Doc in the Box Read Online Free

chemotherapy. And I was with her. If Georgia had been at the office, she would have stopped Charlie’s latest scheme or at least warned me. Now I couldn’t go running into Georgia’s office about my column being pulled. She had real worries.
    “I appreciate how you stick up for your staff,” I said.
    “You don’t have to get sarcastic. It’s only a test, Francesca.”
    I heard my phone ringing and ran to answer it. “Francesca, it’s Janet. Janet Smith. Why isn’t your column in today?”
    “It’s a test,” I told my neighbor. Janet was furious.
    “First, they make us vote for our favorite comics in the Comics Poll, so I have to fight to save ‘For Better or Worse.’ Then, they redesign the TV book, and the type is so small I can’t read the listings. Now they’re testing us by taking out your column. I’ve had enough. I’m getting the school calling tree going.”
    “What’s a calling tree?” I interrupted.
    “We each have a list of ten names to call, and those ten names have ten names, and so on. It adds up to three hundred parents, and they’re already angry. Your paper will not print anything but bad news about our city schools, and we’re tired of it. If yourmanaging editor wants phone calls, he’ll get them. And while we’re on the phone, we’ll tell him exactly what we think about the
Gazette
’s education reporting. We’re sick of the rich kids in Parkway and Ladue getting all the good stories, while our city kids are branded as hoodlums.”
    As soon as she hung up, the phone rang again. It was Debbie, the manager at Uncle Bob’s Pancake House, where I had breakfast almost every day.
    “Hi, honey,” she said. “Where were you today, and where is your column? We had a rush of customers this morning and when I finally got a chance to sit down with a paper and a cup of coffee, you weren’t in. This is Tuesday, right?”
    “Sorry, Debbie,” I said. “I got up late and didn’t make it in this morning. And my column didn’t make it in, either. Charlie’s pulled it as a test.”
    “Oh, he did, did he? Looks like I’ll have to make a sign, informing everyone at Uncle Bob’s what happened. What numbers should we call, honey?” she said.
    I gave her Wendy’s and Charlie’s numbers, and hung up feeling much better. My readers always went to bat for me. Like a Tennessee Williams character, I relied on the kindness of strangers. I stayed at my desk, working on my column for Thursday and taking more phone calls from readers asking why I wasn’t in the paper. I also called the Heart’s Desire to talk to Leo D. Nardo, but he wasn’t in yet. I’d call him tomorrow.
    Occasionally, I’d look up and see a harried Wendy talking on the phone, apparently about my column. “It’s just for a day,” she’d say, sounding aggrieved. “She’ll be back in the paper on Thursday. You don’thave to get so upset. We gave her the day off.” Way across the newsroom, I could also see Charlie’s secretary, Evelyn, talking on one phone, while another line kept ringing. She looked exasperated. Good. By the time I was ready to leave at three-thirty to get Georgia, Wendy was not answering her phone anymore.
    “Your phone is ringing, Wendy,” I said, as I headed for the door.
    “I can’t deal with any more of your callers, Francesca,” she said. “They’re so angry.”
    “They’re just testy,” I said, sweetly.
    I was supposed to meet Georgia in front of her apartment building at three forty-five. Apartment was an inadequate word for Georgia’s fourteen-room penthouse overlooking Forest Park. It even had a terrace and a hot tub. That apartment was one of the things that kept her at the
Gazette
. She knew she couldn’t live in high-rise splendor if she moved to the company headquarters in Boston. There wasn’t much chance of her going to Boston, anyway, not since she’d told the publisher what she thought of his latest plans to cut the paper’s staff and delay buying new equipment.