Sometime in the spring my luck ran out. I was summoned to the Department Chairman's office and told that everybody there was talking about my drinking. I was mortified but my reaction was to quit my job and go to work elsewhere. I don't remember now how I made that passage so easily (I'm guessing they pitied me enough not to destroy my references), but by May I had become the Administrative Secretary to the Nursing Department at the local hospital, beginning 26 years of employment in medical institutions until retirement in 2006. I liked the feeling of working in a hospital - the daily drama even at my level. I got craftier about the drinking - took a tiny flask of hard liquor with me in my purse and plenty of breath mints. It was too far from home now to go there during lunch break and drink, so that helped. By the summer of 1980, all seemed reasonably on track on the surface.


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