapter Seven
    Frankie awakened early the next morning. The sun poured through her half-open venetian blinds and lit her room with a cheeriness she recognized but didn’t feel.
    Still in her pajamas, she padded to the kitchen and made a pot of her own special blend of chai tea. As she sipped from a steaming cup of the fragrant, spicy brew, she stepped over to the large pantry she’d had installed, pulled open the wooden accordion doors and slid her eyes over the rows of items stored there.
    Cans of asparagus, green beans, peas, and turnip greens sat next to yellow wax beans and corn. Sweet potatoes and carrots sat alongside cans of miscellaneous fish and meats. Bags of dried beans, peas and rice lay next to the cans, and four five-gallon bottles of water stood on the pantry floor amid cases of packaged soup mix and marinara sauce.
    She adjusted the cans so that the labels faced outward and placed the most recent purchases at the back of each row, checking the expiration dates as she went. She felt relieved to find that nothing would need replacing for the next several months.
    Fruit—that’s what was missing.
    She added the word to her shopping list and wrote twenty dollars next to it.
    Finances would be tight this month. She twisted her lips in a wry smile. Okay, so she’d pay the minimum on her Visa instead of the two hundred dollars she’d promised herself. Problem solved.
    At least she’d had enough savings to cover the cost of Tim’s funeral. The young mortician, a scion of the owner operator, had been kind. His voice had been pitched low in well-rehearsed, comforting-the-bereaved mode as he showed her the photos and itemized expenditures of the funeral packages available. Frankie had nearly swallowed her tongue at the prices before settling on a modest but lovely blue polyester-lined casket in spite of the guilt trip the young man laid on her.
    “This will be your brother’s final resting place. Of course you’ll want to do right by him.”
    “Actually,” Frankie had responded, “this will merely be his body’s resting place. My brother is no longer here. And if he were, he’d be yelling at me to have him cremated and use the savings to help someone in need.”
    An image had blown through Frankie’s mind of the casket maker’s employees sifting through the landfill, collecting plastic milk and water jugs to melt down and mold into their obscenely over-priced wares. The memory of the crestfallen look on the young man’s face brought a grim smile to her face.
    After another sip of tea, she touched each can exactly three times before doing the same with the packages, bags, and bottles. Then she moved to the hall closet and performed the same ritual with the food stored there. As usual, the