The Doctor Is In Part 3

Author's Note: I apologize for taking so long to post this part of the story, but I was concerned with the story's length, and the sensitive nature of the story. After a lot of thought, I've now come to the conclusion that in order to be a good witer, I have to take risks. WIthout further ado, here's part three.

I don't know how I slept that night after all that had happened, but I did, sometime after midnight. For the first time in almost two years, I didn't dream about The Nude White Male threatening to cum in my eyes. I was so rested, I overslept, and woke up late for work. After a quick shower, I changed into my work clothes, a semi-casual shirt and slacks. I collected an armload of case files that I never got the chance to review, and headed to work.

During my thirty minute commute, I wasn't thinking about the reprimand I knew I was going to get from my supervisor. I just kept seeing Anthony's face. I saw his indigo eyes, dark with lust for me, making me feel warm in the face. I barely noticed the morning rush, with school buses, mini-vans and SUVs whizzing past me. I felt like I was dreaming, and for the first time in a long time, I enjoyed the feeling.

Of course, I crash-landed back in reality upon my arrival. My supervisor was waiting outside The Department of Family and Children Services building (or DeeFaCS as everyone calls it), fuming more than usual. I don't really feel intimidated by him though. With his receding hairline, glasses, and gap teeth, he reminded me of my father. He motioned for me to roll down my window.

"There's a situation. It's Elena Pulliam." He told me. I groaned. Elena Pulliam was a fifteen year-old girl who had been diagnosed with everything from ADD to Bi-polar disorder. Knowing the quality of the overworked shrinks doing evaluations, I made my own conclusions. This girl was trouble, plain and simple. If she wasn't running away from her foster home, she was being arrested for prostitution or selling marijuana. She had a smart mouth and a bad attitude. And of course, she was one of my cases.

"What's she done now?" As soon as I said it, I was suddenly disturbed. I had dozens of cases. So many, even I had to glance at their files to remember their names. The fact that my supervisor knew her full name without looking at a shred of paper could only mean that something was terribly wrong. "Is she alright?"

"She's breathing. She's already at the hospital. You should get over there."

"Which one?"

"Bethesda Memorial. She's been stabilized."

I took a deep breath. She must have really been through something. "What happened?"

"From what the cops can piece together, she was trying to rob her john, and he attacked her. Were you late getting her evaluated this month?" He tightened his jaw, as if he expected me to give him bad news.

"No." I said, probably telling him the only good news he would hear all day. "I was supposed to evaluate her a week from today."

"Good! The local media is already picking up on this story, and they'll be going over every detail of her assault with a fine-toothed comb."

I blinked. Holy shit! "How in the hell did that happen? In the past six months, two foster teenagers killed themselves by jumping off of buildings, a six year-old thought her foster sister's cocaine was sugar, and I walked in on a ten-year old who thought a loaded gun was a toy. And those are just my cases. Those were all good kids who had tough breaks. All of them. Why is her case getting attention?"

"She's pretty. And she doesn't look like the typical foster kid."

What do you mean? I thought. Her eyes aren't cold? She doesn't size you up to see whether she can steal from you, or test you to see if you're going to hurt her or not? She's pretty damn typical to me! But I knew exactly what he meant. He wasn't talking about behavior. He was talking about her appearance. Elena was white. She would be the perfect poster child for tougher minor curfew, gun control, or whatever the fine citizens of V-Town decided was the biggest problem of the month. "I better get down there." I grunted.

I had warned Elena about prostituting herself, several times before, knowing full well someone might not let her out of their car alive. Even though I was angry, queasy, and worried all at the same time, I was relieved in a way. I was hopeful that if Elena recovered, she would change, go back to school and catch up enough to get her High School Diploma in three years.

I had to wade through a sea of reporters and news cameras to get inside the hospital. They seemed to know exactly who I was, mobbing me with questions about her age, who her parents were, etc. I said no comment and kept going. I showed my identification to the admissions clerk, and she told me where Elena's room was. I tried not to breath too deeply. The whole place smelled like professional strength bleach and various bodily fluids mixed together. I thought of it as the death smell. I had always hated visiting hospitals just for that reason.

Elena was in Room number 111. I put my hand on the door, and took a slow measured breath to prepare myself for what I was about to see. I opened the door slowly, and walked in. She was lying in the first hospital bed, bandaged around her neck and chest.. She had a large white eye patch covering her right eye. Her other eye was closed, so I assumed she was sleeping. Someone tapped me on my shoulder.

A weary-eyed Hispanic man in lavender scrubs extended his hand to me. "I'm Dr. Grisham. I understand you’re responsible for Elena?"

I walked out of Elena's room and closed the door behind me. "You could say that. I'm her case worker, Adina Fischer. She's in foster care."

The Doctor shook his head, as if to say that was a shame. He pulled out a chart. "Alright. I'll go over her condition. She was slashed repeatedly across the face, and stabbed twice in the chest. The knife cut nicked her lung, so she'll be here a few days to make sure she doesn't suffer from complications. No bones broken, no arteries damaged, but her eye was damaged in the attack. She's a very lucky young lady. If a Good Samaritan hadn't reported her attack, it could have been a lot worse."

Thank Goodness! "Is it all right if I see her?"

"Yes, but make sure she doesn't move around more than she has too. I don't want her making her wounds worse." I heard him being paged. "I have to go. It was nice meeting you."

"Thank you, Dr. Grisham." I opened Elena's door again, and took another look at Elena. She hadn't moved, so I knew she really was asleep. I pulled up a chair next to her bed. "Elena?" Elena's good eye fluttered. She seemed to be confused for a minute, opening up her mouth as if she was about to scream. "It's me, Elena. Miss Fischer." I said before she could let loose.

Elena relaxed. "You had me going there, Teach. I thought you were death or somethin'." I frowned. The doctor was right. She couldn't be feeling too bad if she was calling me a teacher because I used proper grammar, like always. She smirked. "It's about time you got here. I've been laying up in this hell hole since dawn, and all they gave me was Jell-O. You at least bring me a cheeseburger?"

I frowned even more than before. "Aren't you even the least bit concerned about yourself? You almost died. I came here expecting you to be near death."

Elena's voice became sugary sweet. "Aw, I didn't know you cared, Teach baby! You care enough to buy me a pack of smokes?"

I looked away before I got angry with her. "You're a minor, and you can't smoke in here. Do you want to tell me what happened to you?"

Elena shrugged. "I told the po-pos already. Go get my statement from them." I didn't like cops much either. They showed up too late, and they brought too much baggage. Still, it didn't seem right for me to let her bad-mouth a group of people who I know had cut her some slack more than once. "Those policemen saved your life. The least you could do is have some respect. "

Elena turned her head away, rolling her eye. "Whatever. They did what they got paid to do. What do you want to know?"

"How did all this happen?"

"It's like I told the cops. The guy who picked me up wanted more than a blowjob. I said, 'no, I'm not gonna do you for just twenty bucks'. I ran into an alley, he caught me, and cut me."

It seemed frowning was the only facial expression I could make that morning. "That's not what I heard."

"Well you heard wrong, didn't you?"

"I heard you tried to rob your john-"

"And have the fucker turn out to be a cop? They let you out the next day for prostitution, but they keep you longer for larceny. I know that much."

"Watch your mouth." I was trying very hard not to get angry with a kid like Elena, though I didn't think she was lying. She didn't give two shits about what people thought about her or what she did.

She shrugged, staring at me. "I'm not lying. If I wanted his shit, I would have taken it. And I would'na gotten caught neither."

I wrote down a censored version of her statement in my notes, and changed the subject. "Are you alright?"

Elena shrugged. "I'm still breathing."

"What about your eye?"

"I'm no doctor." she shrugged again. "It hurts and I can't see. Is that good enough for you?" She wouldn't look at me. I think she was trying not to cry.

"You're going to be alright."

Elena chuckled harshly. "I wasn't alright before this happened to me. How am I going to get better now?"

"Take the energy you usually use to break the law, and use it to heal up." I said stonily. I decided now was the time for tough love. Of course, I wasn't blaming her for her attack. I may work for the state, but I'm still human. Still, she did have a hand in getting herself into this situation.

"Oh come on, Teach. Why do you have to lecture me like that? It's not like I O.D.'d or somethin' like that." she said in that sweet voice of hers. I'm sure she talked to her johns in the same way.

"Because I warned you, and you didn't listen. You could have been killed! Do understand that? Five minutes could have been the difference between you sitting here talking to me in this hospital, or you lying downstairs in the morgue." I was holding back from yelling at her, but my teeth were clenched so tight in anger, I don't think it made much difference.

Elena's good eye widened in fear. "Yeah I know. And he's still out there."

She might as well have hit me in the stomach. "He's still out there?"

"Far as I know. He ran off when someone saw him cut me. He was in a stolen car and didn't drop his wallet, so the po-pos'll make me do a sketch of him later." About the only positive thing about Elena was that she was a pretty decent artist. She liked to draw inanimate things like sunsets or buildings, though. I'd never seen her draw a person.

"I didn't know he was still out there, Elena. I'm sorry."

She shrugged, but she didn't roll her eye at me. "It's whatever."

I sat in uncomfortable silence for several minutes. "Have you spoken to your foster mother?"

"The po-pos spoke to her. They told me that she said she didn't want to foster me anymore." she snorted in disgust. "Fucking Christians. They're all the same. Fake as hell."

"She hasn't come to see you?"

"Nope. And I'd spit in her face if she did. Called me a whore yesterday. Showed her how much of a whore I was. I made two hundred dollars last night before that son-of-a-bitch cut me." She looked at me again, probably realizing I was all she had at the moment. "You tell those pigs when I get out of here, that they better have my money with my stuff, or I'll-" She stopped talking, and started coughing for a few seconds. "Damn it Teach...when are you going to get me some cigarettes? I'm dying here..."

The irony of her wanting to do more harm to her already damaged lung was not lost on me a second time. "For the last time-"

A nurse opened the door and addressed me. "Ms. Fischer? I'm sorry, but Elena needs her rest. Could you come back later during visiting hours?"

I nodded. "Elena, I'll be back later today."

She snickered. "You'll be back tomorrow at the earliest. If you make it back at all." I frowned at being contradicted, but knew she was probably right. I had already missed two appointments coming to see her, and it would take me until tomorrow to catch up. "You're just like them, you know. You do what you get paid to do."

I shook my head at her and left the room. But something made me stop and think. It was a dare. She was daring me to care about what happened to her. I poked my head back in her room. "How do you like your cheeseburgers?"

She looked like a deer in the headlights! I think that was first time a social worker ever surprised her. "Pickles...no pickles."

"Then that's what you're having for breakfast. And I will check on your case with the detectives working it. See you later." On my way out I told a nurse to go ahead and send up an early lunch tray to Elena's room. After all, the kid had had one hell of a night.

I spent the rest of my day catching up on my appointments, riding back and forth over the county to inspect foster parents and foster children. Houses and buildings and pets, and childproofing for toddlers and babies. Even with all the interviewing and inspecting, I'm lucky. I never have to take kids away from their real families. Just the substitute ones. Not that it's any easier.

At the end of the day, I had to remove two twin ten-year olds from their foster home because they weren't being adequately fed. I had warned the couple before, but there had been no change in their weight, and their medical checkups had checked out. I drove them back to my office, glad that the day was over. I took them inside, and had every intention of ordering them a pizza to tide them over until I could get them placed for the night, when I saw the bouquet of a dozen red roses. They were wilted from sitting on my desk all day, but they still took my breath away. No one had ever sent me flowers before.

I raised them up, and let the faint sweetness drift into my nostrils. The accompanying card fell to the floor. I picked it up, and read:

Adina - Thank you for yesterday. My intention is to show you how a true princess is treated. -Anthony...P.S. pleasant dreams ...