Empathy

Chapter 1

EMILY BURTON CAME to New York to shoot herself in the head. She stood in front of the mirror in her room at the Morgan Hotel, her head cocked, listening. Her off-blonde hair—a little greasy, a little split at the ends—hung at an angle. Her eyes, tar emeralds in the low light, concentrated into slits; the brow above them all edges, the flesh below plum pillows. Her hands floated level with her belly, frozen in a clutch of long fingers and ragged nails.

Emily closed her eyes and bunched her toes into the hotel carpet. She took a shaky breath and stretched out her mind like splayed fingers in the dark. It was there, she could feel it, she could feel all of THEM, but couldn’t differentiate one from another. She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and shoved with her mind, attempting to divide individuals from the whole. It was like standing in the surf and trying to count drops of water. Emily opened her eyes and wrapped her arms—still muscled from the high school swim team she’d quit ten years ago—around her ribs. Her shoulders bunched and she let out her breath.

Give it a week, she said to herself. If the white noise held, if she could keep the individual drops from smashing into her heart like bullets, Emily would let the woman in the mirror live. If they got through, there was her father’s service pistol in the gym bag on the bed. She’d come to Manhattan looking for silence, one way or another.

Something twitched in her gut. Her heart jumped and her eyes slotted to the right. Had that been a slice of foreign emotion? She squinted one eye shut, her face falling into the all too familiar sideways cringe. She held her breath, waiting for the hammer to come down, expecting the flood of someone else’s feelings. A minute passed. She remembered to breathe. She was still numb with the white sound buzz of all of Manhattan. Still safe.

She stared at herself standing there in mismatched bra and panties. Blue on the top, red on the bottom, and white skin all around. She suppressed the urge to salute. One week. If this relative quiet slipped away from her, then… Emily threw a wink to the patriotic-looking nutcase in the mirror. Put you outta’ your, misery, babe.

The babe winked back, but it was flat, not the slick from-the-hip gesture she’d been going for. More of a fatigued wince. Lauren Bacall she was not. Maybe closer to Courtney Love at the end of a bender. A laugh flirted over her features like a ray of sun over November fields. For just a moment, she was the kind of beautiful boys wrestled each other to get near. She jerked back into listening posture, hands clenched, head cocked.

Had that sun-burst really been from her, or had a stray drop of water gotten through the white noise? Not all the drops burned. Some were so cool and refreshing, effervescent that when the feeling faded she’d crash like a stone dropped from a highway overpass through some unsuspecting driver’s windshield. Sometimes she feared the highs more than the lows. Most of the time she just feared everything. Emily glanced over her shoulder at the gym bag.

She turned her back on the woman in the mirror and trudged over to the bed. The duvet sighed a nylon whisper as she slid under it. The June air outside was wet breath from a dragon, but her skin rose in goosebumps from the rattling AC unit in the window. They didn’t do summer like this in Janesville, Wisconsin. Emily stared up at the scalloped ceiling and watched the stucco swim and swirl. So tired. Beyond tired. She’d driven the entire way in her old blue Accord without stopping for anything more than gas.

Now, sleep, finally, but the underwire in her bra was digging into her left boob. Emily considered leaving it be, but a deep breath and a deep dig convinced her otherwise. With her last ounce of juice, Em levered up like that dried up old vampire from Nosferatu and slipped out of the torture harness. Oh, blessed relief. She sling-shot the bra onto the floor and dropped back into the pillows then hooked her thumbs into the waist band of her panties and slid them down her legs. (Maybe we could shave this week, Em?) Tired of screwing around, sleep reached up from the depths, wrapped an iron tentacle around her head, and pulled Emily down into the velvet nothing with her underwear still wrapped around one ankle.

Dreams filled the gap in her consciousness and she kicked the gym bag off the bed. It landed on the floor with a metallic thunk. Emily whimpered and rolled over, away from the sound and into the silence.

* * *

SHE WAS NINE when it first happened, when the first color of feeling not her own slipped in and tinged her emotions. Emily was just proclaiming herself Queen of All

She Surveyed—currently, the corner of Jasper and Elton Streets, Janesville Wisconsin—from atop the rusted brown jungle gym when Kenny Mitchell fell. Kenny, a grade lower than Em but the same recess period (and a real snothead if you wanted to know), was attempting to challenge her rule over the known universe when his footing betrayed him like a common courtier with evil ambition. He went down, splitting his chin on a metal bar and sending a stress fracture up through his left femur, but it was Emily who screamed.

The world crystallized.

A drip of spring melt water caught a bolt of sun and threw it from the oak tree by the side of the school, the one with Melissa Blocher’s dirty shoe still stuck in it. The wet buzzsaw of a crow’s call stretched over the playground. An airplane dragged a white ice road across the sky, it’s roar deepening in reverse doppler. Kenny’s left Adidas squeaked as it slid off the bar. His internal gyroscopes registered the point of no return and a weightless terror turned his bones to white light.

At that same instant, helpless, electric fear poured into Emily’s chest. She was falling! She shrieked and grasped the nearest bar with an iron fist, eyes shut tight against the rushing ground. A crooked scowl—a child waiting for a blow—wrenched her pretty face into a ball of crumpled paper. She waited for the air to pulse from her lungs upon impact, her ankles to twist and sprain. But there was no impact.

A moment later the world cleared and she stood, feet firmly planted on the jungle gym, blinking in the April sunshine. Kenny’s wails of agony and incomprehension floated up to her. She looked down at the small crowd of kids congealing around the one on the ground with the bloody face. She endured a sense of doubling for a moment, before jumping down to see if she could help, or just, you know, kind of stare at how gross it was.

Kenny was back in school the next day, showing off his stitches (Ewwww, like Frankenstein!) and amassing a respectable signature collection on his cast. Emily floated on the periphery of the autographers, wondering if that strange connection between her and Kenny would reestablish itself.

She could taste him all over her head, as if the inside of her skull had been painted with a generous coat of Kenny. It was not an entirely unpleasant feeling, Kenny-ness; a little sticky and hot—sort of spicy. It was BOY. That made it kind of gross, but at the same time it was kind of neat, too. She kept wanting to jump over things and shout.

That feeling of BOY had faded almost completely by the time lunch period had rolled around the day after Kenny’s fall. And with a child’s ability to accept situations beyond her understanding, Emily just let it go.

By the time she was Thirteen, Emily had gone from a bright-eyed tree climber to a cowering wreck. Puberty had done it, adding a catalyst to her already strange brain chemistry and pushing her ability into high gear. The occasional drizzle of feeling from outside had become a daily deluge. Waves of emotion lapped her feet at all times. In sleep she floated on the backs of alien dream-feelings. One moment nightmare, the next pleasure, none of it hers. The lines that separated Emily from the rest of humanity began to vibrate out of focus like strummed guitar strings. Even so, she had managed to hold onto her sense of self, to brace her shifting outline until one day a parade came to town.

JANESVILLE’S DULY ELECTED sheriff looked across the breakfast table at his genetic footprints in the face of a thirteen-year-old girl. She had his sandy blonde hair, his eyes (Got her mother’s nose. Lucky break for the kiddo on that one.) and wore the same expression of concern. It was like she had known his face was going to make that pinched-brow look almost before he had.

The damn babysitter had cancelled and Andy Burton just didn’t feel right about leaving Emily on her own, not the way she’d been lately. Some part of his little girl was slipping away, growing blurry. All teenagers went through a ragged-edged period between adult and child—Andy knew that—but Emily’s behavior of late was more troubling than the occasional mood swing or defiance for defiance’s sake. She would come home late from school and when he’d ask about her whereabouts, Emily would seem to snap out of a trance then explain that she had just been wandering. Just wandering. She never lied to him, that much he could always tell.

It was more than a cop’s practiced ability to divine truth. Andy, too, had a gift. Nothing powerful as Emily’s, but certainly useful in his line of work and in knowing whether his teenage daughter had been bullshitting him. She hadn’t. When Emily said that between the hours of three and five she had spent her time roaming, dreaming away the sidewalk squares, he believed her. At the same time, there was something more, something worse perhaps.

Andy had taken to hiring a babysitter—Sally Johansen from downstreet—to spend time with Em after school and on weekends when Andy had to work. Sally’s older brother Sam might toke a bit o’ smoke from time to time, but Sally was on the up and up. She was only a few years older and as much a friend to Emily as a sitter, but today she’d called citing female troubles and begged off. (Quite possibly, these female troubles were connected to the electric blue Toyota Supra parked in Sally’s parents’ driveway and the brooding, but sensitive young rebel known to drag it out on State Route 32.)

Andy wasn’t about to leave Em at home on her own. He could just imagine her sitting by the window with that weird stare she’d adopted in the last few weeks—a mix of dreamy and shifty, like everything was transparent and she was caught by action just below the surface of things, or as if she were eavesdropping on a crowd behind a thick curtain, straining to make sense of the muffled noise.

He didn’t relish the idea of her being around what he was going into today either. Oh, he didn’t think there would be much trouble—a few picketers, the odd hurled produce—but if Emily’s problem was what he thought it might be…

You okay, kiddo? Andy asked.

Emily’s own concerned expression intensified. If she were a less respectful kid, Andy would have thought she was aping him. He almost wished she were. I guess so, she said and looked into her drowned cornflakes, stirring the mush. I feel kinda’....

Worried?

She sighed, Worried, yeah.

Sally can’t make it today. Wanna’ come to work with your old man?

Desk stuff? She pulled a face. Boooorrrrrinnnnng.

Andy picked up a Cheerio and flicked it at her head. Emily dodged and the sun lit up her face from the inside. Her mother had smiled like that. Kiddo got lucky on that one, too. Nope, he said. There’s a protest kind of thing happening downtown and I need to be there to make sure everyone keeps their manners.

Protest?

Andy imagined the marching rows of white hoods, the disgusting epithets brushed across signs inked in basements and garages lit with ignorance.

More of a parade, but I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a smallish bunch of folk none too happy about it.

Andy didn’t expect much of a turn-out. The Klan always drew a few well-intentioned shouters to the curb, but the sad fact in Janesville was that most folks turned a blind eye to idiocy. They were used to this kind of thing. Let the pillow-heads do their thing once a year and downtown could go back to its meetings of the Town Selectmen and custard shops. In all honesty, Andy wished the protesters would just leave off. The pillow-heads were like the devil himself: turn your back on Ol’ Scratch and he’s got no power over you. The protesters were really just giving the Klan the attention they wanted. Of course, that was his wise side. The rest of him wanted to hold them all down, tattoo their skin a nice shade of brown and then force them to live in Chicago’s South Side. But no one ever got what he really, really wanted in life. Thank God.

Today’s job would be pretty easy. Andy and his deputies, Hal Svenson and Jerry French, would just let themselves be seen, big arms crossed over barrel chests, a humming prowl car—a quiet reminder. Emily could just stay in the squad car and read one of her books. She probably had a ton of homework anyway with all the gifted classes she was in. And they could have a long overdue father-daughter talk. It was high time Andy Burton told Emily what she was.

He should have told her years ago, when the first signs that she was like him and her mother had begun to show. It had started when that kid, Kirk or Kenny something, had taken a header off the monkey-bars. Em had come home with that look of wonder on her face, and her mother had just known.

Her mother always knew. Lisa Burton had a gift of her own. It had served her well until that sonofabitch patient took her away from them. Andy just couldn’t go back over that. His and Emily’s pain had swirled in and out of each other like black and white paint, the distinctions breaking down over time. Eventually, when it came to Lisa’s death father and daughter lived in dread silence. Neither of them talked about it at all after the first year. It was like Lisa’s memory existed as a shadow in the corner, always there, never acknowledged lest it writhe into full view and wail.

But enough was enough. If Emily didn’t understand how to deal with her talents, how to be careful, she might end up like her mother. Andy couldn’t have that. He’d burn down the world before he lost Em.

FORTY MINUTES LATER, they sat in Andy’s patrol car, the engine growling out welcome heat through the dash vents. The radio hissed and squawked its police chatter, the volume turned low. Andy, now in full Sheriff Burton regalia—badge gleaming, shirt ironed—took off his hat and brushed a hand through his short hair. A chill mist slicked the windshield, blurring the image of officers Svenson and French. They flanked either side of the main street through downtown, their orange ponchos flapping. A group of about twenty people simmered under a forest of bobbing signs. Andy couldn’t read them.

Is that the parade? Emily asked.

Naw, honey, that’s the protest part of it. The parade part won’t start for a little while yet. The Klan had rented out the old Kiwanis building at the end of the strip and had been given permission to congregate there before beginning their annual march. Andy checked the time on the dash clock. He had a good twenty minutes before the pillow-heads hit the tarmac.

The sound of Emily’s pencil scratching in a school workbook brought him back into the car with her. He looked at her, could smell her shampoo and her Emilyness. Sometimes he had to stop himself from leaning over and inhaling his little girl in big nosefuls. Little girl? She was already over five feet. More and more a young woman. Sometimes he could just watch her do her homework. Sometimes it scared him how much he loved this kid.

He took a breath. He had to do this.

Emily felt the change in him and looked up.

Let’s talk about your mom for a minute, he said.

Dad, she started, we don’t have to.

He put a hand on her arm. "No, it’s okay. We do have to. Andy pulled his hand back and ruffed it through his hair again. I’ve been noticing some things about you lately."

Emily looked out through the passenger window. Thought you wanted to talk about mom.

I do, Andy said. You… Shit, how do I start this?

Emily looked back fast enough for her neck to crack. Her daddy never cussed around her. Am I in trouble, Dad?

Naw, honey, never. It’s not like that. I’m sorry I cussed, okay?

’Kay.

Andy took a breath, turned in his seat to face his daughter full on, and said in a rush, You can do something that other people can’t do. Your mother could too, but not as strong as you can, I think. I have a thing I can do too, but nowhere near as strong as your mother or you. He exhaled as if coming up from a long dive. For a moment, he said nothing. Then, Em, you can feel other people’s emotions. You’re what some folks call an empath.

Emily stared down into her vocabulary workbook. She was supposed to read the sentence and use a word from that week’s list to fill in the blank. She was pretty sure the right word was rigamarole.

Em, you listening to me?

Yes, she said, her voice small. It’s just…I guess…I mean I guess I knew that already. She gave him a shy smile. "I mean, jeez, Dad, duh."

The claw in Andy’s chest relaxed. You knew? You knew about your mother and everything, too?

"I didn’t know, she said. I could feel it. After a while I kind of just put it all together. Your thing about lying too."

You know about that? He smiled in spite of himself.

Yeah, she said with a tiniest whisper of pride. Like I could feel Mom feeling things, I can always tell when you know someone’s lying. It makes you feel a certain way that you don’t ever feel any other time.

Really? How do I feel to you when that happens?

Kinda… Concentration crinkled Emily’s face. Kinda’ like you’re disappointed, but you sort of expected it too? Does that make sense?

That’s just about right.

Emily slid her eye sideways. How good is that, anyway?

My lying trick? How well can I tell?

Yeah.

Good enough to know that you were B.S.ing me when I caught you and Richie Schermer kissing last year.

Emily’s face burned. You knew about that?

Don’t sweat it, kid. I think any dad worth his salt would’ve known, but when you tried to lay down that line about how all you were doing was studying, that little something in my head lit up and I knew you’re weren’t telling the truth.

Can you always tell?

Andy considered for a moment. I think so. Guess there’d never really be a way to know all the way. Andy brushed a strand of hair out of her face. But we’re talking about you.

Okay.

Okay, tell me about this thing of yours. Your mother always had a strong sense of what other people were feeling, but it seems so much bigger with you. Almost like it hurts.

It does sometimes, sort of. Her little hand bunched into a fist on her knee. If someone’s close enough? And they’re feeling something really strongly? It’s like I can’t even tell the difference between me and them. And it’s like the older I get? The stronger it is. Like, I used to have to be right next to someone, but now I can feel it when Mr. Lyles from downstreet gets P.O.’d when the Packers loose.

Andy waited, listened.

Do you know what it’s like, she said, to not be able to tell if you feel something because its yours or because you’re standing too close to someone?

Sounds kind of like getting someone else’s perfume all over you and not knowing if you put it on yourself that morning or not.

Emily nodded, her little girl face much too serious for her age. A little bit like that, yeah. Her clenched fist began to shake. Like right now, Daddy, she threw ice bolts, I fucking hate you.

Andy sat back. What?

I dunno, she said, biting down on a glowing anger and looking out the window. I think it might be those ghost-people.

Andy followed her gaze. Shit on toast, he muttered. The pillow-heads’re early this year.

Thick tears smeared Emily’s deep green eyes and squeezed onto her cheeks. Her baby-fat wasn’t enough to disguise the flex and jump of her jaw muscle as she ground her teeth. Resting on her thighs, her fists clenched in rhythm like twin hearts.

Through the fogged windshield a column of about thirty figures dressed in white sheets and matching hoods flowed and flapped in lock-step up the strip. Their footfalls were punctuated by a low, coarse chant, but the distance between them and Andy’s prowl car sanded the edges off their words.

Honey? Andy spoke as if he were afraid to wake her from an episode of sleep-walking. What’s going on with you now?

Emily’s mouth parted a finger’s width, a gossamer strand of saliva spanning the gap. Her eyebrows twisted. A squeak that dipped into a low growl escaped her throat. "Dirty," she said, her fists working, working.

Andy pulled the mic from the dash and thumbed the talk button. "Frog, this is

base, you copy?" (Frog was Andy’s pet name for officer French. French loved it. Really.) Andy could see the big cop bend his head toward the radio clipped to his shoulder.

The CB squawked, Copy, base. Andy could hear the rain spattering on French’s mic. Is this a beautiful morning, or what? Over.

Those jackasses’re early, Frog. Andy glanced at his daughter. Emily was sweating now. Everything under control out there? Over.

French’s hat pivoted toward the bustling group of protestors. He crackled through the speaker. The welcoming committee’s getting really pissed off, but so far they’re staying inside their zone. Over.

Fucking kill them.

Andy stared at Emily. What’d you say?

Her voice came again, flattened like a late-stage schizophrenic. Nuh-nigger loving…, she paused, blinked, racist, fascist…, paused, blinked, string ‘em up with their own guts…

Andy Burton could only stare. Emily shook in her seat, an engine of hatred building toward overload. Very slowly, her head revolved toward her father. I’m gonna’ fucking kill ‘im, Dad.

Keeping his eyes locked on his daughter’s, Andy raised the mic to his mouth and spoke slow and even. Jerry, you and Hal keep your eyes open. I think someone might be packin’. Over.

Andy watched with approval as both broad hats swung like slow, radar dishes, scanning the protesters and approaching marchers. Hal Svenson came across the frequency. Base, this is Svenson. You copy me?

Go, Hal.

Andy, you know somethin’ we don’t? Over.

Andy watched his little girl as she faced out the window and spat a glob of phlegm at the glass. It slid down like a sick slug. Faggots, she hissed.

Maybe, Andy said into the mic. You just make sure you… he trailed off, a blank mask settling across his features.

Base? Repeat, please. Over.

Em? Andy stared into his daughter’s lap, his voice shook. Oh, God, honey.

Emily Burton followed her father’s eyes down to her right hand. It shook so fast she couldn’t see the edges.

* * *

EMILY SAT UP in bed and for a long minute didn’t know where she was. A fevered sweat slicked her skin. The bed sheets were tangled around her legs in a moist rope. The inside of her head was blanketed in warm, crackling electricity. So much energy, so many feelings, but at the same time it overloaded and deafened her. She smelled disinfectant, industrial fabrics, old sweat and laundry, ancient cigarettes indelible from the cheap carpet. A heavy curtain was drawn across the window; its outline glowing arc-sodium orange.

Oh, yeah. New York.

Emily slumped back into the jungly bedclothes and closed her eyes. A flash of her memory dream was waiting for her: her father’s face. Em? Oh, God, honey. She brushed that away and concentrated on the waves of foreign feeling buffeting around inside her skull. Their edges were still blunt like a bag of shattered glass, the shards grinding together and smoothing over time. Emily wondered if there were one or two pieces rolling around inside her head that still had edges on them. Well, she had a solution for that if she felt the slightest cut.

If I can’t make it here, she sang in the dark, "I can’t make it, blah, blah…bang!"

She thought about laughing for a second, tried it, and was not at all pleased with the outcome. Healthy people didn’t laugh like that.

Emily turned her head and checked the clock on the night table. The old-fashioned analog threw an intermittent glow from its stuttering backlight. Em had been asleep for—she squinted, big hand on nine little hand on twelve—only three hours. Man, the drive from Janesville had been something like twenty-five straight hours and she’d only been asleep for three? She didn’t really feel tired anymore. Could that be right? She looked at the clock again. Kitsch, 1960’s revival design, or, quite possibly, this hotel just hadn’t updated. She guessed it could be either one in Manhattan.

Emily reached over and fumbled with various hard objects on the night table until her efforts were rewarded with a click and a greasy spray of light. There was something on the floor in front of the door. Emily threw her long legs over the side of bed, smirked at the shifting line of bruises that seemed to have tattooed her shins since she was small, and got up. She teetered over and stared down at the two days worth of the New York Post that had been slid under the door.

Oops, she said and put a hand over her little smile.

She hadn’t been asleep for three hours, she’d been asleep for closer to thirty-six. Emily bent and (Oh, man!) her lower back shot a triplet of cracks. She winced and picked up the tabloids. The one from the day before screamed in huge slant type:

PHOBIA KILLER TAKES THIRD

FEAR GRIPS CITY

Emily brought the picture in close to her face. She couldn’t quite make out what she was seeing. It looked like a pile of spiky leaves had blown into a corner of some dark alley. A pair of shoes resolved at the base of the pile and she realized that the leaves had been laid over a corpse. She began to read a little way into the article and almost dropped the paper. …The body of a young woman is the third in a bizarre series of murders in which the victims appear to have been scared to death. Authorities believe the scores of arachnids used in the killing may be linked to an earlier break-in at the entomology department at the University of…

Emily looked closer. Oh, Jesus, those weren’t leaves. They were spiders. A length of her hair tickled her naked shoulder and she screamed. Emily flailed at her shoulder. She caught her own reflection in the closet mirror and yelped again, dissolving into a giggles. The naked chick in the mirror was totally off her rocker. Cute though.

She turned this way and that, nodding at her old swimmer’s muscles, frowning at the tiny pouch of subcutaneous fat under her belly button. Some people considered that little female belly sexy. Emily even thought it looked nice on some women, just not on her. She missed her six-pack. Maybe she’d join a gym if she allowed herself to live out the week. She flexed, a little "Huh," escaping over her lower teeth. At least she could still get that vertical line between her abs to show.

She let her breath out and shook her head. The banality of her thoughts jolted her. This was all so stupid, checking out her birthday suit, thinking about joining a gym. Normal people lived this way, not her. Emily tipped her head to one side, listened. The white noise of New York’s eight-million alien hearts pounded the shore of her skull, insistent but still safely inscrutable. Hell, maybe it would really work and she could finally be bored.

Hi, she flashed a smile at her naked buddy with the tummy. I’m Emily. There’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about me. She winked and threw out a hip. In fact, I’m totally uninteresting. That’s me, boredom city.

She glanced again at the paper. Spiders. For fuck’s sake, she whispered, and backed up until the bedspread cooled the backs of her knees. Emily sat down with a squeak of springs and opened the tabloid. The exploits of the Phobia Killer squirmed across the columns in six point agate. Her eyes followed in a flickering cadence.

A few minutes later, she put aside the paper and wondered about the problems of other human beings, or, at the very least, the problems of those who might pass for human. Somewhere on the streets of her new city a monster was hunting.

And eating.

~~~~~~~~

From the Journal of Drummond Fine, MD

Thursday, March 27th, 9:45pm

Began treatment of new patient today—George P. Forty-five, white, unmarried, heterosexual. Referred by Simone Whitehead, MD., attending physician Mercy Hospital E.R. GP was admitted with a minor dog bite (He’s a postal carrier. Would be hilarious if not so…scripted.) but when Whitehead attempted to administer the first round of rabies countermeasures GP refused treatment. Whitehead informed GP that rabies countermeasures are legally required and approached the patient. GP became violent (apparently he gave the pushy bitch a nice hard shove) and was restrained by security. Whitehead made another ham-fisted attempt to administer countermeasures while GP was being restrained and GP subsequently lost consciousness. GP shows a severe belonephobia/trypanophobia. Whitehead was aware of my work and contacted me through the hospital list serv.

GP’s case is interesting. He prickles (couldn’t resist) at the mere mention of needles or giving blood. The usual probes reveal a spike in fear response around a summer spent at sleep-away camp. He claims little or no memory of the experience, but when pushed, his fear spike was intense…delicious. I think I may have been a little off-putting. It’s difficult not to shudder, or dig my fingernails into the armrest of my chair. I’ll have to be more careful; work on my poker-face. There’s a lot of potential here. (Note to Self: get one of those stress squeeze balls.)

Rest of the day passed without incident. Treated I.R., T.P., and Y.J. Y.J. is showing improvement. She may be ready for a deeper probe. I’ll need to tread lightly here. Worked on the new book for