The street lawyer.-Devon Hardy.-

A policeman led me to the first floor of the building where Friends and family and doctors were waiting, The doctors crowded around, but where was my wife?






Six hours in a room with a gunman and she had not come to see me. It was funny really because my wife Claire, was a doctor herself, at one of the biggest hospitals in Washington.






I lay on a table for ten minutes, while doctors examined me to make sure I was all right. Then my secretary, Polly arrived. There were tears in her eyes as she put her arms around me.






-Where is Claire? I asked her.





-I called the hospital.She is working.





-Polly knew there was not much left of the marriage.




-Are you Ok? she asked.



-I think so.






-I will take you home.






I was pleased someone was telling me what to do. My thoughts came into my head slowly. It was like I was under wáter.






We left the Drake and S building by a back door. There were pólice cars everywhere and ambulances and televisión vans even a fire truck.







-I am alive, I am alive !I realized smiling for the first time. I am alive. I looked up to heaven and said a very big tahnk you.







When I got home to our apartment on P Street in Georgetown, Claire was not there.



I sat in the empty apartment and thought about her. We had met the week after I moved to Washington. I was just out of Yale with a great job. She came from one of American oldest families.We were in love, we got married.








But Drake make you work very hard the first year. I worked fifteen hours a day, six days a week. I saw Claire on Sundays and we went out together when I was not too tired.








For the last five years I had worked about 200 hours a month.







That eight hours every day for six with two or three hours on Sundays.






But Young lawyers at Drake dont complain about long hours. Fewer tan one in ten become you earn at least a million dollars a year.






Claire was good about it for the first few months, but then she got tired of having a husband who was never there and I did not blame her.









There were a lot of divorces at Drake. Long hours  each hour paid for by a client, are more important tan a happy wife.






By the end of our first year together, Claire was unhappy and we were not talking together very much.







She decided to go to medical school and I thought that was a great idea.







Drake were telling me that I was posible future partner. I just had to work even harder. When Claire was studying, I did not feel so guilty about that.







But Claire did not just study. She worked long hours. She had decided she wanted to be a great doctor.




My boss, Arthur, was on my team. He had become  a partner in Drake at the age of thirty. The youngest ever partner. And he would son be the oldest ever working partner.








The law was his life. All three of his divorced wives could tell you that.




I woke up suddenly. I had fallen asleep in a armchair at the apartment and Claire was sitting in a chair next to me.









-Where were you today ?




.At the hospital-






-Nine of us are in a room with a crazy man and a gun for six hours. We get lucky and escape. Eight families come and see their relative because tehy are interested in whether or not he is alive. And how do I get home?



-my secretary drives me.






-I could not be there.





-oh no...Of course you coul not be there. How silly of me!





-I could not be there because the pólice asked all doctors to stay at their hospitals until the stuation at Drake ended.




They always do that when there is a posible shooting.






-Oh, Did you call?




-I tried. I guess there were a lot of people trying.