the

lock

and

the key

by Diane Franklin

"Here is your desk, Miss Ricci, and this is Miss Brand. She'll help you if you need someone to listen." I looked into blue-gold eyes and caught a quick smile. We shook hands; the supervisor moved away, her duty discharged. Automatically I found the divided drawer with paper, set up the lead sheet headed FINAL SUMMARY with its three onionskin carbons and flicked on the ediphone. A weird electronic garble attuned became the lazy voice of the doctor. Pause, listen, type. Would I never escape hospitals? I seemed to be forever surrounded by pale green walls as a patient, a student nurse, a doctor's girlfriend, a medical secretary. I pressed the repeater nervously. What an accent! Turning, I saw the eyes meet mine instantly.

"Stuck?"

"Afraid so!" I slipped the earplugs off and Miss Brand was beside me clipping them on; she bent over my shoulder, staring concentratedly ahead. "Eccentropiesis pressure from inside, I think.

"Never heard of it but thanks." She remained beside me for a moment, slim and small in her mocassins and glen plaid suit.

"First hospital job?"

"Lord, no, the fourth but don't tell." Again the quick smile.

"She wouldn't care. Not many stay long for this salary." I began transcribing mechanically, considering these transient co-workers. The office was laid out in an H-pattern with Miss Brand and I at the tip of one vertical. The most rapid and efficient of the group was in her late forties. She sat earphoned pecking like a chicken, lips pursed, eager for the next fatal symptom. In front of her sat a woman whose closed, tired, reaching face suggested long-accustomed blindness. Personnel had mentioned her as having been with the Record Room for eight years. Next, a tall, sleepy, untidy girl, nearly thirty, sullen but equally industrious. A brunette in her late twenties wandered about the room rather absently, searching for a pencil sharpener. The color combination of her clothes suggested something missing in addition to the sharpener. A glamorous but vacant looking Chinese girl and a stocky, tough teen-ager giggled over the files. Two idle typewriters suggested part-time late-arriving

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