The Nearly Girl

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “Frickin’ nutcase, isn’t he?” Whitney said, after they had grabbed a coffee and were seated in the cafeteria. “Although, he does get some things right, I’ll give him that much. I am happier now and much less anxious. Having sex with people other than my husband is definitely the key to happiness in my life.”

  “Yeah, well. The only thing I’m interested in is if you know anything about Amelia’s disappearance? Oh shit!” Megan smacked her hand on the table, causing Whitney to jump.

  “What?”

  “I forgot to ask Dr. Carroll how he knew so much about Mike and Amelia’s disappearance.”

  “Did the police know they met at this group?”

  Megan thought for a moment. “My mother and Mike’s parents would have told them, yes.”

  “Then the police probably would have told Dr. Carroll,” Whitney said.

  “Maybe. But I just can’t see Amelia running away,” Megan said. “She loves her gran and her father. She might leave me but she wouldn’t leave them. Did anyone say anything that could help? Did they ever mention New York?”

  Whitney shook her head. “I’ve got to get going. I’ll phone you if I think of anything and I’ll ask Joanne, she’s back tonight. I would say don’t worry but I’d be sick with worry too. And you call me, if you hear anything.”

  Megan said she would and she sat there for a while after Whitney left, staring into space, and wondering what she could do next.

  19. DR. CARROLL AND AMELIA

  “THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR BEING HERE,” Dr. Carroll said to Amelia. He had brought a chair in with him from the dining room, and he had his legs crossed and his hands were folded behind his head. “The problem is that I didn’t invite you. You have brought with you a range of complications from small to large. On the small side of the problematic scale, there is hygiene. The thought of touching either of your bodies repulses me. As does, god help me, the idea of taking care of your bowel activities. And I don’t want to have to cook for you either. After all, I am your therapist. You are both supremely inferior to me. You came to me for help, for guidance, by way of my intellect. The intention was not — although some do see therapy in this light — the intention was NOT for me to be your NANNY!”

  Amelia was lying on her back as he had positioned her and the only thing she could see was the ceiling. She swallowed and tried to form a sound but her voice was still mute.

  Dr. Carroll sighed. “I don’t know what to do really. I’ll have to think about this one.” He got up and left the room. She heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Carroll was gone.

  Amelia lay still. Mike was next to her, snoring slightly.

  Amelia wondered how much time had passed since she and Mike had vanished. She wondered how Dr. Carroll had covered up their disappearance but she was sure his story was airtight. She wondered if anybody was worried about them and looking for them. She hoped Ethel was out of hospital and she tried to send her mind messages, telling her to look for them.

  Amelia’s eyes were wide open and she was forcing herself to make little growling noises in her throat and eventually she was able to make a sound. She graduated to trying to form words. “Ma….. Ma….. Mak….. Mak!”

  “Mak?” The word was hardly decipherable but she was grateful for the utterance.

  “Mike?” She said his name as quietly as she could but there was no reply.

  She lay on her back and closed her eyes and concentrated hard on trying to roll over. It was impossible to do in one motion but she broke it down, first by just trying to move her right arm across her chest. By the time she achieved this gigantic feat, she was drenched in sweat and she felt exhausted.

  She wasn’t sure why but the sedative was metabolizing in her system in a different way to Mike and Doctor Carroll’s family; it seemed to be leaving her bloodstream much faster. She was worried that Dr. Carroll would notice this and administer the next dose before the current one had worn off.

  She was about to roll over onto her stomach when she heard a noise. Alarmed that Dr. Carroll had returned, she flopped over onto her back, and adjusted herself into the same position as he had left her. No sooner had she done this, than the doctor pushed his way into the room.

  He sat down on the floor and heaved a great sigh. “You two have caused me an inordinate problem,” he said. “Really and truly you have. Why did you have to come here? Why?”

  He sat cross-legged and put his head into his hands. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, his voice muffled. “I have to get rid of you but I don’t know how to do it. I’m not a violent man. I’m not. I never thought it would come to this.”

  He rubbed his face. “I could kill you easily enough, that part is not the problem. It’s the disposing of the bodies. Hmmm….”

  He fell into deep silence. “If your bodies were ever found, the drugs in your system would lead you right back to me. And it’s not easy to dispose of bodies, it’s much harder than you would think. They make it look so easy in the movies but I wouldn’t even know where to start. Although, that said, I could drive north for a few hours, find a couple of side roads and dump you in the swamps. But I’d have to wade into the swamps, carrying you, and you are both so heavy and there are snakes in those waters and frogs and god knows what, so no… that won’t work.

  “Oh, this is such a problem. I wonder if I should disappear instead. But why should I have to give up everything I have worked so hard to achieve? Why should I be the one to lose everything just because two nosy parkers poked their nosy noses where they shouldn’t have?

  “What about fire? I could try to burn you both, but bodies don’t burn entirely in a fire and how and why and where would you have set yourselves alight? I don’t think I would be able to create a scenario in such a way that it would be believable to anyone.

  “There’s dismemberment of course. I could dismember you in the bathtub but the blood, ugh, blood. And I would have to buy saws and knives and plastic sheets and containers and, from what I’ve read, evidence of blood is extremely hard to get rid of. And what would I do with the body parts? I am back to square one. Problems with disposal.

  “A lover’s pact? Perhaps suicide? Yes… but I’d need to get you both into a motel which would be a logistical nightmare. Slitting your wrists would be easy but I’d also have to make sure that enough time passed for the drugs to clear out of your system. And how am I supposed to get you two lugs into a motel without being seen?”

  He gave a great sigh. “I have to prepare dinner for my family. You two can starve to death for all I care.” He got up. “I’m one of the top two percentile of brilliant geniuses,” he said. “I will think of something.”

  20. RESCUE

  APART FROM THE DOCTOR BEING a thoroughly unlikeable man, Megan reported to Henry and Ethel that she hadn’t discovered anything. It was Thursday evening and Megan was close to tears. “I feel at a loss,” she said. “I thought I could solve this but I can’t. Did Mike’s family have any updates?”

  Ethel shook her head. “They’ve hired a private detective but there’s nothing new. They said Mike has never been out of contact for this length of time. He phones or texts them twice a day.”

  The three of them fell silent and when the telephone rang, they leapt in fright. Megan nearly fell over the table rushing to answer it. “Yes?” She was breathless.

  “Megan? It’s Whitney. I’ve got Joanne with me. She remembered something that might or might not have any relevancy. She said that Amelia said something about Dr. Carroll holding his family hostage and Joanne feels terrible because she dismissed it and told Amelia she imagining things.”

  “Can I talk to Joanne?”

  “Yeah, here you go.”

  “Wait, I’m putting you on speaker,” Megan said. “Amelia’s gran and dad are with me too.”

  “Hi,” Joanne said and she spoke in a rush. “To cut a long story
short, we all, from the group I mean, we bumped into each other at Angelina’s burnt house and Amelia announced that Dr. Carroll is keeping his family hostage. I didn’t know what to say or do. I mean we were standing outside the house where Angelina had just killed herself and I couldn’t deal with it. I thought that Amelia was imagining things, but now I don’t know. Mike was with her, and he said he believed her, but I think maybe they went back to the house so Mike could see for himself. He hadn’t seen it with his own eyes and maybe she wanted to show him.”

  “Yes! That’s what she told me too,” Henry spoke up loudly, horrified. “That’s what she said, about the hostage thing but I was in a funk and then Ethel was sick and then…”

  “It doesn’t matter, Henry,” Megan said and she patted him on the shoulder. “We have to find out where the doctor’s house is, and go there. I tried looking him up online but he’s not listed.”

  “I know,” Whitney said. “We’ll go the hospital and I’ll pretend I have to see him and I’ll ask for his home address.”

  “They’ll never give it to you,” Ethel said. “But you could fake a breakdown and have him summoned and then Megan could follow him home when he leaves.”

  “I could do that,” Whitney said. “I do hysterical exceptionally well.”

  “We must hurry,” Henry urged. “We don’t know what’s going on. Amelia is in terrible danger. I can feel it.”

  “But if you have a breakdown, they will sedate you and keep you there,” Joanne said to Whitney and the three gathered around Ethel’s table could feel Whitney’s shrug.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “As long as you find a way to follow him and get those kids back.”

  “Let’s meet at the hospital,” Megan said. “Mom, you and Henry stay here.”

  “No way,” they both said.

  “Forget it,” Ethel added. “We’re all going.”

  “We’ll leave now,” Joanne said. “We’ll meet you in the main reception area. We don’t want to be wandering around the hospital trying to find each other.”

  They hung up and Megan helped Ethel to the car, and Henry climbed into the back. “I really don’t think you’re well enough to do this,” Megan told her mother.

  “I’m not going to waste time and energy talking about it,” Ethel was firm. “Let’s go.”

  They arrived at the hospital and Megan rushed into the main area and she soon spotted Joanne and Whitney and Ethel and Henry caught up with them.

  “Are you ready for the performance of your life?” Joanne asked Whitney who nodded.

  “I’ve got a lot of stored-up rage,” she said. “Watch me. But don’t leave me in there, honey? You’ll come for me as soon as you can?”

  “Count on it,” Joanne said and she gave Whitney a kiss.

  They took the elevator to the eighth floor of the psych wing and Whitney started shuddering and shaking, and by the time they reached the reception desk, she was weeping rivers of tears, not bothering to wipe them away. Joanne led her to the nurses’ station.

  “Dr. Carroll has totally screwed up,” Joanne shouted. “He’s driven Whitney over the edge, and now she can hardly speak. Call him and get him to come here NOW!”

  “Calm down,” the nurse said, looking nervous.

  “I will NOT CALM DOWN,” Joanne yelled. “This is all Dr. Carroll’s fault. I want you to get him here NOW!”

  The nurse was already dialing a number and Ethel, Megan, and Henry, who were waiting around the corner, could hear as she urged Dr. Carroll to come to the hospital.

  “What’s her name?” the nurse asked Joanne.

  “Whitney Abrien. She’s part of his D.T.O.T. group,” Joanne said.

  The nurse repeated the name into the phone and listened. “He’s on his way,” she said reassuringly, but Whitney didn’t let up. She carried on sobbing and Joanne kept a firm arm around her shoulder while Ethel, Henry, and Megan kept a careful eye on the goings-on. All they could do was wait.

  Back at the house, shortly after Dr. Carroll left the room, Amelia tried to sit up. She managed to raise herself upright and was startled to hear the ringing of a phone and, in the silence of the house, she could hear Dr. Carroll clearly.

  “What? Whitney? Yes, she is. What? Now? No, I can’t come now. What? Joanne? Oh for heaven’s sake. All right, fine, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Try to keep her calm. Try to calm them both down.”

  She heard him muttering and putting on his shoes and gathering his car keys and then she heard the slamming of a door and a resounding silence echoed through the empty hall.

  Amelia rolled over onto her stomach and leopard-crawled across the room. Her progress was painstakingly slow and she soon had carpet burns from her elbows to her hands.

  “Cheap, shitty carpet,” she muttered, as she reached the doorway. “Why couldn’t you be thick shag rug or a nice rich pile? Or a nice shiny parquet, like Dad’s flooring. That would be super easy to slide along. But no, it has to be wiry brown office crap, the kind that’s made out of plastic fibers if you look at them closely enough, which I am now, not out of choice. It looks like a scrubbing brush or something you’d see in the conference room of a cheap hotel.”

  Chatting quietly to herself, she made it to the doorway of her and Mike’s room. She dragged herself around the doorframe and her heart sank. She only had about two kilometers to go before she reached the kitchen. She frowned and bit her lip and her brow furrowed in concentration. Do or die.

  She inched forward in the unnatural silence of the house, the house that was inhabited by four sleeping bodies, four ghostly bodies, specters in limbo, unaware of what was going on, unaware that their lives depended on her actions and the success of her achieving her goal.

  “You ruined my life!” Whitney wailed. “My husband found out about Alexei and Joanne and he’s leaving me and the kids! It’s all your fault! And Angelina died because of you and Gino’s dead because of you and…”

  “Three milligrams of Clonazepam, now,” Dr. Carroll said to the nurse.

  “Three?” The nurse looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “Don’t question me,” Dr. Carroll snapped. “She’s experiencing a psychotic break. We need to sedate her immediately.”

  “You’re to blame!” Whitney wailed again. “It’s all your fault. I want to kill myself, and you. I want to kill you first and then me.”

  She gulped down the pills the nurse gave her.

  “And I want you to tell my husband that it wasn’t my fault it was all yours. I was just doing what you—”

  She wailed for another few minutes, slowly winding down until she sank into the arms of an orderly who hauled her up onto a waiting stretcher.

  “I’ll come and check on her first thing tomorrow morning,” Dr. Carroll said tiredly.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Joanne demanded to know.

  “None of your business,” he replied. “Unless you’re next of kin, which I happen to know you’re not.”

  “I care about her and I know that was she said was true,” Joanne said, trotting alongside him, hoping it wasn’t apparent that all she really wanted to do was follow him to his car so that she could make a note of the model and license number and see which direction he went.

  Ethel, Megan, and Henry had already left the hospital and were waiting for her call. They were ready to take off in whichever direction she told them to.

  “True, truth, what is truth?” Dr. Carroll said. “You people, my god, you make me sick. You don’t have the courage to face truth if it looks you in the eye. You’d rather hide behind the suburban safety of endless self-deception than face your real selves. Know thyself. You all think you want that but you don’t.”

  “And you think you could handle the truth?” Joanne challenged him, happy that they were already in the elevator heading towards the ground floor and main reception area.
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br />   “I know I could,” Dr. Carroll laughed. “I have done so, many times. I can always rely on myself for that.”

  “Will we still have group next week, if Whitney’s not here?” Joanne was still gamely trying to make conversation and they finally crossed the polished acres of the reception area and pushed their way through the revolving doors.

  Dr. Carroll looked surprised. “Of course, why not? Look, we are at my car. I cannot talk to you anymore. I must go home. I’ll see you at group.” He waved her away dismissively.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow to check on Whitney, whether I am family or not,” Joanne said, and she fingered her phone in her pocket, getting ready to whip it out.

  “Whatever rocks your boat,” Dr. Carroll said shortly and he started his car and sped out of the parking lot.

  “Silver grey, Chrysler sedan, license plate, DTOTRULE, leaving via Midland exit,” Joanne said breathlessly, thinking the phone had taken forever to ring through to Megan.

  “Yeah, I can see him,” Megan said. “Follow in your car and stay on the line. I’ll let you know where we’re headed.”

  Joanne ran to her car and wrenched the door open. “Oh Whitney,” she said, accelerating out into the street. “I’ll be back to get you tomorrow, I promise.”

  Amelia’s raw and bloody arms were stinging by the time she was halfway down the hallway. When she reached the end of it, her flesh felt as it was on fire. She thought fleetingly of Joan of Arc, burning at the stake and what an excruciating way that was to die, and she felt renewed sympathy for Joan. She was also reminded of her bravery and she took courage from Joan’s battlefield heroics.

  “Be with me, Joan,” she whispered. “I must prevail.”

  She could either drag herself forward through the living room to the front door but that meant she would have to face another vast field of painful iron-bristle carpeting, or she could turn right and drag herself across the comparative coolness of the white linoleum kitchen floor.