The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four by Randall Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

back hall and winced.  Mid thirties, the same as outside.
    Crap.  Bobby had been living in a house with no heat, too
beaten down to mention the problem to me.
    He must have thought I did this to him on purpose.  I
couldn’t say I hadn’t done things to him equally as noxious.
    Bobby had been sporting a runny nose ever since early
October, but I thought nothing about it.  After Thanksgiving he began to hack
and cough.  I…hell, I had enjoyed his misery.  I liked his pain and the power I
had over him.
    This was my fault.  Bobby was going to die because of my
own sadistic stupidity.
    I sank down against the wall and I rocked back and forth,
a horrible keening noise coming out of me.  How could Bobby hurt me like this? 
I was a monster.  Monsters don’t care for people.  Nothing should hurt like
this.  Bobby would die, and I figuratively died with him, my soul trapped in
his gentle hands as he slipped away.
    I recognized this crazy Arm crap emotion, though.  I
remembered feeling this way once before, when Keaton trashed my storeroom home
after I had fixed it up.
    Bobby had, somehow, in an impossible illogical manner,
become territory .
    I had never imagined people might become territory.  How
the hell was I supposed to deal with possessions as complex as human beings?
    Not the way I had been dealing so far, obviously.  I had
gone so far into ‘Arm’ that I left most of my humanity behind, clinging to
those last few remnants like the coat in winter only so I didn’t stand out. 
The lack of heat in the house was so obvious and so screwed up I flinched with
embarrassment, but the desolate emptiness of the house declared a callous
inhumanity as well.  Whether I lost Bobby or not, I had already lost something
of me. 
    I screwed up.  So, screw-ups happen.  When you screw up,
you admit the problem, then deal.  Keaton taught me that.
    I would fix the problem I had created.
    Somehow.
     
    ---
     
    Dr. Johnson signed the papers, unhappy.  Bobby was ready
to come home from the hospital, at least according to me and my Arm instincts. 
He wasn’t healthy, but he wasn’t dying, either.  Ten days.  Ten horrible
hurt-filled days.
    I winterized the house, of course.  I even cleaned the
kitchen and living room.  I fought my memories and emotions as I cleaned; I
once did this sort of thing for Keaton, and after I graduated I decided I would
never clean again.  I was an Arm, dammit, and cleaning was beneath me.
    What stupid pride.
    My pride wasn’t worth spit in a hurricane.  Keaton had taught
me that lesson long ago.
    Such an ordinary little house we lived in.  Over on the
wall by the fireplace, I hung one of Bobby’s poems.  I copied the poem to parchment,
in a surprisingly elegant hand, and had it framed.  It was good to use my
enhanced physical capabilities on something besides murder and mayhem.  Supernatural
coordination made for a nice hand with a pen.
    I didn’t know if the poem was any good.  Poetry wasn’t
my strong suit.  But Bobby’s poem was about silence, and night, and waiting for
something that never came, and his words touched something in me.  When Bobby got
healthier, I thought maybe I would have him sit for a portrait, and hang that
on the wall, too.
    I decorated for Bobby’s sake, I thought, but I found I
liked those ordinary things as well.  Some remnant of humanity apparently still
lurked in my Arm soul.  I chose floral prints and landscape scenes for my wall
decorations, and harmless knick-knacks for the decorations I put on my meager
furniture.
    I found I enjoyed the minutia of decorating.  Decorating
took my mind off other things.  The results made the house seem that much more
like a home, and much more mine. 
    I liked mine .
    Hmm, so maybe an inhuman Arm shared a few points in
common with normal humanity.  This was the last sort of thing I should be
abandoning and I mentally thanked Bobby for the lesson, and for being a gentler
teacher than Keaton.  Lessons involved