I received word this morning that my corrections to the galleys that I submitted will be complete soon and at that point the book will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and Xulon Press's websites. As soon as the book is available I will make sure you know as well. Here is a tidbit to whet your taste buds.
The Beginnings
The ambulance lights undulated against the curtain's edge. Two nonchalant uniformed figures unloaded the
stretcher and began to loosen the restraints that held the appendages of the
new patient.
She was back. Word spread like starling chatter among staff and
patients.
They led her to her room conveniently across from “The Quiet
Room” and deposited her bag of belongings with a soft plop onto the bed.
High heeled black boots and large black sunglasses remained her
uniform despite injunctions to remove them. She began to pace, staccato steps,
the boots clapping the floor like applause accompanying her mounting panic.
Maria-the-Heavy came in: heavy
because she was the head nurse, heavy because of years of overfeeding and
indolence, heavy because of the sinking pit she left in the stomach of the new
arrival.
“Welcome back,” said Maria in a voice singularly devoid of
welcome. “Give me your sunglasses and take off your boots—you know the drill.”
The pacer halted and considered the implication of those demands:
soul-theft—right through her iris blue irises.
And the boots, she needed that rhythm to build the barrier around
her. Every clap was the slap of a brick
being laid about her, keeping them at bay and her being intact because right
now, she could guarantee that body parts were about to detach and then how
could Humpty Dumpty have any hope of integrity at all?
Maria stuck her head out the door of the room and called to
several staff who were waiting, anticipating this inevitable moment.
“Cynthia needs a little help with her shoes and
sunglasses.”
They surrounded her slowly, warily, encroaching step by cautious
step: like hyenas circling a lioness.
Caution, trepidation, and anticipation all dripped from their fangs.
With the suddenness of a tightly wound spring releasing, the
lioness bolted for the door, quarter-backing her way through the wall of
jackals. With the speed bred of a thousand encounters, the buzzer was rung, and
the room filled with muscles flexed on squat men who lived for such moments...An
injection appeared and, despite writhing screams, found its home on her thigh.
As she sank, deflating, the hands then removed her shoes, glasses
and clothing. Gowning her in a hospital
robe they potato-sacked her into the room across the hall, where she would
remain until the medicines had their way with her: reducing her, ironing out
wrinkles in her gray matter, fattening her up for the kill and untwisting her
words—although the word salad was truly spectacular.
Days later-- weeks maybe?--the door to the Quiet Room opened and
spewed its protégé. Subdued, dead-eyed,
leaden bodied-- already thickening in the middle--- she wandered the halls
apparition-like, acknowledging the cohabitants by a minute head nod and a split
second glance at the eyes. It was a secret society of welcome: ranging from
angry disinterest, to too friendly back-patting welcome-backing.
She remained silent, mouth taut at the corners. Fear had already accomplished its
incineration in her bowels. This was the
last stop. The last platform before the
Crazy Train dropped her at her final destination: Greystone. That's where the doctor had told her husband
she belonged; that she was, “hopelessly ill.” Even in her confused rage she
knew that the word “hopeless” was a misnomer.
God doesn't make “hopeless” people and there is no situation so far
wrong that he cannot right it.
No comments:
Post a Comment