Doc in the Box Read Online Free Page B

rat,” I said. “Even took the guy’s Waterman pen. And I’ve never forgotten what Hattie Harrigan tried to do to me when I broke my elbow. What a sweetheart she was. Called all my sources while I was laid up and said she was taking over my column. Fortunately, an outraged source called me, and I called you.”
    “And I nipped that ambitious little twerp’s takeover in the bud. Columnist!” Georgia snorted. “My ass.”
    It was one reason why I helped cover up her illness now. She’d helped me when I’d needed it most. I was not going to lose her. Both my parents were dead. My grandparents, too. I’d already lost the one man I loved. But I wouldn’t lose the one woman I cared about. If I had to drag her out of the grave with my bare hands, I was not going to let her die.
    So far, Georgia had successfully kept her bout with cancer hidden from the
Gazette
staff. She always wore boxy gray suits, so it was hard to tell if she’d lost weight. She preferred expensive blouses in seriously ugly colors like mustard, and they made her look kind of unhealthy, anyway. She’d had her partial mastectomy and axillary lymph node dissection during her vacation, so nobody paid any attention to her absence. The chemo was making her queasy already, so she kept a supply of Hefty bags in her bottom desk drawer in case she barfed without warning, along with a huge bottle of Percocet for the pain.
    “How did you do today?” I asked. “Did you need the Percocet?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “But I didn’t realize what an advantage it was to sit through a
Gazette
meeting drugged. Should have done it years ago.”
    That sounded like my funny, don’t-give-a-damn friend, the only person in the
Gazette
management I respected. But lately I’d been encountering a new Georgia, one who was sentimental and overgrateful and cried for no reason. The old Georgia never cried. I didn’t recognize this weepy, grateful Georgia, and didn’t like her as well as the old one.
    “You don’t have to do this,” the new Georgia said, her voice wobbling under a heavy load of tears. “You have columns to write. How are you going to finish them?”
    “I bought a laptop,” I said.
    “You did that for me?” she said.
    “No, I did it for me,” I said. “I needed one anyway.” That stopped the tears, thank god.
    Georgia was the smartest woman I knew. She made only one really dumb mistake. Her cancer was more advanced than it should have been because Georgia was terrified of mammograms. I’d been trying to get her to make an appointment for the last two years. She made excuses instead. “I’m too busy,” she’d say. Or, “I hate those things. Talk about your tit in a wringer.” Then she developed a lump she couldn’t ignore. Too late, she learned the discomforts of a mammogram were nothing compared to what she was going through now. The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
    “Dumbest damn thing I ever did, putting off thatmammogram,” she said, “and that includes marrying my ex and joining the
Gazette.”
    She gave me the bad news at Miss Lucy’s Lunchroom. It was a safe place for us to talk. Nobody from the
Gazette
ever went there, even if it was just around the corner. Miss Lucy’s specialized in tea and tiny sandwiches without crusts, served by sweet elderly women in ruffled pink uniforms. Georgia and I stood out there like a couple of streetwalkers at a finishing school, and it didn’t help that Georgia sounded like one.
    I arrived first, sat at a dainty pink table, and felt like the Incredible Hulk. The pink ruffled waitress brought a pot of cinnamon orange tea and a plate of cookies that tasted like ceiling insulation dipped in powdered sugar. I’d bet the paper doily they were on had more flavor. This must be bad news indeed if Georgia insisted on meeting me here, and I thought of a dozen different things that could go wrong, but I never guessed the truth.
    When Georgia charged through the tearoom door in a fungus-colored suit,