Chapter 2 Summary
When Hugo first met Judy...
A flashback to 13 years ago when Judy first met Doctor Hugo Weidii while she was a patient at Cliffside. Hugo has just finished Medical School, and is doing his post-doc work with The Zootopia Mammal Health and Welfare office. He has come to the Cliffside Asylum to try new and experimental treatments with patients where traditional methods have failed. Arriving on his first day, he first meets with Administrator Swinton, but their tour of the facility is interrupted by Judy's bi-weekly escape attempt. Judy is captured by Hugo as she attempts to flee, and Hugo chooses her as his first patient.
13 Years Earlier At Cliffside psych ward: Hugo's First Day
"Good afternoon, Administrator Swineton. It is a pleasure to meet you." Hugo held his paw out to greet her, as he stood in the marble clad atrium outside of her office.
"Why, Thank you. It's good for me to finally speak to you in person as well, after all the phone tag and emails we have traded back and fourth. Did you have any difficulty getting here?" she shook his paw politely with her hooves, and quickly let go.
He smiled back up at her, amused by her discomfort but careful to keep his teeth hidden. While she was taller than him, she appeared uneasy in his presence for some reason. He didn't want to appear intimidating to her, as he needed her help and cooperation for the program to succeed, experimental as it was. "No, the drive up here was relaxing, and the location is fairly pretty, all told. The only complaint I could voice is, and I am sure you get this a lot, the lack of parking at the entrance way."
"Yes, one of the common failings of building anything right up on the edge a cliff. That is why most of our employees take public transportation to get here. You might want to consider availing yourself of a ZPT Metropass," she pointed this out to him.
"I shall consider it, thank you."
She turned and started to walk down the hallway, and he fell in step easily beside her. "And were you still looking to start your patient interviews today?" she asked him.
"Yes, please," he answered her. "It will take some time to sort out which form of cognitive therapy will work best for each of the individual patients that I would like to include in the program, and then I will have to test them together in their groups to see if they work as a synergy, or will they too be disruptive to the objectives of the group. That is why I am limiting the initial participation to just 30 patients, so that I can limit the number of variables I have to deal with. Hopefully the interview process won't take too long over all."
"Do you have these 30 patients already picked out, then?" she asked of him.
"I have about half picked out so far, but I wanted to wander around the facility a bit, maybe see the other patients, and evaluate their potentials," he nodded.
"Very well, Doctor. My staff would be pleased to assist you in this," she assured him.
"Watch Out! She's making a break for it!" somebody yelled down the hall.
A grey flash zipped by them, moving fast and low to the floor. Hugo looked up to watch a rabbit or perhaps a small hare, her legs pumping furiously, disappear down the hall and around a corner. A crash of falling sheet metal echoed down the hall, along with a shouted curse. Two bear orderlies came running down the opposite end of the corridor towards the corner, spreading them selves out to block that end. The rabbit pelted back around the corner, saw them both and made a radical 90 degree turn away, sliding along the wall, to bolt back down the hall she had just come from. Towards him.
Time slowed in Hugo's mind as his eyes narrowed. He canted his head down to give his ears better coverage of the approaching Lapin. The noisy corridor stilled, as his mind blocked out the voices yelling all around him and soon all he heard was the sound of her claws scratching on the floor tiles. His paws flexed as his legs slide slightly apart, putting himself into a stable ready stance.
As she whipped past him, he kicked his leg out in front of her paws to block her stride, and used the momentum of their collision to spin himself up and over her back, landing on his paws over her. They slide a few feet down the hall, her smaller body trapped beneath his, the impact causing her breath to go out of her in a whoosh. But she wasn't stunned at all, as she immediately started trying to kick and scrabble out from underneath him. He snapped his paw to the back of her neck, and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck. As he stood up on his other three limbs, he placed his muzzle right by her ear and let a soft little growl escape his lips that only she could hear. Her ears went back in fear, and her eyes snapped back in her skull, locking on his eyes as she froze.
Smiling, he stood back up on his hind legs, and with his paw still wrapped around her scruff, he pulled her back upright. She dangled from his paw, her nose twitching madly as he grinned down at her. Turning his head back to the wide eyed administrator, he inquired of her. "And whom might is this little energetic rabbit be?"
"That's Judy Hopps, our resident escape artist. She must have gotten out of her room. Again," she replied, with a hint of concern in her eyes.
What is with all the nervousness? Does she somehow think that I am secretly here to inspect them? He wondered.
A wolf orderly puffed up to stop in front of them, and turned to apologize to the administrator. "I'm sorry, ma'am. She slipped out from under my legs the moment I opened the door." She nodded at him, acknowledging his apology but her eyes promising him some carefully considered choice words would be said later in private, and then she tilted her ears back at Hugo and Judy. The wolf, contrite, turned to Hugo and held out his paw, "I'll take her now, sir."
Hugo held up his other paw and replied, "No, that is quite okay. I think I will hold onto this one for the time being." The wolf turned his head back to his boss in askance.
"Doctor?" Swineton squeaked, plainly looking confused and a little worried.
"This one will be the first official patient in my program! I'm sure we will be able to find a more constructive outlet for all that nervous energy she has just displayed." Hugo replied to her, grinning at the rabbit while she just looked miserably at the floor.
Judy awoke to the sound of rabid howling. Beaver howling to be precise. Mr. Millpond was at it again, howling like a wolf. But only because he thought he was a wolf. She pulled her pillow up over her head and pulled it down, grinding her teeth in frustration.
There was a clatter at her door, and she peered from under the pillow at it. It was just her breakfast – some limp carrots, and some wilted greens to go with them on a cheap paper plate. Oh joy, the kitchen must being trying to save money again by recycling last night's left-overs.
There was a distant muted thunk, and the howling stopped. Oh good, the orderlies had managed to gag Millpond. He'd chew through that in a few hours, she knew, but that meant at least she'll have some peace and quiet to choke her breakfast down in.
She got up and made her bed. A failure to do so would result in her being straitjacketed for a day as punishment. It wasn't really worth the aggravation for that small defiance. She walked over to the door and pick up her food, and took it back to the steel table bolted to the wall. Plunking it down, she started to pick over her selections, putting them into her mouth and slowly chewing away. As she did she could hear the other herbivores getting up and getting their breakfast by the sounds that came echoing through the vents in her ceiling.
She finished her breakfast quickly, even considering how uninspiring it was, because she knew she would need her strength today. It had been two weeks since her last escape attempt, and she was getting restless. The orderlies were vigilant for a few days afterwards, but by now they were just tired, overworked, and bored. They would get sloppy and present her with an opportunity. And then she would finally get out of this place after six long years and know freedom.
It's not really like she could actually escape, though. She knew that if even if she managed to get out of the building, it was a long causeway across the river to get to dry land and the safety of the mountains beyond the fence. The security wolves would run her down quickly enough before she could even get across all the way. And the only other alternative was to jump in the river, which just meant drowning to death after going over the falls.
No, she tried to escape because it gave her something to live for, otherwise the hopelessness and boredom of this place would kill her in the end. There was no future at Cliffside: no engaging education, no effective therapies, and no interesting diversions. Just dour staff, bleak beige walls, howling patients, and crappy TV to eek out the time. When they didn't drug her for trying to escape, that is.
At least when they did manage to drug her, she didn't care about any of that. But she hated the drugs as much as, if not more than, the hopelessness. It was just one more wall add to her cage that she had been left to rot in.
As she waited for the day's activity to start, she absentmindedly munched on the paper plate her breakfast had come on. She needed the fiber to wear down her front teeth, because the orderlies wouldn't give the patients chew sticks. Why give the patients anything that could be turned into a weapon and used against the staff? And if she tried to chew on any of the wood furniture in the group rooms, she would get thrown in the Roof Box for her transgression. She hated the Box.
The door buzzed, and she stood up, and walked to the middle of the room. If the orderlies couldn't see her through the porthole, they wouldn't open the door to let her out. The door slowly slide into the wall, and she lifted her head up to gaze on the pudgy visage before her. It was Milton, one of the two brown bear orderlies in charge of this floor. He glowered down at her as she shuffled out to join the rest of the herbivores going off to this morning's group session, which was down several floors. His twin brother John brought up the rear.
The two of them marched the group of much smaller herbivores off to the cramped group meeting room, where the wolf orderly in charge of the room held open the door for them to enter through. The various patients filed in and scattered around the room, most of them looking for the best seats to plunk themselves down into with various sighs of resignation. The door behind them latched shut and the wolf came back to watch them finish getting seated.
There was a tapping at door, and the wolf turned to go open it. Judy's ear swiveled to listen. It sounded like the intern in charge of today's group session had brought a large cardboard box and she was struggling to bring it through the door. The orderly offered to help her, and he took the box from he, much to the intern's expressed thanks.
Great! Judy knew this was her opportunity. His back was turned on the patients and he was now distracted, encumbered, and blocked from leaving the room. She wouldn't get a better opportunity today. She quickly dropped from the chair onto all four feet and darted between the chairs. She charged between his legs, causing him to trip and fall, dropping the box on himself where it knocked the wind out of him. She evaded the skinny goat legs of the intern, and blasted out into the corridor as the door shut behind her.
A left and a quick right, and she would be at the emergency stairwell, and halfway out. She tore down the hallway, flew past Cliffside's main administrator and some small doctor in a lab coat, and hung the quick right to go down the back stairs. But as she turned the corner, she crashed into an orderly pushing a cart full of aluminum feeding trays, knocking over the cart, causing them to go flying, landing scattered all over the hallway leading towards the stairs.
Crap, crap, crap! She couldn't go that way now, too many obstacles sliding around now. She had to get to the other set of stairs, further down and back the way she had come. She scrambled back to her feet, her claws scrabbling to get a grip on the cold tile floor. She accelerated quickly down the hall, and started to turn right, only to see the bulk of Milton and his brother block the way.
Damn it! Now the other stairs were blocked. But maybe she could go hide in the administration section just beyond her group room. Damn it, she was so close this time! Well, she wasn't gonna roll over and play dead for these idiots! She would give them a chase to remember.
She switched her direction back again to the left and slide into the far wall. She used the wall and door jambs to jump off of as she sprinted for the end of the corridor. As she approached the Administrator, who was still a gaping idiot and the little doctor who was standing with her, she realized that he was some kind of small and speckled orange cat, smaller than a fox. She had never seen one like that here or anywhere else before.
That moment of distraction was enough to be her undoing. He swiftly slide into her, causing her to crash as he tripped her to the floor. She tried to scrambled out from underneath him, as he wasn't really that big, but he grabbed the scruff at the back of her neck and held fast. And as soon as he had growled in her ear, that was it – all the fight that she had in her evaporated in that very moment as her mind was flooded with primal terror.
Her eyes snapped back to look into his large feline eyes, and she quailed at what she saw there. It wasn't just some little cat that had stopped her, but something much worse, something that smelled and sounded like a jaguar that had just escaped from the deep jungle. Fast, furious, and very hungry. And as she gazed in horror deep into those great emerald eyes hanging above her, she saw Death personified. Her death, finally come for her, now, in this place. She froze, as her muscles refused to listen anymore to the mad jumbled confusion shrieking out of her brain.
He picked her up, gave her a little shake, and turned back to the administrator in triumph. He talked with her, but Judy was so discombobulated from the crash and the look in his eyes that she missed most of what he said. And when the wolf orderly had come for her, the cat just waved him away, and kept her hanging in his paw. She was really frightened then. She would have really preferred to go with the wolf, as any punishment met out by Cliffside's staff would have been infinitely safer than being held up by this cat's claws.
The chase was completely over, now she realized, as she hung limply from his rather larger paw holding her up by her scruff, her toes just barely touching the floor. But he had somehow claimed her, she knew, and he wasn't going to let her go now. She was powerless to contest with him and escape was now impossible.
But she had come so close!
Author's Notes:
The story will be told in an alternating fashion, switching evenly between the current events and flashback sequences from Judy and Hugo's past. This is done for three reasons, even though it breaks some literary conventions to do so.
1) It allows me to expand on the details that the Divine Characters in Debt's Upaid Chapter 19 had summarized, without doing too much exposition in the main story line.
2) The flashbacks are in turn referenced in some way by either the proceeding or following chapters, as a means of fleshing more detail to the relevant scenes.
3) While I could have written the prequel first followed by the main story, that would be a large amount of details for a reader to retain going into the main story. Best to have those details close by, in my opinion. It would also have made the prequel a very depressing read. I felt it would be better to have the story of her fall tempered by the story of her recovery.