Chapter 11 Summary:

Hugo returns to the party and Judy greets him with a display. Now that they have finished up at the clinic, Hugo prepares to survive his trip to the herbivore grocery store with Judy as his native guide. After surviving the Hungry Goat, they have a chat about why he left Cliffside. Once they get home, Judy takes a nap, and Hugo discovers something he never knew about his little charge.

Current Day: Tuesday afternoon in Tundratown

Hugo wandered back into the examination room just as the pika nurse finished taking out the IV. Judy was sitting up on the bed, absentmindedly eating a sandwich and rubbing her IV bandage while Meredith sat in the chair and watched. The sandwich smelled like peanut butter and banana on rye to Hugo, an odd combination, probably chosen by Roberto for it's mysterious nutritional content. Or maybe it had been what ever was what ever was lying around in the downstairs kitchen at the time. Hugo had to caution himself from assigning so much significance to Roberto's actions, especially when he was annoyed with the rodent. After all, when was the last time he had eaten a peanut butter and banana sandwich? Who was he to judge what a herbivore nutritionist deemed healthy for rabbits?

"There you go, dear. All set." The pika beamed up at Judy, "You look like you're doing much better now! Just needed a pick-me-up and some food! Now, you do need to wait for Dr Longs to come back, as she'll be back in here very shortly to go over the treatment plan with you. But you can get dressed if you want to." The pika patted Judy on the knee, and walked back out.

Judy looked up at him and breathed a sigh of relief, "Hey, you came back." She sat up straighter.

"Yes, sorry about that. I got a call from a social worker, and I had to talk to her about a patient. I'm done now. How are you felling?" He asked her.

She finished off her sandwich, and put the plate on the paper covering the bed. "Better now," she smiled at him, "Thank you."

"You are most welcome." He smiled back at her.

Meredith watched them, and she was positive she saw something pass unsaid between the two of them in that interchange. Oh! Before she could put more meaning to what happened, Judy hopped to the floor.

She was only a little shaky on the landing, putting a paw out to the cabinet to steady herself, but she regained her composure. Squaring her shoulders, and giving her head a little shake, she strode over to the chair to where her folded pink outfit was. She stripped off her gown over her head and tossed it it back on the bed. Standing naked before the two of them, without a backwards glance, she began to dress herself.

Nudity bothered Meredith very little, both as a medical professional and as a hare, so she had a bit of trouble trying to discern why this display was bothering her. It was almost as if Judy was subconsciously angry. Aggressive, even. Yes, that was what was bothering Meredith; this little rabbit was being aggressive, yet she had turned her back to Hugo. Turned her back on the only predator in the room. Even in a sick and weakened state, she stood with her back to a predator while radiating aggression. What the bloody hell?

She flicked her eyes over to see what Hugo made of this display, and saw that he was watching Judy dress herself intently. His head had dropped down and his ears had swiveled forward. His paws were hanging loose at his side while his legs were spread slightly with the right leg slightly behind. He's in a ready stance…, she realized, just like a martial artist would use. Is he reacting to her as a predator would to a weakened prey mammal?

She looked up to his eyes, expecting them to be squinted, but no. They were wide open and relaxed, just like his muzzle was. Only his whiskers were moving, sweeping forward and back ever so slowly. He's not hunting, he's not aroused, he's not angry, he's just… ready. Ready for what, she wondered? Escape? Did he expect Judy to run away? She was having trouble just standing up steady. No, it was more as if he stood with purpose. That was it! He stood ready and with purpose! But to do what?

Judy was standing back up, having finished dressing, but she hadn't turned around yet. She rolled her shoulders and stood straight with her feet slightly spread, still facing the wall. Her head dropped down, as her ears came slowly up, her body so taunt it was almost humming.

It was like those awful boxing matches she used to go to with Dale in their youth, with two prize fighters squaring off in a ring, ready to pummel each other into meat paste. She almost expected the cat and the rabbit to start fighting each other or go charging off into battle side by side.

Just a suddenly as it had started, it was over. Hugo turned and put his back to the wall, crossing his paws, his whiskers relaxed and forward.. Judy turned about halfway back around, and started to try to rearrange her bedraggled head fur with her claws.

What. The. Bloody. Hell. Was that? Meredith wanted to know. What did she just witnessed? They hadn't seen each other in over a decade, yet here they were communicating non-verbally like they knew each other all their lives. What happened to them last night, in that alleyway?

Plainly they trusted her enough to show her that, unless they were both completely unaware of what just transpired. If she hadn't been watching them, she probably would have missed it too, especially since Judy had been so vulnerable and meek earlier, when it had been just Meredith and her. Then Hugo walked in and Judy's mood just as quickly changed into something else. Something more… Dangerous.

Who was this rabbit?

"Are we ready to go?" Victoria stood in the doorway.

Hugo turned to Judy, and quirked an ear in her direction. She nodded, "Yeah. We are."

"Alright. Well, I don't think you suffered any permanent damage last night, Judy. You probably do have pneumonia, and the blood work will tell us for sure, but that is easy to recover from, if you are sensible about it. Eat and sleep properly, take your Az-pak daily, and try to limit your cardio-vascular exercise for the next week. Your lungs will appreciate that." She turned to Hugo, "I'll call you when the blood work comes in, and let you know if we find anything else? Is that okay?" Hugo nodded.

"Okay, then I think you can go, and we will see you in about a week for a follow up, if that's okay?"

"Sure," Judy said.

Victoria turned to address Meredith, "I do believe your husband is in the waiting room. Large brown hare, goes by the name of Dale?"

She nodded, "That's my boy. He must have gotten tired of wood shops."

They walked back up the front office. Hugo thanked Victoria for taking the time to see Judy, and went over to the front desk to schedule a return visit.

Meredith walked over her husband, who appeared to be sleeping in the chair, his paws shoved into his coat, his ears down his back, and his eyes closed. She kicked him in the shin, "Get up, you lazy lout!"

He open one eye and cocked it up to meet her gaze evenly without moving his head, "Took you long enough. I was almost ready to go into hibernation."

Meredith leaned over to Judy, "Told you. He got bored."

Dale stood and stretched, but didn't deny his wife's keen observation. He pulled his case of chew sticks from his pocket and handed it to Judy. "Here, keep it. I refilled it for you with an assortment of sticks that you should like."

Judy shyly took them, "Thank you!" She smiled back up at him. He nodded back, "You are certainly welcome."

Meredith hugged him, since he was being a sweet old buck. He was spoiling the little rabbit, just like he did with his grand-kits.

"Ready to go? We need to get some groceries, according to this diet plan." Hugo held the plan up to his face, trying to pronounce some of the vegetables listed. He had never heard of them before.

"Yeah. See you two later?" Judy turned to Dale and Meredith.

"Certainly dear. We are neighbors, after all" Meredith assured her.

Hugo held the clinic door open for Judy, as she walked out, her paws shoved into her hoodie pockets. Meredith watched them walk away as she held her husband. She wondered if there was any mammal she could talk to about what she had witnessed in that examination room. She didn't understand what had happened and she desperately needed some perspective about two mammals she cared deeply about – one old and one new.

Threading through the aisles at the Hungry Goat, Hugo looked around in confusion. "I have no idea where any of this stuff is!" he complained as he looked at the list that Roberto had given them.

Judy smiled up at him "Never been shopping at a herbivore store before?"

"Not really, no. Not my diet. I usually go to one of the carnicerias downtown – they have more selections for protein eaters like me. Plus they have all the stuff I miss from back home, like my arapas." Hugo just shook his head.

"Hum… Let's swing by the pharmacy – at least we can get your prescriptions filled." He turned the cart toward the back, and started pushing it at an easy pace for Judy. Pneumonia is a bitch to work through, so he made sure she was okay with walking. She held on to the side of the cart, and aside for just a little bit of wheezing, she muscled onwards. Just as well, he thought, she'd probably punch him if he tried to pick her up and put her in the cart.

He handed her prescription from Longs to the pharmacist, along with his medical ID and credit card. At least that way he could get his hospital discount. The stripped pharmacist looked at him a bit in confusion, as he plainly didn't look like a Jessica. Hugo smiled, and pointed down at the rabbit, who waved at the zebra. Smiling, the zebra nodded as he turned to fill the order of antibiotics and medicated bodywash for her. Hugo paid, and Judy took her first pill with a cup water provided by the pharmacist.

They continued with their shopping expedition. He had tried to work through the rest of the list, but he was all rather confused by the layout of the store. Judy tried to help him, but she soon started to limp as she pulled the cart around the store. He stopped the cart.

"Judy, I know this may sound silly, but do you want to ride inside the cart for the rest of the way?" He asked her. Inwardly, he cringed. He wasn't implying that she ride in the child seat at the back, and he hoped she didn't think that.

He didn't have to worry, though. Judy felt exhausted, even as she tried to prove how healthy she still was, and her right leg was starting to throb. She need to sit down. She look up at him and nodded, "Sure."

He breathed in relief, and moved the various veggies, snacks, and toiletries to the back of the cart. She tried to climb up herself, but he caught her under the arms and lifted her slight frame effortlessly into the front of the cart.

Her light weight barely affected the steering cart, and up front at least she could still point him in the right direction. They finished up the rest of the shopping in short order, paid and left the store. He picked her up out of the cart as she frowned at him; plainly she had want to get out herself.

Taking that into consideration, he decided against trying to help her get into the car door, and instead went to the hatchback to load the groceries. He put the cart away, and got back into the SUV, where Judy had just finished buckling herself in.

Judy waited until he sat down, buckled himself in, and started the SUV before she asked him, "Dr. Wiedii, sir? Why did you leave Cliffside?"

"Cliffside?" Hugo responded as he pulled out of the parking log, "I didn't leave, not voluntarily at least. I was locked out after just a few months of being there, and was told never to return. I didn't know who ordered me banned from there, but my boss had his own suspicions. I didn't find out the exact reasons why until after the investigation that he had launched eventually led to Cliffside being shut down."

"Oh..." Judy responded, looking down at her paws.

"Mind you, the program you were in at the time was successful, or so I thought. I had managed to get half of my experimental working group transferred out to other programs by that point, and most of them went on to be released, eventually."

"Why didn't you get me out with the others? Or could you have?" She looked back up at him out of the corner of her eye.

He sighed, "I tried to get you out, I really did try, conejita, but to no avail. Since you were still a teenager at the time, none of the juvenile mental health programs I could find that were qualified to handle you would accept your case. Most of them classified you to be a 'violent repeat offender' due to your murder conviction and your prior escape attempts from other facilities, and wouldn't accept you even with my recommendations. I even tried Bunny Burrow's original program, but they hung up on me as soon as I mentioned your name."

Hugo wrinkled his muzzle, and then continued, "Then Cliffside's management kicked me out and wouldn't even let Bonnie back in to see you. She said that they kept making up excuses on why she couldn't visit you: you were in group therapy, and couldn't be seen, or you were eating with the other patients, etc. That continued for three years, and then they just sent you home with no explanation. I could only guess at the time that you had made significant progress, enough for them to parole you."

Judy snorted, "They sent me home because they were getting shut down and couldn't be bothered to find another psych ward to take me. No, I spent those three years drugged up to my ears and drooling, for the most part, in between the paw painting and group screaming sessions."

"Painting and screaming?" He asked her.

"Breakfast and dinner time, respectively." She told him wryly.

"Okay, you will have to explain that one to me. Later, though. Please, continue as you were saying before. So, they sent you home?" He prompted her.

"Yeah. Anyway, they shoved me up on a bus, and the next thing I knew was waking up at the Bunny Burrow train station with no idea of how I got there."

"They didn't have a van drive you home, or contact your parents to come pick you up?" Hugo was shocked.

Judy threw up her hands, "Ha! No. Hell, they didn't even give me change for the pay phone. Just the clothes on my back, and a day's worth of pills. I walked home from there. I must have wandered around Bunny Burrow about a bit, cause it certainly took me a while to get there. I don't quite remember most of that day."

"Yes, Bonnie had called me to tell me about your homecoming. I had gone down south to visit my parents, and to assist with some brain trauma cases at the local hospitals. I couldn't get back up north for another two weeks, and by the time I did you were gone."

Judy pulled down her ear, and twisted it in her paw, "I had left home because I was having trouble coping with the whole situation, and didn't really feel like I fit with Bunny Burrow or the family farm anymore. And doing the whole drug withdrawal thing cold tufu didn't help."

"Withdrawal? What, with no support?" Hugo dropped his jaw in amazement.

"Nope. No prescriptions, no referrals to a local shrink, no instructions, no phone calls to my parents. Nothing. Nada. Hell, Mom even tried calling Cliffside again after I got home, but nobody answered. They had just announced me cured, and kicked me out." Judy responded bitterly.

"What? I'm surprised it didn't kill you!"

"Yeah, it felt like it would for while, although I think they were weaning us off the hard meds for awhile before they got around to sending me home. Maybe they were running out of money for the good stuff, and just didn't have enough to go around? That was all they really cared about at that place, getting paid." She scowled at the floor mats. "Hell, that's probably part of why they canned you. They lost money with every patient you sent out. They couldn't turn a profit on your successes." She turned and gave him a grimace. "Sorry."

He gave her a grimace in return, "No, no, that is okay. Which is to say that it is horrible. Not for me, but for you and everybody else who got stuck there."

"Oh it wasn't totally horrible, for me at least. I was drugged most of the time. They didn't beat me or use electro-shock on me, so it didn't really hurt, per se..." Judy trailed off with melancholy on her voice.

Hugo looked back at her with concern, "Well, I think I may have played a small part in what happened to you. I learned later that I was banned by the company managing Cliffside as a power play with the ZMHW. They had thought at first that I was a roving inspector, conducting an investigation of Horizons' management of Cliffside, and that I was going to recommend changing Horizons' contract with ZMHW. Once they figured out that I was exactly what I said I was, a researcher working on his post-doc, they wasted no time in booting me to the curb. I don't think Swinton actually wanted me to go, since I kept making her life easier by taking her trouble making patients off her paws, but her management forced her to."

"Ultimately that move backfired on them, because my dismissal did end up leading to an internal investigation by the ZMHW, ZDJ, and ZPD departments, which in turn resulted in charges of medical fraud, gross medical mismanagement, and criminal negligence of the Cliffside facility by Horizons' corporate management. It turns out that they had been billing Zootopia for their patients very expensive treatments, but the doctors weren't actually applying any of those treatments, so the administration in turn never released any them, since they weren't 'cured'. They had thought they had a perfect money making system running, right up until they pissed off my boss."

"Oh… So that's why they were shutting down, and sent me home instead of to another psych-ward. They couldn't justify keeping me anymore?"

"Probably. Honestly, I don't think any of the other facilities in the country wanted to inherit any of Cliffsides' problems. Maybe the other facilities in the country thought they would end up getting investigated too if they accepted Cliffside patients? Or maybe just paranoia about bad luck? I don't know. I was only at the first initial meeting between the ZMHW and the ZPD before I got sent out to complete my post-doc with the Youth Diversion program downtown. After that, my boss forbade me from having any further contact with Cliffside or it's patients, mostly to protect me from retaliation by Horizons. Since he was my boss and mentor for the post-doc and my residency, I had to do what he said."

"Oh..." Judy frowned, and turned to stare out the window.

They rode the rest of the way home in silence, each lost in their own bitter memories.

He drove back into his driveway and parked his SUV in the garage. Judy was fading fast, so he slipped out and around to her door to help her into the house. He guided her to the couch, where she promptly collapsed on the pillows. He pulled the blanket back up over her, and she batted him on the arm and softly said, "Thank you."

He replied back to her, "Certainly." He left her there to rest, while he returned to his car to pick up the groceries and pack them away in his kitchen. He finished that up and went back out to check on her. Seeing that she was already asleep, but breathing normally, he left her there and returned to the kitchen to prepare her a snack for when she woke back up. He left the snack and a bottle of water on the coffee table beside her. Remembering his promise to Beth, he stepped back and took a picture of her sleeping. He turned down the lights and went back to his office.

He sent the photo in a text to Bonnie's phone. He got a message back from Beth stating that her dad had taken the tranquilizer early and finally conked out, and that her mother had also passed out exhausted on the couch.

Beth suggested that since everybody was sleeping, that maybe they could just let sleeping logs lie, and maybe talk tomorrow? She was cooking for the rest of the family anyway, and didn't have enough paws to cook and talk at the same time. Hugo agreed, and he set his phone back down.

He sat his desk and pulled out Judy's file folder. He leafed through the notes, scanning them absentmindedly until he got to her drawings. He flipped them over one by one. A crayon picture with lots little stick figure bunnies. A more recognizable picture of her parents done in charcoal and colored pencils. A pencil drawing of two foxes eating blueberries – one labeled "Gideon" and the other labeled "Slick". Those must be local foxes she knew from Bunny Burrow. He gazed down at the one labeled "Slick," thinking that he looked slightly familiar. Hum… He must have seen that fox when he went to visit Bonnie and Stu that last time he was in Bunny Burrows.

He looked up from his files. What was the name she gave at the clinic? Jessica Lapin? Was that a family name? He didn't see it in his files. Out of curiosity, he turned to his computer, and typed that name in the Zoogle search field. The search results were all over the board; apparently that was a really common rabbit name. He switched to the picture option, and again there were pictures of every kind of rabbit, most of whom he didn't recognize. But about halfway down, he spotted an odd picture of a black rhino with a rabbit perched on his shoulders. He was dressed in a tux, and she in long red dress. They were both flexing their biceps, clowning around for the cameras. In the back ground were some letters on the wall that he couldn't make out.

He clicked on the image to blow it up, and in the larger image he recognized that the rabbit on top of the rhino was indeed a very fit and firm Judy Hopps, her gray fur shaved and dyed with stripes of neon red, in a long red dress covered with red sequins. The visual effect was quite striking. They both had large grins plastered on their faces, plainly having a good time for the paparazzi. And he could finally read the logos in the background – "AVA", with "Adult Video Awards" in smaller text underneath that logo.

AVA? Adult Videos? Curious, he scrolled back up the top, turned off the safe search, and hit refresh. The screen blanked white, and then began to fill with more pictures of Judy. A lot more! She was wearing the name Jessica Lapin in most of the photos and, except for that grin on her muzzle, she wasn't wearing much of anything else. He stared at the screen...

Oh My!