What Lies Beneath The Clearing

11.4

She just let out a laugh.

"It's not just an ache dad, it's pain, real pain."

"Which I don't understand, because your pain medication should be minimising it."

"Well it's not." She said frustratedly.

She stopped walking as her dad turned back to her, hearing the desperation in Lennox's voice. He looked her up and down as she swallowed her urge to explode and took a deep breath.

"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't need it." She said slowly.

There was a curiosity to his frown, as though he'd seen an opportunity to get to the bottom of everything if he were to take away her pain. After a few seconds of consideration he nodded down the hall.

"Come on."

Dr Rosewood's office was exactly as you would imagine it to be. Organised, educational with all the toy bones and plastic figurines of body parts that fit together to make an accurate anatomical replica of the human body, and full of books that Lennox was familiar with through the hospital being almost a second home to her when she was growing up. She looked around as she entered, feeling as though it'd been a long time since she'd been in his office. He shut the door and then appeared to her left, walking over to his desk and pulling open a drawer. When he picked up an orange pill bottle she turned away from the book shelves to face him. He held it up as he walked back over to her.

"If I give you this, I can't give you anything else."

"What is it?"

"Vicodin." Lennox almost looked euphoric.

"But," He pulled it back when she tried to take it. "You have to tell me the truth about what you were doing in Evergreen forest."

He watched her reaction. Her hand almost recoiled at the proposed exchange, but her eye contact with her father never waivered, as though she was trying to decide if he was joking or not. He wasn't. Popping the lid, he tipped two pills out onto his hand and put them in hers.

"One for now. One for tomorrow, if the pain gets bad enough. But you have to be honest with me."

"About what? I told you the truth dad."

"No, you avoided the truth. Like you always do. You're good at that. But just this time, I'm asking you to talk to me, because I know you Lennox. Maybe not as well as I used to, but I do. This isn't you. Something is wrong, and it involves the forest, Sasha dying, Kaila's disappearance, and you seem to be right in the middle of it."