Florence is a resilient woman, she always has been, even back when she had lived with the Sisters. It's something Mike has brought out of her, but it isn't one of the things he's taught her. How to handle a gun, how to be a soldier, those are things she's learned from him, but her ability to adapt comes from within and is something Mike and Tom ( Read more... )

When Tom had been young, his grandmother lived in an old Victorian three miles from his parent’s home in Columbus, Ohio. It had been a crowded and musty collection of rooms, full of antiques and baked goods and hard candies, Gramma Hobbes spinning stories while she cooked. He’d spent long hours after school there, helping her with the lawn work, ( Read more... )

It's nearly twenty minutes before Florence realizes that she's left her gun behind in her hut ( Read more... )

"Flo, honey, settle down," Mike says gently, tugging her back down against his side. On his other side, Mack settles her head against his ribs with a little sigh. She's already drowsy. Now if he can just get Flo there too, they can all take a nap, here on the blanket with a good strong tree at their backs and the beach stretching out in front of ( Read more... )

Jane was quite the believer in not wasting what she had been given. She knew that many families did not have the appropriate money or goods to do as they might have pleased and so for her to have fabrics and a machine arrive before her without paying a single pence for it, she could not, would not waste ( Read more... )

Compared to some previous days, it's pretty quiet out in the sattelite clinic. Actually, more like dead quiet. No patients, no emergencies, no little feet - yet - running around and getting into things. It's not Rollie's favourite task to straighten things up and do inventory, but he figures he might as well get it done while nothing else is taking ( Read more... )

"Daddy!" Mack shrieks, neatly cornering a tree, which actually isn't all that hard since she's going at about a mile an hour. "Daddy watchit ( Read more... )

After finding out from Lennox that Chris is gone, Mike goes hunting and then goes a little nuts. Florence finds him, they talk (in their way), and even if she can't heal anymore she can still give comfort.

[Timed to January 6th. Note: contains possibly disturbing descriptions of violence toward a dead animal.]

Last year, the box with Nicholas' name on it had contained the makings for a football field; this year it was filled with supplies for the clinic. He reckons it's rather apt, or at least a sign that he's moving in the right direction, and he can't say whether it was Kay or Paige that did it, but he feels different now. More settled. The ( Read more... )

Even if he hadn't enjoyed a bit too much of the island hospitality, and even if it wasn't the wee hours of the morning, there was no way Rollie was taking himself or his kid back home in that storm. So long after Karen had crashed in one of the beds in the children's office, Rollie snagged himself a spare blanket out of a cupboard and bunked down ( Read more... )