Sleepyside//A Trixie Belden Fanfic

3

She thought she felt something touch her. But I'm... Her eyes shot open.  Apparently, dead people don't think.

The dim sunlight of a musty, Sleepyside dawn poked its head through the ragged curtains on the kitchen window and grimaced. Trixie tried to sit up, but whimpered in pain when she tried. Her eyes fixed themselves on the person kneeling next to her. It was her oldest, Pete. He looked down at her, his tear-stained face wholly invested in the scene before him.

"Baby, it's okay. I'm..." She coughed hoarsely.

"It's okay, it's okay. I'll get you water." He stood up and walked over to the sink. She heard something crunch underfoot, then the squeak of the sink knob, then nothing. Her son sighed. He came back to her side and said, "I'm sorry, Momma."

She smiled at him. "It's not your fault." She felt her little boy, so young but so old grab her hand gently and cradle it in his. 

"Mom, I thought you were..."

"I know, baby. Me too, me too. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. There's just so much blood in here...is it all yours?"

Trixie scrunched up her face, trying to remember, even though it made her head throb. "I don't know. Probably."

"But Momma, it's in a pattern too. And there's a handprint."

She looked over at her son. "Can you help me sit up, honey?" He nodded and helped her slowly sit up against the wall. The corded phone hung down next to her, just where she had left it.

Trixie could not believe her eyes. There was blood splattered on the walls and cabinets. The floor was littered with shattered glass and there were tracks of blood on the floor. On the once-white door frame there was a bloody, smeared handprint.

Trixie looked at her little boy. His lip was trembling and it looked like tears were about to spill over again. Trixie sighed, willing the anxiety to not take over. "Okay, honey. This is what we're going to do."

Ten minutes later, Trixie made her way down the street, limping along with the help of her oldest son. The two younger boys were still asleep in the apartment, so Peter had left a note for Charlie on the inside of the bedroom door.

Trixie's headscarf flapped in the gentle wind that slithered through the seedy alleys of the lower quarters of Sleepyside. She hoped no blood was seeping through the fabric. They suddenly found themselves on the doorstep of a nondescript building with a shabby gray sign that said Free Clinic. The two pushed their way inside. The damp air in the little building seeped into their skin as they entered. Patients crowded onto filthy, gray benches and whispered to one another in hushed benedictions. 

Trixie and Peter sat on the only free bench that remained. Then her son grabbed a ticket: number thirty-seven. It wasn't even eight in the morning and already the clinic had attracted many people to its halls. In the poorest neighborhood in Sleepyside, the clinic was highly appreciated by the good and not-so-good of the area. No questions asked, no payment accepted, no injuries reported.

Trixie tried to hold her head up, but after a solid twenty minutes, it got to be too much. Peter noticed this and sat on the dusty tile floor, letting his mother lay down on the bench. Slowly, the room emptied as a nurse called out the numbers of the various inhabitants of the benches.

"Number twenty-three!" A big, surly man with tattoos running down his arm covered his shoulder with a bloody napkin as he left the waiting room.

"Number thirty-two!" A woman who held an infant in a thin blanket close to her small chest bustled through the door the nurse held open.

And finally, "Number thirty-seven!" Peter tapped his mother on the shoulder and helped her shuffle through the maze of benches and to the nurse. The nurse looked her up and down. It was Nurse Dunham. She knew the Brisbanes well. Too well, Trixie knew. She had visited the clinic countless times when she had been harmed by her unfortunate excuse for a husband.

"And how are you today, Beatrix?" The nurse at least afforded her the common curtesy of not referring to her by the last name of her husband.

"I'm okay," she said in barely a whisper. 

The three went went through the door and walked down the back hallway, a stark, clean-looking place lit with blinding fluorescent lights. They passed a few rooms and heard a woman crying loudly. They heard a man in a white coat say to a nurse, "I seriously doubt we'll make our budget goals for this quarter." Then they arrived at the little examination room that was to be theirs.

The nurse led them inside then closed the door behind her. "Okay Beatrix, can you describe in as many or as few words as you would like, what happened to you?"

Trixie cleared her throat. "I, uh, can I have some water?" The nurse nodded and slipped out of the room. She looked at Peter. "We don't mention all that blood, okay?"

He gave her a solemn nod and they looked toward the door as the nurse entered again.

"Here you go." She smiled at the mother and son. "So you were saying?"

Trixie took a gulp of fresh, cold water. "I fell down the stairs...backwards. It was quite the fall." She looked down guiltily at her bruised wrists. Normally, she would just say it, but today felt different. Today, there was a crime scene in her kitchen.

The nurse gave her a look and said, "Okay, is it your head?" Trixie nodded and removed the headscarf. The nurse bent to look and said nothing for a minute. Then, "I think we need Dr. Adams to come and look at this. I don't mean to scare you, darling, but there seems to be some glass imbedded into your head."

Trixie could feel her son's fearful eyes watching her steadily. She gave a little nod as the nurse left. "Hey." She looked into her son's soft, compassionate eyes. "I love you and it's gonna be okay."

He nodded quickly and buried his face into her shoulder, shaking with sobs. Tears blurred Trixie's vision. Her baby had been through so much, and it wasn't fair.

In time they settled down a bit and Dr. Adams came in. "Hello there, Beatrix. I heard you needed a head exam?" He grinned at her playfully.

Trixie offered him a small smile. "My brothers used to say that when I was just a kid."

"Huh. Are you close?"

She started to shake her head no, but she winced at the pain and stopped abruptly. "Okay, okay, no more answering my nosy questions. Let's look at that head." He brought out a small flashlight and examined her for a few moments. "Okay, we're going to have to clean this and take out the glass. It might take a while. Do you want Peter to leave? I'll have nurse Dunham give him a lollipop."

Trixie nodded at her son to go on. The little boy reluctantly left the room and the doctor prepared for the procedure.

When all was said and done, Trixie had seven stiches in the back of her skull and a head bandage to boot. She found her son sitting on the edge of a bench in the waiting room holding an unopened lollipop and swinging his legs erratically against the bench leg. When he saw his mom, he smiled at her, took her hand, and said, "Let's go home."

When they arrived back at their dingy apartment, the two boys were still in the bedroom as per the instructions of Peter's note to Charlie. When Trixie walked into the bedroom with Peter, the boys shouted, "Momma!" The noise made her head hurt, but she didn't care. She was just glad to see her boys. She brought them food and had Peter watch them in the bedroom while she set to work tidying the kitchen. There was no need for any more of the Brisbane children to see the result of such violence.

As she worked, Trixie thought with regret on the past. She wished she hadn't married Allan. And yet, she loved her boys more than life itself. Deep down, Trixie Brisbane hoped with every fiber of her being that the blood she was cleaning up was her husband's. She would have felt guilty for thinking this, but that potential guilt was outshone by gratitude to whoever had done it.