Hugo meets with his boss and post-doc advisor, Doctor Donny Pahin. They discuss the current status of Hugo's project at Cliffside and the 15 patients that Hugo is recommending for transfer. Judy is the 16th patient that Hugo wants to transfer, but Donny feels that is going to be a harder sell. As their meeting progresses, Donny is concerned when he sees discrepancies between Hugo's reports and the reports from Administrator Swinton.
13 years ago at the Zootopia Health and Welfare department
"Morning, Helen. Is Doctor Pahin available?" Hugo bent over to set his box of files down on the floor next to the receptionist's desk, and turned back up to address the older snow hare doe, "I do believe I have an appointment with him this morning."
"Oh, hello, Doctor Weidii! Yes, he's just on a call right now. He should be off of it in just a couple of minutes more. Would you like to take a seat while you wait?"
Hugo turned back to view the chairs in the sparsely styled waiting room. They were styled in a gray and chrome corporate chic twenty years out of date, all evenly sized for large mammals to sit upon. The fading cushions, the wear of years of restless mammals showing upon the fabric, mocked him by placing the seat at his chest height. It would be rather undignified to try to boost himself into those chairs, he thought to himself. He could do it, he knew, but he would look ridiculous doing it.
They were leftovers from the previous administrator, who was of rather larger stature then the current occupant of this office. He was sure that Donny, being perpetually nearsighted and absentminded about his environment, hadn't even noticed that the chairs were all too large to be comfortably used by his clientele.
"That's quite alright, I've been sitting in traffic all morning. I'd rather stand for a bit before I meet with the director." Hugo assured her.
Doctor Donny Pahin was the newly minted director of Counseling Services, for the Zootopia department of Mammal Health and Welfare, and Hugo's boss and advisor for the duration of his post-doc work. One of Donny's first objectives in his new job had been to reduce the workload and overhead that his department was experiencing. They simply could not retain the experienced medical professionals needed to meet the physical and mental health needs of a very diverse city of mammals.
Donny hoped that by trying less conventional approaches to mammal mental health he might be able to reduce the number of patients still stuck in the system. So when Hugo had initially applied for the post-doc grant at his department, he was intrigued by the possibilities that Hugo's experimental program might have at the perpetually overcrowded Cliffside, and took Hugo under his arm personally.
Hugo had come in at Donny's request for a mid-project review, and while he was there, he hopped to get some advice from Donny on how he might possibly get his star pupil moved to a more amiable program for her. He didn't hold out much hope.
He passed the time while he waited by chatting with Helen about her favorite topic, her kits. "And how are your kits doing?"
"Oh splendid! The oldest three are off at college right now and enjoying the social life that affords them. My oldest doe has even picked up a new boyfriend there. He's training to become a mechie."
"A mechie? What's that?" Hugo hadn't ever heard that term before.
"Oh, I'm sorry, that's not a medical term, is it." She laughed, "He's studying to become a mechanical engineer. It looks like he's going to be roped into his father's company, and they sent to get him educated on the subject. Have you ever of Macleod Excavation?"
"Um.. I think so? Aren't they the company that took over the new water tunnel for the city that's supposed to bring in lake water from the north?" The project, true of most government public works projects, was way over budget and massively behind schedule. The Macleod's had a reputation for fast and efficient work and as result the city had hired them to fix the problems with the tunnel that the last company, Acme Tunnel Rats, had bodged. Hugo did appreciate the Zootopian government actually tried to do something about public project waste and corruption here, unlike some of the goverments on the southern continents. Most of the politicians back home acted like the public coffers were their own personal accounts, and tended to raid them dry.
"That's the same. Anyway, she's excited to have finally found a strong buck who's just as nerdy as she is." Her desk phone buzzed. She pushed the intercom button, and leaned into the mic, "Yes, Doctor?"
"Helen, is Hugo in yet?" Donny's voice crackled over the cheap intercom. She pushed the button again and responded, "Yes, sir. I'll send him right in." She turned to Hugo and motioned him to go in, "He'll see you now." He nodded and smiled, "Thank you," as he picked up his box and walked into Donny's office.
"Hugo, my cub, how are you?" Donny stood up from his stool and reached his paw across the low slung desk, clad in cheap oak venier. Hugo took it and shook it. "Quite well, Director. I thank you for taking the time to meet with me." He set his box down next to his chair and flipped off the lid. "May I sit?"
"Certainly! What have you got for me today?" While Donny liked to consider himself a progressive mammal, he usually still felt a shiver of fear when in the presence of a predator. But he didn't experience that unease when he met with Hugo. Donny was enough of a psychologist to hypothesize that the lack of reaction was probably due to the cat's smaller size combined with his formal speech.
Hugo was also enough of a neurologist to relish the fact that Donny wasn't expressing any fear responses to his feline presence. What Donny didn't probably realize was that his grandmother had trained him well on how to put anxious and grieving mammals at ease. It was always difficult for smaller mammals to meet with such a large predator like a jaguar, so she endeavored to make sure that they felt safe and unthreatened whenever they arrived to meet with her. While he was nowhere near her size, her lessons still bore fruit in his interpersonal approach. Now if he could only figure out how to consistently relate to Administrator Swinton. She still bore him a measure of distrust that he couldn't reconcile, and it made their professional relationship somewhat unstable.
"Well, sir, I wanted to report that I have been meeting with some success with my alternative treatment programs, particularly with the art-therapy classes. I've got fifteen, maybe sixteen, patients there that show real promise that I would like to recommend for transfers out of Cliffside." Hugo handed the thick file with his recommendations over to Donny, who sat back down and put on his glasses to read it.
Donny pawed down through the list at the front, but could only count fifteen names. He turned his attention back to Hugo, "Who's the sixteenth patient you're thinking off? I don't see them listed here."
Hugo sighed, and handed Judy's smaller personal file over to Donny. "The only rabbit in our group, and probably the best artist of them all: Judy Hopps."
Donny squinted and racked his brain for a moment, "Hopps, Hopps, where do I know that name?" He shook his head, "Wait, wait, you mean Carl Latrans' murderer? The Bunny Burrow Predator Killer? That's her?" Donny asked Hugo incredulously as he gestured at the file.
"Judy was nine when she did that, and she has never tried to deflect or deny her guilt. I know that she's had discipline issues in other facilities, but since starting my program her behavior has improved dramatically." Hugo defended his charge.
Donny took off his glasses, folded them, and pointed at Hugo, "She's going to be a hard sell to some of the other programs due to her record, Hugo, to be honest. Though it might be easier if..." He put his glasses back on to read again, "Did you ever figure out if there were any underling psychological issues in her case, or perhaps come up with a preliminary diagnosis for her? Her file is pretty bare on that, other than her problems with authority figures." Donny leafed through the file, but he didn't find any further notes to that effect, which was really strange. She had been in system for six years – somebody should have come up with a diagnosis by now. Even a vague diagnosis picked from the DSM that was close to her psychological presentation would justify keeping her in the system.
"Actually sir, I do not. Other than exhibiting an religious conviction that has survived even in the face of her incarceration at Cliffside, I believe that she is as sane as anyone can be growing up in there." Hugo just shook his head. He didn't understand it either.
"Religious? How so? Does she exhibit a messianic complex, or some kind of religious delusion?" Donny peered over his glasses at Hugo.
"She prays to the Divines every night, according to the orderlies. I've manage to listen in a couple of times, but she never has any complains about her situation or how she feels she is being treated unfairly. She plainly admits her guilt during the prayers, and feels that her crime was a sin. It was a necessary act, she believes, but still a sinful one."
Hugo continued, "As for her problems with authority, she is pretty respectful at this point with most of the adults in her life, my nurse and I included. Most of those previous authority problems were expressed as escape attempts, which I believe had more to do with boredom due to a lack of meaningful diversions at that facility than actual criminal intent. She's since found that diversion that she craves in the art that she expresses in my classes, and she hasn't tried an escape attempt in months."
Donny's head snapped up, "None? Really, no escape attempts? Isn't that's what got her sent to Cliffside in the first place?" Donny put down her file, and pulled another folder out of his desk's file drawer. It was the latest patient update from Horizons, the private company that managed Cliffside. He flipped through it until he came to the entry for Judy Hopps. He read to himself, 'patient continues to exhibit emotional instability and problems with authority, as expressed by continued escape attempts 2-3 times a month, as well as a complete lack of remorse for her past criminal actions. Further chemical treatment regimes are recommended.' The diagnosis field was blank, he also noted.
"None since that first classroom session, and she didn't even make it out of the room before Manchas caught her. And since she didn't make it past the door, I didn't report it to Administrator Swinton. I figured it was an internal classroom issue, and I have enough problems with the administration as it is without calling more attention to my program."
"Swinton, eh? What is that corporate windbag up to?" Donny smiled over at Hugo.
"She's been alternatively supportive and aggressively antagonistic. It's almost like she's got in her brain that I am secretly a government inspector come to observe her operations, and she can't decide if she should suck up to me or kick me out. Honestly, and I say this with a grain of salt as it is not the most flattering of observations, but she lends credence to the old notion that the insane asylum warden has to be crazier than the inmates to be there." Hugo grimaced a bit as he bit that admission out. He knew that it's not a good career practice to make observations like that to departmental directors. But since she wasn't Donny's employee, being employeed by Horizons directly, he wasn't as protective of her as he might be otherwise be of one his employees.
Donny quirked an ear at that observation, and he looked back at the report in his paws. He flipped to the end, and there it was, Swinton's signature, clear as day. Frowning a bit, he flipped back into the report, and chose one of Hugo's patients at random. "Have you been having trouble with Riccio?"
"Rizzo? Not really. While he's not a stellar student, like Judy or Mork our budding manga artist, Rizzo's pretty diligent about his artwork. I've not had any discipline issues with him since the first two weeks, once I got them settled into their seperate groups. His artwork is faily chaotic, but I think that is actually helps him to calm his ADHD down by scribbling randomly."
"Have you observed any patterns of self-destructive behavior." Donny looked up over the report at Hugo.
"Well, he's not acting out in class in front of me or Manchas. Honestly, I think that he and his buddy Shakes are pretty normal for hyperactive teenage rats. The worst behavior issue I've had with them recently was when they tried to gargle the water color paints last month. It was stupid and made a mess, but that was it. They couldn't hurt themselves with it – it was non-toxic. They stopped doing that once they figured out that the paint tasted awful."
Donny raised his eyebrow at that little story. "I see." He turned to Riccio's section in the Cliffside report, 'patient continues to express self-destructive compulsions, which culminate in self harm episodes that require staff to employ physical restraints. Further chemical treatment regimes are recommended.'
Donny started working through Hugo's recommendation list, and compared that to Swinton's submitted report. Every patient that Hugo recommended for transfer due to improvement was shown to be problematic in Swinton's report. The phrase 'Further chemical treatment regimes are recommended.' also cropped up rather extensively, like somebody was cutting and pasting it into every patient synopsis.
He frowned. Somebody was lying to him and to his department, but he didn't quite know who. He hadn't ever dealt with Cliffside, as he had spent most of his service career dealing with the homeless and family housing programs in Zootopia, so he didn't know if this feeling was accurate or not. He didn't believe it was Hugo that was lying to him. It would damage Hugo's chances at finishing his post-doc work, and the stories he had just told about his patients rang true. But something in these files still wasn't right, and the quickest way for him to find out was to move those fifteen patients out of Cliffside and into another program where he could monitor their progress personally.
Hugo was concerned with the frown and asked apologetically, "I'm sorry, sir, have I erred in some fashion?"
Donny slapped the file shut and smiled at Hugo, "Nope. Your work is exemplary, in my opinion. I agree with your recommendations on the first fifteen, and I'll get started on their transfers right away."
"And my sixteenth?" Hugo held out.
Donny scowled, "That will be a harder sell. She's burned some bridges by escaping from all the likely programs that I know about. You're going to have to call around and contact some programs that are further away from Zootopia, who would be less familiar with her reputation, and see if they would be interested. If you can get a nibble, let me know, and I'll contact them and try to convince them to take her. How does that sound?"
"Thank you, that sounds much better, sir. Cliffside isn't working for her." Hugo thanked him.
Donny laid his paws on the Cliffside report sitting in his lap, "I know. I can see that." He smiled back at Hugo, "Why don't you leave me your box of patient records right there so I can go through them tonight, and you go back to your office and see if you can find a program that would be interested in taking Ms. Hopps?" He put Horizons' Cliffside report back in his desk drawer, and stood to shake Hugo's paw.
Hugo stood, and took the offered paw, "Thank you sir, I'll get right on it." He shook the paw, and walked out of Donny's office with a bit of a spring to his step. There was hope after all!
Donny waited until he heard the door to the hall close behind Hugo, and picked up the phone.
"Mrs. Snow, do you know if we have a departmental lawyer on staff?"
Buzzzzzzzz…..
Hugo sat at his departmental desk and stared at the phone in disbelief, Diosa!
It couldn't be that hard to find a facility that had never heard of Judy Hopps! He's worked through twenty so far on, working farther and farther away from Zootopia, and none of the program directors he had contacted expressed any interest in talking about taking her. The last call he made had been to the Bunny Burrows' diversion program, but they hung up on him as soon as he mentioned her name.
He was going to have a hard time fulfilling his promise to Bonnie at this rate!