Pool_1

so lifeless, robotic, distant, allergic to emotion. Sumner had become the mule of an old dead prospector, making daily rounds of abandoned digs, out of habit, addiction by repetition and form without reason. Marcus still called on him professionally at regular intervals hoping to revive a glimmer of the old spark. But there was none. Spiritually, Sumner was gone and Mac missed him. Frank was handsome if you could get past the left burn clubbed ear and Bells' palsy. A cigar, a pure prop as he never smoked it, was habitually stuck into that lower left sagging lip. The only inkling that he had an opinion or a feeling to what was being said was a small rise in the tip of that cigar. The Purple Heart garnered from his actions in Vietnam, and which nobody at the hospital ever saw, could not equal the red ribbon, Julie's ribbon, which even now he still wore pinned to his left shirt pocket in stone silence at the end of The Table. It clung to his chest symbolically as she clung to him as he suffered, as his burns healed. And it clung to him much as he had embraced her as she suffered, unable to heal. He was her best and only poultice when her misfortune came. Don't expect bastards like Karl to show up with flowers. He found that he could handle a Karl. He could run through fire. He could drag himself on his belly one hundred yards with a bullet hole in his leg, face half cooked pressed into the dirt. But, when kids plan their lives, who thinks of cancer? Psychiatrist Larry Osten, a regular at The Table, picked up on it first - Frank was more withdrawn in Mary Richards' presence. Julie's death, two years ago, left him more alone than any other man could ever be left alone. A rich involvement in the chatter of the table died with her. Conversation now tread carefully around the death of loved ones, especially from cancer. Mary never touched this subject in Frank's presence. She had gotten too close to Frank and Julie and determined that his misery was too permeating to be eased. Osten, on the other hand, analyst as he was, and unable to let