25
Marg was taken away in cuffs. The police had been called and she was carted off to a local precinct. Fergal kept holding Dottie as she rocked where she stood.
"Fergal!" Cait called out to him as he stood talking to the Detective of their case.
Dottie hadn't spoken, he had to physically stop her from twisting her fingers at strange angles as she stood rocking. Fergal held her hand as he watched Cait and Doran O'Connor pass through the area.
"Oh Dot." Doran said. "Sweet Peach, come here."
Dottie allowed her father to pull her into his arms, her face burying in his chest. Cait grabbed Fergal's arm and looked up at him with her pale blue eyes.
"What happened?" She asked.
"Marg showed up. Dottie sort of freaked out on her, but her hollering got the nearby security guard's attention. Now she's gone quiet." Fergal said.
"Did Marg hurt you?"
"No, actually," he told her what Dottie did, putting herself between Marg and him. "She protected me. But I think she's over stimulated."
Doran ran his hand down the back of Dottie's head. "We ought to see her back home. She'll probably be better off there."
"Yeah, we've been gone long enough." Fergal nodded. "Let's get her home."
"I'll have a squad car take you guys wherever you need to go."
Dottie walked like a zombie, her face looking down at the ground as she shuffled along. They got in a police car, Doran and Cait took Doran's truck back to Fergal's apartment. Dottie sat next to Fergal the entire way with her head on his shoulder and her hands clasped together in her lap.
His Lovely tried to protect him. She stood up for herself, for the woman that was actually hurt and she did what she thought was right. Even if it emotionally fizzled her into silence again.
By the time they got to the apartment, Dottie went to their room and laid down.
"I can't believe she came back. Why would she do something like that?" Doran asked.
"Mom was nothing if not narcissistic. Everything had to be about her and her image, and if it wasn't right she needed to find a way to fix it." Cait said as she sat down on the couch. "My God, when that officer called the house I almost had a panic attack myself."
"Will there be anymore interviews?" Doran asked as he looked at Fergal.
"I honestly don't know. Work hasn't been contacting me." Fergal took a drink of his beer. He needed it. "They probably want me to make a statement after hearing what happened. I have absolutely no idea what to say. Just that Dottie was the one to act first."
"She was protecting you. In animals, when a significant other is harmed and injured, they will fight off other animals that would seem like a threat." Doran said.
"Good to know." Fergal sighed and took another drink.
He was halfway done with his beer when Doran went to check on Dottie. Fergal looked over at Cait who was quiet.
"I can't leave Dottie here alone; not saying you can't take care of her." Cait looked at him.
"I know. I'm not asking you to leave either." He said. "It would mean a lot if you stuck around until we got back on the road. I know you're not going back…"
"I'll stay for Dottie's sake. Or until she tells me to start getting my Florida apartment ready for when I actually do move in with Colby."
Fergal smiled. "How is Colby taking the whole baby thing?"
"Good, he's real excited, no more than his mom is. Maybe I can help out at his Wrestling Academy in Iowa."
"His Mom works there, right?"
"Yeah, book keeping or something. She's a nice woman, I've talked to her over the phone a few times."
They fell into a quiet, not an uncomfortable quiet but still a quiet. Fergal mulled over what Cait had said about her relationship with Colby and the changes that she was making.
"Is it strange?" Fergal asked.
"Is what strange?"
"You going from the mother that you had to having an older motherly woman figure in your life. I love that my folks adore Dottie. Dottie was petrified of the idea that my parents wouldn't like her or something when they came to visit."
"It kind of is. Strange I mean. And now that I have a father, I'm leaving him and my old job behind to go be a mother myself."
"I won't hesitate to say I won't miss you. You've helped a lot with Dottie when I needed it the most."
"Yeah, I know. But I know she's getting better and she has you and the others to help her out when she needs it." Cait smiled at him.
He ran his hands over his head.
There was a sound in the hallway and Dottie came walking down the hall with Doran. She fiddled with her fingers and Doran was guiding her.
"Would you like to come to the zoo with me tomorrow?" Doran asked.
"Really?" Fergal asked.
"Only if you want to. I've invited Dottie to come meet Cheddar, the orangutan. He has a few things in common with her and I thought Dottie would like to meet one behind the scenes again."
"I wouldn't mind going." Cait stood up. "I haven't been to a zoo in a while."
Fergal nodded. "Sure, I can go for more animals." He stood up. "Come to me, Lovely."
She did and she went right into his arms. She held onto him, squeezing him. Her hand closed around his shirt and her cheek rested against his shoulder.
"I'll see myself out but we'll be leaving tomorrow fairly early. I'll drive." Doran said.
"Thank you for dropping everything to come see to Dottie." Fergal looked at his fellow Irishman.
"Not a problem." He smiled before rubbing Cait's shoulder, and then seeing himself out the door.
Fergal kissed the top of Dottie's head and pulled back so that he could look at her pretty face. "How are you doing now, Dottie?" He asked.
She shrugged, not really looking at him.
"You're safe now. That woman isn't going to get to you again." He rubbed her back.
"She can't, she was told to leave you alone." Cait said. "God, what what she thinking?"
"Blaming her for turning you away from Marg." Fergal said. "She has no control, you took that control from her when you told her that you didn't want her to have anything to do with your lives."
Dottie pulled away from him and walked into the kitchen. Fergal watched her disappear and then heard the fridge door open.
"She was never a mother." Cait's hand covered her stomach. "Not like your mom, not like Colby's mom. There was never any love, just a real need to be the center of attention while having the best image possible."
"Now look at what's going on, Dotty is thrust into the limelight and not all of it is good." Fergal grabbed his partially empty beer bottle.
"That was out of Dottie's control, especially in a time when the diagnosis of autism was still relatively new and mostly seen in young boys. The stigma was that if you had a child that was mentally handicapped then they should be pushed aside." Cait dropped onto the couch. "I wanted my sister but Mom said she was damaged and wouldn't even know it was me. That's bullshit."
"Yeah, it is." Fergal nodded.
Dottie was put in The Facility because she was damaged and would never be normal. At least that's what Marg O'Connor thought.
"There's a stigma, you know." Cait said. "Get put in a mental institute and you're damaged, you're broken, you're less than the rest of us."
"She isn't less, I prize her more than anything." Fergal said as he swirled the bottle around.
"You don't control her either."
He nodded. "I want her to experience the life she wants. If she wants to make clothes, I will support that. She wants to go back on the road, she misses everyone."
"But what about her job now that all this is going?"
He'd not really thought about it. Would she be able to live in the limelight, knowing that her personal life was out there for the masses to see.
"Maybe they can drop her acting, just keep her behind the scenes." Fergal said, looking up at the ceiling as he did so.
"This is the WWE, Ferg. Whatever works in their perfect ideas they are going to milk it to it goes dry."
Yeah, there was that.
Dottie came back in from the kitchen with a glass of ice water yet she took it to the bedroom with her. Moments later, the sound of her sewing machine could be heard from down the hall.
Good, she was doing something productive.
The next day Dottie had gotten up after Fergal did. He wanted to see if he could walk around without that damned boot. Though his flesh was still heavily bruised, bearing weight on the foot was bearable.
"What are you doing?" Dottie asked as she sat up in their bed.
"Seeing if I can walk without the boot." He responded as he paced the length of the bedroom. "I'll be needing to go see the doctor soon and see how i'm doing."
He caught her staring. Nothing new with that, but she looked withdrawn. She played with her fingers and rocked from where she sat. Fergal walked up to the bed and sat down on the edge of the bed. She laid her head down on his thigh and then started drawing patterns on his skin.
"Everything will be okay now, Dottie." He said as he ran his fingers through her hair.
She sighed. "How can you be sure."
"How about nothing is going to happen when we go to the zoo today?" He asked.
She made a sound. "Tomorrow I have to go back to the therapist." She said and then draped her arm over his leg.
Cait cleared her throat. "Hey, you guys better start getting ready to go. Doran will be here soon."
She was dressed in jeans and a nice top. Fergal knew Dottie wouldn't want that kind of shirt. Sure enough Dottie got up and went to the dresser.
"What are we going to do when we get back to Fergal's apartment."
Cait's brows furrowed and looked over at him. "I thought...you know what, never mind."
She left to go get something.
"Come on, Dottie, let's get dressed so we can go."
He helped her up and then they went to get ready. Dottie dressed in front of him, something that he appreciated. As Fergal was getting himself ready, Dottie's fingers ran down his upper back.
"I'm," she stopped and closed her eyes.
"You're what, Lovely?"
"I don't understand the emotion I have. I don't know what it's called. Not really sad, not really angry or scared. Sort of all of them but foggy. Why do I feel that way?"
"Do you feel like you're worthless?" he asked.
"Sometimes. Even when you tell me that's not true. I feel it in here." She pointed to her chest and then her head.
She was depressed but Fergal didn't tell her that.
"Will seeing an Orangutan be a medicine?" He asked. "Will that get the beautiful smile I love to see on your lovely face?" He asked as he pushed her hair from her face.
He did get a small smile, which was better than nothing.
Fergal decided to wear his boot while he was out. Dottie helped with that, kneeling in front of him so that she could adjust the straps of the immobilizer. Just as they were getting finished getting ready, there was a knock on the door. Cait was the one that answered it and of course it was Doran.
"Hey guys, ready to go?" The women's father asked.
"How are we going to fit, you have a truck." Dottie said.
He smiled. "I have a small sedan that I don't use a lot. We'll take that."
Somehow, as they were driving to the Bronx, the conversation went to what was happening with Doran and his job.
"Today we are moving Cheddar to the Woodland Park Zoo." Doran said as they turned off the main highway from Brooklyn to the Bronx.
"Why? Woodland isn't a part of the Five Boroughs Zoos." Dottie said from the backseat with Fergal.
"They already have an Orangutan exhibit. The Bronx Zoo was only housing Cheddar until he got over his illness. Seeing as I also work with gorillas, I was the lead with him during his sickness. Now that he's better, he's being shipped over there. I told him about you." Fergal caught Doran glancing in the rearview mirror at Dottie.
"We were already over in Staten Island." Dottie said. "We went to the Interactive Zoo."
"Yeah, Cait told me. That's a good place for children to get a good interaction with animals. Conservation for wildlife is a good thing to instill in children when they are young so that they can do something about it one day."
"What can I do about it?" Dottie asked. "Can I donate to the Orangutan Foundation?"
"That would be something great to look into." Fergal said, rubbing her shoulder. "I would think that would something good to do."
She smiled, a full smile no less. Dottie smiled at him and he fell harder at that smile.
Fergal himself had never been behind the scenes of a zoo before. They were given visitor passes and followed Doran into the gorilla house. There was a holding area for the animals and Dottie's eyes were big as bright eyes from inside the indoor enclosures watched them. Big things with bigger arms than even Big Show were watching them. Some made hoots, they talked with gestures.
"Gorillas have a natural language." Doran said as Fergal came to a stop in front of one indoor enclosure. "They have their own gestural language, kind of like sign language."
There was a small group of gorillas but one caught his attention. Sure animals were Dottie's thing but this time he found one that intrigued him. It was a female gorilla with a small black furry baby hanging from her underbelly.
"That's Tuti and her new offspring." Doran said.
Dottie walked up to Fergal and looped her arm through his. Fergal stared at the baby, who was looking back at him. And the mother, Tuti, was watching them as she held the tiny baby.
"Fergal," Dottie looked at him. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing. They just caught my attention." He rubbed her back.
They met Cheddar who hung out on the indoor enclosure. Doran greeted him with a face mask so that he couldn't spread anymore diseases. Cait, Dottie and Fergal stood back a safe distance as other workers came around.
"Cheddar, this is Cait and Dottie, they are my girls. Remember me telling you about them?" Doran asked as he approached the cage. "Can you say hello?"
What they got was a raspberry. Dottie giggled and waved at him.
"You have the same hair color, so he's really interested in you girls." Doran looked back as he touched the Orangutan's large fingers.
Doran seemed to have a connection with Cheddar because he allowed the keeper to touch him with a needle.
"You don't need a tranq gun?" Dottie asked.
"No, not with Cheddar. He was hand raised and can take a needle real well." One of the keepers said.
"He was smuggled in through customs on a boat. It's harder to detect through the ports. I had to hand raise him." Doran said.
"How old is he?" Dottie asked.
"We believe him to be about six years old. We rescued him on Halloween so that's his birthday."
Soon Cheddar had gone to sleep from the injection and they started to move him.
They followed Cheddar's move for most of the day. Because Cheddar was under Doran's main care, Cait drove in Doran's car. There was a slight delay on the highway but they had their own way across to Staten Island, a New York Zoo transport boat. Dottie was there with the transport crate that Cheddar was in, looking into the breathing holes so she could check on the orangutan.
"I want to marry Dottie." Fergal told Cait as they stood next to the railing of the boat.
Hope you liked this update. I'll be back when I can because this coming month I'll be busy with something in my life.