The Great Gatsby Dialectical Journal

Words: 1419
Pages: 6

A child’s high-pitched wail echoed throughout the third floor of the hospital, the mother’s soothing mutterings barely audible over the sustained crying. Booker passed the woman as she paced up and down the corridor, the screaming child bouncing in her arms, but he avoided eye contact. It wasn’t that he was an insensitive bastard who didn’t care, he did, more than most people realized. However, a smile of solidarity from a stranger wasn’t high on his list of priorities. He didn’t have the energy or inclination to get involved in anyone else’s problems. Tom was the only blip on his radar, everyone else was nonexistent.

Stopping at the nurses’ station, the dark-haired officer pushed down his rising panic. He had no idea what he would say to Tom once he saw him face to face. Blunt to the point of rudeness, he was a call a spade a spade kinda guy, and empty platitudes seemed—at least to his mind—pointless and a little insulting. He’d cut Tom some slack in the beginning, but their relationship had evolved too far for him to worry about sparing his feelings. Honesty was the best policy, and if telling Hanson his brother was a dangerous psychopath lost him his friendship, then so be it. Lying about it wasn’t going to make the problem go away,
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They passed several rooms before she stopped beside a single chair that looked out of place in the deserted corridor. Staring at the open door, the dark-haired heart hammered against his chest wall. Room 314 was Tom’s sanctuary, a sacred space free from his brother’s violence, but Booker knew he could continue to protect him long after his friend left the hospital. There was nothing like a violent rape to reset your thinking. Whatever frustration he had felt about Tom had disappeared the moment he saw the young officer lying on the bathroom floor...bloody...beaten...broken, and he was determined to do everything in his power to help make his friend whole