Special Needs

Chapter 42: The Doctor

Note to my precious readers: I suck for leaving you on a cliffhanger for over a month. Sorry!

My shoulder ached as if I'd dislocated it. No matter which position I turned, I couldn't relieve the stabbing pain. I'd never had a shoulder injury before but I must have pulled it hard in last week's competition against Notre Dame. If it didn't get better, I was going to have to sit out the next few meets and Coach would not be happy. I needed to see a doctor, for sure.

I got up and searched my apartment to find something, anything, I could take to dull the pain, but there was nothing. When the hell was Helena going to go shopping again? She hadn't gone in weeks. As I sorted through the prescription bottles, I found prednisone, Ritalin, Lamictal and a huge bottle labeled anti-psychotics. Who the fuck was taking anti-psychotics? My birth control pills were there and some laxatives. Seriously, did we not have one damn painkiller in this place? I pulled out a large bag of ice and pressed it against my aching joint.

I got into my car and drove to my doctor's office. I was amazed that he fit me right in. I told him about the excruciating pain in my shoulder. He wanted to send me for an X-ray but I begged him to give me something for the pain first and he agreed. He prepared a long needle, bigger than I'd ever seen before, and I gulped in apprehension. The moment he injected it into my shoulder, I screamed from the burning pain.

"Wh...what?" I stammered, practically regurgitating from a level of pain I'd never known. I panted and squeezed my eyes closed and then worked desperately to open them again. I realized I wasn't in my doctor's office or my apartment back home. A man I didn't recognize sat next to me. 

"Just relax," he replied calmly. His voice sounded uncannily familiar. "I got the bullet out."

The memories came slipping back in, like cars sliding on an icy road and crashing into each other in a mangled heap. The woods. We had been running, trying to escape with Clive towards the ocean, and then sprinting back towards the treehouse, Theodore and his men surrounding us with guns aimed, and then running back towards the shore with Harry-

Harry!

"Where's Harry?" I demanded, my voice coming out much weaker than I thought it would as I fought to control the nausea.

"Just relax," he soothed. As my eyes began to focus, I realized the man above me bore a physical resemblance to Theodore. Maybe I was delirious from pain and his face and voice were just distorted. "It's nice to finally meet you, Juliette."

"How do you know me?" I whimpered as he pulled a needle and thread through a gaping wound in my shoulder. I could feel it and I could see it but I couldn't make the connection that the ghastly injury was part of my own body.

"I'm Dr. Benjamin Blake," he smiled, a smile that exactly matched Theodore's. And that's when I realized that his voice sounded familiar, not because he sounded like his brother because I had spoken to him on the phone before. "We've had the pleasure of speaking on a few occasions."

"How the...fuck!" I screeched at one particularly harsh tug on the thread. "How the hell? I called you; how did you...I don't...What? How did this happen?"

"Blind dumb luck," he said, pulling the last stitch and tying off the thread. The mocking smile on his face gave me the chills, making me think he was actually enjoying my pain. "Well, not exactly, I guess. You happened to call me because my name was on Harry's prescriptions."

"Why didn't you tell me who you were?" I said, grunting in pain as he dabbed the injury with antiseptic.

"Come on now," said a voice from another corner of my room. It was Theodore's. "Harry's the stupid one, not you."