Mother's Milk Read Online Free

Mother's Milk
Book: Mother's Milk Read Online Free
Author: Charles Atkins
Pages:
Go to
swear to God I’m not going to do anything to make it worse. And speaking of which … there was a message on my machine saying Jimmy’s six-month review is coming up next month.’
    George sighed. ‘It would have been so much better if he’d gone to trial.’
    â€˜Top lawyers and a ton of money,’ she commented. ‘And he is one of the most psychically damaged people I’ve ever known.’
    â€˜Are you getting any sleep?’
    â€˜Some, not much. Thank God Max sleeps through the night. So I can’t blame this on him, if anything just watching him helps. Some nights I’ll just stare at him, wondering how something so beautiful could have come out of me. But I still wake up every couple hours and my thoughts go a mile a minute … and my dreams. In the morning I feel like I’ve been running laps, like I’m about to jump out of my skin. Although …’
    â€˜What?’
    She took a sip of iced tea. ‘I went on an outreach this morning with one of the social workers.’
    â€˜Really? You’re the director now; you could have sent someone else.’
    â€˜It was one of my regulars, a young man with schizophrenia, whom I’ve known for years. Seems he picked up a dope habit. Anyway, he called in a panic and begged me to come out. Said he wanted to get back on meds and go to a hospital. I should have known something was up.’
    â€˜Because?’
    â€˜I really like Jerod, one of these guys that under all of the badness he’s been through, and his low-level crimes, mostly to get food or drugs, you know he’s a good person. I mean half the time whatever he steals he gives away. But here’s the thing, he hates being on meds and he hates being locked up; it makes him nuts. So he wants us to meet him down in the Lower East Side, says he’s too scared to bring himself to an emergency room.’
    â€˜I don’t like where this is going,’ George said.
    In spite of her funk, Barrett cracked a smile. ‘So we go down there, and we pull up to one of those buildings that if a building inspector ever showed up would be condemned. No working security door, broken steps, graffiti in the hallways …’
    â€˜For the love of God, Barrett. Are you about to tell me you dragged some poor social worker into a crack house without a police escort?’
    â€˜When you say it like that … what am I doing in this job, George?’
    Houssman chortled. ‘Stop fishing … no one else wanted it, or at least no one competent. So did you find your schizophrenic junkie with the heart of gold?’
    â€˜His name’s Jerod,’ she said, feeling a twinge of annoyance, and not liking the way George so easily put labels on people. ‘Not then, what we did find was two suburban-looking dead teenagers, and there was someone else in that building, someone who didn’t want us there.’
    â€˜So what you’re telling me is that you nearly got yourself and some poor crisis worker killed this morning, is that about right?’
    â€˜The funny thing is, here I’m swimming in jitters, always feeling like I’m on the verge of a panic attack, but not when I was in that building. It’s like all of that had evaporated, and for a few minutes I started to feel like myself again.’
    â€˜Oh, good,’ George said dryly, ‘mortal danger as a cure for panic disorder. You should be on meds. You breast-fed for four months, switching to formula is not going to make a hill of beans difference.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Then therapy at least.’
    â€˜Yeah, right. With my crappy cash flow I’m going to shell out a couple hundred bucks a week for therapy? I don’t think so. Besides, I’ve got you.’ She pictured George, sitting in the living room of his sun-drenched apartment in a dated brown suit, his eyes big behind Coke-bottle lenses, his gray hair uncombed and sticking up at odd
Go to

Readers choose

María Dueñas

Leigh Hutton

Gill Arbuthnott

Khloe Wren

Timothy M. Gay

J Robert Kennedy

T.A. Foster

David Smith