The Passenger- Part 5

Deloris sat in the waiting room of her doctor’s office. She must have had an anxious look on her face, she thought to herself as she noticed the looks of concern on the other waiting patient’s. She stared suspiciously at the child who sat in the chair across from hers. It was a young boy, maybe 6, with his face mostly buried in his mother’s arm save for one eye that stayed on Deloris watchfully. He seemed frightened.

Deloris was growing more and more agitated. She eyeballed the child with a sideways sneer for a few minutes then stuck out her tongue forcefully. The child flinched into his mother’s protective embrace. The mother stood up, arm still around the child, and led her son to a chair across the room with a look of disgust aimed right at Deloris. “What’s her problem?” Deloris thought to herself, further agitated.

“Deloris Tate? The doctor will see you.” A nurse dressed in obnoxiously colorful scrubs had come out of the door next to the front desk. As Deloris approached her she had a passing thought about how ridiculous it was that such a large woman would be wearing an outfit covered in florescent cartoon hippos. The nurse gave her the same worried stare.

“I must look how I feel.” Deloris joked as she walked through the door.

“Let’s hope not, honey.” The nurse replied.

Deloris grimaced and followed the nurse into an empty examination room. She took it upon herself to sit on the papered bench. The nurse set to checking her temperature and heartbeat.

“The doctor will be right with you, hun.” The nurse said leaving the room and closing the door behind her. As the door swung closed Deloris saw a startling and unfamiliar person in the mirror on the back of the door. There sat a haggard and filthy creature, with a rat’s nest of hair matted to the sides of her head. There was mud streaked across her face, blood smeared from her face down her neck. She looked down at her body. Her clothes were torn and soiled with dirt and grass stains and god knows what else. There was dirt under her nails, scrapes up her arms. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “How did I…”

“Good morning!” Dr. Gupta said cheerfully but mindlessly as he entered the room, nose still in a file. “Let’s see. You are here for headache?” He looked up from the file at Deloris and gasped. He took an unconscious step back.

“Oh. Uh. Yes.” Deloris replied, suddenly very self-conscious. She ran her hands down what used to be a white t-shirt as if to smooth it out. “ I.. uhh… I’ve been having these terrible migraines for almost a week now. Umm… I had to take some time off work. And well…. last weekend I slept for almost three days straight.”

Dr. Gupta approached her warily, reaching slowly to pluck a muddy leaf from her hair. He held it away from himself for a moment both inspecting and presenting the article as if it might be pertinent to the problem at hand. He stepped on the pedal to open the trash can and dropped the debris in. He looked back to her with a stunned expression.

“Has there been a head injury?” He asked as if he knew the answer already.

“No… well…” Deloris put her finger to her face wear the dried blood was. “Maybe?” she said unsure.

“Well lets make an appointment for you to have a CAT scan this afternoon. And while you're here now we'll go ahead and get some blood work done and a urinalysis. In the meantime do you have someone to drive you? You probably shouldn't be driving until we know if there is a head injury.”

“Uhh. No..” She mumbled thoughtlessly, “I mean yes. I can work it out.”

The doctor gave her a suspicious look, “Well be careful. You should have time to get home and... uh... clean up before you need to be at the radiologists office.”

After Deloris had her blood drawn and had hap-hazardously peed in a cup and handed it to a nurse she walked out of the doctor's office and got into the driver's seat of her car. She looked through her cell phone for a minute pretending to herself that she might actually call someone for a ride. She turned the key in the ignition and backed out of her space. Driving was the least of her worries now.

Deloris decided unconsciously to take the country road home. She didn't feel like dealing with the traffic on the highway, and she had a strange desire to be near the trees.

As she came around a wide bend she was forced to slam on her brakes. I fox stood in the middle of the road, unwilling to move. It just stood staring in Deloris's eyes and Deloris found herself staring back. She was enchanted. As the fox walked slowly across the road and into the trees it did not take it's eyes off of her. She pulled her car over to the side of the road and got out. The fox was still there, now at the edge of the woods, looking at her, waiting for her. It slowly turned and walked into the forest. Deloris followed.