In Too Deep

Jackie never thought she’d see the sophisticated Dr. Barrie run panting into a dirty walk-in clinic in the Bronx, her short gray hair flying everywhere and her brisk suit and skirt looking quite out of place. And yet… here she was. She spotted Jackie sitting in the corner of the waiting room and raced over to her.

“Miss Bodello!” Dr. Barrie said, sounding completely frazzled. “Are you alright? Have they taken care of you? Where is Mr. Leopold? What were you two thinking running away from his house like that? Can you imagine how I felt when I got a call from a Bronx clinic telling me that two of my students had been assaulted? How did you even get here?”

Jackie opened her mouth hesitantly, unsure of which question to answer first. “Uh… Max is in with the doctor, but they can’t do anything until you sign something and show them the insurance papers,” she said, figuring that was the most important bit of information.

Dr. Barrie didn’t utter another word as she immediately scampered to the front desk. Jackie sighed and leaned back in the uncomfortable, plastic chair. It was past midnight now. Time had moved quickly since the incident in the alley…

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Jackie kept her arm firmly around Max’s waist, while his arm was thrown around her shoulder. His headache had calmed down enough for them to get up and walk, but he was still drained from having his head hit repeatedly against the pavement. Plus, his nose was still bleeding and it was causing him to feel light-headed.

”Keep walking. We’ll be okay,” Jackie muttered reassuringly, though she probably needed more reassurance than Max. She was leading the way in the dark, with no idea where she was going, just hoping to find someone who could help them. Anyone.

Max’s head fell onto Jackie’s shoulder. He clutched a very bloody t-shirt to his nose, trying to stop the flow. “I know we’ll be okay,” he said, sounding muffled. “I trust you, Jackie.”

“Well, that’s good, because I sure as hell don’t trust myself,” Jackie said with a nervous laugh, even though there was absolutely nothing funny about their situation.

After another fifteen minutes of walking (or hobbling, really) down the empty sidewalks, a figure appeared on the street corner. As Jackie and Max moved closer, they saw it was a young woman, wearing very little clothing and smoking a cigarette.

“Uh… hi,” Jackie said to the young woman, trying to look pleasant. The woman took in the two teenagers’ strange appearances and gave them a look that quite clearly said ‘who-the-hell-are-you-and-why-are-you-talking-to-me?’

Jackie gulped. “Do you have a phone that we could use?” The woman shook her head. Jackie’s hope deflated a little. “Oh. Um. Do you have any money we could borrow for a payphone?” The woman raised her eyebrows, making it clear that she would not be loaning them any money.

“Probably saving it to buy drugs,” Max muttered into Jackie’s shoulder. Jackie was about to kick him to make him shut up, but upon remembering he was already injured, she pretended to cough instead, hoping the woman didn’t hear him. She didn’t appear to.

“Thanks anyway,” Jackie said, sighing. She and Max started to hobble away, when the woman finally spoke up.

“Need a doctor?” she asked. “There’s a walk-in clinic two blocks away.” She pointed in the right direction. Jackie smiled gratefully.

As they proceeded down the sidewalk, Max mumbled, “I don’t want some creepy doctor looking at my nose.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Cool. Just bleed to death instead. This is kind of the only option at the moment, so deal with it.”

“Someone needs to give you some cranberry juice so you won’t be such a bitch,” Max said, his voice higher than usual. Jackie noticed she was carrying more and more weight, and the t-shirt Max was holding to his nose just kept getting bloodier and bloodier.

He was losing blood. Fast.

Jackie tried not to panic. “Keep walking, Max. Just keep going. You’ll be okay. Everything’s going to be okay if you just keep walking.”

“I know, Jackie. I told you before. I trust you.”

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Jackie snapped out of her reverie when she saw Dr. Barrie exiting the back room where Max had been taken earlier. She hopped up from her seat. “Can they help him now?”

Dr. Barrie nodded, obviously much calmer than she had been moments prior. “I’ve taken care of the paperwork. They just stopped the bleeding and are checking to see how serious the break is and if surgery is needed.”

“Surgery?” Jackie asked, sitting back down.

“If his nose has been deformed, they might need to realign the broken bones and cartilage pieces. If that’s necessary, I’ll be moving him to the hospital near school,” Dr. Barrie said, eyeing the waiting room of the clinic with a disgusted look on her face.

Jackie sighed and leaned her head against the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest. Dr. Barrie took a seat next to her and crossed her legs, looking oddly formal in the dingy surroundings.

“Miss Bodello, I need to know exactly what happened,” she said briskly, staring Jackie down with her signature glare.

“Um… we got on the wrong train and ended up in the Bronx. We barely had any money left. We didn’t know what to do…”

“You had your cell phones?” Dr. Barrie questioned.

“Yes, but everyone is out of the state for spring break,” Jackie said, frowning.

Dr. Barrie raised her eyebrows. “I am still here, Miss Bodello. James Academy is still in this state. I daresay you have the school’s number in one of your phones?”

Jackie nodded. She couldn’t believe they hadn’t thought to call the school, where Dr. Barrie would obviously have been, ready and willing to send a taxi to fetch them. “Uh… brain lapse, I guess,” she said quietly.

“Continue,” Dr. Barrie said.

Jackie kept going with the events of that night. “Well, we were resting at the mouth of an alley—”

“Are you two the most unintelligent children ever?” Dr. Barrie interrupted again. “You don’t call the school and then you stop in an alley? We’re in New York, Miss Bodello. That’s dangerous even in the busy streets of Manhattan.”

Jackie really didn’t like being told how ‘unintelligent’ she was by Dr. Barrie. “Okay, so maybe we had more than one brain lapse,” she said bitterly. Dr. Barrie noticed her tone and kept her mouth shut. Jackie continued. “Two guys jumped out of nowhere. I guess they’d seen us earlier, because they said they wanted our luggage. One of them punched Max, and then later the other guy kicked his nose.”

“Were you hurt?” Dr. Barrie asked.

“Just slapped,” Jackie answered. “And scared out of my mind. Nowhere near as bad as Max.”

“Then what happened?”

“They didn’t find anything in our suitcases, so they took our cell phones and ran away. We waited until Max could stand, then some woman told us to come here.”

Dr. Barrie eyed Jackie carefully. “Why didn’t you see the two men coming if you were sitting at the mouth of the alley? Surely you could have at least heard them approach?”

True, Jackie thought, if we hadn’t been too busy making out. But she wasn’t about to share that with her headmistress, so she just shrugged.

“Well,” Dr. Barrie said, sighing. “We’ll talk about you two running away later. Before I left the room, Mr. Leopold requested that I do something for him.” She stood up.

“What?” Jackie asked, curious as to what Max could have requested.

Dr. Barrie started to walk toward the door, but turned her head to look at Jackie. “He told me to find an open supermarket and buy you some cranberry juice before you eat someone’s head. His words, not mine.”

As Dr. Barrie left the clinic, Jackie shook her head. “Jackass,” she muttered to herself, a smile forming on her face.

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The bottle of cranberry juice was chugged in about fifteen seconds. As Jackie smiled serenely and wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket, Dr. Barrie stared at her in disgust.

“Mr. Leopold wasn’t kidding,” she muttered, once again sitting next to Jackie.

At that moment, a nurse came into the waiting room and made her way over to them. “Well, no surgery is necessary. He says he was punched and kicked, but obviously not very hard, because it’s a minor break. And there’s nothing wrong with his head, except for a pretty nasty bump in the back. Dr. Hamilton is prescribing a painkiller that will help with both. He’ll be out in a moment.”

Several minutes later, Jackie stood up and grinned as Max came out of the backroom, clutching a doctor’s note and looking much more together than earlier, though he now had a white bandage covering his nose. He approached them, his eyes on Jackie.

“Mr. Leopold, is that your prescription?” Dr. Barrie asked. Max nodded and handed it to her. Dr. Barrie looked it over. “We’ll drop it off tonight and I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Come along, you two. I have a taxi waiting for us outside. I daresay you’re both tired from all the excitement.”

As their headmistress led the way, Max grabbed Jackie’s hand and smirked at the empty juice bottle she held. “Was it good?” he asked.

“Better than ten bottles of espresso vodka,” she answered, smirking back at him.

Dr. Barrie sat in the front seat of the taxi as Max and Jackie slid into the back, hands still clasped. “Now that,” Max said softly as the taxi began to drive, “I find hard to believe.”

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Dr. Barrie grimaced at the two sleeping teenagers in the back of the taxi. Not only were they being completely inappropriate by being all over each other like that, but they were now making her endure harsh glares from the taxi driver, who obviously wanted to leave.

Dr. Barrie shrugged at the driver. “You wake them up,” she suggested.

The driver pressed a button that started the annoying precautions tape that played whenever new people entered the taxi. As “please buckle your seatbelt” rang out through the cab, Max opened a bleary eye and glanced out the window. They were at James Academy. He shook Jackie awake, and she sat up and stretched. “Where are we?” she asked, yawning.

As Dr. Barrie handed the driver money and got out of the taxi, Max smiled. “We’re home,” he said.