Read Online Tampered by Ross Pennie - Free Book Online

satisfied. They’ll take away our in-and-out privileges if any more of us come down with the runs.”
    Art didn’t mind the lack of visitors. In fact, it made for a welcome change of pace at the Lodge. He would hate, however, to give up their weekly trips to Tim Hortons. It was a struggle to transfer on his gammy legs from his scooter into the backseat of Phyllis’s Lincoln, but it was worth it. When four or five of them sat parked in her vehicle, sipping coffees and munching fresh doughnuts from the drive-through, he felt like a youth again. It was sure nice to bite into a soft, warm doughnut that bore no relation to the biblical relics served at the Lodge.
    He turned to the piano and started chording with his left hand and refining the melody with his right. Not bad, he decided. Betty would like this. A few minutes later he resolved the final chord, laid his hands in his lap, and was surprised by the clapping behind him. He turned to see an audience of four: Betty and Phyllis together on a loveseat, Maude and Myrtle seated at the card table, hunched over their jigsaw puzzle.
    â€œThat was lovely,” said Betty. Her voice didn’t sound right. It was weak and trembling.
    He backed his scooter away from the piano and rolled to Betty’s side. “You don’t look too well, my dear,” he said, taking her hand. “Something wrong?”
    Betty looked down at their hands in her lap. “It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine.”
    â€œThat’s not what Dr. Jamieson said,” Phyllis corrected. “He’s putting her on an antibiotic.”
    Art couldn’t suppress the alarm he knew was lighting up his face. “Not another bout of —”
    Betty shook her head. “Don’t worry. No fever. And no upset tummy. Just . . . You know, bladder problems. A few days of antibiotics and I’ll be fine.” Her face brightened and she pointed to the front door. “Look. My prescription must be arriving this very moment. There’s Vik.”
    Art watched Viktor Horvat, the owner of Steeltown Apothecary, standing beside the reception desk and rubbing sanitizer onto his hands. Vik arrived once a week with a cartful of medications arranged in those easy-open blister pack things that kept you from forgetting which pills to take at what time. He and the ever-canny Gloria had some sort of exclusive arrangement to provide the prescriptions for everyone at Camelot. Vik was a broad-shouldered fellow with a large Slavic head. He never wore a hat, and Art reckoned that was probably because he couldn’t find one to fit. When Vik first started coming to the Lodge three years ago, shortly after Art moved in, he’d been jovial and charming, the steel cap on his front tooth flashing disarmingly when he smiled. Art hadn’t seen a smile on that face for months, and the steel-capped tooth now seemed like a crudely fashioned weapon lurking behind his lips.
    â€œHe’s starting to put weight back on,” said Phyllis. “Lord knows, he needed to.” Vik had spent a few days in intensive care at Caledonian University Medical Centre at Christmastime. He’d had some sort of dangerous infection. But he’d stopped smiling long before taking sick.
    â€œHe’s been through a lot, poor fellow,” said Betty.
    â€œHis English is atrocious,” Phyllis said. “It’s a wonder he can read the names of your medicines with any sort of accuracy.”
    Phyllis was proud of the fact she didn’t need prescription medications and took only a baby aspirin once a day, which she purchased at Wal-Mart whenever she noticed the price was discounted.
    â€œHe deserves our compassion,” Betty said. “Imagine losing almost your entire family to a hit-and-run driver and then starting your life over in a new country.”
    â€œIt’s all very well for us to take in these Balkan refugees, but it’s another matter