Hell Within -- Chapter Two: The Bastard -- Scenes 6&7

-6-

The phone jangled like a fire alarm nearly causing Paul Ambrose to jump out of his skin. He looked down at the page he had been scribbling his notes on and the ball point pen had failed beneath the pressure of his hand spilling a black cloud of ink across the white.

He capped it and threw it in the garbage, and then he glared at the phone like a teacher might glare at a student who’d spoken out of turn. He yanked the receiver off its cradle.

"Hello?"

"May I speak with Dr. Ambrose please?"

Paul’s glare softened.

"This is he."

"Dr. Ambrose this is Judy Ellis, Mandy Green’s homeroom teacher. You asked me to contact you if she didn’t show up for school?"

Paul nodded. "Thank you very much Mrs. Ellis."

"Is everything okay?"

He rolled his eyes. "There’s probably no reason for concern."

"Well, is there something about her that, as her teacher, I should know about?"

Paul sighed. "Not unless there’s something she wants to tell you herself."

"I see," she said, pausing as if waiting for Paul to gossip anyway.

"Thank you for your call. If anything’s wrong I’ll let you know."

"I appreciate it," she said as if that satisfied her, and then she hung up.

Paul shook his head and hung the phone back on the cradle. Then he flipped open his Rolodex and found Terra Green’s number.

It rang three times before Mrs. Green answered in a groggy voice.

"Mrs. Green, this is Dr. Ambrose. Is Mandy sick?"

"I Don’t know."

Paul frowned. "You asked me to keep an eye on her attendance in school?"

"That reminds me, I need to tell you not to charge me for any more office visits."

Paul shook his head. "I don’t understand."

"My boyfriend kicked Mandy out last night."

"And this isn’t something that you thought I needed to know?"

She said nothing.

"Your boyfriend kicked your daughter to the curb and you’re worried about me charging you for her office visits?"

"It’s not your business."

Paul hung up the phone, and looked helplessly around his office. It was Mandy.

And now he needed to find her.

-7-

The ceiling rolled by above her.

Somewhere an intercom announced that Dr. Wallis needed to report to the CCU. What a ridiculous thing to say! The other sounds around her were disorganized and muted -- alien sounds buzzing through her skull half noticed like wind through a car window.

And square florescent lights hung from the ceiling spaced at intervals of every four panels. She’d never noticed before just exactly how much thought went into crafting a building, the symmetry of it -- the order.

Rushed voices surrounded her. She had no particular clue as to their topic of conversation just the sense that their discourse was important and somehow related to her.

Her bed stopped rolling suddenly beneath a stainless steel dome full of bright lights. A face hovered over her now. A man with salt and pepper hair mostly covered with a green cap. He pulled his emerald facemask away from his mouth and nose revealing well-formed lips and a full brown mustache.

His face was so shapely that she couldn’t help but smile at him, and smiling caused white-hot surges of pain to shoot up her face from her jaw.

"You just relax and hang tight, young lady. We’re gonna get you through this."

The tension drained from her shoulders.

Something heavy landed on her chest, and a nurse with angelic brown eyes looked down on her from her right, and she pressed a black mask over her mouth and nose. The air in the mask stung her throat, but she didn’t care. She was horribly drunk all of a sudden.

Her eyes drifted shut.

* * *

There’s something I need to remember.

But she had no idea what. The memory was barely misplaced just beyond the darkness surrounding her like a lost set of keys.
It couldn’t be too important.

She was alive and warm. She wasn’t hungry, and the bed beneath her was incredibly cozy -- softer than her own.

The sudden urgency of the discovery that she was not at home sent her lurching forward into the darkness gasping for breath. Something caught her hands and feet halfway up sending a sharp jolt of pain through her frame. Her eyes popped open.

A heavy cast covered her left arm, and her other hand and both her feet were bound with the kinds of restraints orderlies might use in a mental hospital to bind a dangerous patient.

"Just relax," someone said to her left. Her head followed the voice.

Dr. Ambrose sat in a chair beside her bed wearing all black with his legs crossed and a People magazine open in his hands.

She gave him a confused look.

"They have you restrained. You’ve had some pretty violent nightmares."

She reclined, not taking her eyes off him. Ambrose closed his magazine and sat it face down on a maple table to his right.

"What am I doing here?" she said.

"I might ask you the same question."

She frowned and looked forward. What had happened to her?

"Your mother told me that her boyfriend kicked you out," Ambrose offered.

A flash of an image returned to her. She was lying on the floor in the trailer staring up at her mother.

She looked back at Dr. Ambrose.

"I was kicked out?"

He nodded.

Fear shot through her.

Dr. Ambrose leaned forward.

"You’re in a mess. This hospital bill will be in the thousands, and you have no one to pay it, no insurance, and more importantly no place to live and nothing to eat."

"Oh, my god!"

He leaned back.

"What am I gonna do?"

"I want to discuss how we got here."

She gave him an incredulous look -- an expression that sent white-hot flashes of pain shooting through the broken nerves in her face. Ambrose folded his hands in his lap and stared back at her expectantly. She frowned and looked away. Ambrose cleared his throat.

"What?"

"I’m waiting for you to tell me how you came to be so accident prone."

Her mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe her ears. This situation was too ridiculous to be anything other than a dream.

"I’m lying busted up in a hospital suddenly homeless, and all you can think about is therapy?"

"Now’s as good a time as any. I’m in a position of power, and you have no where to go."

She just stared at him. Ambrose sighed and looked down at his lap.

"I’m not here because I want to rub your nose in it, and if I just wanted some good gossip, I’d go buy a copy of the National Enquirer."

She huffed and shook her head. "Mom’s not paying for this anymore, so why don’t you just go away?"

Ambrose grinned at her. "There’s a way out of this, but you’re gonna have to come clean with me."

She smirked. "And how’re you gonna help me?"

He did not reply, acting as though he didn’t even hear her.

Her smirk faded, and she looked away from him.

"There’s nothing I haven’t heard before."

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. She had the same sinking dirty feeling that she’d felt the first time one of her mother’s "Friends" had convinced her to take off her clothes.

"Can you keep your mouth shut?"

He shrugged. "As long as you don’t tell me that you are going to harm yourself or someone else is or will harm you."

She leaned forward, her restraints snapped tight sending jolts of pain all through her limbs.

"If you say anything, I will be killed."

He sighed hard. "And if nothing is done, you will likely die anyway."

She looked straight at him. "Davy did this."

"Your mother’s boyfriend?"

She nodded.

"How long has your mother been with him?"

"Four years. She doesn’t love him. He just gives her all the drugs she wants."

He frowned. "I understand."

She nodded. "Davy is like some kind of drug dealer."

"Is there some reason you didn’t tell me this before? I could have helped you."

She smirked in spite of the pain.

"Aren’t you supposed to be a psychologist? You’re supposed to know things."

He nodded. "That’s right, and a large part of being a good psychologist depends on how honest your client is with you."

She shook her head and looked away from him and out the window to the right of her bed. Outside, it was night, and she had a clear view of the cold, black sky and the graveled rooftop below her window.

"I’m pretty good at detecting lies, but all you seem to deal in is half-truths and omissions. I only know what I see."

"And what is that?"

He leaned forward.

"I see a young woman who is obsessed with doom and gloom.
That died-black hair, pale make-up, black fingernail polish, self-mutilation. . . . What we present on the outside represents who we are on the inside."

She looked straight at him with her eyes welling up.

"No shit Sherlock."

Dr. Ambrose rubbed his face and sat back in his chair.

"How long has Davy been abusing you?"

"I don’t know. I lost my ledger with dates and times while I was getting my face kicked in."

"You do realize, of course, that it didn’t have to go this far. All you had to do is tell me."

She huffed. "And what would you have done, big boy? Go down there and break his arms?"

"No, I would have done exactly what I intend to do now, get a lawyer and file a suit for emancipation."

"Speak English."

"We go to court and ask the judge to divorce you from your mother."

He leaned forward. "It won’t put a roof over your head or food on the table, but it’ll ensure that your mother can’t get food stamps for you anymore."

She couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. Allying with her against the person who pays his bill?

"Lawyers cost money," she said.

"Which you’ll earn."

She shook her head. "I’d have to drop out of school."

"That’s not going to happen."

"What am I gonna live on? Love?"

"I can help you with that, if you’ll allow me."

She studied his face carefully, now, for any trace of ill intent, and Dr. Ambrose smiled knowingly.

"Why are you so interested?" she said.

"If someone doesn’t do something, you’ll not live to see twenty."

"Why is that your problem?"

He frowned. "I find this kind of violence particularly deplorable, and I enjoy the challenge you represent."

She looked straight ahead. "Where will I live?"

"There’s a vacant loft above my office that I don’t use."

She studied him harder. Ambrose smiled.

"Of course, nothing in this world is free. I’ll expect you to be my call service at night."

"What do you mean?"

"If my clients call after hours, which they sometimes do, you’ll speak with them and decide if it’s important enough to contact me at home."

She didn’t know what to say. Mandy Green had never met a man who’d do something for a woman out of the goodness of his heart, and she had no reason to believe that Dr. Ambrose was any different. However, she didn't think she had a choice in the matter.

She looked at Dr. Ambrose and nodded.

(Coming soon: Chapter Three: The House)