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Then, just yesterday, our landlady, Mrs Jenkins, knocked on my door and stood there, her chin up and hands on her hips

"Nurse Becky," she said "You owe three months’ back rent and my patience is as thin as snow in Atlanta Twenty thousand people in the US are being laid off every day andto put you out if you can’t pay by Friday We need the cash"

I had only forty dollars, not enough for one month’s rent, let alone three The rest of the doc’s ht, Blu him to bed, he spoke for the first time in more than a year

"Go ho

"We are hoinia"

"No" He shook his head "Other Virginia!"

By this I realized he inia, where he still owned a house and his old clinic Sohaving no other options, I loaded up what I could and we escaped in the night

Noe follow the wooded ridge on the county road past s, past waterfalls that cascade down sandstone cliffs, past in our descent my spirits rise The old worried Becky is replaced by the other Becky, the optimistic one

"We should be in Liberty in another ten minutes," I say to my mute companion "The electricity at your house may be turned off and it will be dusty and dirty, but we can e" The doctor doesn’t comment, but then I don’t expect him to

Finally, after twenty hours in the Pontiac, we enter a high ht stoht of a fa ribbon of silver they call the Hope

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A Poor Welcome