The Doctor

Chapter 4

To Albina, the idea of not living with her family anymore was a great plan, however there were some flaws in her plan – where would she live? How was she going to find food? What about that project that she had to finish for Chemistry? Suddenly, that spark of independence and hope was put out by the winds of worries. Even though she needed a place to stay, there was no way she was going to go straight to the police or foster home to find a place to live; she shuddered at that thought of being sent back home. There would probably be some missing poster signs hanging around every telephone pole, window pane and tree the next day so she couldn't go roaming around in the city looking for alley to live in. Maybe she could go and sleep on a tree for the rest of the night. Albina also had to forget about the Chem project since it was on her computer, she never printed anything out and it was due the next day anyway. Now that, she thought about no way to print out her assignment, she remembered that she had no idea in what part of the country this forest was and if her school was anywhere near this location.

Snap! Crck! The teenager froze. There must be something or someone else in this forest. There is no way her parents would come to her rescue in this kind of situation so perhaps help arrived. No, it can't be help, otherwise she would have seen white lights swishing in the air or someone's voice amplified with a megaphone. Eh, it was probably a squirrel or chipmunk but those cracks were loud and a cute little rodent wouldn't be able to make them that loud. Well, she would never know until she turned around. Albina's feet did a one-hundred eighty degree spin and she found two men; one tall and burly yet slender with a fair-haired handlebar moustache and the other one was short and chubby with rugged facial hair; they both had greasy and untamed hair, however the burly one had platinum blonde hair that was shoulder length and the smaller one had ear – length jet-black hair. Neither did Albina move nor did the men that were staring at her seven feet away. Who were these men and how long have they been following her?

"Before you do anything, we are not going to hurt you little girl but we want you to come with us." said the tall and slender one. "We are from the medical departments and your parents sent us there...so you know..." The girl was not stupid. Those men did not look like medical professionals or rescue forces. Where were their uniforms? Even if they were from the medical forces, they wouldn't just try to sneak up on her like this. They were both covered in sweat and dirt, they were wearing their casual clothes and there was a bulge in one of the men's front pockets. Albina had also heard strange men on the streets tell her to come and help them pack their luggage, give announcements that they had free puppies to give away before and at age thirteen, when she was walking home from school all alone, a man with a gray, wiry beard was smoking weed and standing leaning on a wall near the alley between Lila's Drycleaner's and Fuji's Japanese Food; he told her that he had puppies just $10.00 but she had to follow him into the alley. Boy! She ran so fast that everything she saw was blurry!

The adolescent turned back around and bolted! She was running faster than the speed of light and it seemed that fear gave her an energy boost. She didn't think of where she was running, she didn't care where would she run and where was the road, she wanted to run just enough to lose these weirdoes off her track. Albina running down trails, skipping over rocks, tripping over nature's trenches until she was racing down a very deep valley; she couldn't stop skidding until she tripped on a rock and was rolling down the mound. The whole world was spinning round and round and now she knew what it felt like to be a wheel of car. She felt the wet earth and the rough textures of dead leaves hitting every part of her body until she felt flowing water and hard stones. Slowly, Albina lifted herself up and felt pain in her spine when she tried to straighten her back. To her dread, the strange blokes were rushing to her right after she straightened her back and stood up; she is so dead meat.

With the remaining strength Albina had left, she turned to a monstrous Beech tree that was 3 meters away from her sand she sprinted as fast as she could toward it. Albina placed one foot on the tree bark and two hands on one of its tentacle-like branches and started climbing. While she was gradually clambering up the tree, both men stopped in their tracks and the short and chubby one pulled out a shiny, black Luger. Bits and pieces of wood exploded on the tree as he shot and Albina climbed in a zigzag direction. It was getting harder for the teenager to continue mounting and she was losing her stamina quickly; her arms were getting weary and her back still ached from rolling down the hill and into the water. She decided to stop climbing and rest on a tree branch to catch her breath. At least now she so was high up that it was hard for her foes to aim accurately at her however, that didn't make her feel any safer; she had a fear of heights. Down below she could see other trees, the hill she rolled down, the moonlit ravine and her kidnappers the size of small pebbles.

It's so high up, I don't want to be on this tree! Anything but up here! She mentally screamed.

You'll be fine, her conscience contradicted you won't fall as long as you hold on to the tree.

Yes, thank you Conscience for that encouraging statement!

I am only trying to help!

Why the hell did I get up here?

Hey, at least be grateful that those guys won't be able to shoot you from here and hopefully won't dream of climbing up here.

Shut up Conscience.

She looked down to see the men talking to each other but she could barely catch a word from their conversation. What she did hear from their conversation was an underground "hospital", a Smok, their own deaths and arguing about whether to shoot, climb or give up. Whatever those guys were talking about, the teenager knew it was not going to be a regular check-up to the doctor nor was it going to be pretty. The short and chubby one she learned was Bassett turned to her and again aimed.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!" screeched Albina. "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Leave yuh alone?" he chuckled, still aiming at her. "It ain't gonna be that easy, kid!"

"We were going to go easy on you, we weren't even going to hurt you – "shouted the burly one.

"Oh you weren't going to hurt me, sure like that's right!"

"YOU'RE NOT STAYING IN THIS DAMN PLACE AND YOU'RE COMING WITH US EITHER WAY, WHETHER WE'RE GOING TO PUT A BULLET IN YOUR TINY BODY OR NOT!"

Phbom! The bullet landed on the tree next to Albina's head but as she was scooting further to her right, the next one went whizzing past where her head was five milliseconds ago; this scared half the life out of her and sent her falling off the tree branch sideways. She was plunging back to earth in fifty miles per second, thousands of thick, chocolate-brown tree limbs were launching into the sky as quickly as the speed of light and her paper-white face and hands were achieving thick and thin salmon pink lines every millisecond from the whacks of many twigs and branches. Her stomach was flying up like a pancake being flipped in the air, her arms and her blanket of silver hair were floating in mid-air and it was all happening too fast for Albina to register what was going on until. She only realized what was happening until the earth was fifteen feet away. She never thought or dreamed of the author's last inky scribbles ending her story at this point! If Albina wasn't at a process of falling, then she would be sobbing with her face covered and resting on her knees. Death had its arms raised, ready to catch her until the teenager's eyes detected a slender, twig-like branch. Without thinking, her arm caught the branch! Albina's soul and body began to relax and loos - Snap!

As Albina lay on the ground with the boughs of her arms covering her face, she laid in agony while the men were kicking and throwing punches at her. As she felt a foot crash into her side, pain was shooting up at her ribs and an apple-sized cough was escaping from her mouth. Another hard blow was thrown at her stomach which made Albina feel as if her spine had just moved an inch and her chest was throbbing at where Bassett had hit her. Where it hurt the most was in the knees where Albina had landed; her knees felt as if weights had been tied to them and lava was flowing throughout her veins. What was the purpose of thrashing at her when she had already plummeted at the ground with aching legs preventing her from wanting to stand up ever again? It's not like she was planning to go for a fight; she was going to give up anyway! Where else would the teenager run if she wasn't familiar with the forest? How would she make a break for it if she was exhausted from all the running, climbing, almost falling to your death and legs glowing with pain? Even if she knew the forest and had the strength to run, it still would have been too late to run since the men were a foot away from her. Albina felt her body being dragged like a ragdoll through dead leaves, tree roots, earth and traces of this season's first few grasses. She felt her wrists and ankles being tied together by rough, beige rope, her mouth stuffed with cotton rags and brown darkness was the last thing she saw before the engine rumbled to life and the tires squealed. The battle was lost.