Chapter 88

word count 1180

Trudy woke up with her head clanging like an anvil. Moaning, she rolled over and, as fate would have it, went flying right off the couch. She landed with a loud thump, dazed and confused. Without getting hurt, however, since she was still so numb from her night of drinking, her body just went with the fall. And then the reality hit her. Couch? What was she doing sleeping on a couch?

With great effort, she opened her eyes, not an easy task when her eyelids each weighed a ton. From that veiled perspective, she spied Buzz sleeping in a chair opposite. A cursory glance revealed whiskey bottles and wine bottles, empty and discarded, scattered on the floor. What had they done?

Then she remembered how it all started in the kitchen over ham sandwiches. They finished her flask, and as she now dizzily recalled, Buzz had demanded Mrs. Dunn tell him where she hid his stash of liquor. There had been an argument, of that Trudy was sure. And she sort of thought she, herself, may have played a role in it. Probably a pretty good role. Trudy knew how to pick up the volume and intensify the rhetoric to get what she wanted. No silly Mrs. Dunn would ever to get in Trudy's way!

Trudy thought she recalled Mrs. Dunn tossing the key to her desk drawer in Buzz's direction on her way out the door. That's where they found his alcohol stash.

The facts having been determined, it was time to wake him up. She might have done it gently, quietly--but that wasn't Trudy's way.

"BUZZ! WAKE UP!" She yelled it as close to his face as possible.

"Wha..what? What the hell!!!! Trudy, is that you? What the hell are you doing in my house?"

"We partied last night! Doncha' remember?"

"PARTIED?" Buzz's heart almost gave out. "We didn't...you know...not so soon after Jeannie died."

"Nah. We just drank."

"Yeah, I can tell that. My head feels like a basketball. Oh, shit! Do I remember Mrs. Dunn quitting her job here?"

"Yeah, ya know, that does sound familiar. I think we got her mad about the drinkin'." Trudy smiled with a devilish grin.

"Oooooh shit!" Buzz rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. "Hey sweetie, do you know how to make coffee?"

Trudy, who was applying her signature red lipstick, stopped to glare at Buzz.

"You have got to be kidding."

A knock at the door surprised them both, in addition to causing major head throbs.

"Who the hell is that?" Buzz muttered. He looked around the room helplessly at the mess, diving for one of the bottles to get it out of sight. "Trudy, are you going to help?"

She gathered the rest and Buzz tried to straighten his clothes, smoothing his shirt. Having never made it to pajamas was a convenient thing at this point. He looked to Trudy and she nodded, indicating all was well. He hobbled to the door and opened it.

"Hello, Detective Miller? I'm Dr. Travis...Jeremy Travis. I am the court-appointed psychiatrist treating your son."

Buzz looked him over. A psychiatrist! Goddamn! Didn't the kid have enough problems? His hangover big head throbbed and his mind wandered.

"Detective Miller, may I come in?"

"Yeah, sure." He opened the door wide.

Once inside, the most glaring sight in the room for the doctor was Trudy who sat perched on the arm of the couch, looking his way with interest.

"This is my...ah, friend, Trudy Hunt. Trudy, this is Dr....what was your name?"

"Travis, Dr. Jeremy Travis." He smiled at Trudy, then directed his attention to Buzz. "Detective Miller, there were some private matters I wished to discuss with you...concerning your son." He nodded toward Trudy as if to say, get rid of her.

"There isn't anything we can say that I would mind her hearing."

"Very well, then. May I be seated?" As the doctor spoke, his worried eyes darted around the room. He turned his attention back to Buzz. "The reason I am here is, upon interviewing your boy, Adam, I found he told me some disturbing things. Mind you, I must adhere to certain principles of confidentiality, but still I thought I'd like to talk to you."

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you talking about how he wants to kill me?" Even as Buzz said it, his heart plummeted, as he realized this conversation would do little to help him keep Adam.

"Well, that's part of it. You see, Detective Miller, if a child is brought up in a household with anger issues, invariably that tension is transferred to the child, often causing him to act out his anxiety in bizarre or dangerous ways."

"Will you please speak in plain English?" Buzz felt his face flush.

"Yeah, we don't talk like that around here!" It was Trudy. She could never stay quiet for long.

Dr. Travis looked from one to the other and shifted nervously in his chair. He cleared his throat. "Well, to make a long story short, we found wounds on Adam's arm, and in fact, according to him, he was deliberately cutting himself when he unknowingly hit a vein. So when we found him, he hadn't try to kill himself, but merely made a mistake in the act of of what we call cutting. Are you familiar with the term, Detective Miller?"

"My boy was a cutter? I did that to him?" Buzz's heart collapsed into itself. This was worse than Adam threatening to kill him or even a rash act of trying to kill himself. This was Adam, day in and day out, hurting himself by degrees, a slash for every pang of anxiety, all to kill the pain of seeing his mom get hit or yelled at or hurt in a myriad of daily emotional sabotages.

He felt Trudy next to him, hugging his huge shoulders, sobbing quietly. He could tell she knew what he was thinking, perhaps even blaming herself for her role as the other woman.

Dr. Travis studied them with interest. Being a perceptive man, he understood the scene in front of him. This was a broken man, his mistress, the house where a wife suffered. This Trudy was the "woman" little Adam said his dad brought home, the one causing that final upset where the boy dangerously cut himself. Small wonder little Adam was a cutter.

"There's one other item, Detective Miller," Dr. Travis said, clearing his throat. "Upon consideration of all Adam told me, and my conversation with you, I regret to inform you it will be my recommendation that little Adam be turned over to Child Protective Services to be placed into a foster home as soon as one is found, until an appropriate adoptive family is determined. If you have an objection, you may take that up with the courts."

"Get out of my house." The words were said with grit and suppressed anger.

Being a psychiatrist, Dr. Travis could see oncoming danger, and jumped up, rushing to the door. "Good day, Detective Miller! I'll see myself out!" he said, not looking back.