The Nearly Girl

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “Where’s her room?” he asked urgently and Amelia guided him through the maze of corridors. He rushed inside Ethel’s room and came to a shuddering halt next to her bed.

  Ethel was fast asleep and Henry gently took her hand in his and pressed it to his face.

  “Is she going to be alright?” He whispered to Amelia, voicing the thought he had wanted to ask the entire ride over.

  Amelia nodded. “The doctor said she will be fine. He said a setback is normal and they’ve put her on more antibiotics.”

  Henry dug some money out of his shirt pocket. “Buy her some more flowers,” he said. “Ethel likes flowers. Buy her two bunches, three. And cards and a basket or whatever you can find. She must wake and see that she is dearly loved. One vase of flowers is not enough.”

  Amelia nodded and went shopping. She returned with a stack of gossip magazines, several bouquets of flowers, and a great big teddy bear. “Nana loves these magazines,” she told Henry. “Although she thinks I don’t know that. I got her The Sun newspaper too, She loves it, too.” She sorted the display at the end of the bed and she and Henry settled down to wait.

  “Dad?” Amelia whispered. “What about my therapist and his family?”

  “Not now, Amelia. I can’t think about anything until Mom wakes up.”

  Henry was still holding Ethel’s hand gently and his chair was pressed up close to the bed.

  Amelia rubbed her eyes with frustration. She had no idea what to do. She pinched the bridge of her nose hard, as if tiny attacks of pain would help her clear her own head and that a course of action would become clear to her. But nothing was forthcoming and she sighed. “I’m going to get some stuff from the vending machine,” she said. “Do you want anything?”

  Henry shook his head.

  Amelia returned with a stash of junk food. She sat on the floor, flicked open The Sun, and bit into a granola bar. She paged through the paper idly, not paying much attention to any of it, when a story caught her eye and she gasped, pinning her hand to her mouth.

  HOARDER AND RABBITS DIE IN FLAMING INFERNO.

  Amelia stopped chewing in horror, her mouth half-full.

  She had thought that the photo of the blazing house looked familiar. The garden was familiar, as was the shape of the burning house. And how could it not be, when she’d been there only days before?

  Angelina had done what Dr. Carroll had suggested. She had burned down her house, with herself and her rabbits inside.

  The fire chief said there was no doubt that it was suicide by arson. Amelia pictured Angelina’s stoic resolve to end her emotional turmoil. She had, after all, been given a clear directive by Dr. Carroll that this course of action was her only solution.

  “Amelia?” It was Henry. “Are you okay?” Even he had noticed her reaction.

  Amelia shook her head and she spat her unchewed food into a napkin and got up. “I have to go,” she said, throwing the napkin into the trash.

  “What’s wrong?”

  But Amelia rushed out, unable to speak.

  She sat under a tree in the hospital grounds, keening and hugging her knees to her chest. She wished there was someone, anyone, that she could talk to but there was no one. She was utterly alone and this made her cry even harder. She’d always had Nana and sometimes she had Dad, but right now she had no one. She emptied the contents of her pockets out onto the grass, hoping to find a tissue. She discovered a dryer sheet, her cellphone, and a Werther’s Butterscotch instead. She blew her nose on the dryer sheet and picked up her phone.

  Five missed calls.

  She stared at it in disbelief. It wouldn’t be her mother. She didn’t have that level of interest in Amelia’s life and the only other person who ever called her was Nana.

  She dialed her voice mail and listened to her messages and her heart skipped more than one beat when she realized the calls were all from Mike. He had read about Angelina and, from the sounds of it, he was as devastated as she was. Without pausing, she dialed his number and he picked up on the first ring. “What took you so long?” he asked without preamble.

  “My gran’s in hospital,” Amelia said. “And I went to see my Dad. Never mind that, Mike—”

  “I know. It’s all his fault. He told her to do that. We all heard him. Just when I thought he was some kind of okay guy. We have to report him.”

  “I need to tell you something else about him,” Amelia said. “Can you meet me at the hospital?”

  “Yeah, sure. Are you there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me in the lounge area near the coffee shop, where we went that time. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  He rang off and Amelia leaned against the tree, heartbroken about Angelina.

  15. MIKE

  MIKE ARRIVED AND WHEN HE WALKED towards her, Amelia thought that he looked more handsome than ever. She felt self conscious about her weepy appearance and swollen red face, not the mention the fact that she had neither showered nor changed since the last time she had seen him.

  “So much has happened,” she said, quickly. “Yes, I know I’m wearing the same clothes as the last time you saw me, and no, I haven’t been home but I can explain.”

  “Amelia, you are so beautiful,” he said in a rush. “I told Jane I’ve met someone, I did. I’m telling you the truth. After we helped David out, I thought about it. I thought about how he had been lied to by his wife and by everybody else, and I thought that I couldn’t lie to Jane any more. It’s not fair to her.”

  “Oh. How did she take it?”

  “She’s furious. She said I’ve wasted the best years of her life and that she’ll never forgive me. She said she hates me. She said I’ll be sorry and she said a whole bunch of other stuff, but she’ll be okay. Don’t get me wrong, I nearly threw up before I told her, and I’m not exactly Mr. Popular in our crowd right now, but I don’t care.”

  Amelia was alarmed. He had done what she had wanted him to do, she knew that, but now, instead of feeling happy, she was filled with dread. “I know I said you should do this,” she told him, “but now that it’s done, I’m kind of freaked out. I mean, you did all this for me and you don’t even know me. Now you’ll see how strange and weird I am and you’ll hate me because you lost all the good stuff that you had, because of a whim.”

  He took her hand and he touched her forehead with his. “It wasn’t a whim. And just so you know, even if it doesn’t work out between us, you helped me see that Jane wasn’t for me.”

  “You agree that it’s not going to work out between us?” Amelia sounded truculent.

  “I didn’t say that,” he replied patiently. “I just said that if it doesn’t, and I think it will, you mustn’t stress about anything.”

  He kissed her lightly and she folded into him, her hands clasped tightly around his neck and her body pressed close to his. When they finally pulled apart, Amelia ran her finger over his unshaven upper lip. “Feels nice when we kiss,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t shave?” he grinned.

  “I never said that,” she burrowed her head into his neck. “You smell so good. So clean.”

  She pulled back suddenly. “Mike, Dr. Carroll is keeping his family drugged and hostage in their home.”

  He jerked away, his eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw him pull into a driveway and I wanted to see what the great doctor was like with his family and I watched them through the window.”

  Mike was silent.

  “Don’t you believe me?” she asked.

  “Of course I believe you,” he said. “He’s responsible for Gino going crazy. He’s responsible for Angelina setting herself and her house on fire. Of course I believe you, but I don’t know what to do. Who will believe us?”

  They were both silent.

  “I don’t know. But until we figure something out, come and meet
my Dad and my gran,” Amelia said. “I need to see how my Nana is doing.”

  Mike held onto Amelia’s hand and despite the complex and multiple disasters that swirled around them, Amelia thought that she had never felt so happy.

  They found Ethel sitting up in bed, pale but chatting to Henry who was grinning with relief.

  “This is Mike,” Amelia said and Mike raised a hand in greeting. “This is Nana, who you’ve met, and my Dad.”

  “Good to see you again, Mike,” Ethel said and Henry got up and shook Mike’s hand. Henry seemed flummoxed, and didn’t know what to say.

  “I should be out in a week,” Ethel told Amelia. “I’m feeling much better. I’m so sorry I gave you all a scare.”

  “Look,” Henry said, “we got you some magazines.” He stopped short, unable to say anything else and he stared at his hands and twisted them nervously.

  The room filled with an awkward silence.

  “Tell us about yourself, Mike, ” Ethel said and he shuffled and looked as ill at ease as Henry.

  “I work in computer programming. I graduated two years ago.”

  “Computer programming,” Ethel said admiringly. “That’s the way of the future.”

  “So they tell me,” Mike said and Amelia wanted to get out of the room more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

  “We’ve got stuff to do,” she said. “Nana, I just wanted to check in again before we left. We’ll see you later. Dad, will you still be here?”

  Henry nodded furiously and hid behind the newspaper that he had flapped open.

  “Good to meet you, Mike,” he managed to say in a strangled voice.

  “My Dad’s a poet,” Amelia told Mike, as if that explained everything. “Bye Nana, see you soon.”

  Amelia tugged Mike out of the room. “Nana’s wonderfully normal,” she said, “but Dad’s like me, only he’s three hundred and ninety-seven point five percent worse. Please tell me you’ve got some nutcases in your family.” Mike shook his head. Amelia felt shut out by the normalcy of his life. He must have known what she was thinking because he pulled her to a stop.

  “Hey, he said. “Don’t do that, okay?” He kissed her. “Don’t ever do that. And from what I’ve seen now, you guys are really close. Anyway, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than worrying about whether my family will be too normal for you to handle.”

  They fell silent.

  “Let’s go to Angelina’s house,” Mike said. “For no good reason except that I’d like to say goodbye to her.”

  He led her to his beat-up little white sedan and opened the door. “You may not believe me,” he said. “But I’m going to make millions one day. I’ve got big dreams. I was a sports jock in school. I hit a pretty mean baseball too, but a career in sports is like playing the lottery. I prefer to rely on my brain.”

  To her dismay, Amelia found his earnest ambitions boring and she didn’t know what to say. Was this the same Mike? It was as though the Mike she had previously connected with had disappeared and she felt as if she was on a blind date with a stranger. It suddenly occurred to her that she really knew very little about him. “Do you read books?” she asked, hoping to find a topic they could talk about.

  “Yeah, business books mainly,” Mike said, as he drove them to Angelina’s house.

  “Novels?”

  “Nope, but I’m big into biographies and autobiographies. I study what the big-time winners did to climb the ladder of success, so I can do the same thing.”

  Amelia had no idea what to say in reply to that.

  “What’s your favourite movie?” she asked, scrambling to find a way to connect with him. She remembered him saying that he liked going to movies and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t ever seen a movie but generally they seemed like a waste of time.

  “Pirates of the Caribbean. I love Johnny Depp.”

  Amelia felt despairing. “I liked him in Edward Scissorhands,” she offered and Mike looked blank. This was not going well. Amelia decided to attribute the awkwardness between them to what had happened to Angelina and she focused on that instead of acknowledging that things between her and Mike were not quite the way she had hoped they would be.

  “We’re here,” Amelia said with great relief and Mike parked and they got out of the car.

  “Look,” Amelia pointed. “There’s Joanne and Whitney.”

  “And David, too,” Mike said and they walked over to join the group.

  “Such a terrible thing,” Joanne said, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve been crying since I heard about it.” Whitney put her arm around her.

  David was pale and shaking. “It wasn’t Dr. Carroll’s fault,” he said defensively. “He couldn’t have known she’d take him literally.”

  “He’s a maniac,” Joanne said. “We trust him, and the things that he says, and look what happens.”

  “Hello group,” Dr. Carroll piped up, appearing at Whitney’s side and looking somber. “How is everyone doing? I thought I might find you here.”

  “This is all your fault,” Joanne shouted at him. “You told her to burn down her house.”

  “Not with her in it,” Dr. Carroll reminded her. “We were just brainstorming. The whole point is to come up with some of the most extreme ideas possible. She had tried everything else. I had no idea she was suicidal. There was nothing about that in her file, nor were there any signs.”

  “You’re the expert,” Joanne said, blowing her nose. “We rely on you. What good are you if you can’t be relied on?”

  “I do my best,” Dr. Carroll said mildly.

  “Your best isn’t fucking good enough,” Joanne shouted, and there were tiny flecks of white tissue stuck to her chin and Whitney brushed them off.

  “I’m going to make sure they investigate you,” Joanne said. “I can do that. I can at least do that.”

  Dr. Carroll shook his head. “Good luck with that,” he said, and his sharp little teeth flashed a grin. “I’m famous for my unorthodox methods and in this game, you win some, you lose some. Besides,” he added, “she was on anti-depressants and everybody knows they can trigger all kinds of psychoses.”

  Amelia was staring at him in horror. She had not been able to utter a single word. She was hanging onto Mike’s hand and he too, was silent.

  “And may I remind you,” Dr. Carroll said. “That we’re only on the fifth of a twelve-week course and should you elect to not return, there will be a price to be paid.” He grinned and turned to leave. “And,” he added, “none of you read the fine print on the documents you signed, did you? You were all in such a hurry for me to fix you and clear the cobwebs of horror from the recesses of your addled brains that you happily signed on the dotted line without paying attention.”

  Even Joanne looked alarmed when he said this. “What did we miss?” she asked. “Bottom line, Doctor Loco, spill the beans.”

  “Tread lightly,” Dr. Carroll admonished her. “The form says that should I feel the need, vis-à-vis that you might be a danger to yourself or anyone around you, that I can check you in for a four week period of inpatient treatment and trust me, you don’t come out of that singing Sunshine On My Shoulders.”

  He cast a sad look at the smoldering remains of Angelina’s house. “So unfortunate,” he said, and he left.

  The group stood looking at one another in the manner of car crash victims who were unsure what had just happened.

  “Joanne?” Whitney asked in a tiny voice, “can he do that?”

  “I guess he can,” Joanne admitted. “Did anybody read the whole document? I know I didn’t and I should have known better.”

  “We’re utterly at his mercy,” David said. “He’s the crazy one and we’re at his mercy.”

  “You’ve got no idea how crazy,” Mike started to say, but David raised his hand to silence him.

  “My game plan is t
his,” he said. “Pay him, leave quietly, and make like this never happened. Besides, the guy really helped me. And he seemed to help you,” he said to Whitney and Joanne, “and even both of you.” He directed his last comment at Mike and Amelia. “Good luck with everything.”

  He turned and trotted off, his head down, his posture resolute.

  “I’d better get home or my husband will be wondering where I am,” Whitney said and she gave Joanne a deep tongue kiss. “See you tomorrow, honey. Try not to worry. We’ll get through this.” They watched her leave, her solid mom-hips clearly outlined in the white track pants she was wearing.

  “She’s still with her husband?” Mike asked and Joanne shrugged.

  “Sure. She’s got two kids and a twenty-year marriage. I wouldn’t ask her to ditch all that and she wouldn’t want to.”

  “But I thought you guys were having a thing?” Mike was perplexed.

  “We are. We’re having a great thing but life goes on. On a good note, she makes me happy just by being in my life and I’m not crying in the toilets anymore.”

  “Joanne,” Amelia said. “Dr. Carroll is holding his family hostage. He’s drugging them and feeding them and keeping them prisoner. His wife, his son, and his daughter.”

  To her and Mike’s dismay, Joanne laughed. “Sweetie, we know you have a weird way of thinking and you see things that aren’t there. I know the man’s more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic but now that I’ve calmed down, I see what he’s saying. I mean, who in their right mind would burn down their house, with themselves in it? Only a very unstable person and he can’t be held responsible for that.”

  “But you said he was responsible!” Amelia was outraged.

  “I did. I was, I am, really sad about Angelina. But if he was right and she was on meds, then who knows? That crap causes all kinds of suicidal tendencies. Trust me, I know. I took them for a year on the advice of my doctor and coming off them nearly killed me. Not to mention that I nearly killed myself being on them. I didn’t know who I was.”