The coin hovered in the air, spinning over and over again.

It reached its peak

and began to descend. Both boys were pleading with it to land a certain way
but the coin had already made up its mind on what it was going to do.

Her eyebrows were a shade darker than her hair. They were thick and almost
horizontal, emphasizing the depth of her eyes. She was rather handsome than
beautiful. Her face was captivating by reason of a certain frankness of
expression and a contradictory subtle play of features. Her manner was
engaging.

Betty was a creature of habit and she thought she liked it that way. That was
until Dave showed up in her life. She now had a choice to make and it would
determine whether her lie remained the same or if it would change forever.

Indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of

her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a
shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. It was strange and
unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her
husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path
which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself. The
mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her firm, round arms and nipping at
her bare insteps.

He stepped away from the mic. This was the best take he had
done so far, but something seemed missing. Then it struck him all at once.
Visuals ran in front of his eyes and music rang in his ears. His eager fingers
went to work in an attempt to capture his thoughts hoping the results would
produce something that was at least half their glory.
There was a time in his life when her rudeness would have set him over the
edge. He would have raised his voice and demanded to speak to the manager.
That was no longer the case. He barely reacted at all, letting the rudeness melt
away without saying a word back to her. He had been around long enough to
know where rudeness came from and how unhappy the person must be to act
in that way. All he could do was feel pity and be happy that he didn't feel the
way she did to lash out like that.

She tried not to judge him. His ratty clothes and unkempt hair made him look
homeless. Was he really the next Einstein as she had been told? On the off
chance it was true, she continued to try not to judge him.

You're going to make a choice today that will have a direct impact on where
you are five years from now. The truth is, you'll make choice like that every day
of your life. The problem is that on most days, you won't know the choice you
make will have such a huge impact on your life in the future. So if you want to
end up in a certain place in the future, you need to be careful of the choices
you make today.

What if dogs were racist? Would they care about fur color….. “son, only play
with other tan dogs”? Or maybe it would depend on breed, “honey, only play
with other German Shepards, never poodles”. Better yet it could depend on
occupation. “I’m a sled dog while you’re only a running companion, leave me
alone”. Maybe the neighborhood they live in could be the way they choose
which dogs to associate with and which to shun? Size could be the determining
factor, “see how tall that dog is, they are probably dumb”. Luckily dogs don’t
discriminate. Just watch at a dog park. Big black and white dogs wag their tails
and play with tiny tan dogs. A service dog chases after the same ball as the off-
duty police dog. So if dogs don’t discriminate then why do we?
There were only two ways to get out of this mess if they all worked together.
The problem was that neither was all that appealing. One would likely cause
everyone a huge amount of physical pain while the other would likely end up
with everyone in jail. In Sam's mind, there was only one thing to do. He threw
everyone else under the bus and he secretly sprinted away leaving the others
to take the fall without him.

The drug seekers would come into the emergency room and scream about
how much pain they were in. When you told them that you would start
elevating their pain with Tylenol or Advil instead of a narcotic they became
nasty and combative. They would start telling you what drug and dose they
had to have to make their pain tolerable. After dealing with the same drug
seekers several times a month it gets old. Some of the doctors would give in
and give them a dose of morphine and send them away. Sure that was faster,
but ethically she still couldn’t do it. Perhaps that’s why she had longer care
times than the other doctors.

She had been told time and time again that the most important steps were the
first and the last. It was something that she carried within her in everything she
did, but then he showed up and disrupted everything. He told her that she had
it wrong. The first step wasn't the most important. The last step wasn't the
most important. It was the next step that was the most important.

It was always the Monday mornings. It never seemed to happen on Tuesday

morning, Wednesday morning, or any other morning during the week. But it
happened every Monday morning like clockwork. He mentally prepared
himself to once again deal with what was about to happen, but this time he
also placed a knife in his pocket just in case.