The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird
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Synopsis
The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird is an unforgettable story of obsession, redemption, and the magic of unexpected friendship, from the acclaimed author of A Secret History of Witches.
Beatrice Bird is haunted by ghosts—a gift she's had since she was a small child. Unfortunately, it's an ability that has now grown more intense, shifting from flashes and feelings to physical manifestations she can't escape.
In a desperate attempt to find relief, Beatrice flees her home, her partner, and her psychology practice in San Francisco for a remote island with only nuns and a few cows for company. She doesn’t call home. She sees as few people as she possibly can. Then she meets Anne Iredale, a timid woman who has lost everything that matters to her.
For the first time in a long time, Beatrice's gift will be called on to help someone in need. But the ghosts have taken on an even darker edge—and there is something sinister lurking in the shadows. Beatrice may not be enough to stop what's coming for them.
For more from Louisa Morgan, check out:
A Secret History of Witches
The Witch's Kind
The Age of Witches
The Great Witch of Brittany
Release date: November 21, 2023
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 448
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The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird
Louisa Morgan
THE SEASCAPE BEYOND the cottage window was beautiful in a monochromatic way. Tarnished silver clouds drifted in a somber sky, and pewter water shivered under restless whitecaps. Sparse evergreens framed the pale scene with their dark, slender trunks.
It was a charming vista, but a painful reminder of how dramatically Beatrice’s life had changed. San Francisco was all color, pastel houses marching along the steep hills, scarlet trolleys rattling along their rails, wisps of fog slipping through the vivid orange girders of the Golden Gate Bridge. The island was nothing like San Francisco, and it didn’t feel like home. She had to remind herself that she had been here only six weeks. It would take time.
She liked the cottage well enough. She had bought it sight unseen, but it lived up to the real estate agent’s description as a “charming woodsy getaway.” The door from the wraparound porch opened into a well-appointed kitchen, separated from a dining area by a short bar. A forties-style archway led to a small living room, where wide windows afforded a view of the water. The outside walls were a muted blue-gray, in keeping with the coastal setting. Thick juniper bushes curled along the foundation. The interior walls were cream and rose and butter yellow, warm colors for a cool climate. A short strand of beach, featured prominently in the real estate photographs, ran below the porch, linked to the cottage by a steep stony path.
The photographs and the descriptions had somehow failed to mention one significant detail. Steps from the cottage, a small cow barn nestled among the pines and firs, an unpainted lean-to jutting from one side. Beatrice couldn’t decide at first if the omission was an oversight or a deliberate effort by the sellers not to introduce a detraction. She doubted many buyers would see the barn as a bonus, nor would they be happy to learn about its occupants.
In any case, the purchase hadn’t disappointed her, even though her ownership felt temporary. It felt pretend, like setting up a dollhouse, or like playing hide-and-seek, which was a better metaphor. The cottage—indeed, the island itself—was Beatrice’s hiding place. She was an animal gone to ground, a wounded creature seeking respite, pulling folds of solitude around herself for comfort.
Beatrice was unused to isolation. She had chosen this loneliness, and it brought relief of a sort, but it was the kind of relief that comes from the cessation of pain. She was learning that the absence of pain left space for other discomforts, like the weight of unrelenting silence and the yearning for places and people she loved.
The worst was missing Mitch. At night, in her sleep, she often turned to reach for him. When her groping hand found nothing but a cold pillow, an unused blanket, she woke, and lay aching with loss.
She doubted that Mitch, safe in their blue and yellow house above the bay, felt anything like she did. He had neither written nor telephoned. She could only assume he was still angry.
In fact, the heavy black telephone on the bar had rung only once since she moved in, and that was to remind her that the store at the ferry dock would sell any milk she couldn’t use.
Milk, for pity’s sake. Who would have thought?
Beatrice moved close to the window to watch a single intrepid boat, bristling with fishing gear, plow its way through the frigid waters of the strait. It was too far away for her to see the people on board, so it didn’t trouble her to watch its progress. It trailed an icy wake as it circled the distant silhouette of the big island and disappeared.
Thinking how cold those fishermen must be made Beatrice shiver and turn to the woodstove that dominated her living room. It hummed and crackled, filling the cottage with the spicy fragrance of burning pine. The fire was comforting, but the stove consumed an astonishing amount of wood. The cord stacked against the side of the cottage was shrinking with alarming speed in the face of the cold snap. She really shouldn’t put off calling Mr. Thurman to ask him to deliver more, but she dreaded doing it.
Mr. Thurman was a pleasant man. When she called him with her first order, he had rattled and jounced up the dirt road, the bed of his ancient Ford pickup piled high with logs. He had greeted her cheerfully and made quick work of the chore, accepting her payment with a tip of his flat wool cap.
But he hadn’t come alone. He would never come alone. Seeing him—them—had ruined what was left of that day. Remembering it, Beatrice pressed a hand to the base of her throat, where the borrowed misery lurked.
Regardless, she would have to order more wood. The radio said tonight would be even colder than the night before, which had glazed the boulders on her bit of beach with ice. She crouched beside the stove to stir up the embers and lift in fresh chunks of pine. She had just closed the glass-fronted door when Alice’s commanding call rang out.
Smiling for the first time that day, Beatrice straightened and leaned to one side to look through the archway. Through the window half of the kitchen door, she saw Alice and Dorothy standing below the porch, the two of them gazing expectantly up at the cottage.
Dorothy was tall and rangy, white with splotches of black on her sides and her crooked nose. Alice was tawny and petite, with big dark eyes and long eyelashes. She was considerably smaller than Dorothy, but there was no doubt that she was in charge. At this moment she clearly considered it her duty to inform the new dairy farmer that milking time had arrived.
Beatrice adjusted the stove damper, then crossed into the kitchen to pull on the rubber milking boots left by the previous owners, as well as the secondhand red-and-black Pendleton jacket, her last purchase in San Francisco. She had not expected cows, but she didn’t mind them. A woman alone could do worse for company than two easygoing cows.
The elderly couple who sold her the cottage were fortunate in their buyer. Beatrice had grown up in South Dakota. Her father had been a country GP who often helped out the local ranchers when the vet wasn’t available. Beatrice had gone with him on house calls from an early age, and sometimes their patients had not been people, but horses, cows, or the occasional pig that had cut itself on barbed wire. She was used to livestock.
She said, “Good evening, ladies,” as she stepped down from the porch and crunched across the graveled yard to the little barn. Her voice creaked, reminding her she hadn’t spoken aloud all day. As she set Dorothy and Alice to munching hay in their stanchions, she chatted to them, just to hear herself.
She started with Alice, who would stamp and low if she didn’t. “You must have been reading Betty Friedan,” she said, as she slid the milk bucket beneath the cow’s udder and sat down on the three-legged stool. “You’re a bossy little bossy, but that’s okay. I like that in a cow.” Alice gave a small, bovine grunt, and Beatrice took it for agreement.
For all the times she had helped her father treat animals, she had never actually milked a cow, though she had seen it being done. Now she found herself in possession of two of them. No one knew what might have become of the cows if she had refused to keep them, but she hadn’t done that. She had figured out how to accomplish the task of milking through trial and error, aided especially by the patient Dorothy. Now the chore went smoothly for the most part. If it didn’t, Alice never failed to apprise her of her errors, swishing her tail so it stung Beatrice’s cheek, or overturning the bucket with one impatient hind leg.
Beatrice appreciated Dorothy’s compliant ways, but she and Alice had more in common.
After the next morning’s milking, Beatrice eyed the supply of milk and cream that had accumulated in the refrigerator and made a face. There was no excuse for not taking it down to the store. She had already managed that twice, after feeling guilty for letting a gallon of good milk go sour.
The experience hadn’t been too bad. The nun who managed the store and the tiny ferry terminal called herself Mother Maggie. She had accepted the milk and filled Beatrice’s grocery list with a minimum of questions, evidently unbothered by Beatrice’s reticence. She was far from young, perhaps too old to be operating a ferry dock, but she had a kind face beneath her short black veil. Even better for Beatrice, Mother Maggie’s ghosts were mercifully pale with age. As long as she was the only person in the store, Beatrice wouldn’t mind the chore.
She showered and changed. It felt good to put on something besides the wool pants that had gotten too big and the cable-knit sweater she had borrowed from Mitch and neglected to return. She wondered if he knew she had it. If he did, he would understand why she had kept it. It might even make him smile. She missed his smile. She missed his unlikely dimples.
She put on a fresh pair of slacks and a clean sweater, and took up her scissors to hack off a few strands of hair still straggling into her face. She had cut off most of her hair soon after she arrived on the island. The long dark strands lying on the floor around her—to say nothing of the ragged look of what was left—had put a period to what remained of her life. Her hair looked pretty rough, but there was no one to notice. Most of the time she covered it under her knit hat.
One of her patients had made the hat for her from leftover bits of yellow and purple yarn. It was a curious-looking creation, but the knit was smooth and regular, and the hat was warm enough for the damp cold of the island. Every time she wore it she thought of the young people she had worked with in the Haight: homesick kids, stoned kids, frightened kids. She cherished the hat, odd though it was, because it reminded her of them. They were sweet, but so hurt and confused, flower children struggling to accept that the Summer of Love wasn’t what they had imagined it would be.
Beatrice pulled on the hat and her secondhand Pendleton, wrinkling her nose at the clash of red plaid wool with yellow and purple knit, deciding it didn’t matter. She packed the bottles of milk into a straw-lined basket and set out in the crisp winter air for the hike down the hill.
Mother Maggie was the leader of a handful of nuns who made up a tiny island monastery. She took grocery orders and sometimes delivered them in the nuns’ dusty yellow station wagon. The other sisters taught in the little school and took occasional shifts with the ferry ramp. Their brown habits were familiar to everyone on the island, but tourists smiled and pointed at the unusual sight of nuns as ferry operators. They took snapshots with their cameras, as they might with wildlife or historical buildings.
When Beatrice emerged from the quiet of the woods into the clearing around the terminal, she wished for the thousandth time that she had succeeded, in the face of her disability, in developing a strategy for dealing with people. It was what she expected her patients to do, build tools to handle their challenges, but she had failed to do it for herself. She remained raw and vulnerable, and though it hurt her pride, she had fled her problem instead of solving it.
She was glad to see that it was Mother Maggie operating the ferry ramp, which meant she was also working in the store. She wouldn’t have to meet someone new. The ferry was churning its way back out into the bay as the nun trudged up from the dock, an orange safety vest zipped over her billowing habit. She caught sight of Beatrice and waved a welcome as she went into the store, leaving the door ajar behind her. By the time Beatrice reached it, Mother Maggie had shed the vest and exchanged her rain boots for Birkenstocks with thick gray socks.
“Good morning, Mother Maggie.” Beatrice set the basket on the counter beside the cash register. “Six quarts here.”
“Good morning to you, Beatrice,” Mother Maggie said with a smile. “We’ll be glad to have the milk. Are you settling in all right?”
“Fine, yes.”
“The groceries you ordered are in. I’ll bag them for you.”
“Thank you.”
The nun turned to put the milk in the big refrigerator behind her, saying over her shoulder, “Won’t you stay for a cup of coffee? I was just about to make some.”
Beatrice found, to her surprise, that she liked the idea of sitting down for coffee with Mother Maggie. She hadn’t been in company for weeks, and the shades that trailed behind the nun were so faint as to be nearly invisible, their energy almost spent. She could surely ignore them for a little while.
She said, “I’d love some coffee.”
“Good. Go grab a chair. I’ll just be a few moments.”
There were three wooden tables in the back of the room, arranged around a potbellied stove that hummed with warmth. Beatrice pulled a chair close to the stove.
She sat down and started to shrug out of her coat just as the door to the store clicked open with a jangle of its welcome bell. A tall, slender young woman stepped through.
Beatrice froze, one arm still in the sleeve of her jacket.
The woman wore an expensive-looking camel’s-hair coat, a creamy cashmere scarf around her throat, and a pair of elegant leather boots. She had fair hair tied back in a low ponytail and a shining leather handbag on a shoulder strap. She was exceptionally beautiful, with long legs and smooth skin, but her slender shoulders hunched as if she were carrying a burden.
As in fact she was. Two burdens. Beatrice saw them distinctly.
One, hovering above her like a storm cloud, was a threatening charcoal gray so dark it seemed lightning might flash through it.
The other clung to her legs, tiny and tragic, the lavender and indigo of confusion and grief. It was accompanied by the faint sound of a child weeping. Beatrice’s throat throbbed suddenly, painfully, choking her with anxiety.
Hastily, she thrust her other arm back into her jacket and blundered her way through the tables toward the door. Mother Maggie was saying to the newcomer, “Oh, hello. You just got off the ferry, didn’t you?”
Beatrice didn’t hear the woman’s answer. She was already out the door, abandoning her basket, forgetting her groceries, having not so much as nodded to the woman who had come in, nor said goodbye to Mother Maggie. Her mouth dry and her throat aching, she stumbled toward the forest path that led to her house. She fled.
She was ashamed of it, embarrassed by it, but she was helpless to do anything about it.
Most people saw their ghosts in the dark of night. Beatrice saw them in broad daylight, and it was intolerable.
Anne, The Island, 1977
A SMALL WOMAN, wearing a man’s plaid wool jacket and with short dark hair bristling beneath a multicolored knit cap, brushed past Anne without so much as a glance as she hurried out through the door. It gave Anne an unfamiliar sensation. She had often wished people wouldn’t stare at her, but now, she found being ignored unnerving. She wasn’t used to it.
Even at this point in her life, when she felt so diminished, people looked at her. They had always done so, openly or covertly, since she was a girl of thirteen. It was her height, the straight sweep of her pale hair, the fortunate arrangement of nose and lips and dark blue eyes, the blessing of unblemished skin. The combination inevitably attracted attention, and the people staring at her—men, but women, too—couldn’t know how intrusive that was.
Anne understood she was physically beautiful. She had been told often enough. She had been complimented for her beauty, and not infrequently envied for it, but she had learned not to place her trust in it. It had not protected her. It had made her vulnerable instead. It was all too easy to equate admiration or desire with love.
The thought weakened her knees, even as a nun, plain and gray-haired, greeted her. Anne blinked and hugged herself, trying to recover her fragile composure.
“Come in.” The nun peered at her through black-framed glasses as she tied a printed apron over her habit. “Are you all right, young lady? You look a bit shaky.”
Anne’s voice sounded an octave higher than the nun’s, squeezing past the constriction in her throat. “I—I was startled.”
It wasn’t a credible reason. She should be accustomed to these bouts of anxiety. They weren’t the small woman’s fault. When Anne’s anxiety rose, it seemed to bloom from nowhere, like steam from a suddenly boiling kettle. It rendered her light-headed and unsteady. More than once, tormented by an attack of nerves, she had expected her heart to simply give out and let her fall dead in her tracks.
James would have told her to take one of her pills, but she was done with them. The respite they offered wasn’t real.
The nun said, “Perhaps you’re just cold from your ferry ride. It’s nippy on the water. Come over by the stove and warm yourself.”
Anne stumbled after her on feet she could barely feel and accepted the chair the nun indicated, resting close to the potbellied stove. The burning wood filled the room with a resiny smell and a generous wave of warmth.
Anne loosened her scarf and extended her gloved hands toward the stove. When she spoke again, her voice had eased almost to its normal pitch. “Thank you, Sister.”
“It’s Mother, actually. Mother Margaret Theresa, but I go by Mother Maggie.”
“Ah. Mother. Of course.” Anne stripped off her gloves and held out her hand. It shook visibly, embarrassing her. “Anne Iredale.” At the touch of the nun’s hand, strong and dry and warm, she felt the burn of tears and lowered her eyelids to hide them.
“Ah, Miss Iredale! Yes, I’ve been expecting you.” The nun pulled a chair up beside her and sat. She fell silent, her eyes down, her hand on her wooden pectoral cross. Anne wore one, too, tucked beneath her sweater. Hers was small and gold, suspended on a gold chain.
Anne let her eyes close as she felt the nun’s prayers wrap around her, soothing her spirit the way the warmth from the stove soothed her chilled flesh. She released a long, sighing breath and opened her eyes to find Mother Maggie watching her.
“I’m sorry,” Anne said softly.
“Nothing to apologize for. I hope you’re feeling better. Maybe you need some food.”
“Probably.”
Anne couldn’t remember when she ate last. In Seattle, perhaps, when she got off the train at King Street Station. That had been noon the day before. A bowl of clam chowder, she recalled, though she hadn’t been able to finish it. It had been weeks since she ate a full meal, and the way her slacks hung on her reminded her of that every time she buttoned them. She blinked at the small cardboard menu Mother Maggie put into her hand.
“We have some homemade soup,” the nun said. “It’s off-season, so we don’t keep a pot going as we usually do, but it’s easy to warm up. Or I could give you scrambled eggs. Or my favorite, a cheese and pickle sandwich.” When Anne hesitated, Mother Maggie added, “If you don’t have the money just now, I can—”
“Oh, no,” Anne said. “I have money.” She had problems, but money wasn’t one of them. Not yet.
She considered for a moment. Scrambled eggs sounded good, but risky. If she found she couldn’t eat them, she would be wasting this kind woman’s effort. Soup seemed safer. “I would love a cup of soup, if it’s easy.”
“Easiest thing in the world. The next ferry’s not due for half an hour, so I have time.”
Mother Maggie rose and patted Anne’s shoulder before bustling off to the little kitchen behind the counter. At the comforting touch, tears rose again in Anne’s eyes. She found a handkerchief in the pocket of her coat and dabbed at them, marveling that she had any tears left to shed.
Soon she was seated at one of the café tables with a pottery bowl of steaming chicken soup and a plate with crackers and squares of cheese. Mother Maggie excused herself to attend to her ferry duties, urging Anne to enjoy her lunch while she was gone.
The soup was thick and savory, and Anne was glad of her choice. Her empty stomach accepted it without complaint. As she ate some of the crackers and all of the cheese, she gazed through the back window of the store, watching the ferry maneuver itself up to the dock. There were no foot passengers that she could see, but two cars drove off and disappeared up the road to the west.
Anne wondered who was in those cars. Families, perhaps, heading to their quiet island homes. Mothers, fathers. Children. Did they laugh together? Argue? Would they sit down to a family dinner, perhaps play a board game afterward?
A dog appeared from somewhere, breaking into her reverie. A border collie, Anne thought. It followed at Mother Maggie’s heels as she worked, then tagged after her, its flag of a tail waving, as she climbed the slope back to the store.
The dog followed the nun inside, and as Mother Maggie traded the orange vest for her apron, she called, “I hope you don’t mind dogs.”
“I love them. What is this one called?”
Mother Maggie grinned from behind the counter. “This is St. Peter. Petey for short.”
“So sweet. I would have loved to have a dog.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My husband doesn’t like them.”
In fact, James was terrified of dogs. He pretended he just didn’t like them as a species, but she had seen him shrink from the neighbor’s gentle old Lab and had watched him cross the street to avoid a dog being walked. She hadn’t understood his fear until after they were married, when she saw the ugly scar on his calf from a dog bite. It upset her then and filled her with sympathy. It upset her even more now that she knew the truth. The well of her sympathy had run dry.
She held out her hand, and the dog trotted to her, sniffed her fingers with his graying muzzle, then retreated to curl up on a dilapidated cushion at the end of the counter. Anne rose with her bowl and plate and carried them to Mother Maggie. “The soup was delicious, thank you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Mother Maggie said, with a satisfied nod. “How about some coffee, or perhaps a cup of tea?”
Anne felt steadier for the food, and for being in the presence of Mother Maggie. According to the ferry schedule, there was one more boat she could catch, so she said, “A cup of tea would be lovely.” She had given up coffee. Her nervous state was already more than she could bear.
She endured her nerves every day until five o’clock. Cocktail hour, the time she could have a drink without troubling her conscience. In her current state, she could have drunk scotch for breakfast, but she would not give James the satisfaction of turning his lie about her into truth. Even though he couldn’t possibly know what she was doing. Even though he had no idea where she was.
Today, she wasn’t sure where she was going to find her cocktail, and that in itself made her anxious. It wasn’t until she had drunk a glass or two of wine, or even better, of scotch or vodka, that she felt relief from the flutter of anxiety that made her heart beat an uneven, panicked rhythm and sometimes made her feel she couldn’t catch a breath.
The nun brought her a cup of tea and a saucer with four homemade butter cookies on it. She smiled as she set it down. “You look as if some calories wouldn’t hurt you, Mrs. Iredale.”
“Anne, please.”
“Anne it is. May I join you?” Mother Maggie indicated the second chair at the table.
“Please do.” It was funny how the ingrained habit of good manners persevered even under stress. She wondered if that would ever fade. Perhaps she would become a crotchety old woman who snapped at people and shouted at children.
No. She would never shout at children.
Mother Maggie settled herself into the chair with a little groan of fatigue. She had brought a cup of tea for herself, but when Anne edged the cookie saucer closer to her, she shook her head. “Lent,” she said, wrinkling her nose with regret. “Cookies, among other things.”
Anne’s hand went to her heart, where she felt the edges of the cross under her sweater. “Lent,” she breathed. “Oh, dear. I missed Ash Wednesday.”
“Just last week,” Mother Maggie said. “Not too late to start your observance.”
Anne hid her dismay by lifting her teacup and taking a sip.
She had always appreciated Lent. It was a welcome season for her, a time to make sacrifices, to give from the bounty that was—that had been—hers and James’s. She loved the rituals, the ash mark on her forehead, the meatless Fridays, the cathartic emotions of Holy Week.
And she had adored dyeing Easter eggs with Benjamin. Ben, James insisted on calling him, because he thought it was more manly. Anne supposed one day her son’s friends might call him that, but she thought the name was beautiful in its original form. It was one of a thousand points of disagreement, things James resented out of all proportion.
But now it was Lent. Her usual Lenten sacrifice was her nightly cocktail when James came home from court, but she couldn’t tolerate that this year. She would think of something else. She would find something else to give up—even though she had already lost everything.
“So, Anne. The sisters at the motherhouse told me you were coming. They didn’t explain, and of course your reason is completely confidential, but I’m curious as to why you would choose the island. We’re such a small community. There are bigger monasteries, ones much easier to get to.”
Anne turned the cup in its saucer, watching the tea spin widdershins against the plain china rim. “I know, but I thought, perhaps—I’ve thought of trying to discern my vocation.”
“You’re thinking of becoming a postulant?”
Anne looked up from the teacup. “Y-yes. I think so.”
“You sound as if you come from the East Coast. Boston, maybe?”
“Very near there.”
“This was a long way to travel if you’re not sure about your vocation.”
Anne looked away, out to the dull gray water and the mist-shrouded island on the other side of the strait. A stiff breeze raised lively whitecaps, and ridges of waves cut the water in lacy curves. She had always loved the sea, but now she saw it as a threat. A temptation.
She took another deliberate breath. At least she was no longer shaking. “Mother Maggie, I’m a lifelong Catholic. Cradle Catholic, as we say.”
“So am I. And grateful for it.”
“I’m grateful, too. It’s been a comfort.”
“I’ve often felt that way.” The nun paused. “That’s not a vocation, though, is it?”
Anne dropped her hands into her lap and twisted the fingers together. “I wish it were.”
“And why would that be, Anne? Why do you wish for a vocation to religious life?”
“Because I don’t know what else to do.”
Beatrice, San Francisco, 1967
“THE CHRONICLE KEEPS calling it the Summer of Love,” Mitch said, as he hung his white coat on its hook. “I wish they wouldn’t.” He unwound the stethoscope from his neck and hung it over the coat. “Christ, Bea, they’re making it worse. Kids are pouring in from all over, and they have no idea what they’re going to do when they get here.”
“Sex, drugs, and love-ins,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be so concerning if it were just the love-ins.” Mitch put on his overcoat and stood by the door, waiting for her to change.
They had worked late in the community clinic, and Beatrice felt the familiar weight of weariness blended with satisfaction at having completed a long day. She said, with a rueful smile, “You understand why they come, though. Summer of love sounds romantic.”
“There is nothing romantic about venereal diseases and drug overdoses.”
“Not for you, obviously. Or me.”
Beatrice wore a tweed jacket for work, striving for a professional look. She and Mitch were the same age, but even at thirty-eight, his hair was enchantingly dusted with silver while hers remained stubbornly dark. She imagined his blunt features had made him look like an adult since he was a kid himself, despite the dimples. His round eyeglasses added a nice touch of gravitas. She, on the other hand, with small features and long straight hair, looked all too much like her patients.
“Maybe,” she mused, as she slid her arms out of the jacket, “I should cut my hair.”
“Why?” Mitch said. “Your hair is your signature. You look like a petite Joan Baez. Much prettier, though,” he added with a grin.
She twinkled her thanks for the compliment. “I look too much like the kids I treat.”
“I thought women liked to look young.”
“I’d like even better to be taken seriously.”
She hung up her jacket, exchanging it for a wool cardigan. It was July, but the fog had persisted all day. The evening air would be chilly.
He said, “They take you seriously, Dr. B. They keep coming back, don’t they?”
“Some of them.”
“Most of them.”
He held the door for her, then carefully locked the handle and the deadbolt. They only kept antibiotics and antiemetics in the clinic, along with basics like aspirin and cough medicine, but some street kids hung about the place in hopes of scoring more—narcotics, amphetamines, barbiturates. Marijuana and LSD and a half-dozen other psychotropic substances were freely available on every street corner, but for some, they weren’t enough.
The single most effective medicine they kept on hand was Enovid. The Pill. Mitch prescribed it liberally, because he thought the flower children gathered in the Haight-Ashbury district had enough problems without adding pregnancy to the list. Beatr
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