The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Five (4 page)

“They all sound good to me,” Tonya said.  “Do you see any problems with this, Tommy?”  Tommy, due to his seniority, could make a strong claim
to
the house president position.

“None at all,” Tommy said.  “They’ll all do just fine, Mom.”  No resentment at all, Tonya read.  He liked his position as head of security and
wouldn’t
let go of it
unless ordered.  Not
even for a major promotion.  H
e
even used the old-timers ancient nickname for her: Mom.  Tonya glow
ed with a moment of pure Focus happiness
.

“Why don’t you call Delia, Rhonda and Marty over, Tommy?” Tonya said.  She believed in the adage that a mostly right quick decision was better than a perfect late decision, and besides, she trusted Honey’s judgment.  Her people would adapt.  They always did.

Tonya
walked
up
to
the farmhouse just before 9
a.m.
, an hour before the meeting was supposed to start.  Polly was
waiting for her in the living room
.  Johnny greeted Polly most respectfully and Tonya pointed him to the kitchen.  Over the months Johnny was starting to adapt to his role in life as a Transform.

Delia served as Tonya’s aide today.  She
ha
d been supremely unhappy to lose the kitchen manager position when she
got the word
, but going through a day as Tonya’s aide at a Council session would probably knock the frown off her face.

“Is th
is
Ellen’s problem child?” Polly asked, nodding toward Johnny as he disappeared through the door.

Tonya nodded as she sat herself down at the end of the couch.  The room was a comfortable place with wooden floors and braided rag rugs.  Polly sat opposite her in an old blue high-backed chair with an afghan draped over the back.
A
now-sparse
plate of little hors d’ouvres
sat
on the table beside her.  Tonya reached over and snagged one.

“He looks pretty well-behaved.  Are you ready to pass him back?”

Tonya shook her head, her black curls bobbing.  “He’s getting close.”

Polly leaned back in her chair and
frowned
.
“So how much
more time
do you
need
with him?”

“Going right into business already?” Tonya asked.  She hear
d
Johnny getting his orders in the kitchen.  Not long ago, he
woul
d have been resentful, but not anymore.

“Well, yes,” Polly
said
.  “I have a stack of problems six miles high.  I
’m
hoping you
can
help me with one of them.”  Polly was
the
Council
president
, and
adept at
all the
political games
.  She was
a
woman of medium height
,
and
she wore her
short brown hair curled close to her head.  She looked tired.

“I’d guess Johnny has no more than a month to go before he’s fully broken in.  He should be in good shape then, but I wouldn’t want to pass him back to some young Focus before
hand
.”

“Can’t you just say he’s finished now, and pass him along immediately?”

Tonya frowned.  “Haven’t we had this argument before?”

Polly leaned forward, and her voice was earnest.  “Tonya, I’ve got Focuses all over the country calling for help, stuck with people they can’t handle.  I’ve got three situations blowing up as we speak.  You’re the one Focus
who
can train these people without breaking them.  When you
’re
done with them, they’re perfect.  Civilized, cooperative, productive members of a household.  I need you, and I need you to handle these people faster than this.”

Tonya shook her head and gr
e
w angry.  She noted
her anger
and took special care to keep her juice flow smooth so her anger didn’t reflect itself in her people’s juice counts.  “No.  I do
things
the slow way because the slow way is the right way.  Better for the people, better for the household they go back to.  I could tame someone like Johnny in a month, but not without breaking him.  He
woul
d be eager and cooperative, but half-nuts and screwed up in the head.  I’m not going to
break
someone just because you can’t find some other Focus with enough guts to do what I do.”

Polly sighed.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you angry.  Everyone does appreciate what you do and I wouldn’t want you to do something you feel is wrong.  I just have a big problem.  Three of them, actually, that I would like your help with.”

“Find someone else to tame them.  It isn’t hard.  All it takes is a little backbone,” Tonya said, testy.  “I’m sorry none of the other Focuses seem to have come equipped.”

“I’m sorry, Tonya.  I said I was sorry.  We do have other Focuses
who
can deal with the hard cases.  Just none of them as good as you are.”

“All right,” Tonya said, trying to let herself be soothed by the flattery.  “It just irritates me to hear me called the Wicked Witch of the East until all of a sudden some young Focus picks up a Transform she can’t handle.  Then you want to know how cruel I can be, just so you can run people through a people-breaking mill.  I’m not going to run an operation like that.  If you want to chew people up, find some other Focus.”

Polly waited her out, leaning back in her chair.

“Feel better?” she asked.

Tonya sighed.  “All right,” she said again.  “What did you want to know?”

“The three you’re working on now.  What shape are they in?”

“I’ve told you about Johnny.  Ben Sterling, my replacement for Phil, is in worse shape.  He’s well behaved if I’m standing over him and he’s afraid for his juice supply.  It hasn’t sunk into his heart yet.  I think he’s got another six months to go.”  Tonya fell silent.

“The third?” Polly
said
.
“Horst something or other?  You’ve had him for months, longer than Johnny.  What’s wrong with him?”

Tonya shook her head.  “Shot,” she
said
.  “I’m not doing anything with him. 
I d
on’t need to.  The only thing wrong with him was an incompetent Focus.”

“You have a problem with Allie’s style?”

“The day God was giving out spines Allison Silvey was sleeping in.  I’ve known snails with more spine than
her
.  She couldn’t handle a church sewing circle.”

Polly raised her eyebrows.  “I know Allie isn’t anything spectacular, but I didn’t think she was that bad.”

Tonya leaned forward.  “Look, Shot is a twenty year Army Ranger.  He fought in both World War II and the Korean War.  He’s seen more combat tha
n
he can even remember.  He just doesn’t have any patience with fools.  Allison Silvey is a fool.”

Polly looked at Tonya for a long moment.
“So what are you going to do with him?”

Tonya shrugged.
“He seems pretty happy where he is.”

“Oh, no.  He’s not yours.  You’re just borrowing him.  We need you too badly.  If you give up one of your free slots and take him on permanently,
your choice will
impact young Focus households all over the country.”

Tonya leaned back in the sofa and took another of the small hors d’ourves.  It was a cucumber sandwich.  She always thought the entire idea of a cucumber sandwich was silly to begin with, and worse when the sandwich was cut into quarters. 
Old
cream cheese
didn’t help either
.  “I’m not giving him back to Allison,” she said.  She
woul
d rather not be giving him back to anybody.

Polly sighed and thought for a moment.  “What if I find another Focus to take him?”

“It depends.  Are you talking some young Focus barely out of her transformation?  Or some older Focus competent enough to handle him.”  Tonya knew she was wearing a hostile frown, but she hated to see good people screwed up by incompetent Focuses.

Polly thought for another long moment.  “What about Katie Anderson?  She’s got nine years and I happen to know she has a couple of men she wouldn’t regret losing.  I can convince her to move one of them to Allie and you can pass Shot to her.”

Tonya thought.  “No,” she said after a minute.  “Katie’s
pleasant
, she’s competent enough for most people, but she’s not strong enough for Shot.”

“What about Wini Adkins?  She certainly isn’t too nice.”

Tonya shook her head.  “Now you’re going the other way.  Wini may be
a strong
tin pot dictator, but
she isn’t
good with people.  Besides, none of the first Focuses would add someone like Shot to their households.”  Wini Adkins was Focus number nine.  She could bring Focus bitch up to an art form.

“She lost one of her men to cancer a couple of months ago.  Since then, she’s been talking about trying her hand at breaking in Transforms.  I don’t know how serious she is.”

“Well, find her a Transform who actually needs breaking, not some perfectly functional one who just needs a decent Focus.”

“All right then?  Who do you suggest?”  Polly grabbed another hors d’ourve.  Tonya expected her to be looking irritated herself, but Polly was head of the entire UFA.  She lived for this sort of thing.

Tonya thought some more.
“I can handle Shot.  You could.  Connie
Webb
.  Rizzari, but I doubt she would be willing to give up any of her existing crew of fanatics.”  Tonya stopped, trying to dredge up more names. 
T
he more competent Focuses
rarely added anyone
new to their households.

“What about Lupe Rodriguez?”

“No.  Well, maybe.  I don’t know her well enough.  But Shot isn’t Mexican.”

“Who else?  Think about it.”

Tonya thought.
“There’s Pearl Innkeep
, b
ut Shot isn’t colored
.  Other than them
, I don’t know.  I don’t exactly spend my time with the most competent Focuses in my line of work.”

“So what you’re telling me is, out of the 221 Focuses in this country, there are only four
who can
handl
e
this man Shot.  But this isn’t a problem with the man.  It’s a problem with the other 217 Focuses.”

Tonya shrugged, unable to come up with a response.  The last number she remembered for the total number of Focuses in the country was 209, at the end of last year.  Twelve new Focuses already this year. 
The numbers
scared Tonya.  By the end of the year, the number of Focuses
would
have grown by an eighth.  Just one year’s worth.

Polly ran her hand through her hair and looked tired.  Thinking about the numbers involved, Tonya didn’t blame her one bit.

“Look, how’s this?” she
said
.  “I find some Focus who at least has a chance of handling this Shot character.  As soon as I do, you pass your man off and take on one of my problem cases.  You finish up th
e
other one a month later and take on another one of my problems.  I’ll just have to find a different home for my third.  Can you live with that?”

Tonya sat back on the couch,
exhausted from Polly’s business
.  “You find someone decent for Shot.  Plus, the new cases need to be paying cases.  I’ve got a household to support, too.” 
Tonya had too much money
tied up in investments
right now; eventually, hopefully,
the investments would pay off and the household would be rich, but right now, money was an issue.  Tonya knew she was abandoning Shot to some fate unknown.  He was
n’t
the first of her problem children that she had
grown
to care for.  So many of them left her hands to fates less happy than she would have liked to give them.  She traded people like poker chips.  It made her feel ancient.

“Done.  I’ll have a new home for Shot before the Council is done.  And thanks, Tonya.  There are a lot of people who appreciate what you do.”

“Right,” she said.
“Right.  Right after they call me the Wicked Witch of the East.”

They went into small talk from there.  Mercury Catering, Polly’s household company, had just picked up a major new contract with one of the big Wall Street accounting firms.  Polly hoped that would be enough to crack the Wall Street market
,
and she
hoped
to
see a bunch more
similar contracts
once they proved themselves.  Tonya’s new construction company was
about to
finish their first house and had contracts for three more.  Tonya had a new baby in the house.  One of Polly’s kids had been beaten at school, by a group of bullies calling him a Monster.  The school
had ignored
the issue until a small group of Polly’s older kids cornered those bullies behind the gym and beat them up in return.  Now the school was complaining about dangerous cliques and violent children.  Tonya sympathized.  She
had
struggled with
a few similar incidents, until the local school children learned her kids weren’t safe targets even if they were different.