The Alcoholics Read Online Free

the General seemed in favor of a drink of arsenic.
    "I'll send it right out to you," he said, "but you'll have to promise you won't vomit it up."
    "Excellent," murmured the General, allowing Doc Murphy to assist him from the chair. "Oh, uh, by the way, Doctor. I'm afraid my account may be slightly in arrears…"
    "Who says so?" demanded the doctor, belligerently. "You telling me how to run my business?"
    And then he jumped so suddenly that the General was almost thrown over backwards. For he had heard screams before-he had heard screams that were screams. But he had never heard anything like this, the terrifying cry that could only be coming from Room Four.

4
    Lucretia Baker, R.N., had had a very good night's sleep. Not in months, not, in fact, since her sudden dismissal from a cerebral palsy case (male) had she slept so well. And she awakened well before six, thoroughly refreshed and relaxed, rejoicing in the apparent certainty of many more such pleasant nights to come. It had been an inspiration to take employment in this place. Not once, during the several weeks of that employment, had a day passed without its delighting interlude. It might be nothing more -nothing more!- than an eyelid, twisted beneath a professionally inquiring thumb. Or it might be nothing more than boiling bouillon, forced between lips too weak to protest. But once there had been a hypodermic, driving all the way to the bone, and…
    And last night!
    Ah, last night!
    Throwing open the French doors of her room, she stood naked in the cool-gray light of dawn, drinking in the tangy air of the Pacific. She looked out past the balcony and down the cliff, seeing the hunched red-tipped speck that was Doctor Murphy, reveling in the childish, age-old joy of seeing without being seen. In her imagination-a very vivid, much-practiced instrument-she mounted the balustrade of the balcony and called to him, sweetly in the voice of Circe, sweet but imperious, a Salammbo commanding the barbarian. And he came to her, scrambling up the rocks; and suddenly he was there, his feet and hands somehow bound, stretched helplessly on the bed.
    She bent over him (in her imagination). She let her full breasts brush back and forth across his face.
    "Well," she whispered, "don't you like me? Ith there thumpthing wrong, Doctor?"
    She shivered delightedly. The scene changed.
    Now, it was she who lay bound and helpless; and it was the doctor who bent over her. And if she was helpless. well, if a person was
    helpless, how could she…? A brief wave of sickness, nausea, swept over her. Her imagination, vivid and much-practiced as it was, would go no further.
    She sat down on the bed and lighted a cigarette. She tried to reason with herself, to squeeze out past the door of inhibition which always, when she was on the point of escape, crushed so cruelly and firmly against her… A doctor would be all right. Doctors had always been all right. Wasn't it a doctor who had been nice to Mama, all those years when no one else had been nice? Well. There you were. Doctors were different.
    Doctors were all right.
    She showered in luke-warm water, then turned the cold faucet on full, letting it beat for minutes against the molded curves of buttocks and belly. She took a great many cold showers, and usually they helped; she supposed, anyway, that she might have felt much more unease without them. But even if it had helped this morning, that help fell far short of the aid she needed.
    Less than thirty minutes before she had felt relaxed and joyous, ready for anything. Now, there was no joy in her, only the old, never- satisfied hunger, and it was as if she had never rested.
    And it was his fault! It was always their fault! It had been their fault with Mama, the mean, wicked, dirty things. They had killed Mama-always demanding, and giving nothing in return…
    Miss Baker dressed in her clean white uniform, her spotless white shoes and stockings. Eyes sparkling strangely, she pinned a white, blue-edged