Chapter 2: Imogen
Masada, Stronghold of Arcadia
The locker rooms were a surprisingly subdued place, contrasting with their inhabitants. The children of the upper crust of nobility could be a raucous bunch, but hours of drills and war games would tire anyone out, even if they’d gotten used to it over the years. Imogen of Arcady, heir to the Throne, was a tightly wound ball of barely contained fury and righteous indignation.
Traditionally, there hadn’t even been a throne. There were three royal houses, each in possession of one irreplaceable warship from centuries past. However, Imogen’s grandfather had consolidated enough power that House Arcady had managed to wrest control over what remained of human space. This, of course, made Imogen a target of hatred from the scions of the other two houses and their allies—as did the medical implant in her brain.
These war games were supposed to be training for how nobility should conduct themselves, but more importantly, they were a method to teach the future leaders of the nation how to wage war. There was a whole galaxy of infrastructure, ancient technology, and garden worlds to be reconquered, and everyone here was going to be involved in some capacity, and she was to be at the head of it. Some people in the room, however, failed to anything from those lessons.
Lothar, scion of House Fury, was a prime example. Time and time again she heard through Royal Intelligence about some misdeed or failure, and each time it seemed he could sink no lower. But, time and time again, he somehow found a way to become even more of a miserable wretch than he had been before. Lothar was a brilliant manipulator, and his family was powerful, so the young nobles with an ambition for power clung to him for as long as he was useful to them, regardless of how he treated them. This was a power he abused greatly, and at every available turn. Imogen had spent an annoying amount of time around the heir to House Fury, given the fact his family was second in political power only to her own. He’d not changed at all since they were children; he’d only found new victims.
He had gone too far, however. She had had enough. Lothar’s mother was not just a fleet admiral using her commission to bring to heel the disorganized worlds among the lawless unbound stars, but also head of House Fury, thus making her the second or third most powerful living human. For her son’s 18^th birthday, she had gifted him control of a small fleet of four ships. More specifically, they’d been Arcadian ships, lent under the guise of inter-House diplomacy.
Lothar had returned with only the ship he commanded from, and his executive officer had to be talked down from shooting the boy for treason. Lothar had, apparently, attempted a raid on a well-established pirate base in the region, with only four ships, and no backup. The details of his plan, if it existed at all, had not been revealed to her through Royal Intelligence.
What she did know, though, was that during this spectacularly stupid series of events, Lothar had immediately panicked when his leading gunboat was destroyed. He then used his remaining ships to cover his escape. It was pure cowardice, plain and simple. And it would not stand. He’d gotten her citizens, her sailors, killed. People that she, as heir to the throne, was responsible for protecting.
Imogen slammed her locker closed and set out to hunt him.
Lothar could usually be found surrounded by a pack of even more pathetic lackeys, and today was no exception. They sat, somehow enraptured by whatever yarn of bullshit he was spinning. As parts of the conversation floated to her ears, she realized he was sitting in the locker room bragging about his recent experiences commanding a fleet.
“I heard all about your fleet,” Imogen interrupted. “Did you make sure to tell them about how you lost three ships, and got over a thousand sailors killed?”
Lothar looked at her, sneered, and replied, “So I lost a few ships. Who cares? They’re replaceable. It was a learning experience. At least I actually do something as opposed to sitting around the palace all day.”
Imogen’s hands balled into fists. She wasn’t sure Lothar believed anything he said, really, but he was remarkably adept at pushing people’s buttons.
“Why do you care? It’s not like anyone’s going to do anything about it, not even if you go crying to your father,” added one of the lower nobles that hung about Lothar. Imogen wasn’t even sure of the girl’s name. Sadly, but the girl had a point. Nothing would be done. Those lives had ended for nothing.
“She’s right you know, there’s nothing you can do, what’s done is done. Just walk away.”
Somewhere in Imogen, fiery rage transformed into a strange sort of detached calm. Nothing would happen to Lothar. Not unless she did something about it. So she would.
She punched Lothar square in the face.
Lothar fell backwards into the metal lockers, and the room erupted into absolute anarchy. Fights like this were uncommon, especially among proper royalty engaged. News of this would be heard in dining halls and country clubs across the universe, but Imogen simply didn’t care anymore. She was going to beat the hell out of Lothar.
The bastard got back up, struggling slightly, steadied by his groupies. One of them rose to swing at her, but Lothar put a hand on his arm to stop him. He would have to deal with this himself, or he’d appear weak to all the future leaders of humanity.
Technically Imogen could have, should have, formulated a proper duel. But that could take months, and the little rat might well have found a way out. This, though, was something that could not be avoided.
The observers had made a ring around them, credits flowing like water between outstretched hands as they made bets on who would win, who would strike first, who would be most injured and so on. Many of the watchers didn’t seem to know who had insulted whom, or the context of the insults, and frankly didn’t care to learn. They simply knew good entertainment when they saw it.
Lothar stood a few feet opposite her, bouncing to-and-fro on the balls of his feet and generally trying to appear far more confident and light-hearted than he actually was. He seemed to have realized he might have bit off more than he could chew.
Imogen stood with her feet squarely planted and her legs bent slightly, open palms held front of her face, slightly curled to punch or to grab at her opponent. They circled around each other, eyes locked, hand-crafted leather boots clacking and tapping on intricate tiles.
Lothar darted out with his right fist, pivoting from the hips with the precision of hundreds of hours of practice. She blocked it with her left, gritting her teeth from the impact, ducked in and slammed a fist into his chest.
She grappled his neck, and with her weight on top of him drove her knee into his stomach. Lothar made a horrid noise as his lungs searched for air that simply wouldn’t come, but he had the clarity of mind to wrap one hand around her leg and use the other to drive a fist into her thigh as hard as he could.
Imogen yelled as she drove her elbow down like a hammer onto his back, striking at her opponent’s kidneys. Lothar crumpled, and she rolled his weight off her legs and onto the hard floor with a wet thump. He wasn’t dead, or unconscious, but she knew from experience that he was hardly able to move.
The gathered crowd seemed agitated, and a bit disappointed. The fight had been brutal, but too quick for their tastes. Imogen hated to agree, but she still wanted to fight. It didn’t feel like punishment enough. A thousand sailors dead, several ships damaged or lost. For what? Rage simmered at the senseless loss of so many lives, when they were already working with limited resources.
Imogen flipped Lothar from his side on to his back, facing up at her, and pressed her boot down on his chest. “Do you yield?”
His breath came in rasping gasps, and his glassy eyes focused on her.
“Fucking freak,” he gurgled out, “you should have died before you let them defile you,”
Imogen snarled and lashed a kick into his ribs.
The watchers cheered and jeered as Lothar yelled in pain. He curled up.
Then, quick as the vermin he was, Lothar grabbed her leg with one hand, withdrew a knife from his belt with the other, and launched himself off the pristine ceramic floor towards her chest.
Imogen’s hand whipped out to block the knife.
The crowd’s roars of excitement drowned out everything. The fighters were in lockstep, muscles twitching and feet shifting to gain any advantage over the other. Imogen ducked inside his reach and smashed her palm directly under Lothar’s nose into a nerve cluster, and then again, this time into his throat.
He let go of the knife.
Imogen, enraged almost beyond words, guided his limp body towards a bench. He fell onto the carved wood, his arm splayed slightly over the edge. She raised her booted foot and slammed it down, snapping his elbow backwards over the bench with a sickeningly wet cracking sound. He screamed and fell off the bench into a fetal position curled up on the floor. Blood oozed from his nose, a brilliant crimson mark upon the alabaster tiling, as he sobbed and cradled his arm.
The audience had mostly quieted down at this point, watching with either admiration and fear, or with a slowly building rage. As all things in Masada did, the distinction seemed to boil down to politics--namely, whether they liked her or Lothar more. Or perhaps it was simply who they were more afraid of.
One of Lothar’s people, the girl who’d insulted Imogen earlier had gone over to check on him. She rose from his side with a mounting fury and started heading towards Imogen, picking up Lothar’s discarded weapon as she went. Several of her peers followed in tow.
Imogen squared her feet and drew her own knife, long and thin with a tapered double-edge, built for thrusting in between the ribs of your enemy. She flicked a small switch and the weapon hummed to life, an impossibly thin filament of prismatic energy floating above the cutting edge as it transformed from a mere blade to something which could cut through bone and metal in an instant. It was, in essence, the same technology behind starship shielding and weaponry, but rigged into a melee weapon.
She breathed heavily as she watched them form ranks and build up the courage to approach her. Others stepped forwards to fight alongside her. There was something freeing about this, to be entirely focused on the here and now, on the morass of gore and violence. Some distant part of her though recognized that she had, perhaps, gone a little too far, and that this sort of thing brought consequences even for one of her lofty social standing.
“That’s enough,” barked the voice of one of their trainers as he strode into the room, flanked by two medics.
Imogen’s attendant, Ingrid, followed behind the trio. The crowd parted around them and quieted down as the tension left the room alongside the blood seeping into the drains. One of the medics knelt by Lothar, checking his vitals and administering aid, slathering his wounds in nanite paste.
“Did you kill him?” her attendant asked coolly, a neutral expression on her face as she eyed up the body.
Their trainer looked far more irritated, but bit his tongue.
“Probably not.” Imogen settled into a far more relaxed stance, her blade again in its sheath.
“He’ll live, your highness,” answered the second medic, examining Lothar’s vital signs on a portable viewing screen. “He’ll be spending a week or two in medical, though. I can’t give an exact timeline.”
The medic eyed the trainer, who gave a silent nod of assent. The medics quickly and precisely unfolded a litter to cart Lothar out of the claustrophobic locker room. They hurried perhaps a bit more than was strictly necessary. They likely shared the same sentiment as some of the noble children: this was no longer a place they wanted to stay.
The trainer strode towards Imogen, scowling as he went. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She stood and met his eyes, saying nothing.
“Come now. We need to get you to medical, your highness,” Ingrid spoke quietly. She looked at the trainer. “We will discuss this later.”
Throughout this, the crowd had taken on a deathly silence. Even the arrogant sons and daughters of the upper echelons of Arcadia knew that true political power held sway over blue blood.
Still standing tall and defiant, Imogen walked out of the locker rooms, leaving her things behind. Almost none of the crowd would meet her eyes as she left, but she knew they watched her from behind, like vultures. She did her best to suppress the pain and keep from limping as she walked. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her injured.
The gym doors opened into a sprawling walkway decorated with stone paths and carefully maintained rows of trees and greenery. Buildings and shops were both free-standing and built into the station itself. Skycars flitted about above them, dancing in between skyscrapers and military installations. They walked towards her personal vehicle, long and angular, with blacked out windows, parked quite illegally on the walking path in front of the training facility.
Imogen glared at one of the ambling merchants who’d been gawking at the whole spectacle, and he darted away. The back doors opened upwards silently, and Ingrid tried to help Imogen in. Imogen knocked her hand away and hauled herself into the car.
The attendant gracefully slid in on the other side, and nodded to the driver, who took off at a clip towards the palace.
“Your hands,” Ingrid said, handing Imogen a cloth as she did so. “You’ll stain the leather.”
Imogen eyed her bloody knuckles, and dutifully wrapped them with the cloth. She leaned back in the quilted leather and stared out the window. Masada was a beautiful place, one of the last vestiges of true human civilization. Glittering buildings shined below, and above them an open view of the void beyond, thanks to pre-collapse technology. The entire assemblage rotated slowly, so over a series of days the scenery would change from stars to a jaw dropping view of Crom Cruach, the gas giant they orbited. From where they were now, it was a little bit of both, but by the time they reached the palace, the planet would dominate the view. If you sat at the very top of the palace spire, Crom would span from one end of the “sky” to the other, an endless stretch of roiling storms and lightning the size of terrestrial worlds. It felt like you could fall into it and never come back up.
Imogen looked away from the window and back at her attendant, locking eyes with her. Unlike most people, that didn’t seem to bother her. Nothing seemed to bother her. It was annoying.
“What happened back there?” Ingrid asked.
“What do you think?” scoffed Imogen.
Imogen’s eyes unfocused slightly as she examined the hand-stitched interior of her car, suddenly not interested in sight-seeing a place she’d seen a thousand times before. A familiar view snapped her out of her fugue--the palace spire. The skycar angled down gently towards a landing pad and touched down ever-so-softly. With all the sound deadening, you couldn’t even hear the engines from inside.
The doors opened, and Imogen hauled herself out, stumbling only slightly. An entourage of medical personnel had arrayed themselves to meet her, doctors, nurses, military triage medics. They’d even brought a stretcher with them. Two nurses rushed to her side, poking and prodding at her, scanning her with various devices.
“I’m fine!” Imogen eyed the stretched with disdain. She’d rather crawl than be carried into medical on something like that. “And I can walk.”
She headed inside, stalking down the corridors as fast as she could without outright running. It was quite painful, and hardly dignified, but she was tired of waiting. She wanted to get this over with. The winding path through the palace spire took her to a room nestled deep inside the complex, far away from the paths servants and nobles took through the spire. Not even the help wanted their bedroom near the good doctor, apparently. She knocked twice, then pushed the door open, knowing the occupant would be waiting for her.
“Ah, Imogen!” remarked the sole inhabitant of the room, a spindly old man fiddling about with something at one of his desks.
“They brought a stretcher, Doctor Birrer,” Imogen remarked, sitting down on the edge of the chair in the center of the room.
“Ha! “I did tell them not to waste their time. Always so dramatic.” The doctor pushed a small cart containing a variety of medical implements over and set about scanning her limbs and body for maladies, bright orange light soaking through her clothes and skin. Images of her bones and organs were displayed on holographic screens across the room, all examined closely by the Doctor.
“Your opponent is in far worse shape, I assume?” He magnified a scan of her bruised and swollen leg.
“Broken elbow. Bruised kidney. Broken nose. Crushed windpipe. A few other things, too,” she rattled off as she stared at the ceiling, trying not to look at the scans of her body, knowing what would come next.
Doctor Birrer was silent for a moment, but then he laughed slightly, shaking his head. “Well, he’ll have a longer stay in medical than you will. By far. It looks like you should just need a minor layer of nanite paste. Nothing’s broken, no lacerations. No internal bleeding. You’ll want to keep your weight off the leg for a while. No running for a few days at least,” he told her, still examining the readout.
Imogen grunted in acknowledgement.
“I’m going to do some routine diagnostics while you’re here, though,” he said, and he moved the scanner over her head.
Despite herself, Imogen couldn’t help but look. The holographic screen showed the inside of her skull, and the hateful machine curled up inside of it. Dull gray, with thin wires spreading like roots all throughout her brain. It was disgusting, but she couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Imogen . . .,” the Doctor whispered, barely audible. “You had it turned off.”
She said nothing, eyes still glued to the display.
“You could have died,” he said, now staring directly at her.
Imogen remained quiet
The Doctor shook his head, sighed, and continued his work. “You are the only heir. You have a responsibility to stay alive.”
Imogen broke her trance-like fix on the display and looked through the one-way window in the clinic at the city below, at the teeming mass of humanity sprawled out across the orbital assemblage. She was born for her people, and that was all she’d ever be.
Imogen might steal a few minutes of freedom in her rebellions, but she was the heir. That was first, last, and all she was allowed to be.
“Just fix what you can. I suspect I’m needed in the throne room,” she said, and after a pause added, “Please.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes as the warm electric feeling of nanite paste rolled over her skin, reveling in the sensation.

A friend of mine. Too afraid to say anything. I want to post this para makita niya opinion ng iba.
This effing driving school sa Gensan, kumikita ng almost 100-200k in net every month, has my friend, a very gifted yet gullible fellow, working like a slave for 7,500 a month.
Ito job description niya from least to worst:
Social Media Manager: He literally put the business on the map. SEO, Video editing, you name it. He maintains that everyday, that diligent fool.
Customer Service: Online and Front Desk, siya subject matter expert. Kabisado niya lahat promise. His voice and the way he talks is half the reason why people enroll in their overpriced courses. Did I mention phone calls?
Instructor: He teaches the seminars cause the school is too CHEAP to pay for an actual instructor.
Admin: He does the payroll, he does the class schedules, he does the compliance for LTO and TESDA, and Assessment center audits, accreditations, and all other paper BS. He made an automated excel spreadsheet that made things hell easier.
Liaison Officer: External affairs? He's the guy they send. Cause he KNOWS EVERYTHING there is to know about managing a school.
Operations Manager: All employees depend on him. Everything day to day, siya in charge.
Extra shit: Answered his boss's exams, assignments, and quizzes for two semesters. Made all the materials for Training Methodology sa TESDA para ma qualify boss niya (to anyone who knows this, alam niyo na Hindi joke makapasa sa TM. He was forced to do all that para makapasa boss niya) Stupid intellectual prosti.
Working hours Niya? Monday to Sunday. 8am to 5pm. Starts his time by CLEANING LIKE HE'S THE JANITOR. Friend ko siya pero you idiot! (I know you'll read this someday)
OT? Thank you. Holidays? Ano yun? Baka may room and board? Naga bayad siya, 1,500 pa bawas sa 7,500 Niya every month. Siempre utilities din bawas sa sahod niya.
Overworked, underpaid, undervalued. Pagagawan siya ng hundred pager module tapos thumbs up lang reply sa kaniya.
Boss niya nag hire ng baguhang part timer, binayaran ng 7,500 isang buwan din. Naghire ng bantay sa siomai, 7,000 bayad. Gusto na magpaka deads ng friend ko eh.
Ambilis mag deduct kapag late kasi ganun daw pag corporate. Pero kapag OT, holidays, or weekends, family daw sila kaya tulungan.
Benefits are deducted regularly, nakita ko payroll. Pero he showed me proof na hindi rin binayaran yung pagibig, sss, philhealth nila. Proof in the form of recorded phone calls from those agency looking for their representative to come and pay.
Nakita ko siya recently, his eyes are lifeless. Nangigigil ako sa awa at badtrip.
Paano ko ba maconvince to na magquit na?

critique my school list Last cycle 8 interview invites 5 waitlists 3 rejections. Schools with * gave me an interview. I also applied early last cycle. State/Country of Residence: NJ
Ties to other States/Regions: No
URM? (Y/N): No
Year in School: none graduated.
Undergraduate Major(s)/Minor(s): bio major
Graduate Degrees (if applicable): MBS RWJMS SMP Program
Graduate 3.95
Cumulative GPA: 3.46
Overall GPA w masters 3.50
AMCAS sGPA: 3.29, AACOMAS sGPA: 3.46
MCAT Score(s): 505 (129/124/125/127)
Research Experience: Capstone research project on COVID misinformation and beliefs.
Publications/Abstracts/Posters (include how you were credited e.g. first author, second author, etc.): Presetation of Capstone.
Clinical Experience (paid or volunteer): ~2500 hour medical/technician scribe in opthamology offive \hours clinical volunteering (volunteer covid vaccine clinic and NADI and Rutgers RIOT)
Physician Shadowing: ~20hours across multiple areas, mostly opthamology.
Non-Clinical Volunteering: ~150 non-clinical volunteering. Mentor for highschool students.
Other Extracurricular Activities: None
Other Employment History: Swim instructor (~250 hours). PHYSICAL therapy assistant. Covid Lab Assistant.
Immediate family members in medicine? (Y/N): None.
Specialty of Interest (if applicable): maybe opthalmology
Interest in Primary Care (Y/N): Yes
Interest in Rural Health (Y/N): N
Medical School List: Aamc
Albany Medical College
Central Michigan University College of Medicine
Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science
Cooper Medical School of Rowan University
Drexel University College of Medicine
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine
Indiana University School of Medicine
Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University New York Medical College
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Rutgers, rwjms rejected me post Interview
Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson
SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University College of Medicine * on a waitlist
University of Connecticut School of Medicine
University of Maryland School of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Wayne State University School of Medicine * on a wait list
Aacomas (tentative)
Rowan som * on a waitlist reached out to admissions said I am competitive applicant but not enough seats
Pcom
Unecom * rejected me post interview
Nyitcom * on a waitlist
Touro com *waitlist for middletown
Lecom * rejected me post interview
Duqcom I never applied to this school.
I dont have any significant changes from last year. I still do the same hobbies such as dance and singing. I'm rewording alot of my application as well.

I'm in the 4th year of my Ph.D program right now. My advisor in my current Ph.D program wants me to graduate ASAP due to budget issues with my current program. I previously got a Master's at Appalachian State in Experimental Psychology and have reflected on the experience lately (feel free to see my post history on the App State subreddit if you wish to learn about the fiscal details and why I chose the program. Long story short, they offered assistantships, but they didn't waive tuition at all). Since I got next to nothing out of my Ph.D, I'm reflecting on what I got out of my Master's in Experimental Psychology.
I entered the program in Fall 2018 and graduated in December 2020. I graduated later because I had to rewrite my thesis due to COVID won't be something I'll pin on my department at all. No one could predict the outcomes of COVID so it is what is there.
Anyway, I enter the program and my advising is minimal to none. My advisor read my drafts and things I sent him, but he wasn't really paying attention to whether I kept up on what I needed to do to gain admission to a Ph.D program in Experimental/Cognitive Psychology. Those topics were only really broached if I asked him. Furthermore, when I asked him if I could reach out to any of his previous students, he told me he was only still in touch with just one of this students. So, my networking opportunities and branching out professionally were next to none. Many others I knew in Experimental programs (or a rough equivalent) had advisors who had connections. The program director and my advisor had no such connections. I also didn't get any relevant work experience over the first summer of my Master's either nor did I bump up my GRE scores to be competitive for a Ph.D program when I should've gone above the 60th percentile for all of them. My GPA was also apparently too low.
I had a low GPA for a Master's (3.48 and I even took one non Psychology course) due to a bad first year I had largely due to untreated dental issues (I had to get two root canals and even took finals at one point with dead teeth). Fortunately, my advisor and program director's letters of recommendation backed me up on that issue. I even got a C+ in core course, which thankfully counted for credit in this case and I still graduated in my case.
Furthermore, someone who was a valedictorian in her undergrad and had solid lab experience prior to the program (she even turned down a clinical program for the one at App State) never completed the program due to constant disputes with her advisor and advisor retaliating to an extent by not signing anything. She worked an outside job as well to pay tuition and hid it for a while until she got caught working by faculty and was told to not do so despite working on multiple research projects and was instructor of record for a whole class. She also had all As and one B.
I often never learned things were a problem until they were too late as well. For example, I didn't know that working on other research projects was essential to show independent skills a Ph.D program would want. My advisor also openly said he never read those end of semester summaries, which would've helped him steer me accordingly.
You may be wondering why I didn't broach topics that may have been a concern. I didn't because I wasn't even sure what was a red flag and what wasn't throughout the program. All I knew is that someone who had low grades in their bachelor's had to get a Master's to be competitive for a Ph.D program. In other words, I thought completing the degree was all it took. I had no idea of how many other things I had to pick up.
I will say that I had a feeling something was up when the second year of the program came along and I was the only one with just a 10 hour assistantship. I'll never forget when someone came up to me and went, "Do you have an assistantship with [advisor's name]?" I replied, "Yeah." Their reply, "Well, at least you have that?" There was a 1 credit hour non mandatory TA class that was required for students to become a TA the following academic year. Everyone other than me took it (even the ones who weren't sure if they wanted to TA or not) because I was under the impression I'd have to teach a whole class. Turns out that wasn't the case and many of them did once a week lectures for lab components of a regular course, which I'm confident I could've done in hindsight. Doing so also meant a high enough stipend to where I wouldn't have had to borrow from my parents at the time. I will admit that part of it came from the autistic urge to keep things similar too (I am clinically diagnosed autistic) and not change too much.
Towards the end, my advisor was told to give feedback from the committee to me that Ph.D programs are "trial by fire" and that things would change. Especially with advisors and that "sometimes they're a colleague, sometimes they're a co author, other times you don't know." I was also told to have short, concise presentations as well. I should note that I got a B and B+ in both Spring seminars (1 credit hour once a week courses) because I got Cs on presentations both years. I had the lowest grades on those. I wanted to improve on those but I was seemingly marked down for every little thing.
For what it's worth, I got a poster for a conference out of the experience in 2019 (even if I could in 2020, those conferences were shut down due to COVID).
I realize some of this is on me, but here we are now. There was a general psychology (not experimental) MS degree that gave me full funding that I turned down and was next in line for funding from the Cognitive and Social Processes program at Ball State (program no longer exists). I wish I went to one of those two programs instead! I realize now that Master's to Ph.D admission isn't so much about the speciality as it is the thesis and the quality of it. It stunk a ton and I'd recommend applying to Towson or other similar programs with more funding.

I'm 19 years old and a woman. I'm having autism, which makes a lot of stuff very hard for me, like understanding other people's emotions, reading faces, knowing when I should talk or not... also a big problem is, that I'm very direct and I often tell my opinion, which I try not to do it as often anymore but it's very hard.
So my boyfriend and me are in a relationship since two years. He and I have a very romantic and a emotional relationship, or at least I think... he doesn't really talk to me about his feelings, emotions or his opinions. At the beginning of our relationship, I've asked him out and if he wants to be my boyfriend. He said yes, after I kissed him. In the next day I went to his apartment because he still lives with his parents and his little brother. At first it was everything alright, but I think his family and he took a lot of me. I was taking antidepressants at this time and I couldn't feel anger or any emotion at all.
They wanted me to clean up every weekend the whole house, doing the kitchen, cooking, walking the dog, making tea, etc. but I didn't say anything at first. I thought that was a normal thing to do because I didn't have a boyfriend before and I could reduce stress for all of them. I wanted to take care of them because I thought that's a normal thing to do.
After a few months, they went on holiday over my 18th birthday. When they came back, I wanted to visit my boyfriend. I came over and he hugged me, kissed me but his mother forced to unpack all the bags, to iron all of the clothes, etc.
My boyfriend didn't speak up for me and when I told him, he didn't realised what I said. I stopped going over there. I got really depressed about that because at the same time I'm going to a really hard school which makes me even more stressed.
Half a year later I went to the clinic to deal with my burnout. I was there for about three months. My boyfriend hat at the time when I was done his final exams. While being in the clinic, he had three weeks spring break. He didn't come and visit me once, without me crying about it. He wouldn't come by his own choice and I asked him, if he wants to meet somewhere else or at the weekend or if I should be with him. But he never said what he want. I mean it was perperation and I understand that he had to take time but three months?
After I got out of there I thought about breaking up because he wasn't there for me when it was hard but I was always there for him, asking him at least how he was. He didn't even knew for what I was there...
So yeah over summer holidays he went again on holidays without texting me. I felt so alone. And then came my birthday in autumn. He kept telling me, how amazing my birthday is gonna be.
I have a little problem on celebrating my birthday. It's during autumn break and no one really comes to my birthday so I have to do it alone every year. So he kept telling me how it will be the best birthday ever but he showed up late to my house and we did nothing the whole day.
I took time to prepare several looks for my day, laid all over my bed. I was so happy because there is finally someone being there for me and celebrating my birthday. But we did nothing. In the evening I decided to go out of my apartement and to get my new glasses, which I've ordered a few days ago. He asked me why I was going out, without telling. How this is not for his plan. I told him, he had the whole day to plan something. I didn't even wanted to look at him because he wouldn't even cuddle me the whole day. He was sitting far away from me and didn't even cared. I asked him many times if we're going to do something. He just said wait for it.
When I asked him what he wanted to do, he said that it was my fault for going to get glasses for my birthday in the evening. He said he couldn't go after his plan because he wanted to go with me to the amusement park. But it was closed???? So I cried so much, I told him how this hurt me, but I don't know if I'm overreacting because he keeps telling me and I am!!!
The next day he did the whole plan, that I told him to do: instead of being lazy and to be far away from me, take the time and celebrate my birthday. But a day after I wasn't even in the mood anymore to celebrate it.
I had a self planned party on the weekend in the same week. Next to me is a bar, I wanted that he is maybe down in the bar so my friends could smoke or drink something. It was btw my first party ever I've organised. At my home they could chill and play with cats. I told my bf to be first at the bar and I could be upstairs and then change the position, because I also wanted to drink and smoke and dance etc.
His mother called me, asking where he was. I said he was with me. I told my bf to call her back but she didn't. She called me 200 times that evening. I stayed upstairs, my bf didn't even hesitate to come up to me to change positions. I was alone almost the whole evening because I had to stay upstairs with my few other guest, which didn't talk to me. Also my Mother is very sick and I always have to be aware that if something happens, I can take care of it.
So yeah, I kind of stopped finding him attractive after that. He promises me so much stuff and then doesn't even care about it. I told his mother to Stop calling me because her son is 20 and she should call him. But she didn't. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
She didn't want to talk to me again and hated me. My bf didn't speak up for me, I understand that it's hard but when I tell him that, all im doing is overreacting.
Since then, so many more situations happened which hurt me even more. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I started arguing with him, why it hurt me, I asked him a dozen of times why because I couldn't get over it for the next month. He said half a year later that he was also feeling depressed but I don't know why he didn't tell me sooner. For me it was just an excuse but I didn't know it back then, he could've told me and I wouldn't be so hurt about his behaviour.
So I figured out, that he might help us out, when I start saying things more often. But this also didn't work.
A few days ago, we went to an all you can eat restaurant with his whole family, because I went to the little brothers musical. I just didn't want to talk with the adults because they all hate me. His brother is severely Overweight and is about to get diabetes soon. His family wanted to surprise me with the all you can eat restaurant, which im very happy for. But I said that it's not good when they take the little brother with.
My bf said what's wrong about that, I told him that it's not good for his brother and that I think it's dumb to take him there.
He said again I'm overreacting and I don't appreciate the gift. But: he and his whole family are also overweight and I just feel bad for them because I want them to be healthy but they don't realise that they're sick. I don't want to bodyshame someone I'm sorry.
I also wanted to make him a birthday party. He's having birthday soon, but his parents want to spend the day with him. I organised almost everything with his friends together and waited for an anwser from his parents but they ignored me for two weeks and someone else took my location. So I don't know what to do either and I told him that, that I think it's disprespectful behaviour from his Parents towards his friends and me. So he said again, I'm overreacting and I'm mentally destroying him but I don't know what I'm doing. He doesn't really tell me what's wrong, I ask him what I can do, what I can change but he doesn't want to tell me.
So I'm asking AITA for wanting to take a break? I'm so scared, that I'm Hurting him mentally even more.

I recently left a job in Corporate America mental health. When I started there I thought it was a great opportunity with good pay and benefits. I had to leave the private group I was in prior as I was getting divorced and needed benefits. As I worked there, and worked my way up, not only was I hearing horrible complaints about customer service and billing on our admin side, but I was seeing more and more how things worked. No one on the business side seemed to care about our clinical services- which is the entire product- and its MENTAL HEALTHCARE. Higher ups didn’t listen to the clinical side and often times wrapped benefits or procedural changes up in a box with lovely packaging and a bow, but sooner or later it was apparent it was not much benefit if any at all. For example, I met the stock option bonuses every year totaling about $50K which turned out to be $38 and some change. I get its stock, but the way it was sold to us made it sound like it was a real benefit. Also their BBB rating is an F. The kicker for me was when I realized how much they were charging our clients for mental health care and how they weren’t even paying us 1/3 of that. When I resigned it was obvious no one besides my immediate office mates cared that I was leaving and gave me a lovely last day and gift. I am so grateful for all of them. They made this job bearable and they are wonderful clinicians who provide great care for clients. From the Operations side- There was no meeting, no exit interview, nothing except what furniture will you be taking out of your office. Let me add in I’m a top earner there, so you’d at least think they’d care about the $$. I’m not special in this treatment. It seems to be a standard operating procedure as I’ve learned from others who’ve left prior. I also realize we are all replaceable at work. I did receive a follow up survey. At first I was so mad I couldn’t even fill it out. Finally I did. In that survey they asked why are you leaving. I told them in a very diplomatic way, but then it came over me and I ended it with… Basically blah blah blah company looks great from the outside, but it’s really just the pie served up in The Help. Let me add I’m not worried about burning bridges here and I’ll be just fine apart from the company. AITAH for telling them they are the pie served up in The Help?

There are some things which have been on my chest for many years and I never talked to anyone about them but I just need to get it all out of my chest. So I am a 22y feminine guy (femboy, I guess?) who just recently discovered this realm and came to terms with my person. One of the things that bother me is that, when I was around 10-11 years old, my mom took me to this 'eye doctor' because she thought I was 'too skinny' and 'didn't have enough body hair'. We only visited this doctor once and, in his clinic, what he did was: 1. look at my eyes and 2. ask me if I had masturbated by that time, and by the end of the appointment, his conclusion, according to my mom, was that 'I had to be given hormones otherwise I would grow up and become gay'. And my mom agreed. So I was given hormones, and I started puberty earlier than my classmates. I ended up developing more body hair than them, and I remember crying on the shower one day because my skin became less soft. When I look back at this situation, I cannot stop thinking that the only gift that God gave to me (my body) was stolen and corrupted (I will never know how my body was supposed to naturally develop). And worse, by my own mother (keep in my mind that I have no father) and because of that one sentence from that stupid 'doctor'. I feel like a monster, like my body has been destroyed and violated without my informed consent. And what's even worse is that when I talked to my mom about this she said: 'you don't know what you've gained' (and I thought: 'but what about what I have lost? How could you trust that doctor with no evidence?') and my mother won't tell me the name of the medicine that was given to me, and the doctor is fucking dead so I can never ask him so I will never know for sure. This is so frustrating, I feel anger and distress when I think about this and I don't know what to feel towards my mother. Lately I simply decided to not talk to her anymore. I just don't want to see her. The other thing that's on my mind is that I don't really understand where my desire to dress femininely comes from. I remember when I was a kid I used to steal bras and panties from my mom because I wanted to try them (which I stopped doing once my mom caught me and decided to give me a wedgie in front of the whole family). But this desire never left me, it always stood in the back of my mind (repressed) during my teenage years and early adulthood. There is also the fact that my classmates would call me gay all the time (they even had a song for it) although I never showed any signs of it. I wonder if they influenced me on this path or if they knew something that I didn't. Anyways, there is more to this story but this is the most relevant information. Forgive me for the long rant, but I just needed to get this out of my chest, as it has been very heavy to me for a very long time. I want to know what you guys think about this situation, how you would feel about it, and what you would do about it.

We operate a private clinic with my wife as the sole clinician (nurse) providing one medical treatment. My wife is 100% shareholder.
The clinic has been running for 3 years, turnover approx £100k with profit after tax of about £50k. As this is a services business, the startup costs were less than £5k and there are minimal assets.
We would like to gift 30% of shares to parents. Gifting the shares will create a CGT liability. I am looking for advice on how to estimate the value of the business for CGT purposes.
In the open market the business has little value. Someone could establish the same business for £5k startup costs. It couldn't be run as a hands off manager owned business as the practitioner would want paying from the profits, meaning there would be little profit for a hands off owner.
I think there are a couple of options to value the business:
1) Entry cost - so the valuation would be minimal - £5k
2) Multiple of profit after tax - as a single practitioner, with forward visibility of patient bookings of 2 weeks, the multiplier would be low - my assumption would be maximum 0.5?
Please can you advise on how best to calculate the value for CGT?

I am a twice exceptional person, I have both autism and giftedness (the neurodevelopment condition). My doctor said that to me, and she needed to tell me several times, because I still question her about that like I can't believe. I feel weird, I feel like a fraud because even though I am gifted, I haven't conquered many things in life and I am entering my 30s.
To be fair, I became a programmer and I have a good job now, but I only started achieving things from 2021 onwards. Almost 3 decades of my life I was surviving an atypical family. My mother has ADHD and suffers from severe depression since I was little, and my father is clearly autistic like me and clearly has lots of issues with rigid thinking, making decisions, and stuff like that, and we were also very poor. Because of that, me and my brother were neglected, we had to survive this hostile environment. Not only that, but I am also gay, and when my parents found out, they spent several years doing everything they could to make my life miserable. I couldn't eat properly when I was studying on college because my salary was too low and my parents didn't want to give me money to eat because I am gay.
I developed several mental health issues, clinical anxiety, clinical depression, and deal with shutdowns and meltdowns without knowing I am autistic. People treated me like I had no value, my boyfriend abandoned me because I couldn't work, I was fired because of my shutdowns and I couldn't make income. He betrayed me, I tried to kill myself, I used to thought about finishing my life several times.
But after 2021, I managed to overcome a lot of that. As I said, I became a programmer, I have a good job and a good income, I found out I am autistic and gifted. I am doing lots of therapy, but I am still traumatized by all of that.
And I have friends that are also gifted. One has a doctor degree, the other one speaks several languages, sings, is good at sports, the other one is an amazing visual artist, and another one has awards for writing books. What about me? I am none of that.
I know rationally that giftedness is a neurodevelopmental condition, and that it's possible to be gifted and not have big accomplishments in life. Specially if you had gone thought hell like me. However, I still feel like a fraud, or even if I am not a fraud, I feel grief, like I lost something special that I was supposed to have.
Since the day I found out I am gifted, I can't stop thinking about that, and feeling I am a fraud...
And I don't feel like I can trust people, because people used to treat me like garbage when I couldn't keep a job and make income, and now that I have a good job, people treat me differently. I feel like people don't value myself as a person, but the amount of income I can make. I feel hurt...

Hey, this is my first time posting here.
I don't even know where to start since this shit has been going on for over 30 years, surprisingly I'm 36, which means this cancer has been eating my soul since I was a little kid.
One of my earliest memories was me lying in my bed and crying like a dog because I realized that my grandmother was going to die one day. It didn't seem fair and I didn't want to accept that fact. She made it until the beginning of 2020, when a strange Chinese flu ended her life. This woman had to die alone in a crowded and restricted hospital, she lived through a world war, raised 5 children, lost 2 of them and never gave up. She continued to give her best every day. It was a shame to let her go like that.
Another memory was me lying in bed crying again. My mom noticed and ran into my room angrily yelling at me why I was still awake. My response: "Why did you bring me into this world?"
She just left the room without saying a word, leaving me alone in my room where I continued to sob silently so as not to cause any more trouble.
Death was a big topic in my head, while other people in the neighborhood were playing soccer, chasing each other, or generally having a good time, I was sitting at home on hot summer days, thinking about death, searching for the meaning of life. Why live if you are going to die? What's the point of trying to achieve anything if it doesn't matter? Questions that have never been answered.
I was sent to therapy quite early in my life, it was the early 90s, so the doctors usually said that I just needed to do more exercise and leave the video games alone and then everything would be fine with me. When I had my breakdowns, it was okay to casually yell at me or hit me, that would do the trick, they said. After all, we have to be "normal" and fulfill a purpose in life, there is no time and space for "thinking", we have to work and live our lives.
As I got older, I realized that my parents and grandparents were just overwhelmed and kind of embarrassed to have a kid like me. "Why can't this boy just be a normal kid?" were sentences I heard a lot back then.
As I write this, I somehow lose motivation because it is all the same blablabla as usual, yes, I was excluded in school, I was bullied, beaten, laughed at, rejected by girls as a teenager. Blablabla, it's the same story as everyone else's, nothing special, just the standard life that happens to millions of other people out there every fucking day.
I had some success as a young adult, about 18-25 years old. I looked pretty ripped from my construction job, even without going to the gym. I had played guitar for a long time and played in bands, toured Europe, relationships and sex were not a problem at all, I just did what I wanted to do. I was the young rebel. I even managed to convince a girl from the USA to travel 5000 miles across the globe just to see me. Yes, I was quite successful with women, had a large social circle, an international touring band, worked very hard, had good money and was a respected and well-oiled machine in society.
Later I realized that it was just because I drank ridiculous amounts of alcohol every day and just didn't give a fuck about anything. I was literally drinking myself into a stupid state of mind where I just "functioned" and didn't think about anything else. Apparently, that was the winning formula for a fulfilled life. Just do it, don't think about it.
That all stopped when I went to a clinic to get sober, they checked my blood alcohol and it was 4 per mille. The strange thing was that I talked to the doctor as if I had just had a beer in a pub or something. I wasn't stuttering or mumbling, I was standing straight as a post with no weird movements at all. The doctor noted that the amount of alcohol in my blood could be considered lethal for "normal" people. That was the day I stopped drinking once and for all. It's been 8 years now and I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since, not even a piece of cake with alcohol in it or anything else.
It made me a total introvert, shy, insecure, even more depressed. I had time to think again. To the point where, in addition to my depression, I developed an anxiety disorder and had panic attacks as soon as I left my house. They called it agoraphobia. Lost my job. Lead to a point where I isolated myself at home, ordering food, never went outside. It got so bad that I started getting paranoid about anything health related. If I had a twitch in my little finger, I would call an ambulance because I was afraid of having a stroke or a heart attack. If I felt a little dizzy, had a headache, or whatever, I drove to the hospital because I was afraid it was a serious medical condition that could kill me. I once choked on a piece of pasta and that caused severe dysphagia. I can't even eat mashed potatoes when I'm having a bad day because I'm scared to death I'm going to choke again.
So this is my life today. I'm 36, single, basically completely isolated from society, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, depression, severely overweight (which is ridiculous considering I have trouble swallowing even small amounts of food, but hey, soda and candy bars exist, right?).
My mother committed suicide in January of this year, 6 weeks later my father had a new partner and expected me to go on with my life as if nothing had happened. I didn't want to, so he left me. Now I don't have any parents.
My mental health is fucked up, my body is fucked up, I feel lonely but at the same time I'm socially awkward and I don't know what to do with other people at all, I get super stressed pretty quickly. Most people annoy me and I want to be alone.
I failed to start a family myself, so I just accepted my fate and wait for my first heart attack to eventually kill me from the amount of unhealthy food and lack of exercise I do every day.
I fucking hate my life and I don't see the point in changing anything because it doesn't matter if I'm depressed in a nice house or in my shady apartment. Achieving something feels the same as failing. To be honest, I can't feel anything but sadness, anger, hate, jealousy, fear... whatever emotion you choose, it's a negative one. I can't feel positive emotions, yes, I laugh when I see "funny" things, but inside I am dead to positivity. If I get a gift I feel bad, if something good happens to me I get paranoid because there must be a downside and I spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what the catch is.
My apartment has no hot water, my radiators are broken, the windows are leaking, I haven't had a working washing machine in years. I am too insecure and depressed to call my landlord to fix my shit. I fear the words "Wait, you've been living like this for 3 years?" or "Why didn't you call before?"
I am afraid of being judged or even laughed at. I fear having to justify myself.
There is no way I can accept things like love, passion, joy... I don't even know what it feels like anymore because it's been decades since I embraced positive feelings. Now they just seem like a strange concept to me, a concept for stupid people who just lie to themselves to try to forget the inevitable (death). Like a mask, like a little kid putting his fingers in his ears and screaming "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". I get angry when people try to be positive around me because I think it is all bullshit. I can't remember the last time I committed to something, when people talk about good things in the sense of "life is so beautiful, look at the flowers, the sun, hehe I love life" I think they are crazy and just close their eyes because they don't see the reality and how fucking stupid and meaningless life is.
Being so bitter annoys the fuck out of me, but I can't help it. I have to destroy any positivity, it's almost like I want to suffer because I think that's the only way this life works. That I deserve this. Seeing people on the internet making millions of dollars every year just by jumping around on TikTok while stupidly imitating some degenerate music is the total state of humanity for me. Why should I get up in the morning and work my ass off for a company that doesn't give a shit about me if I can just collapse and die on the spot? Just so my stupid fucking boss can drive his Porsche at the end of the month? To pay my taxes so some rich ass corrupt politician without a degree can sit in parliament and get paid 10,000 bucks a month to be there and tell people like me that I need to pay more taxes and work harder?
This planet sucks ass! Excuse me for getting more and more profane with every sentence, but I have managed to write myself into a state where I desperately want to have the big red button that destroys the entire Earth in front of me and just push it so that this whole planet just blows up with all the assholes living on it. I gave life a lot of chances, always got back up after falling down, worked hard, cared about relationships and friendships, always paid the full price, never broke the law. In short, I did everything this fucking society wanted me to do, and what did I get back? A kick in the ass.
I have to pull myself together right now. To be honest, I have no idea what I even wrote here as my hands took over and it just poured out.
I'm trapped between the worlds. Too afraid to die but too tired to want to live. I just don't want to exist at all.
I'm exhausted and want peace.

Context:
My (25M) GF (27F) moved to Missouri one week ago. She accepted a job there after we found out that I had been placed in MO for my last year of clinical rotations. She decided to move one month ahead of me to make some extra money, and I follow her in three weeks after my current rotations end.
Her move has been difficult because her temporary housing cancelled on her last minute. The company provided a week hotel stay, so she's scrambling to find a room for the next few weeks, all while beginning a new full-time job and enrolled in part-time, online college courses.
Meanwhile, I've been on phone calls with her multiple times per day and helping where I can to research places to stay, though she has mostly handled interacting with hosts. I'm also working to clear out my apartment ahead of my move, working on my dissertation, and doing 2 days/wk of clinical work.
The concert:
My good friend from my grad program was gifted front row tickets to see two of my favorite artists, and she invited me. I was really excited because tickets to this kind of show are usually too expensive for me as a student, not to mention front row seats.
I told my GF just before she left that my friend had invited me, and she seemed mildly jealous that she would be alone in a new state and couldn't participate.
The fight:
Yesterday was the day of the show, and my partner called me midday to let me know that she was struggling with stress at the end of her first week at work. I did my best to console her, and she kept up a good attitude, but there's not much I can do to solve her actual problems at this time.
After she got off work, she asked if I had time in the evening to Facetime and watch TV or a movie together, which we haven't done yet since she left. I let her know that the concert was tonight, that I was sorry I couldn't spend the time with her, and that I'd be happy to watch something any of the following few nights.
This made her really angry. She said that she'd been looking forward to this evening to relax with me, even though I didn't know she was expecting a date night. She declined my offer to call and talk it out. After an exchange of a few texts where I indicated that I would still attend the concert with my friend, she stopped replying, still angry.
This isn't the first time that she's become very angry about something I didn't agree with, so I went to the concert anyway. Aside from some mild worries about her and sending a few unanswered texts to check on her, I had a great time with my friend.
Now it's the next day and she's still very angry. She says my decision indicates that I do not care about her as much as either my friend or seeing this concert. She's talking about breaking up with me because of my disregard for her emotions, especially after having a long week at work.
Admittedly, I recognize that her week and move have been extremely stressful and she let me know that spending the quality time would mean a lot to her. There's also been moments this week where I've been inconsistent in my availability, which she let me know has hurt her feelings. I've apologized for these moments and been more available by phone since.
I don't think her anger was warranted. I explained that she's a top priority of mine, but it's also important for me to enjoy special events and time with friends before I move. I wish she would have appreciated my excitement for this event and worked with me to find another time to spend quality time together, but now she says that a movie night doesn't even sound like fun moving forward. AITA?
TLDR:
My GF moved to Missouri all alone, had a long week at work and sorting out housing, and asked me last night to Facetime, watch a movie, and relax with her. I said we should find another time because my friend and I had front row tickets to a concert for 2 artists I really like. She became really upset and stopped responding, and I went to the concert. She says I don't care about her, and I say it's important to have personal time and work around one another's major plans. AITA?

Copied from Facebook
So, about this morning.
I got to the clinic in KCK by 8:00 a.m. and Kevan the Wife Beating Womb Sniffing Hillbilly Street Preacher was already there, but he and three other people were the only ones who showed up. I think most of the womb sniffers were over on the Missouri side trying to fix themselves up with drag queens at Pride. 🤣
My brother and then Moe showed up not too much later. We were there until about 11:00, I think. One of the escorts' husbands came and sat with us on the sidewalk for the last hour or so while his wife escorted patients. Most of the appointments at that clinic today were going to be done virtually anyway, so there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, but I believe that the staff at that clinic has been more proactive in warning patients not to engage with people on the sidewalk, because none of the patients even looked the way of any of the protesters. We kept reminding Kevan of that, but he was too annoyed with me for calling him a wife beater every chance I got to think much about that.
He claims I'm lying about him being a wife beater and that God counts all the lies coming out of my mouth and will one day take it out of my sinning hide, a prospect I'm sure that he masturbates to with disgusting regularity. 🤪 I told him that since he insists on lying to patients about abortion being murder, then he deserves to be lied about, and if he doesn't like it, he should shut his big fucking yap and go the fuck home.
My brother had sat out in the heat for just about long enough, and I didn't blame him for deciding to call it a day at that point. Moe and I decided to go down to the Overland Park clinic, since there were a large number of Catholics there and only four or five defenders. The fake clinic vest people were also there, which is unusual for a Saturday.
The fake clinic vest people have become more bold over the last few weeks, attempting to speak to patients and being much more belligerent than they had been. I already knew this as I was driving from KCK to Overland Park and the farther I drove the more pissed I got thinking about it. They, with their orange vests and their fake traffic cones and their thinking that the FACE Act doesn't apply to them, really had me pissed off. So I called a friend who works for the Department of Transportation, to ask if she knew anything about the laws concerning traffic cones. I know she's not a lawyer, and I was taking a chance on using her as a source, but she told me that it was her understanding that unless a property owner or lessee puts traffic cones down or authorizes them to be put down, no one else has a right to.
So I got out of my car across the street from the Overland Park clinic, and in much the same fashion as I had done when I got out of my car across the street from the KCK clinic and the first action I took was to dash iced tea all over Kevan's precious sidewalk chalk renderings, I walked across the street and knocked over each of the traffic cones, one by one. Both of the fake clinic vest people started telling me that I couldn't touch their property, and I told them that since they weren't the property owners, they had no right to put down traffic cones. They immediately called the police.
While they were waiting for the police, the same whiny little bitch that I caught on video on Thursday called her supervisor, which resulted in several more orange vest clowns showing up to try and intimidate us about their "rights" on the sidewalk and to private property, which was highly amusing to me, Magic Mike, Moe, Brian, Steve and the rest of the crew, because here they are attempting to intimidate patients into stopping for them, but when it gets turned around and they are being intimidated, all of a sudden they're whining about how we're being intrusive.
The police came and stayed across the street, but the fake clinic vest people went whining over to them. I stayed put on the sidewalk, figuring that if they wanted to talk to me they could come talk to me. They never did. The police were told that I was being vulgar and profane toward them on the sidewalk (who, me? 🤪). The police told them that I could say anything I wanted to as long as I wasn't threatening them physically because of my first amendment rights. The police were told that people were pushing into them. The police told them the same thing that I had told the little bitch the other day, to wit, that her feet aren't nailed to the ground, so if someone is getting too close to her she needs to back away. They complained about Brian filming them. The police explained that there's no right or expectation to privacy when you're standing on a public sidewalk.
So to recap, when they want to stand on a sidewalk and attempt to stop people who are entering the driveway, that's okay. But when other people show up and keep them from doing this, suddenly their rights are being infringed.
The police never even came across the street, although I was quite prepared to tell them all about what these people do in the name of their religion, and how they might not like my nasty vulgar mouth, but my nasty vulgar mouth keeps them from bothering patients as much as they would if I were not there to stop them. I have fucking had it with these people. And if the Overland Park Police are not going to enforce the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, then I and the group of defenders will do it.
When the orange vests came back across the street, looking sulky, they packed everything up and left.
I know there are people on my friends list who don't agree with me about abortion. I know there are people on my friends list who don't agree with my tactics on the sidewalk. I know that there are people who think that having defenders at a clinic just adds to the confusion for patients. But I'm not sure that's true. A woman came from the parking lot to speak to us while the whiners were across the street with the police. She wanted us to know that she had brought a patient from (an east coast state) for an abortion. They had to fly here. That is on top of paying about $800 for the abortion itself, the cost of losing work days, the cost of hotels and food, and all the practical obstacles that happen when you have to travel several states away for a medical procedure that you should be able to get in your own town. This person approached us because she wanted to thank us for what we were doing. I have never seen anyone walk up to the protesters and thank them. In fact, I've seen a lot of cars drive by flipping them the bird or yelling out the window. Maybe some of them yell at me too, as I know not everyone agrees about the legality of abortion. But making abortion illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It means that it's no longer safe to obtain for a lot of women, because when something is illegal, the price can be driven up, and the methods can become dangerous and or ineffective.
Magic Mike, one of the defenders who is gifted with the ability to speak to these people with a lot more calmness than I can, tried this morning to tell them that all they were getting was a taste of their own medicine. That as long as they continue to harass patients, they were going to get pushback from people who didn't think that they should be harassing patients. I don't care how long it's going to take to get that through their heads. Moe and I were like the Katzenjammer Kids walking around knocking cones down after they started putting them back up. The cones eventually stayed down after they finally figured out we weren't going to stop knocking them down. The cops saw us doing it a number of times, but they never came over and asked us not to, because what we were doing was not illegal.
My late brother used to say that if you want to run with the big dogs, you'd better be able to piss in the high grass. And he was right. Score for the defenders today.

Question for instructors who are nurses, APPs, etc who work 12-hour shifts. How do you create a consistent schedule where you teach the same days each week? My clinic requires two Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shifts in every 6-week cycle and there's minimal consistency in the schedule. IS your manager flexible or do you have the staff to accommodate such schedule?

I own a physical therapy clinic and I would like some ideas on a welcome gift for patients that buy a plan of care from us. At the moment, I give a tennis ball for the patient to massage/release certain trigger points and a sachet of electrolyte powder. Any ideas on what I could add? Or do you recommend anything else to replace what I have? Have you received anything that you remember when getting treatments at a clinic? Thank you!

Archana stepped off from the bus, pulling the shawl even more tightly against herself, taking care to wrap the woollen garment around her ears to protect against the bustling wind. Even with her full saree, socks, a cardigan and the shawl, she had been shivering in the rickety bus, with the broken glasses and wooden window shutters letting more of the cold air in than keeping it out.
Kunidanga was not the most crowded village in the district to begin with, and now at the end of December, with the temperatures hovering in the single digits, the roads wore a deserted look in the fading light of the dusk. Situated on the banks of the Torsa river in North Bengal, it was a tiny little hamlet which was barely a speck on the map. Archana was the only one who got off the bus, which left immediately for the final stop at Dinhata - nearly ten miles due south near the border with Bangladesh.
The bus stop, with its tin roof having long lost its shine, the mandatory stray dog lying in a corner in a ball of old newspapers, the walls completely covered in graffiti and posters of everything from the latest theatrical releases in the one movie theatre of the district in CoochBehar, the latest political agenda for the upcoming elections, ones extolling the virtue of the famous palmist Sri Abhaynanda while others that extolled the brilliance of D K Lodh - the infamous ‘sex doctor’.
Even with the musky odour of too many sweat stained bodies, months of public urination and defecation which hadn’t been washed away since the last rains, Archana sat down on the stone bench - just to balance herself for a moment.
She slowly patted her belly, calming the little one inside.
It was just the first trimester, actually the very beginning of it. Today was her first visit to the doctor in the district hospital. Archana had been experiencing the tell-tale symptoms of pregnancy for the past few days and Nakul was absolutely, joyously certain, that they were going to be parents! They had gone to the doctor together in the first bus from Kunidanga, starting at the break of dawn. Nakul had fidgeted the whole way there, nervous excitement bubbling through at every second while Archana simply tried to control her nausea - made worse by the rolling motion of the rickety old bus on the untarred roads. Waiting for the first consultation with the doctor, going for the blood tests, then another long wait for the reports and then the final confirmation from the doctor had taken them the whole day.
A quick meal at the hospital canteen, they had to rush to catch the last bus departing for Kunidanga. Nakul had gotten down from the bus at the last stop, he needed to visit the government depot there to collect some documents for his job as Kunidanga’s public works superintendent.
Their small government issued bungalow was not too far from the bus stop and Archana was confident that it was a distance she could cover well enough on her own - having taken the same short route countless times in the past. She stood up, clutching her small purse with some spare change and the regulation IDs, a bit tired, but with the additional spring in the step which happiness sometimes brings you!
Archana had only gone a few steps when she stopped, her senses overwhelmed by the unique smell of burning incense, fresh flowers and freshly cut fruit and milk - that typical combination which filled the air around all hindu temples - a smell so common and deeply ingrained among the god fearing Bengalis.
A few more steps along the dusty corporation road, and the source of the smell became clear to Archana. A sadhu - a kapalika to be more precise from the way he was dressed - had set up a small tenement on the empty plot of land just off the road, hardly a hundred feet from the bus stand.
A large man, well toned but not really muscular, the skin tanned with constant exposure to the elements, a thick beard and wrapped in the regulation red dhoti and uttariya sat in prayer.
It was a deep plot of land, opening up into the forested shrubbery at the back, butted on one side by the road and the bus stand, the other end a good two-three hundred feet away - completely empty except for a few shrubs and bushes, till Kanai’s small stationary shop.
In the middle of this huge plot of land, there stood an old Ashwathama tree, perennial, huge, imposing! The sadhu had created a small clearing at the base of this tree, burning away the shrub and the grass, the soil blackened and charred by the fire. He had planted his ornamental trident - the trishul - on the ground, the tips reddened with what seemed by red chandan powder. A small cloth tote bag hung from one of the low hanging branches - evidently containing all his worldly possessions.
The sadhu sat with his back to the tree, his eyes closed in prayer. Even in the dim light of the dusk, he seemed to have extremely sharp features, even though his face was gaunt and he had the emancipated look of someone who seldom has a proper meal. However, there was a sense of strength in him, an unexplainable aura of dark power, which however inspired more fear than fealty.
The normally god-fearing Archana instinctively folded her hands, palms touching, with that well known gesture of respect - in this case - somehow tinged with fear.
She stood rooted to the spot, trying to decide in her mind whether to approach this godman or not. On one hand, with the new pregnancy, she instinctively wanted the blessings and comfort from divine sources - and this one seemed to have quite literally fallen on her lap; on the other hand, there was a small tug of fear, a deep unnatural cold grasp of terror from deep within her which warned her to turn away from this man - and never catch his attention - ever.
Archana was brought out of her indecision by a sudden deepthroated fierce growling. A brown stray - so common on the streets of India, had entered the open land from the bush in the back. Perhaps this is where it slept during the night, finding a comfortable resting spot amidst the shrubbery and hedges. Having found an intruder who had taken over what the dog must have considered to be its own territory, he had reacted the only way he knew how - baring its canines and letting out a low fiery growl to warn the human away.
Archana was shocked by what happened next. She was about to shout out a warning to the meditating godman, when the man opened his eyes and with a cruel and brutal swiftness picked up his trishul from where he had fixed it to the ground and threw it at the crouching canine nearly fifty feet away. It happened so quickly that the poor creature barely had a moment to react, its growl dying away as the trident easily found its mark - cracking his skull open and breaking its jaw. The sadhu approached the fatally injured animal, picking up his formidable weapon once again, ostensibly to finish the job.
Archana didn’t wait around to witness the horrific aftermath. Shocked to her very core by the swift brutality and instinctive boorish behaviour of the sadhu, she gave credence to the tightly coiled fear in her stomach and moved as quickly as she could, past Kanai’s small stationary shop and beyond the bend in the road which lead to the barb wire compound of the government superintendent - Nakul’s official workspace as well as the small living quarters in the back.
She reached the sanctuary of her house, securely fastening the door behind her, breathless not only due to the sudden enforced exercise, but more so because of the sudden brutality which she had just witnessed.
Suddenly exhausted and drained, Archana went into the tiny bedroom, most of the space taken up by the large king-size wooden bed. A wedding gift from her grandparents, the huge bed covered almost three quarters of the room, leaving just enough space to fit in the old fashioned steel almirah and a mirror fixed on a hook on the wall to serve as a makeshift dresser.
Archana lay down on the bed, nauseated and deeply troubled by the sudden violence she had witnessed. She could still hear the crunching noise when the heavy iron trident hit the leaping canine, its yelp of pain. She grabbed the thick woollen blanket from the top of the almirah, wrapped it around herself, and curled up on the bed. Suddenly wracked by deep sobs, Archana wept. Wept in sympathy for the poor stray dog which was just doing what stray canines are supposed to do. Wept perhaps due to the sudden change in hormones in her body. Wept due to exhaustion and all the changes happening and about to happen. But mostly Archana wept in fear. Fear of the Sadhu who had suddenly appeared at the edge of the village, perhaps promising piety and salvation, but also promising a deep, dark violence.
X
Life moved at a breakneck pace for Archana and Nakul. Busy with Nakul’s work as the government administrator of public works, Archana’s work at the nearby primary school as a clerical staff and of course, getting ready to welcome the new addition to their family. Soon, the horrifying encounter with the Sadhu was an almost forgotten memory in Archana’s mind.
The first time they had to go back to the district hospital for a check up, Archana was worried. She hadn’t shared the incident of her first meeting with the Kapalik with Nakul. She didn’t see the point of unnecessarily worrying him and on top of that she wanted to push the memory of that incident as far away from her mind as she could.
However when they walked down the road to the bus stop early in the morning to visit the hospital, Archana was relieved to see that the godmans encampment was empty. The small camp had grown, it had a look of permanence about it now. A makeshift wooden fence created a border around the clearing around the tree. A small but sturdy wooden shed with a thatched roof had been built, a place for the worshipper to shelter in during the cold nights of the north. The large tree at the centre of it all bore various vermillion marks of sindur and sandalwood - the common symbols of hindu worship. However the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
By some strange twist of fate, Archana never ran into the man on her many visits to the clinic, passing by his ever expanding house of worship. There were obvious signs of his presence, and Nakul mentioned having seen him nearly every day, but luckily through some mystical working, Archana never had to face the strange sadhu who had taken up residence in their village.
She heard about him quite often. The young girl who came in twice a day to help with the household chores, the old bearded vegetable seller who came tooting on his van each morning, her few friends and the infrequent neighbour who dropped by, all had news about Kripali Baba.
He was known to be extremely pious, a follower of the goddess Kaali, he was known to keep the most difficult penances for himself as he tried to get closer to his venerated deity.
He was powerful too, quite capable of curing even the most incurable diseases, helping treat cancerous growth in an old coolie, treating the deadly lung infection in another. He was also known to be particularly partial to helping mothers - whom he considered to be an embodiment of his revered deity - Maa Kaali.
He was known to sit on long fasts right before every new moon, on which night he would disappear from his makeshift ashram and be away for days at a time.
Archana listened to all these tales with only half a mind, as she was completely occupied with the process of becoming a mother.
With every passing week, the small foetus growing inside of her grew more into a human and neither Archana nor Nakul could wait to get their newborn out in the world. They spent long hours planning for the baby’s name - Rabi if it was a boy and Nisha for a girl.
Their little island of happiness got a new inhabitant soon enough, when a handsome little boy, healthy and hale, was born to them at the turn of autumn. Rabi had arrived.
A precocious child, he was truly the Sun of his parents’ lives - the angel around whom Archana and Nakul spent doting around forever. Born during the auspicious Durga Puja, Rabi got the first glimpse of the majestic goddess Durga when he was barely a day old, the ecstatic parents taking him to the Durga Temple in the village to get him blessed and anointed.
The first few days of the young Rabi’s life were filled with joy, with the joyous grandparents, various aunts and uncles all coming to visit the newborn and celebrating the auspicious blessings of Maa Durga quickly followed by the Bengali Laxmi Puja - the celebration of the goddess of wealth and good fortune!
However, after a few days, the relatives all left, leaving the newborn and the new parents to their own schedule. Nakul had to rejoin his office, having used up his vacation days, and right the next week, was asked to go to the district office for some new instructions. Even though Kaali Puja was the next day, Nakul had to make the early morning journey leaving the sleeping Rabi and anxious Archana behind.
Promising her that he would come back right after the urgent meeting called by the new superintendent, Nakul left for the bus stop. Even though winter was still a few months away, the days were shorter and the morning Sun wasn’t fully up, the road lit by the reddish glow of dawn filtering through the mist which was still slowly receding.
As he passed by the ever expanding adobe of Kripali Baba, as he had done a hundred times over the past year, he saw the sadhu sitting in the traditional lotus pose - deep in meditation.
Nakul brought his hands together clasping them briefly against his forehead in the traditional show of respect, before hurrying on his way to catch the bus from Dinhata.
Archana and Rabi had a pleasant morning, the mother son duo enjoying the sunshine in the small garden which they had just outside their cottage. Rabi lay on his back on the small plastic crib - a gift from an indulgent uncle, while Archana sat on a blanket next to him, singing him lullabies, laughing at the various expressions the newborn unwittingly made.
After giving him a massage with the baby oil, Archana gave him a quick bath in lukewarm water before feeding him and putting him down for a nap in their bedroom. She sat for a moment staring at her sleeping son, her heart full of joy and satisfaction.
However she had to get moving soon, the time the baby slept being the only window when she could get any of the household chores done. Even though the girl who helped out with the household chores took care of the more manual work, Archana still had to cook for herself and Nakul. She also washed all of baby Rabi’s clothes and knickknacks on her own, unable to trust anyone else with her baby’s things.
Finishing all the household chores took a while - Archana always had an ear cocked for the slightest stirring sound. Rabi was a light sleeper and would cry his eyes out if he woke up and didn’t find his mother next to him.
Finally done with all the chores, taking a quick min long bath, and scarfing down her lunch, Archana went to bed, lying down exhausted next to her baby.
Rain in the autumn months in Kunidanga isn’t unheard of, but it isn’t a common occurrence either. Thundershowers are definitely a more uncommon sight.
Archana woke up disoriented and scared at the clap of thunder which had crashed somewhere close by.
She hadn’t realised when she had dozed off, tired from the constant crushing routine which she had as a new mother. Now, awake, she was scared at the dark cloudy sky outside, the gusting wind, the clapping thunder.
She suddenly turned - where was Rabi? The small infant was nowhere on the bed! Archana let out a wail of despair, probably her precious baby had rolled over and fallen from the bed. But then why was he silent? Why was he not crying? Was he hurt?
She scrambled off the bed, searching for Rabi, but he wasn’t there.
He was hardly old enough to turn on his belly, so it wasn’t likely that he had crawled out of the room.
Desperately, with an anguished cry, Archana searched all around the tiny house, darkened by the storm approaching, with no power. The only source of light was the now near constant flashes of lightning.
The house was empty.
There was no Rabi.
Now completely panic stricken, Archana ran outside, ignoring the large drops of icy rain drenching her, the uneven unpaved road striking her bare feet.
The road was empty, no one had ventured out in this weather. The wind and the rain made it really hard to see anything.
Not knowing which way to go Archana ran towards the bus stop, for no good reason other than knowing that’s the direction Nakul would come back from.
She passed by Kripali Baba but he was nowhere to be seen. The rain was pouring down now and there were small puddles forming on the sodden ground around the thatched hut which Kripal Baba had built for himself.
Somehow drawn in by some irresistible fear and a deep sense of foreboding, Archana turned off the road and into the venerated plot, taking trepidation filled steps towards the drenched hut. The makeshift abode didn’t have a door, just a heavy rug hung from a string like a curtain.
Archana flung the curtain aside and stepped inside - it was empty. No sign of Kripali Baba. No sign of Rabi.
There was a rolled up mattress on one corner of the tiny space, a few change of clothes on a wooden pallet, acting as a cupboard, and a few odds and ends lying here and there.
Archana didn’t know what she was expecting but she ran back out, somehow relieved to have not found her son there in the sadhu’s hut but also more scared wondering where he might be.
Much later that evening Nakul came back to find a comatose Archana wailing while a few neighbouring women tried to console her. Shocked and desolate, Nakul rushed into the house, convinced that their little boy was hiding somewhere. He turned the entire cottage upside down but alas there was no sign of the missing child.
Minutes stretched to hours, hours into days. The hapless parents remained comatose, completely clueless about what might have happened to their child. Neighbours, relatives, well wishers all had some sort of advice or the other, but none which did anything to alleviate the pain and suffering the distraught couple was going through.
Even though Nakul was fraught with an unbearable sense of loss, Archana was comatose wracked by an overwhelming sense of guilt which sat like a suffocating weight on her chest. She had been castigating herself for falling asleep and not even realising that her baby wasn’t next to her anymore.
When she heard someone saying to go to Kaali temple near Salmara, the last village on the banks of the Torsa river before it entered Bangladesh, she made up her mind to go. She had heard that the deity in that temple was particularly powerful and particularly keen to the plight of mothers - apparently the temple had been built and consecrated by a mother in memory of her child who had drowned in the river many years ago.
Nakul didn’t object. Even though he had given up hope and accepted it in his mind that their Rabi was lost, he didn’t want to dissuade Archana. They started off that very afternoon, taking a rickety old van from a kind neighbour, taking the long winding muddy roads along the bank of the river.
The Kaali Temple was old and bore a deserted look. It didn’t live up to its reputation of hosting a powerful deity who never let mothers return empty handed. There was no rush of devotees, no sound of clanging bells, no smell of incense or cut fruits - all the common sensitivities which one found afflicted near a temple.
Archana and Nakul hadn’t given any thought of bringing any offerings, they did not come here for any elaborate ritual, just to pray to a powerful deity to help them find their child.
As they walked towards the temple, they were surprised to see a lone figure sitting on the entrance steps, smoking a beedi.
Kripali Baba seemed to be equally surprised to see the couple, though he didn’t really seem to acknowledge their presence. If he had a flicker of recognition for them, he hid it well; neither did he raise an eyebrow at the couple’s dishevelled, unkempt appearance.
It was getting dark, seemingly the beginnings of another storm. Nakul hurried Archana inside the temple, they had a long way to go back.
Archana sat in front of the deity, elevated on a black stone. The deity was different from the others of the same goddess which she had ever seen. It seemed to be carved out of the same black rock as the base on which sat, the features carved out of stone. Even though the masonry was excellent, the features of the goddess had harsh edges - harsher than normal perhaps. What was most striking was her eyes. They seemed to be glowing, a strange lifelike quality quite astonishing to see in a stone carved idol.
Archana poured her heart out, dry eyed as there were no more tears left in her, she prayed to the goddess as only a mother can. She promised all that she had and all that she hadn’t, promised her own life and an eternal servitude to the goddess to have her child back.
All she wanted was for her Rabi to be back. Back to his mother’s embrace - where he belonged.
The stone deity had no answer. There was no sign, no crash of thunder as a prompt from the almighty that her deepest entreaties were heard.
Dejected, desolate Archana couldn’t control herself as she felt that the last vestiges of hope which she was nurturing in her heart were now broken. Her Rabi was not going to come back to her.
Nakul held Archana up, tears of a deep inconsolable grief flowing down his own face.
They stepped back out of the temple to dark skies. The wind had picked up and the heavy rain laden cumulonimbus clouds were racing in from the horizon shading the scenery with a dark hue.
Nakul suddenly shrank back, pulling Archana back as well. Kripali Baba lay on the ground, face up, eyes open, not breathing.
Quite dead.
There was a gaping wound in his stomach, a bloody, raw puncture.
Inside out.
As if something inside his stomach had tried to crawl out. Crawl out in a hurry. As if, that something, was being summoned. Summoned by a mother.

Got this email from the celiac foundation. Please consider becoming part of the study if you’re eligible. Clinical study participants are critical to the health of the community as they help find potential treatments, cures, and long term effects science may not be aware of.
I participated in phase 1 of the KAN-101 study in 2020 which is now in later phases and is looking promising. This is a different kind of study but I’m happy to discuss my experience!
Here is the info I got:
If you were diagnosed with celiac disease in the past year and live in Southern California, Avrok Biosciences has a new opportunity for you to support therapeutic discovery and help advance celiac disease research with a quick at-home blood donation. Eligible participants will receive $110 via gift card. Participants must be able to provide confirmation of their celiac disease diagnosis by blood test or biopsy. Learn more and see if you qualify below!
If you have any questions, please contact icureceliac@celiac.org.
Sincerely, Celiac Disease Foundation

Archana stepped off from the bus, pulling the shawl even more tightly against herself, taking care to wrap the woollen garment around her ears to protect against the bustling wind. Even with her full saree, socks, a cardigan and the shawl, she had been shivering in the rickety bus, with the broken glasses and wooden window shutters letting more of the cold air in than keeping it out.
Kunidanga was not the most crowded village in the district to begin with, and now at the end of December, with the temperatures hovering in the single digits, the roads wore a deserted look in the fading light of the dusk. Situated on the banks of the Torsa river in North Bengal, it was a tiny little hamlet which was barely a speck on the map. Archana was the only one who got off the bus, which left immediately for the final stop at Dinhata - nearly ten miles due south near the border with Bangladesh.
The bus stop, with its tin roof having long lost its shine, the mandatory stray dog lying in a corner in a ball of old newspapers, the walls completely covered in graffiti and posters of everything from the latest theatrical releases in the one movie theatre of the district in CoochBehar, the latest political agenda for the upcoming elections, ones extolling the virtue of the famous palmist Sri Abhaynanda while others that extolled the brilliance of D K Lodh - the infamous ‘sex doctor’.
Even with the musky odour of too many sweat stained bodies, months of public urination and defecation which hadn’t been washed away since the last rains, Archana sat down on the stone bench - just to balance herself for a moment.
She slowly patted her belly, calming the little one inside.
It was just the first trimester, actually the very beginning of it. Today was her first visit to the doctor in the district hospital. Archana had been experiencing the tell-tale symptoms of pregnancy for the past few days and Nakul was absolutely, joyously certain, that they were going to be parents! They had gone to the doctor together in the first bus from Kunidanga, starting at the break of dawn. Nakul had fidgeted the whole way there, nervous excitement bubbling through at every second while Archana simply tried to control her nausea - made worse by the rolling motion of the rickety old bus on the untarred roads. Waiting for the first consultation with the doctor, going for the blood tests, then another long wait for the reports and then the final confirmation from the doctor had taken them the whole day.
A quick meal at the hospital canteen, they had to rush to catch the last bus departing for Kunidanga. Nakul had gotten down from the bus at the last stop, he needed to visit the government depot there to collect some documents for his job as Kunidanga’s public works superintendent.
Their small government issued bungalow was not too far from the bus stop and Archana was confident that it was a distance she could cover well enough on her own - having taken the same short route countless times in the past. She stood up, clutching her small purse with some spare change and the regulation IDs, a bit tired, but with the additional spring in the step which happiness sometimes brings you!
Archana had only gone a few steps when she stopped, her senses overwhelmed by the unique smell of burning incense, fresh flowers and freshly cut fruit and milk - that typical combination which filled the air around all hindu temples - a smell so common and deeply ingrained among the god fearing Bengalis.
A few more steps along the dusty corporation road, and the source of the smell became clear to Archana. A sadhu - a kapalika to be more precise from the way he was dressed - had set up a small tenement on the empty plot of land just off the road, hardly a hundred feet from the bus stand.
A large man, well toned but not really muscular, the skin tanned with constant exposure to the elements, a thick beard and wrapped in the regulation red dhoti and uttariya sat in prayer.
It was a deep plot of land, opening up into the forested shrubbery at the back, butted on one side by the road and the bus stand, the other end a good two-three hundred feet away - completely empty except for a few shrubs and bushes, till Kanai’s small stationary shop.
In the middle of this huge plot of land, there stood an old Ashwathama tree, perennial, huge, imposing! The sadhu had created a small clearing at the base of this tree, burning away the shrub and the grass, the soil blackened and charred by the fire. He had planted his ornamental trident - the trishul - on the ground, the tips reddened with what seemed by red chandan powder. A small cloth tote bag hung from one of the low hanging branches - evidently containing all his worldly possessions.
The sadhu sat with his back to the tree, his eyes closed in prayer. Even in the dim light of the dusk, he seemed to have extremely sharp features, even though his face was gaunt and he had the emancipated look of someone who seldom has a proper meal. However, there was a sense of strength in him, an unexplainable aura of dark power, which however inspired more fear than fealty.
The normally god-fearing Archana instinctively folded her hands, palms touching, with that well known gesture of respect - in this case - somehow tinged with fear.
She stood rooted to the spot, trying to decide in her mind whether to approach this godman or not. On one hand, with the new pregnancy, she instinctively wanted the blessings and comfort from divine sources - and this one seemed to have quite literally fallen on her lap; on the other hand, there was a small tug of fear, a deep unnatural cold grasp of terror from deep within her which warned her to turn away from this man - and never catch his attention - ever.
Archana was brought out of her indecision by a sudden deepthroated fierce growling. A brown stray - so common on the streets of India, had entered the open land from the bush in the back. Perhaps this is where it slept during the night, finding a comfortable resting spot amidst the shrubbery and hedges. Having found an intruder who had taken over what the dog must have considered to be its own territory, he had reacted the only way he knew how - baring its canines and letting out a low fiery growl to warn the human away.
Archana was shocked by what happened next. She was about to shout out a warning to the meditating godman, when the man opened his eyes and with a cruel and brutal swiftness picked up his trishul from where he had fixed it to the ground and threw it at the crouching canine nearly fifty feet away. It happened so quickly that the poor creature barely had a moment to react, its growl dying away as the trident easily found its mark - cracking his skull open and breaking its jaw. The sadhu approached the fatally injured animal, picking up his formidable weapon once again, ostensibly to finish the job.
Archana didn’t wait around to witness the horrific aftermath. Shocked to her very core by the swift brutality and instinctive boorish behaviour of the sadhu, she gave credence to the tightly coiled fear in her stomach and moved as quickly as she could, past Kanai’s small stationary shop and beyond the bend in the road which lead to the barb wire compound of the government superintendent - Nakul’s official workspace as well as the small living quarters in the back.
She reached the sanctuary of her house, securely fastening the door behind her, breathless not only due to the sudden enforced exercise, but more so because of the sudden brutality which she had just witnessed.
Suddenly exhausted and drained, Archana went into the tiny bedroom, most of the space taken up by the large king-size wooden bed. A wedding gift from her grandparents, the huge bed covered almost three quarters of the room, leaving just enough space to fit in the old fashioned steel almirah and a mirror fixed on a hook on the wall to serve as a makeshift dresser.
Archana lay down on the bed, nauseated and deeply troubled by the sudden violence she had witnessed. She could still hear the crunching noise when the heavy iron trident hit the leaping canine, its yelp of pain. She grabbed the thick woollen blanket from the top of the almirah, wrapped it around herself, and curled up on the bed. Suddenly wracked by deep sobs, Archana wept. Wept in sympathy for the poor stray dog which was just doing what stray canines are supposed to do. Wept perhaps due to the sudden change in hormones in her body. Wept due to exhaustion and all the changes happening and about to happen. But mostly Archana wept in fear. Fear of the Sadhu who had suddenly appeared at the edge of the village, perhaps promising piety and salvation, but also promising a deep, dark violence.
X
Life moved at a breakneck pace for Archana and Nakul. Busy with Nakul’s work as the government administrator of public works, Archana’s work at the nearby primary school as a clerical staff and of course, getting ready to welcome the new addition to their family. Soon, the horrifying encounter with the Sadhu was an almost forgotten memory in Archana’s mind.
The first time they had to go back to the district hospital for a check up, Archana was worried. She hadn’t shared the incident of her first meeting with the Kapalik with Nakul. She didn’t see the point of unnecessarily worrying him and on top of that she wanted to push the memory of that incident as far away from her mind as she could.
However when they walked down the road to the bus stop early in the morning to visit the hospital, Archana was relieved to see that the godmans encampment was empty. The small camp had grown, it had a look of permanence about it now. A makeshift wooden fence created a border around the clearing around the tree. A small but sturdy wooden shed with a thatched roof had been built, a place for the worshipper to shelter in during the cold nights of the north. The large tree at the centre of it all bore various vermillion marks of sindur and sandalwood - the common symbols of hindu worship. However the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
By some strange twist of fate, Archana never ran into the man on her many visits to the clinic, passing by his ever expanding house of worship. There were obvious signs of his presence, and Nakul mentioned having seen him nearly every day, but luckily through some mystical working, Archana never had to face the strange sadhu who had taken up residence in their village.
She heard about him quite often. The young girl who came in twice a day to help with the household chores, the old bearded vegetable seller who came tooting on his van each morning, her few friends and the infrequent neighbour who dropped by, all had news about Kripali Baba.
He was known to be extremely pious, a follower of the goddess Kaali, he was known to keep the most difficult penances for himself as he tried to get closer to his venerated deity.
He was powerful too, quite capable of curing even the most incurable diseases, helping treat cancerous growth in an old coolie, treating the deadly lung infection in another. He was also known to be particularly partial to helping mothers - whom he considered to be an embodiment of his revered deity - Maa Kaali.
He was known to sit on long fasts right before every new moon, on which night he would disappear from his makeshift ashram and be away for days at a time.
Archana listened to all these tales with only half a mind, as she was completely occupied with the process of becoming a mother.
With every passing week, the small foetus growing inside of her grew more into a human and neither Archana nor Nakul could wait to get their newborn out in the world. They spent long hours planning for the baby’s name - Rabi if it was a boy and Nisha for a girl.
Their little island of happiness got a new inhabitant soon enough, when a handsome little boy, healthy and hale, was born to them at the turn of autumn. Rabi had arrived.
A precocious child, he was truly the Sun of his parents’ lives - the angel around whom Archana and Nakul spent doting around forever. Born during the auspicious Durga Puja, Rabi got the first glimpse of the majestic goddess Durga when he was barely a day old, the ecstatic parents taking him to the Durga Temple in the village to get him blessed and anointed.
The first few days of the young Rabi’s life were filled with joy, with the joyous grandparents, various aunts and uncles all coming to visit the newborn and celebrating the auspicious blessings of Maa Durga quickly followed by the Bengali Laxmi Puja - the celebration of the goddess of wealth and good fortune!
However, after a few days, the relatives all left, leaving the newborn and the new parents to their own schedule. Nakul had to rejoin his office, having used up his vacation days, and right the next week, was asked to go to the district office for some new instructions. Even though Kaali Puja was the next day, Nakul had to make the early morning journey leaving the sleeping Rabi and anxious Archana behind.
Promising her that he would come back right after the urgent meeting called by the new superintendent, Nakul left for the bus stop. Even though winter was still a few months away, the days were shorter and the morning Sun wasn’t fully up, the road lit by the reddish glow of dawn filtering through the mist which was still slowly receding.
As he passed by the ever expanding adobe of Kripali Baba, as he had done a hundred times over the past year, he saw the sadhu sitting in the traditional lotus pose - deep in meditation.
Nakul brought his hands together clasping them briefly against his forehead in the traditional show of respect, before hurrying on his way to catch the bus from Dinhata.
Archana and Rabi had a pleasant morning, the mother son duo enjoying the sunshine in the small garden which they had just outside their cottage. Rabi lay on his back on the small plastic crib - a gift from an indulgent uncle, while Archana sat on a blanket next to him, singing him lullabies, laughing at the various expressions the newborn unwittingly made.
After giving him a massage with the baby oil, Archana gave him a quick bath in lukewarm water before feeding him and putting him down for a nap in their bedroom. She sat for a moment staring at her sleeping son, her heart full of joy and satisfaction.
However she had to get moving soon, the time the baby slept being the only window when she could get any of the household chores done. Even though the girl who helped out with the household chores took care of the more manual work, Archana still had to cook for herself and Nakul. She also washed all of baby Rabi’s clothes and knickknacks on her own, unable to trust anyone else with her baby’s things.
Finishing all the household chores took a while - Archana always had an ear cocked for the slightest stirring sound. Rabi was a light sleeper and would cry his eyes out if he woke up and didn’t find his mother next to him.
Finally done with all the chores, taking a quick min long bath, and scarfing down her lunch, Archana went to bed, lying down exhausted next to her baby.
Rain in the autumn months in Kunidanga isn’t unheard of, but it isn’t a common occurrence either. Thundershowers are definitely a more uncommon sight.
Archana woke up disoriented and scared at the clap of thunder which had crashed somewhere close by.
She hadn’t realised when she had dozed off, tired from the constant crushing routine which she had as a new mother. Now, awake, she was scared at the dark cloudy sky outside, the gusting wind, the clapping thunder.
She suddenly turned - where was Rabi? The small infant was nowhere on the bed! Archana let out a wail of despair, probably her precious baby had rolled over and fallen from the bed. But then why was he silent? Why was he not crying? Was he hurt?
She scrambled off the bed, searching for Rabi, but he wasn’t there.
He was hardly old enough to turn on his belly, so it wasn’t likely that he had crawled out of the room.
Desperately, with an anguished cry, Archana searched all around the tiny house, darkened by the storm approaching, with no power. The only source of light was the now near constant flashes of lightning.
The house was empty.
There was no Rabi.
Now completely panic stricken, Archana ran outside, ignoring the large drops of icy rain drenching her, the uneven unpaved road striking her bare feet.
The road was empty, no one had ventured out in this weather. The wind and the rain made it really hard to see anything.
Not knowing which way to go Archana ran towards the bus stop, for no good reason other than knowing that’s the direction Nakul would come back from.
She passed by Kripali Baba but he was nowhere to be seen. The rain was pouring down now and there were small puddles forming on the sodden ground around the thatched hut which Kripal Baba had built for himself.
Somehow drawn in by some irresistible fear and a deep sense of foreboding, Archana turned off the road and into the venerated plot, taking trepidation filled steps towards the drenched hut. The makeshift abode didn’t have a door, just a heavy rug hung from a string like a curtain.
Archana flung the curtain aside and stepped inside - it was empty. No sign of Kripali Baba. No sign of Rabi.
There was a rolled up mattress on one corner of the tiny space, a few change of clothes on a wooden pallet, acting as a cupboard, and a few odds and ends lying here and there.
Archana didn’t know what she was expecting but she ran back out, somehow relieved to have not found her son there in the sadhu’s hut but also more scared wondering where he might be.
Much later that evening Nakul came back to find a comatose Archana wailing while a few neighbouring women tried to console her. Shocked and desolate, Nakul rushed into the house, convinced that their little boy was hiding somewhere. He turned the entire cottage upside down but alas there was no sign of the missing child.
Minutes stretched to hours, hours into days. The hapless parents remained comatose, completely clueless about what might have happened to their child. Neighbours, relatives, well wishers all had some sort of advice or the other, but none which did anything to alleviate the pain and suffering the distraught couple was going through.
Even though Nakul was fraught with an unbearable sense of loss, Archana was comatose wracked by an overwhelming sense of guilt which sat like a suffocating weight on her chest. She had been castigating herself for falling asleep and not even realising that her baby wasn’t next to her anymore.
When she heard someone saying to go to Kaali temple near Salmara, the last village on the banks of the Torsa river before it entered Bangladesh, she made up her mind to go. She had heard that the deity in that temple was particularly powerful and particularly keen to the plight of mothers - apparently the temple had been built and consecrated by a mother in memory of her child who had drowned in the river many years ago.
Nakul didn’t object. Even though he had given up hope and accepted it in his mind that their Rabi was lost, he didn’t want to dissuade Archana. They started off that very afternoon, taking a rickety old van from a kind neighbour, taking the long winding muddy roads along the bank of the river.
The Kaali Temple was old and bore a deserted look. It didn’t live up to its reputation of hosting a powerful deity who never let mothers return empty handed. There was no rush of devotees, no sound of clanging bells, no smell of incense or cut fruits - all the common sensitivities which one found afflicted near a temple.
Archana and Nakul hadn’t given any thought of bringing any offerings, they did not come here for any elaborate ritual, just to pray to a powerful deity to help them find their child.
As they walked towards the temple, they were surprised to see a lone figure sitting on the entrance steps, smoking a beedi.
Kripali Baba seemed to be equally surprised to see the couple, though he didn’t really seem to acknowledge their presence. If he had a flicker of recognition for them, he hid it well; neither did he raise an eyebrow at the couple’s dishevelled, unkempt appearance.
It was getting dark, seemingly the beginnings of another storm. Nakul hurried Archana inside the temple, they had a long way to go back.
Archana sat in front of the deity, elevated on a black stone. The deity was different from the others of the same goddess which she had ever seen. It seemed to be carved out of the same black rock as the base on which sat, the features carved out of stone. Even though the masonry was excellent, the features of the goddess had harsh edges - harsher than normal perhaps. What was most striking was her eyes. They seemed to be glowing, a strange lifelike quality quite astonishing to see in a stone carved idol.
Archana poured her heart out, dry eyed as there were no more tears left in her, she prayed to the goddess as only a mother can. She promised all that she had and all that she hadn’t, promised her own life and an eternal servitude to the goddess to have her child back.
All she wanted was for her Rabi to be back. Back to his mother’s embrace - where he belonged.
The stone deity had no answer. There was no sign, no crash of thunder as a prompt from the almighty that her deepest entreaties were heard.
Dejected, desolate Archana couldn’t control herself as she felt that the last vestiges of hope which she was nurturing in her heart were now broken. Her Rabi was not going to come back to her.
Nakul held Archana up, tears of a deep inconsolable grief flowing down his own face.
They stepped back out of the temple to dark skies. The wind had picked up and the heavy rain laden cumulonimbus clouds were racing in from the horizon shading the scenery with a dark hue.
Nakul suddenly shrank back, pulling Archana back as well. Kripali Baba lay on the ground, face up, eyes open, not breathing.
Quite dead.
There was a gaping wound in his stomach, a bloody, raw puncture.
Inside out.
As if something inside his stomach had tried to crawl out. Crawl out in a hurry. As if, that something, was being summoned. Summoned by a mother.

Hey everyone,
This is a sequel to a vent post I made about two days ago: https://www.reddit.com/PhD/s/FLBTeMyKQa
I learned more about why my PI chose me and he said that he's confident I understand statistics and research methods conceptually because I've taught it. The thing is though... I've never made my own materials when teaching with the exception of a class that was taken off the docket for the first time in 4 years and was only a two credit hour course beforehand. With the exception of one online class, I've consistently been rated and commented that I had the worst class and/or was the worst instructor students have had for the past two years I've taught. The ratings have only gone down as well. For example, I had overall averages of 2.8-2.9 out of 5 for my in person classes while my last ones were 1.8 out of 5 all across the board.
For example, I was also recently told by my advisor about chi square as one of the analyses for dissertation data and I've never done one in my whole life despite taking two undergraduate stats classes, one Master's level stats class, and retaking the equivalent stats class in my Ph.D program.
I've felt on edge every single day of my internship, afraid, and scared to death of voicing how I really feel. Every day, we have to put our fingers up on a scale of 1-5 (sometimes 1-10) about how we truly feel. I put up a 4 (on the 5 scale) or 8 (on the 10 scale), but in reality I'm a 1-2 out of 5 or a 3-4 out of 10. I also need to rate how busy I was out of 10 and I always feel like a 5-6 because the tasks I'm required to do I have a tendency to do much faster than my PI (for this internship) expects of me in this case.
In addition, I'm finding my focus when I read journal articles at my cubicle non existent because I'm still trying to overcome my sleep apnea. It's better than before, but when I'm emotionally overwhelmed like I am at my internship, then I can't think at all. It took me hours to read a journal article that should've been 1-2 hours for example.
To top it off, my PI promised and wants us to all have something that can lead to a first author publication by the end of this. I don't know if I'm at a point where, despite being towards the tail end of my Ph.D, whether I can handle this.
I'm going to sit on this decision further, but how do I mitigate the damage if I quit? I think this will surprise my boss since I've kept everything to myself, but I want this to be clear. To top it off, the hospital where I'm working right now is doing this as a first ever and my PI has said there's a ton of trust being put into this so he can do so in subsequent years. I would want him to still be able to do that, but acknowledge at the same time that I was the one and only person who just didn't fit expectations.
My advisor at my Ph.D program was also extremely happy that I got this because of the first author publication promise. Since the university where I'm doing my Ph.D recently stopped admitting clinical psychology students because they're going to cut the program, it's been difficult for those in adjacent programs like mine (i.e., Experimental) to get any sort of internal funding from the university for projects or anything of the sort. In other words, I could only use the resources the lab already had to try to run experiments and get published in this case.
I'm looking for advice on how to minimize the damage in this case since I'm inevitably going to burn a bridge with my boss. My advisor though... I think he'd be disappointed in me and I can't avoid interaction with him. Hopefully, there's some way I can mitigate the damage.
ETA: In case it's important, my current PI's h-index has been in the mid 90s these past few years. I'm not going to name drop him but he's been faculty at a lot of prestigious institutions. Thus, this internship felt WAY better than I deserve given my Ph.D program is at a no name R2 state school.

Hey everyone,
This is a sequel to a vent post I made about two days ago: https://www.reddit.com/PhD/s/FLBTeMyKQa
I learned more about why my PI chose me and he said that he's confident I understand statistics and research methods conceptually because I've taught it. The thing is though... I've never made my own materials when teaching with the exception of a class that was taken off the docket for the first time in 4 years and was only a two credit hour course beforehand. With the exception of one online class, I've consistently been rated and commented that I had the worst class and/or was the worst instructor students have had for the past two years I've taught. The ratings have only gone down as well. For example, I had overall averages of 2.8-2.9 out of 5 for my in person classes while my last ones were 1.8 out of 5 all across the board.
For example, I was also recently told by my advisor about chi square as one of the analyses for dissertation data and I've never done one in my whole life despite taking two undergraduate stats classes, one Master's level stats class, and retaking the equivalent stats class in my Ph.D program.
I've felt on edge every single day of my internship, afraid, and scared to death of voicing how I really feel. Every day, we have to put our fingers up on a scale of 1-5 (sometimes 1-10) about how we truly feel. I put up a 4 (on the 5 scale) or 8 (on the 10 scale), but in reality I'm a 1-2 out of 5 or a 3-4 out of 10. I also need to rate how busy I was out of 10 and I always feel like a 5-6 because the tasks I'm required to do I have a tendency to do much faster than my PI (for this internship) expects of me in this case.
In addition, I'm finding my focus when I read journal articles at my cubicle non existent because I'm still trying to overcome my sleep apnea. It's better than before, but when I'm emotionally overwhelmed like I am at my internship, then I can't think at all. It took me hours to read a journal article that should've been 1-2 hours for example.
To top it off, my PI promised and wants us to all have something that can lead to a first author publication by the end of this. I don't know if I'm at a point where, despite being towards the tail end of my Ph.D, whether I can handle this.
I'm going to sit on this decision further, but how do I mitigate the damage if I quit? I think this will surprise my boss since I've kept everything to myself, but I want this to be clear. To top it off, the hospital where I'm working right now is doing this as a first ever and my PI has said there's a ton of trust being put into this so he can do so in subsequent years. I would want him to still be able to do that, but acknowledge at the same time that I was the one and only person who just didn't fit expectations.
My advisor at my Ph.D program was also extremely happy that I got this because of the first author publication promise. Since the university where I'm doing my Ph.D recently stopped admitting clinical psychology students because they're going to cut the program, it's been difficult for those in adjacent programs like mine (i.e., Experimental) to get any sort of internal funding from the university for projects or anything of the sort. In other words, I could only use the resources the lab already had to try to run experiments and get published in this case.
I'm looking for advice on how to minimize the damage in this case since I'm inevitably going to burn a bridge with my boss. My advisor though... I think he'd be disappointed in me and I can't avoid interaction with him. Hopefully, there's some way I can mitigate the damage.
ETA: In case it's important, my current PI's h-index has been in the mid 90s these past few years. I'm not going to name drop him but he's been faculty at a lot of prestigious institutions. Thus, this internship felt WAY better than I deserve given my Ph.D program is at a no name R2 state school.