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    The Seaside Clinic
    The Seaside Clinic
    The Seaside Clinic
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    The Seaside Clinic

    By Pen Avram

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    About this ebook

    Kroupa and Hendrych face their toughest case yet when patients at a psychiatric hospital begin to die. Going undercover, Hendrych checks into the clinic. However, with his sidekick on the inside, Kroupa begins to fear for his friend's sanity as, one by one, more patients are found dead.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPen Avram
    Release dateJul 4, 2011
    ISBN9781466027688
    The Seaside Clinic
    Author

    Pen Avram

    This one-time piano mechanic turned Master of Applied Science (Critical Enquiry/Social Ecology) fled to the West from the former Soviet bloc, finally finding his home in Australia. Growing up in a family touched by the horrors of the holocaust and communism, Pen Avram has spent his life studying what drives people of different faiths around the world to act the way they do. His insights now inform the mysteries investigated by the intrepid team of Kroupa and Hendrych. And Sara is a real dog, blood an bones.

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      Book preview

      The Seaside Clinic - Pen Avram

      THE SEASIDE CLINIC

      A book by Pen Avram

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      *****

      PUBLISHED BY:

      Pen Avram on Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

      Copyright 2011 Text - Pen Avram

      Copyright 2011 ArtWork Design - Pen Avram

      The author and the artwork designer assert the moral rights to

      be identified as the author and designer of this work,

      Contact: mailto:penavram@hotmail.com

      CHAPTER 1

      In Joanne’s Room

      Outside the building, two men pushed a narrow stretcher with a corpse covered in a white sheet into an ambulance and drove away.

      ---

      The room was full of stale air. Tom was sitting in the corner, on the only chair in the room. His mother Joanne sat on her bed, looking at him and talking.

      So, how was your day so far, Tom? Did you have your breakfast? The weather has been nice lately. I am sure you went for your walk, had coffee on your way. And you bought me these lovely chrysanthemums. You know that I love chrysanthemums, don’t you, my darling?

      Tom didn’t respond.

      The room was bare; one single bed, a bedside table, a chair, a small wardrobe with peeling lacquer and heavy curtains full of dust.

      The nurse came in and took the bunch of fresh chrysanthemums from Tom’s hand. She took a vase with a one-day-old bouquet from the bedside table. Tom watched as she left the room. He religiously brought flowers for his mother every day.

      The nurse came back, with the vase and the new bouquet of fresh flowers. Joanne stopped talking for a second, and then exclaimed as she did every day,

      Aren’t they beautiful, Tom? Just look at them! The sound of her voice, loud and high-pitched with the pretence of excitement, had an undesired effect. The nurse dropped the vase and it shattered on the grey worn-out carpet, the water soaking into it and leaving a dark patch. The flowers were scattered everywhere.

      Tom just looked on and without a word he turned his head away. He didn’t want to see it. A few tears ran down his cheeks. But he kept his silence.

      That’s okay, Tom. We still have the ones you brought me yesterday; they are still beautiful. What do you think, nurse?

      I am so sorry, I really am. If you want, I get some new ones. And I’ll buy a new vase, too. The boy would surely want me to. He wouldn’t want you to have yesterday’s.

      Definitely not. The ones from yesterday are still perfect, and if you bring a jar or something, we can put them in it. Tom wouldn’t mind, would you, Tom? When they allow me to go out, Tom and I will go to the shops and buy a new vase, one that Tom will like, won’t we, Tom? Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke.

      Tom didn’t react. He never asked what happened to his old flowers. He didn’t know that they were just taken away and new ones, the ones he had brought, were put in the vase instead. He didn’t know that his mother had kept supplying the other, not so fortunate patients, with her one-day old flowers just to make them happy. The thought of buying a new vase hadn’t registered in Tom’s mind yet.

      Joanne kept talking, trying to distract her son. I must tell you the latest news, Tom darling. Imagine, we are getting a new nurse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also Irish, like most of our nurses are. But you know that, don’t you? Sometimes I wonder if there are any nurses left in Ireland, she chuckled. But Sister Ruth mentioned something like England, so perhaps he is not Irish. She said that he was very good. His sister is somewhere in England, I believe Oxford, or maybe London, I don’t really know, can’t remember what she said, but I’m sure she said that he’s doing some PhD in pharmacy-chemistry, I’m sure that’s what she said. What a strange world, isn’t it, Tom? He should start here any day now. I wonder what he looks like. His mother is very ill, or maybe dead, that’s what Sister Ruth told me, but maybe the girl, the mother’s own daughter, will find some new medicine to save her. So she must be still alive, I suppose. And if her mother won’t be here anymore, someone else may need it. That would earn her a doctorate surely. That would be wonderful, a girl saving her mother, wouldn’t it, Tom.

      Joanne continued her monologue as she had done every day, talking about the patients, the weather, what she read in the papers, her opinion of global affairs, never criticising anyone or anything, not to upset Tom.

      As on every other day, Tom kept his silence, moving his hand across his face, rubbing his right ear, which over the years increased noticeably in size, patted his knees and shifted on his chair. He kept doing this for two hours, until his mother suggested, as she had done every day, that he might want to go home. He got up, went to his mother, kissed her on the cheek, moved the chair closer to the wall, adjusted the curtains and closed the door behind him.

      Kroupa talks to Terence

      How are you, Terence? How do you feel?

      Like anyone going through cold turkey; awful, that’s all I can say, awful. And all those loonies around. I can’t stay here a minute longer.

      You don’t have to stay, there are other options, DCI Rowan Kroupa tried to calm his cousin Terence. "You can get out, get stoned again and land yourself in some trouble, get picked up by the police and shipped off to the Duke of York’s North Shore, into a real loony bin. They might even give you a straight jacket. And you won’t be free to leave, not like here; you’ll stay there till you get through a much tougher cold turkey. So, what do you think?"

      I just wanna drop dead, and wake up feeling okay somewhere nice, maybe on some island, under the hot sun, with plenty of bananas and coconut milk, lying on yellow sand and letting it run through my fingers with warm water gently splashing at my feet. Can you do that for me? You see, I am hallucinating.No, sorry, I can’t do that, but you can do it yourself when you get out from here. Give it a few weeks. So far you are sick and you bloody well know it. Kroupa spoke in a

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