AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl sat on the second hand couch in the small starter house that he called home and spread the information out in front of him on the coffee table. From time to time he remembered to flick the growing ashes off the end of his cigarette, but mostly he was wrapped up in what he was reading. He was consumed by trying to imagine…to wrap his mind around…the things that were presented in the files.
He would have to return the file to Alice by morning so that no one would notice that it was missing, so he was trying to take in all the information that he could in the amount of time that he could look over the file without either of them getting in trouble.
Carol Ann McAlister was, approximately, twenty years old…four years younger than Daryl was…and she'd already seen more than he could imagine squeezing into that amount of time.
She'd been admitted to Sunny Meadows four years prior following an "episode"…no next of kin…
Essentially Carol Ann McAlister was forgotten by the world, and according to her files, she may have even forgotten herself.
Daryl read through the information, unable to make heads or tails of most of it, unsure if whether it was the fact that he didn't understand the language or the fact that it was written in such a halfhearted manner. She didn't matter to anyone…and she didn't matter to Sunny Meadows.
Words popped out to Daryl, though, and they hung with him…words that he did understand even if he was unsure whether or not they were true…even if he was confused by their context.
Delusion…hysteria…psychotic break…
Hypnosis…electroshock therapy…
Amnesia…
Daryl rearranged the papers into the manila file folder and closed it on the table in front of him, squaring it thoughtfully before he sat back, balancing his ashtray on his knee and lit another cigarette.
He found work at a place like Sunny Meadows to be somewhat depressing…but he'd learned that most of the people who worked there, most of the people who had any compassion at all for people found it to be that way. There simply wasn't any other way to feel about it.
And the best thing that you could do, if you were going to work in such an establishment was learn to unplug. You had to learn to distance yourself. You had to learn to think of the people there as something a little less than people…you had to learn to think of them as hollow shells of people where only a diagnosis remained.
To survive working day in and day out with the situations that you could see in such lonely buildings with such happy names was simply to see them as nothing more than hollow shells.
You had to become hollow to them.
And Daryl was pretty good and growing better with every passing day at unplugging and not caring. He was getting better at seeing the people in pitiful and pathetic situations as something that he couldn't relate to, something he couldn't understand…even if he chose only to take that position.
Yet, for some reason this woman, this Carol Ann McAlister with her soulful eyes…this woman of twenty years of age that was forgotten by the whole human race, or so it seemed, wasn't someone that he could forget.
He believed that she was in there, despite what her records said…and he didn't even know himself why he cared.
But he did care.
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"My coffee?" Alice asked as a greeting when Daryl came walking toward where she was leaning against the fender of her car…or of the car she drove, whether it was hers or not Daryl didn't know for sure.
She was smoking a cigarette with the laziest efforts that Daryl had ever seen anyone puff on one of the long sticks.
He offered her the metal thermos of coffee that he'd brought her from his house…part of the deal for getting him the records and not ratting on him that he'd asked her to take them out for him.
She took it, smiling at him, and then she took the file folder and tucked it into the oversized bag that rested on the car hood beside her before she turned her attention back to the cigarette.
Daryl lit one of his own, knowing full well that he could finish the cigarette in the time that it took for her to finish the one that she'd already been smoking.
"So you can be trained," Alice said, raising an eyebrow at him.
He narrowed his eyes at her in confusion and she shook her head to dismiss the whole line of conversation.
"Thanks for the coffee…cream?" She said instead.
"Yeah…damn near white, just like you wanted," Daryl said.
Alice smiled.
"Did you find out what you were after?" She asked.
"I guess," Daryl responded. "What do ya know about her?"
Alice shrugged.
"Not too much…I mean I know the gossip, but not a lot of fact," Alice said.
She dropped her cigarette to the ground and ground it out with something like aggression before she burrowed in the large bag and came out with a leather cigarette case, removing another.
Daryl took the hint when she placed it between her lips and flicked his lighter open, lighting it for her.
"I'm just the lowly little receptionist…remember?" Alice said.
Daryl almost laughed.
"You say that like you pissed about it," Daryl said. "It's a good job…"
"It's a great job!" Alice said with a fake smile, the kind she plastered on for everyone that passed by her desk…the kind that faded once you knew her better.
"So…?" Daryl asked.
"So...I can't say it's a dream job," Alice said. "That would be a stretch…but what are you going to do? And I get more bored at home than I do here…so it's a necessary evil."
She curled a lip up.
"So what do you know about Carol Ann McAlister?" Daryl asked.
Alice shook her head.
"I wasn't here when she came in," Alice said. "But…I've heard that she had a child."
"Where's the kid now?" Daryl asked. "File said somethin' about it, but I could barely make head or tails with all that chicken scratch."
"Gave it up," Alice said. "From what I hear she lost her mind…went completely psychotic because her boyfriend didn't want her anymore…"
Daryl wrinkled his nose at the thought.
"Why'd she give her kid up?" Daryl asked.
Alice raised her eyebrows at him.
"Not every woman relishes being an unwed mother," Alice said.
She straightened up and dropped the second cigarette butt to join the first on the ground, crushed beneath her shoe. She lifted the heavy bag and the coffee mug and stared at Daryl.
"What's got you so interested in this woman?" Alice asked.
"What makes you so not interested?" Daryl asked.
Alice smiled and then she shrugged a little.
"It's the nature of the beast," she said. "You and me? We're underdogs here…we have nothing to offer anyone…we can't change their lives. I just book them in and out and hand out visitor information…you…what? Clean up after them? We're not changing the world, Daryl…so it's better not to even worry about it. There's nothing you can do about any of it anyway…"
Daryl sucked in a breath and dropped his own cigarette butt to mingle with hers in the parking lot.
She was right. There wasn't anything that they could do. They were both underdogs at Sunny Meadows. They didn't have any training that would make them able to handle the kinds of things that were going on with any of the patients there, and from Carol's scanty and poorly written file, there wasn't even any telling what he'd be getting into if he had some idea of trying to do something about it…if he even had any idea what he might do.
Daryl followed the woman toward the entrance of the building, both of them trampling the carefully manicured lawn with the dew damp signs declaring to "please walk on the sidewalk" without a care, her only stopping once because apparently her hell sunk too deep and she nearly lost a shoe.
"Hey," Daryl called at her before they reached the entrance.
Alice turned around, waiting on him to speak.
"What if there was somethin' we could do? Would you think it was worth it then? To give a shit?" Daryl asked.
The line between Alice's brows deepened and she shrugged again.
"What are you going to do, Daryl? This is the land of the lost…and you're just the clean-up boy and I'm just the gatekeeper," Alice said.
"An' that's all the hell either one of us gonna be we don't do nothin' about it," Daryl said. "I ain't talking about savin' all of 'em…but you look into her eyes one good time…there's somebody in there. She ain't even deep down. I'm gonna find her."
Alice smiled and nodded her head.
"Then I hope you can," she said. "And…if I can help? Let me know. Just don't get your hopes up too much. You might be dancing with the devil."
Daryl chuckled.
"Then it's him that's gonna be pissed off," Daryl said. "Because I can't dance a step…"
And maybe there was nothing to be done, and maybe he was wasting his time and energy by even thinking about something like trying to help…but Daryl couldn't shake the feeling that Carol Ann McAlister was more than just a hollow shell of a woman or a name on a poorly kept file.
He couldn't help feeling like she was and could be so much more.
And he couldn't help but feel that, given the chance to be that, she was someone that he would really like to get to know better.