Yes, truly Marlene could not wait until 0800. Although she had agreed the day before to go with Skipper at that time for more outside world exposure, once 0730 came around, Marlene left her habitat to go over to the penguins' HQ to find out if Skipper was willing to begin a little bit early.
"Hey, Skipper," she called to him upon entering into the HQ, "can we go now? Please?"
Skipper, who was sitting at the table with the other penguins, put down his fish coffee and clapped his flippers together a few times.
"You know, yesterday morning you were debating about even wanting to give it a try at all, and now you want to go early," Skipper said as he smiled. "What a difference a day makes. Of course we can go now."
Skipper then chugged down what was left of his coffee and then stood up and waddled over to Marlene. He saluted his men, then left the HQ with her.
"OK, Marlene, day number two," Skipper said as he walked away from the HQ with her. "Today I'd like to have you walk into the park again without a blindfold, but this time will be a little different than when you first did it yesterday."
"How so?" Marlene asked.
"Well, rather than walk into the park a short distance and then stopping, I want to give just walking as deep into the park as you can a try," Skipper replied. "I'll walk alongside you as long and as far as you can handle."
"But when I get to the point that I want to leave, if we're too deep into the park, there might not be enough time to get me out before I totally turn into my wild self," Marlene stated with some concern. "Do you have a plan for that?"
"I have plans for about 30 different contingencies," Skipper replied. "Don't worry about any of that. Just stay focused and relaxed when you enter Central Park."
At that time, the two reached the same spot where the zoo ended and the park began that they had been to twice before. And for yet another time, Marlene entered the outside, but this time she and Skipper kept walking and walking deeper and deeper into the park.
Minutes passed, and even without the blindfold, Marlene seemed to be unaffected by being outside the zoo walls.
"You know, Marlene, you're doing great out here today," Skipper said proudly. "The third time's the charm. Today's the day you're going to be cured for good."
Skipper then looked to his left to see Marlene walking beside him, but she was no longer there. He looked to his right, but the case was the same. It was when he looked behind himself that Skipper saw where Marlene was, and that she hadn't made a breakthrough after all.
Once again, she had turned wild.
"Don't worry, Marlene, we can get through this," Skipper told the now-ferocious-looking otter as he held out a flipper for her. "Here, take my flipper and I'll walk you out of the park. Things will be OK, I promise."
Marlene either couldn't comprehend what Skipper was telling her or just chose to ignore it. She did not take her friend's flipper, and instead pushed him to the ground. As she then straddled him with her legs, Skipper fully expected to be subjected to the same romantic escapades that Julien had been days before, but such never came.
Instead, Marlene just stared at Skipper's face, and was completely silent as she did so. Throughout, Skipper remained calm and looked at Marlene with reassuring eyes, attempting to coax the real Marlene that Skipper knew was still inside of her to come out. But just as Skipper thought that he saw the twinkle in her eye, Marlene moved off of him and then reached down and picked him up, then, although Skipper was bigger than she was, lifted him up over her head a little.
After shaking him around a little in the air, Marlene carried Skipper over to the base of Cleopatra's Needle, the granite obelisk that she had carried Julien to the top of days before. She then positioned Skipper so she could climb up with him, and when they reached the top, she sat him down not far from the angled peak.
Again, Marlene got her face close to Skipper's and began to stare at him.
"Marlene, all you need to do is trust me and things will be OK," Skipper tried to tell her as she seemed poised to actually begin kissing him this time. "Remember, the heart has to win, and I know that being ferocious isn't what's really in your–"
But that's all that she would let him say before she pushed him off the top.
As Skipper tumbled down to the earth, a ferocious Marlene watched as he slammed into the ground. But as she took in the sight of the motionless penguin, her true feelings were suddenly triggered. Somehow, just as strangely and mysteriously as the freedom of the outside world had brought on insanity, the sight of her most trusted friend in peril restored a clear mind.
Marlene was normal again. And she always would be.
"My God, I've killed him!" Marlene shouted as she began climbing down the structure as fast as she could, clearly remembering everything that had happened in the brief time that she had been wild this time. "Make it a dream! Make it a dream! Dear God, make it a dream!"
Marlene was the most scared she had ever been in her life as she reached the bottom, but she knew that she had to go and see if Skipper had survived the fall. It was the most joyful moment she had ever known when she saw that he was still breathing, albeit unconsciously.
"Skipper, Skipper, please wake up!" she shouted through the tears as she rubbed him under a flipper. "It's the real Marlene here, and I need you! I swear I will jump off myself if I lose you!"
"You will do no such thing," Skipper declared as he then awoke. "The very thought of such should never even cross your mind."
There was suddenly an even more joyful moment in Marlene's life.
"Thank God! Thank God!" Marlene praised the Almighty as Skipper spoke to her. "I swear I didn't mean it! If nothing else, know I didn't mean it!"
Though he had only been able to move his eyes and his bill since the fall, Skipper didn't seem to care. For him at that moment, only Marlene mattered.
"Marlene, you're out in the park and you're the real you again," he said. "I knew that you could do it."
"But at what cost?" Marlene asked, feeling guilty that Skipper's kindness had nearly cost him his life.
"I've had worse," Skipper said, though Marlene knew that he was lying through his bill. "But if you could go down to the HQ and get the boys to come get me, I'd appreciate it. I might need a Band-Aid or two."
Marlene couldn't help but be a little heart-warmed by Skipper's humor despite what she had done to him. She also wasn't about to leave him alone and in pain to get the others when she could do something about it right then.
"That's OK, Skipper, I've got you," she said as she reached down and began to carry him in her arms. "I'll bring you over to the veterinary station, then I'll call the guys to come down."
Though Marlene found Skipper to be heavier then she had when she went wild, she managed, for he was not nearly as heavy as her heart. Throughout the walk to the veterinary station, Marlene carefully supported Skipper's neck, fearing it could be broken; he still hadn't yet moved anything beyond his face. No veterinarians were on duty that day, which was actually beneficial, for the penguins would be able to have free run of the place to help their injured leader. After placing Skipper up on the examination table in the vet's office, Marlene went to the phone to call down the other penguins.
At the penguins' HQ, Kowalski answered; Marlene didn't mince words with what she had to say or with who was to blame.
"Kowalski, it's Marlene. I hurt Skipper. Bring the others down to the veterinary station. Hurry."
About two minutes after receiving the call, the other three penguins arrived at the veterinary station. Upon entering, Private and Rico went over to Skipper to begin assisting him, while Marlene approached Kowalski to inform the second-in-command penguin about what had gone wrong.
"Kowalski, I didn't mean to do it," she began, "but I went wild again for a few minutes. I carried Skipper to the top of the tower–"
"Obelisk," Kowalski corrected.
"Whatever it was, I pushed Skipper off the top of it," Marlene continued. "Do you have any idea how high of a drop that was?"
"Sixty-nine feet, two inches from the tip to the ground," Kowalski replied.
"Well, after I saw Skipper hit the ground, it somehow triggered the real me to come back," Marlene said. "I was so scared that he was dead, and now I'm so afraid that I may have paralyzed him. You will help him, won't you?"
"Of course we'll help Skipper," Kowalski replied. "Thank you for filling me in on the details. You can go home now."
"I can't leave Skipper until I know what I've done to him," Marlene declared. "I need to stay by his side."
"I'm sure that Skipper wouldn't want a crowd around him right now," Kowalski replied. "Don't worry, I'll come by and tell you his condition later."
"No, I'm not leaving, Kowalski," Marlene affirmed.
"No, she's not," Skipper called over, having overheard what Marlene had been discussing with Kowalski. "Even if Marlene didn't want to be here, I'd want her to be here."
The fact that Skipper still wanted her around after what she had done to him made Marlene feel all the more shameful for what she had caused. She then left Kowalski and went over to Skipper.
"Skipper, you have never hurt me, and look what I have done to you," Marlene said with tremendous guilt as she placed a paw on Skipper and began to cry. "This is the worst day of my life. This is the worst thing I have ever done."
"Marlene, helping you be able to experience more that life has to offer is one of the best things that I have ever done," Skipper told her. "Don't feel bad for me, my condition is temporary. But the freedom you now have to go into the outside world, that is yours to keep forever."
"I'd much rather be a zoo otter than to have caused harm to a good friend," Marlene said.
"But I'd much rather have you join us on a sushi mission in Brooklyn, and now you can," Skipper stated. "I may be a little dinged-up now, but you're worth it."
"Worth almost killing or maybe now paralyzing you?" Marlene asked. "Say what you want, but I'll never forgive myself for doing this to you."
"You did nothing," Skipper told her. "A strange, sharp-toothed otter did this to me when she couldn't control herself. But the Marlene I know, the Marlene standing beside me right now, has not a sin on her soul."
"How do you do it, Skipper?" Marlene asked. "Yes, the otter I am now could never throw you off an obelisk, but how can you ignore that hurting you was still done by my hand?"
"Because I–" Skipper began before Kowalski interrupted, wanting to begin a few tests.
"Gotta touch the feet, sir," Kowalski said as he pressed on Skipper's feet a little with his flippers. "Do you feel anything?"
"I don't know if Mort would ever want to touch my feet or not, but I'm glad that he's not the one doing this to me right now regardless," Skipper joked. "But seriously, Kowalski, I do feel it. I still have feeling everywhere, actually."
"That's good," Kowalski said as he let go of Skipper's feet. "Can you move anything?"
Skipper tried for a few moments, but he still couldn't move anything except for his face.
"Well, the fact that you at least still have feeling tells me that this is not a complete spinal cord injury," Kowalski said. "If I had access to a magnetic resonance imaging machine – what the laymen call an MRI – I could tell for sure, but for now my gut tells me that you likely have a bruised spinal cord. You'll probably be able to move and walk again, but I'm not quite sure when. Any other areas to address, sir?"
"Well, the left flipper is hurting me a bit," Skipper said.
On that note, Kowalski used the X-ray machine above the examination table to take a radiograph of Skipper's left flipper. He then processed the film, and when ready, analyzed it.
"The ulna is indeed fractured, but we can fix that," Kowalski stated as he looked at the X-ray. "But there also appears to be an old injury to the radius. Did you ever break your flipper before, Skipper?"
"Well, seeing as we could all use a little comic relief, I'll tell you about that – just don't laugh too hard," Skipper said. "I once tried to fly. I was two months old and naïve and in Pittsburgh at the time; I jumped off a rock display and came down hard on my left side. Embarrassed by it, I never let anyone know and I just let the bone heal on its own."
"Well, we're going to immobilize this the right way this time," Kowalski said as he began to wrap Skipper's left flipper with some cotton cloth that Rico had regurgitated in preparation for a cast to be applied to it.
Watching Skipper have to go through all these procedures was beginning to take its toll on Marlene, who was still at his side. Though she had vowed to stay with him, she finally reached her breaking point. She had to leave.
Tears in her eyes, she gave Skipper a pat on his head, saying nothing as she did so, before silently walking out of the veterinary station.
She needed her space. She needed some time. She needed Skipper. She needed God.