No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) by Randall Farmer Page B

anything.  Everything will be all right.”  From her mother.  She was so tired of her mother’s saccharine sweetness she could just spit.  Her father, she didn’t even want to think about.
    Monotony.  Misery.  Nothing but pain.  The world conspired to leave Gail alone, so very alone.  She lay on the bed in the dark, and cried.  Sometimes the tears were the only thing left in her , besides the aching misery and the bleak depression.  She wondered if eventually she would cry all her tears away, and leave herself empty.  Hollow inside, nothing more than a shell for her father and the other people to fill, an echo of what they expected her to be.  She wondered if this had happened to Focus Adkins, and if this had turned her evil.  Maybe she had cried herself hollow, and the darkness came and filled her up.  Maybe this happened to all Focuses.  Maybe they were all Monsters, just like the preachers said.
    Someone knocked on her door.  She ignored the knock.
    A few seconds later, the knock came again.  Then, pounding.
    No one was supposed to disturb her behind her locked door. Van, her parents, and the medical staff all had keys.  Everyone else was supposed to leave her alone.
    However, her father had gone back to the dealership in Flint, her mother had returned to the hotel, and the clinic only carried a couple of medical people on duty at this late hour.
    “Gail!  Are you in there?”  Kurt.  He wasn ’t supposed to be bothering her.  Nobody stopped him, though.  “Gail, do you have any idea what you’re doing to everyone?” Kurt said, shouting through the door.  “Sylvie’s been a wreck for days.  She can’t even stop crying.  Answer me, Gail!”
    Gail didn ’t answer.  She knew the effect she was having.  She could goddamned see her Transforms through her metasense.  She couldn’t get them out of her head if she tried.  She would stop the agony and depression if she could.  She didn’t know how.  Guilt made her cry harder.
    “God dam mit, Gail!”  Kurt rattled the knob angrily, but the lock was good, and the door didn’t open.  He gave up after a few seconds, and slammed his hand against the door.  The door rattled loudly against the frame.
    “Yeah, come on in there!  You ’re hurting people!”  Gail didn’t recognize the voice.  Male, angry, probably the spouse of one of the other women in her household.
    A third and a fourth voice added to the chorus, now all of them pounding on the door.  Gail burrowed deeper into her blankets and the slow seeping tears began coming in giant, wrenching sobs.  Oh, damn, how could she deal with this?  Everyone hated her, and everything was her fault.
    The nurse came finally and told them to leave Gail alone.  Nurse Sourpuss, night shift specialist, laid into them with the same supercilious disapproval she always gave Gail.  The men told her to go away, and when Nurse Sourpuss didn’t, one of them called her a bitch, loud enough for Gail to hear.  Well, that threw the gasoline on the burning fire, as shouts and threats and likely even lawsuits began to fly.  Gail laughed at the yawning chasm of death and the hilarity of life, but didn’t stop sobbing.  For the first time ever, she appreciated the French philosopher Sartre.
    Eventually she heard Van ’s quiet voice, too soft to understand any words.  Some of the men shouted at him, and Van responded, but he never shouted back.  They shouted some more, but slowly, over the course of several minutes, the voices all came down.  There was a long, low conversation, as the men murmured outside her door.  Slowly the hallway quieted.  Van’s voice faded into the distance.  Kurt’s angry voice took longer to fade.
    Gail sobbed and hoped that the door would hold.  She couldn ’t understand the exact words, but she didn’t care.  The pounding had stopped, a little relief of a relative sort.  She huddled tight under her blanket and let the wrenching storm of tears drift back