Alice & Dorothy (16 page)

The girls stepped out of the hospital and into the morning sunshine. It felt good to be alive. Good to be free. Dorothy snuggled up to Alice as they passed ingoing patients, and elderly long term care patients standing around smoking and gossiping.

“Where are we going?” Dorothy said after a while.

“I need to go see a friend about something,” Alice said. Rabbit, of course, would probably not be happy to see her. But if the fucker was going to dump her at the hospital like so much useless garbage, well, he was going to pay for it.

Alice found the bus stop she wanted, then sat and invited Dorothy to sit on her lap. Eventually the bus came, and the girls paid with part of Dorothy’s ice cream fund. Then the bus pulled onto the road and was swept away in the traffic.

Dr Weller came out of his office wiping doughnut powder from his face. He followed the duty nurse out into the main room of the ward and met the two cops standing at the front desk. “Yes?” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Alice Pleasance,” The Wall said.

“What is this about?” Dr Weller said. One of the officers was wearing an expensive smelling cologne but he couldn’t be sure which one it was.
Probably the dark one,
he thought.
They usually smell better.

“Is she here?” Sgt Pepper asked.

“Yeah. Listen, guys. I don’t want to be a bother, but I’m Alice’s acting doctor, and you really need to tell me what this is about.”

“One of the security guards she assaulted has pressed charges,” Sgt Pepper said. “So we need to discuss it with her.”

“Are you planning on taking her out of here?” Dr Weller said.

“We are probably going to need to set up a time for her to take a statement and to get fingerprinted, if warranted. We saw the guy yesterday, he’s got a busted nose. Looks like he got hit in the face with a baseball bat.” He made a slicing motion across his face to show the doctor where the man had been hit.

“It happened while she was still flushing opiates out of her system,” Dr Weller said. “I can hardly see how she could be responsible for her actions.” He crossed his arms, an unconscious show of defiance. He was like most people dealing with police; he felt intimidated by their rough manner and the uniform. These men were exuding violence; it dripped from their pores and tainted the air.
Not here though. This is my territory and I will not be intimidated in my own yard.

“Yeah, well, that’s why we want a statement instead of taking her in.”

“She really needs to stay here,” Dr Weller said. “She’s suffering a breakdown. She has diminished mental capabilities
.
”

“Ahh. It’s right over here then,” Dr Weller said. He came around from the back of the desk. Moving past the two policemen, he stopped and turned. “I will need to be present for this, of course. I’m Alice’s legal guardian while she is under my care.”

“Of course you are,” The Wall sighed. He looked at his partner and shook his head before nodding at the doctor. “Hey, whatever you say,
legal guardian
.”

That’s right,
Dr Weller thought.
We will do things my way here
. He’d been dealing with men like this his entire life. They responded to direct commands much better than Dr Weller could ever hope to appeal to their softer sides. He turned and walked to Alice’s door, giving it a sharp knock. The two police officers walked up behind him. “Alice. You have visitors.”

The two cops looked at each other. Dr Weller caught the silent discussion they were having and didn’t like it one bit.
They think they’ve won,
he thought.
Perhaps they have. Alice just made me look a fool.
“Hold on a sec.”

Dr Weller walked back out to the front desk. There he stood very close to the duty nurse and spoke softly. “She’s not in her room. Is she maybe somewhere else?”

“Well, she’d have to be, right?” the nurse said. She looked at Sgt Pepper’s nametag and started to smile, but the look on the doctor’s face killed the smile at birth. “I’m afraid I don’t know where she is. She was out here a little while ago, and then she got up and left. I assumed it was to go back to her room, because the door was shut.”

Weller looked around the room, frowning. “Where’s Dorothy Gale?” His gut was suddenly telling him something he didn’t want to hear.
They’re both gone. Right out from under your nose, old boy.

“She signed out just as these cops were showing up,” the nurse said.

“Any luck?” Sgt Pepper said.

“And Alice was nowhere near the elevator when Dorothy left, right?” Dr Weller said, waving them off. The not now gesture wouldn’t sit well with their alpha male egos

“Well, no,” the nurse said. “I mean, wouldn’t the cops have seen her? They were talking to Dorothy when I looked up—,”

“What do you mean?” Dr Weller said. “You weren’t watching her?”

“
Of course I was.
It’s just that Dorothy spilled water all over the counter so I was busy trying to save all this paperwork. Besides, those cops were talking to her.”

Dr Weller walked around the outside of the table, around to where the sign out book was sitting. It was still in the same spot Dorothy had left it. He ran his finger down the entries until he came to the last one. Then he looked up at the duty nurse. His face was a mix of sour and anger.

“
I was,
” the rookie nurse said, with a touch of dread in her voice. She looked as though she might start crying at any minute.

“See this?” Dr Weller said, his finger on the last entry. “This is the girl she is with.

The Wall read it, and then looked at the doctor. “
Ozma of Oz?
What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Those women are both very disturbed,” Dr Weller said. “But Dorothy Gale is more so. She lives in her delusions full time, but she has been able to integrate them seemlessly into her everyday life. She actually believes that somewhere out in the world there is a land of magic and fairies where she is a princess.”

“So?” Sgt Pepper said. “Sounds like every other nutcase in here.”

“Dorothy is suffering from severe post traumatic shock,” Dr Weller said. “Last year there was a tornado near her town and her family was killed. Dorothy reacted by attempting to drive a stolen car into the tornado because she believed she could reach her fairyland if the tornado picked her up and carried her there. Natural disasters are the only way to travel to Oz, apparently.”

The Wall stared at Dr Weller. His face was a stone. “Uhh, no offense doc, but that’s seriously fucked up.”

Dr Weller sighed.
Brutes.
“I know. The danger here is that Dorothy may try it again. And Alice is suffering from some kind of breakdown that I haven’t been able to pin down yet. I believe she suffered a trauma before she came to the hospital, and that her overdose on heroin was her attempt to self medicate her pain. This could all be temporary, though, and in her state I believe she could absorb Dorothy’s delusions and make them her own.”

“Really? So what,
crazy by proxy?
”

“Well, that’s a gross oversimplification,” Dr Weller said. “But I guess in a way it could be seen like that. It’s not guaranteed, mind you. Most of the time things like this don’t happen. Anytime you have people with reality impairments, though, it
is
a possibility.”

“So?” Sgt Pepper crossed his arms and scowled. “She trades in one crazy fantasy for another?”

“The thing is,” Dr Weller said, “Dorothy Gale’s fantasy is not harmless. Her attempts to reach the Land of Oz have caused her to attempt suicide at least three times. The first time she tried to burn the family barn down while she was in it. After her parents pulled her out she tried to fight them and get back into the fire. The second time she was caught trying to burn a schoolhouse down.”

“Christ,” said the dark cop. “What a nut job.”

“After that she spent some time in juvenile custody. It was in there that her delusion evolved so that her trip to Oz could no longer be completed with a manmade disaster. It had to be natural. I believe this was an attempt by Dorothy to keep herself out of prison.”

“What about Alice’s fantasy?”

“I honestly can’t tell you much,” Dr Weller said. “We didn’t have enough time to dig into it. And Alice had a breakdown during our first session.” Dr Weller stopped. Something had suddenly occurred to him. “During her initial session, she began screaming about having killed someone.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Dr Weller said. “I wouldn’t trust that it actually happened, but
something
happened to her. If it is a temporary episode, it could well have been brought on by a rape or murder.”

“Or both?” the dark cop said.

“Definitely, yes,” Dr Weller said. “That would explain a lot of things. She blames her addiction to heroin and the forced detox we put her through. But that’s not the case at all.”

“Call it in?” the blond cop said, looking at his partner. “We can check and see if anything like that has happened. Recently.”

“Yeah, let’s get on it.”

“Thank you doctor,” the blond cop said. The two men turned to go. The dark cop spoke into the small walkie talkie attached to his shirt.

“Officers,” Dr Weller said, following them toward the elevator. “Could you keep me up on what’s happening please? I’m the doctor in charge of both of these girls. They are my responsibility.”

The door shut. Dr Weller looked at his warped reflection in the steel door for a moment, then turned and faced the duty nurse. She was standing there watching him. She had a pen in her hands but wasn’t writing anything.

“That’s it, I guess,” Dr Weller said. He ran his hands through his hair.

The nurse didn’t say anything. After a few moments, Dr Weller returned to his office and shut the door.

In the nurses’ office, the bathroom door opened to the sound of a flushing toilet. The older nurse walked out to the desk and put a hand on the younger nurse’s back. “I wouldn’t go in there,” she said, chuckling. Then she clapped her hands. “So what did I miss?”

The bus stank like piss and was full of odd looks for both Alice and Dorothy. Dorothy clung to her stuffed dog and kept her eyes on the floor. Alice met each stare with a sneer. She knew how fucked up they looked together: A young girl carrying a toy dog and a blond girl still dressed in her hospital gown and robe. At some point she’d have to get clothes if they were going to be out in public; she imagined herself as a beacon for emergency calls from good Samaritans.

Finally they drove to a neighbourhood that Alice recognized, and a short time later they were getting off the bus. The neighbourhood looked like a dozen other run down areas Alice knew of in the city; she could count them off on her fingers. Old houses with big yards, slowly torn down one at a time and replaced with cheap duplexes and townhouse developments. The air was muggy and carried a faint industrial smell. It was the kind of neighbourhood that held many different races of people, most living in close proximity to one another but keeping to themselves as much as possible. Between these groups were houses owned by the elderly poor. Everything felt run down. Even the tires on the cars parked on the side of the road seemed flat.