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Page 195
School of Nursing in Columbia and within two years became a registered nurse.
Irene Rabinovich was short, buxom, and unfailingly goodnatured. She was passionately grateful to her new country and worked tirelessly to discharge her obligation. She soon married Eustace Cullen, a general practitioner of Spatha, and for ten years she worked with him as his nurse, assistant, and receptionist. Among her extra duties was that of school and visiting nurse, and it was in this capacity that she captured the affection and regard of many of Spatha's young people, now-Deputy Bobby Lee Calhoun among them.
When Dr. Eustace died, Irene Cullen was given charge of the nursing staff of Spatha Station Hospital. And it was to her that Deputy Calhoun had brought the odd case he had picked up trudging east on Route 702, soaked, shivering, fevered, with a hook for a hand, a Russian accent, and no identification.
The transient was now bedded in the hospital's single ward, a glucose IV in his vein, a massive dose of antibiotic also trickling into his arm. He was running a temperature of 100.8 degrees, and he was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.
''I think he's an illegal, Miz Cullen,'' Deputy Calhoun said earnestly. "He was standing out on the road, rain pouring down on him, like he was lost. I don't think he's been eating so regular, either. He was glad when I stopped to check him out. Happy to get into the cruiser and out of the rain, I guess.
"Seems like he's starved for talking; I don't know how else to put it. He never shut up, all the way here. Says he's coming from Brownsville in Texas, and that he needs to get toare you ready for this?Washington D.C. That's what he said, all right. He didn't seem to know you can't walk on freeways, and he didn't understand why people wouldn't stop for him at night. He said that there were 'too many roads,' whatever that means. He claims he was in Brownsville a month ago, and that it's taken him this long to get this far."
Deputy Calhoun obviously felt sheepish at having been touched by this strange transient's situation. "He said he got

 
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