Pool_1

>> Water's Edge <<

When all the patients had been seen and the dictations completed, Shannon asked, "Coffee? Its on me." He knew that meant that there were charts to go over. "Sure. Where are you hiding the charts?" "Chair behind you." "Oh. Not too bad. You pooping out finally?" "Oh God, I don't know. Nothing works. It's a loaded deck. Nothing is real. How do you counter sanctified illogic? I mean, look at this. How do we counter these bastards? Appeals. Appeals, my ass. They own the process. You wish you were a life guard again? Huh?" Marcus took a slow long sip of his coffee, closed his eyes, and allowed his mind to float on the waters of his past. "So what as it like?" she asked. A day at Charles Darling was actually pleasant. Lifeguard work was well paid and important. The body of water was about three fourths the size of a football field, ten feet deep at the end near the guard house and dressing rooms and two feet deep at the far end. The guard house was a room in the change house that had a window centered between the two diving boards and looking down the center of the long expanse of water. There was no Washington monument but there were plenty of kids named Washington something or other. The lifeguards were all, with one exception, white. This was not a discrimination thing, as efforts to recruit black guards were a colossal failure. The reality was that