Tess had her mother’s hazel eyes, sharp nose, and chin. But she was tall, like her father. Until things turned out as they had, Angie considered it the only good thing the sixteen-year-old had inherited from his side. .

Tess had been back for eight months.  Angie left little gifts on her bed and bought her favorite ice cream even when it wasn’t on sale. And she tried to be home more, turning down extra shifts at the restaurant and cutting short evenings with Dan. She shrugged when he complained: “Shouldn’t The Princess be the one with a 10 p.m. curfew?”

Angie knew she’d have to tell Tess soon.  They’ll get used to each other, she told herself. Continue reading “How lucky is she”

The perishing sun dove into the shimmering expanse of the desert.  This, the last day of her residency, Christine McDaniel, a gangly redhead, all angles, caught the spectacle through one of the windows of the University of Arizona Medical Center.  No more than momentary, it lifted her spirits.  Achieving adulthood on the East Coast in Boston, she seldom saw the sun, as the clouds always hung over Harvard Square, where she matriculated for undergraduate and medical school.

Tomorrow, July 1st, she would no longer be a resident.  Celebrations were in order; at Maria’s, her favorite Mexican food restaurant, she would dine with Michael Mitchell, her present squeeze.  She’d be accompanied by Vicki Turner, another resident, and her boyfriend, Tom Davidson.  Tomorrow night would be a night of reflection and joy.  In a month she’d ply her profession as a hospitalist at St. Cecilia’s, one of the largest hospitals in Tucson. Continue reading “Moses denied”

Just like his fifth grade teacher Mr. Young had always

told him, Brian put on his thinking cap.

Brian’s fifth grade teacher’s name was Carl Young.

He was six years old, permanently.

Brian’s name was Brian Old. He was one hundred

years old, permanently. But he had the emotional maturity

and the mentality of a six year old!

Carl Young was the result of gene-splicing and

scientific experimentation. In a futuristic society,

where parents had designer babies, Carl was a gene-

splicing wet dream. With some traces of DNA from

a gene meant to imitate the great psychologist

Carl Jung, Carl was the envy of all the parents

who had ordered designer babies, that had not

come out of the test tube successfully. Continue reading “Science project”

“These qualifications are handed out to people in underdeveloped…er…developing…countries on the basis that something is better than nothing” gravely intoned the official at the Department of Education and Science, dismissively handing back Sunil Herath his clip file. “…not intending to be nasty”, was thrown in as an afterthought. Sunil was left to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that he was not qualified for a teaching position in the United Kingdom.  Until that moment, Sunil had fondly believed that all that promised to be his entitlement to a glorious future in a new land, was contained in that clip file.

Vexed though he was, he could not deny that the official was right.  He had not worked as a teacher in his own country, although he had invested the last few years of his life acquiring teaching certificates awarded by the education department of southern Australia.  As a 16-year old school leaver, he had won a Foreign-Aid correspondence scholarship leading to a diploma in primary-school teaching. While engaged in low-paid, mind numbing, routine clerical chores at the municipality during the day, he had pored over cyclostyled notes and paper-bound texts sent by Air Mail from Australia most evenings at home. He assiduously completed all assignments.  Accumulating the annually awarded modular certificates, he fervently hoped that someday these would provide the key to a better life.  It did not occur to him that it was pertinent he had never been inside a classroom in a teaching role. Continue reading “Wash and wipe”

“I’m sorry! I can’t find your name in the list,” said the officer in charge of clearing scholarships at the Foreign Office.

“What do you mean?” snarled Pendo, pacing to and fro by the counter.

“Have a look.”

“You must be crazy,” she said fumingly, hands akimbo. She threw the list back at him.

“Cool down, Madam.”

However, the more he tried to explain, the more she became uncontrollably hysterical. “I can’t waste my time reading a doctored list.”

“Try to understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” she yelled, trembling with fiery rage.

“Please, go clear it with your parent ministry. We can’t help as it is. I’m sorry,” said a touched officer.

Pendo was raving mad. Pointing accusingly at him, she asked, “What else did you require other than these documents?” Continue reading “Grand revenge”

In the thin early morning hours on the day that Dyke Debenham was born, the stars were not serene.  Montgomery Debenham, Dyke’s father, tired of anticipating the impending birthing, chose to leave the waiting room, walk outside, and await in the patient’s patio behind the hospital.  Lighting a cigarette from the tobacco that made the Debenham fortune, he gazed up at the stars twirling in their journeys.  Every so many minutes a star, from the Pleides Meteor Shower, shot across the sky, dipping like a flat rock about to skim over a placid body of water.  The night that Dyke was conceived an obscure pact was concluded, for though the Debenhams had a daughter, they did not have a son.  Dyke entered this lonely world a few endless hours after with his dad in attendance in the fathers’ waiting room.  Born weighing eight-and-a-half pounds, he was no less a handful growing up, the scion of the vast Debenham Empire. Continue reading “The travails of Dyke Debenham”