Heller's Punishment (10 page)

Jorge turned up
on the dot of seven and brought in a tray that smelt good. He was
more subdued than he’d been the day before, obviously having
received a serve over not finding Felicia’s drug stash.

“She’s so
determined to keep using, despite everything,” he said unhappily.
“I should have known better, but I guess it threw me that she
wasn’t wearing any panties. She deliberately distracted me. I have
to be so careful with the female patients. Someone like her is very
capable of accusing me of molesting her just to get me into
trouble.” He gave a bitter laugh and then sighed heavily. “Please
Tilly, don’t trust her for an instant. Not about anything.” He
turned to leave, then swung around once more. “I’ll be bringing her
up here again soon and I’ll pick up your tray then.”

I nodded and
tucked into the delicious breakfast. Geez, if I couldn’t get to
some exercise equipment soon, I’d end up putting on weight while I
was here.
Oh well, what the hell
, I thought as I buttered
another piece of toast. I loved food, which was one of the reasons
that I’d decided to give up on my acting ‘career’ when I’d started
working for Heller. Sure, a lack of talent and success were two
other important reasons for that momentous decision, but I didn’t
want to live the cigarette, vodka and lettuce leaf diet of the
female celebrity. I wasn’t skeletal by any means, but I was tall,
lean and muscular and still managed to keep a few nice curves in
place as well. I’d never had any complaints from my lovers about my
body, and my boobs received more than their fair share of attention
from men, so I figured that whatever I was doing was working for
me.

Around eight,
Jorge brought Felicia back to our room. She was wearing a loose
hospital style gown and was barefoot. Jorge took her into the
bathroom and stood there with the door open watching her as she
stripped off her gown to dress in the clothes I’d picked out for
her when she’d gone for her shower the evening before.

“Enjoying the
view, Jorge?” she taunted. She bent over lewdly to flash her
privates, laughing nastily over her shoulder at him.

He grimaced.
“Not particularly, Felicia. It’s a bit too well used for my
liking.”

“You wouldn’t
know what to do with it anyway,” she sneered.

“Yes, I would,
and it would involve some penicillin, tetanus shots and a stint in
a nunnery,” he snapped back at her, momentarily forgetting his
professionalism in his anger. She gave another nasty laugh then,
knowing that she had stung him, enjoying her small victory.

“I can’t wear
these jeans. They’re too big,” she complained as she pulled them
on. “Whose are they? That fat bitch in the office?”

“They’re mine,
you ungrateful cow!” It was my turn to snap at her and she laughed
again at baiting me as well. “Give them back. You can wear your
skanky ho clothes instead.”

She stepped out
of my jeans contemptuously and kicked them in my direction, before
walking to her bag in her see-through, lacy panties, slipping on
another micro miniskirt, this one a deep red colour, which clashed
in an ugly way with her violet singlet top. She slipped on the Elmo
jacket, and pulled out a pair of teetering gold sandals, frowning
at me as she remembered the loss of her ugly green shoes. She again
applied the almost-dead face powder and the garish lipstick. She
was ready for some kind of action when she’d finished, but not the
kind that a decent law-abiding woman would want to know about.

“Come on, time
to get going,” ordered Jorge. “You have group session this morning,
then lunch, then physical activity, followed by personal
counselling.”

“So fucking
boring,” she groaned and flopped down on her bed in protest.

“Get moving,
Felicia,” he insisted, pulling her by her arm off the bed. “You
have a lot of making up to do after your little stunt last night
before we can give you a clean bill of health to your parents. And
you know what that means.” They exchanged unfriendly glances. “They
will cut you off without a cent this time if you don’t make it
through the program. How long will your charming boyfriend want to
hang around you then without mummy and daddy’s generous pocket
money coming in each week?”

“Fuck off,” she
spat out, but it did the trick and she reluctantly climbed off the
bed and straightened her clothes. “Well, let’s get it over and done
with.” She teetered to the door in her heels and rattled on the
handle.

Jorge looked
back at me. “Coming too, Tilly?”

“I’d better,” I
decided and followed them out the door.

He led us on a
circuitous route to the floor below to a large bland conference
room, like that you’d see in any mid-range hotel. A circle of
chairs had been placed in the middle. A number of seats were
already taken by clients, obviously the ones trusted and motivated
enough to make their own way to the session. A quiet murmur rose
from those clients who were more social and had sat next to other
people.

Felicia
deliberately chose a chair well away from everyone else, and sat
gracelessly, her knees drawn together, feet either side of the
chair, her arms crossed in an unreceptive manner. I wasn’t sure
whether to sit near her or not, but Jorge gently took me by the arm
and led me over to some seats at the side of the room, where a few
other staff had congregated.

“We stay on the
sidelines in case anyone gets too angry or upset, or tries to make
a run for it. But generally we don’t interfere with proceedings,”
he explained.

We sat down and
he commenced chatting to an attractive dark-skinned female staff
member on his left, catching up on office gossip. More patients
came in then and almost every seat in the circle was full. I noted
that her scowling features had kept a seat free either side of
Felicia, though she didn’t seem to mind the snub from the other
clients at all.

Two very perky
and resolutely positive counsellors burst into the room, arms full
with huge sheets of paper, highlighters, marker pens and squeezy
stress toys.

“Good morning,
people!” exclaimed Perky One, a short, rotund blonde woman with a
permanent smile etched into her jolly features. She commenced
affixing paper to the wall.

“How is
everyone today?” asked Perky Two, a tall, lean, extremely elegant
woman with a slicked back bun, stunning facial features, dressed as
if she was heading off to lunch at the Hilton. She also had a smile
baked onto her skin. In fact, I didn’t see her smile reduce in
brightness to below gigawatt the entire two hours, regardless of
what anyone did or said. It became quite creepy after the first ten
minutes.

She broke the
ice by randomly throwing the squeezy toys at the clients, causing
some good-natured bickering among them as they clamoured to score
one for themselves. Felicia sat in her chair, not participating in
the game, immediately bringing herself to the attention of the
counsellors.

“Well, well, we
have Felicia back with us. How lovely to see you again, Felicia.
How have you been?” Perky One enquired. Felicia shrugged one
shoulder in an uninterested manner. Perky Two threw her a toy. She
didn’t even try to catch it, but let it bounce off her on to the
floor.

“Now, now,
Felicia,” Perky Two admonished cheerfully. “You’ll be needing that
later. We’ll all need them later, because ladies and gentlemen,
after our session today you all get to vote with them.” She beamed
even wider. “That’s right. You all get to choose who you think was
the most honest with us today and you give them your toy as your
vote. The person with the greatest number of toys wins a special
prize.”

Dear
God
, I thought,
it sounded so juvenile
. Had she
forgotten she was dealing with a group of adults? The clients
didn’t seem to mind being patronised in such a way though. The
Perkys managed to settle the group down and start the session,
advising that the topic would be on trust. They talked for a while
about what trust meant, letting the group brainstorm, writing the
responses on the paper. They then asked the clients to talk about
the issue of trust in their own lives.

Many of the
clients became quite emotional as they discussed what trust meant
to them. They opened up with each other about who they could trust
in their lives, who they thought they could trust and found out
they couldn’t, and who was not trustworthy at all. For many of
them, they discovered that the person they were least able to trust
was themselves, because of their addictions and deceitful
behaviours to support them. That self-realisation was very
powerful. There were tears galore. I blinked fiercely myself a few
times at the sad stories, trying to be professional.

However,
Felicia sat in that circle, not contributing, not participating and
not moved by anybody else’s story. She couldn’t have appeared less
engaged in the whole process if she’d tried.

At the end of
the session the clients were invited to vote with their toys for
the most honest participant. The votes were equally divided between
two patients who’d told devastatingly frank stories about just how
untrustworthy they’d been in their lives. Felicia, as a statement
of contempt, picked up her toy and left it on her own seat. Perky
One asked her to explain her vote to the group.

“I voted for
myself because I’m the only honest person here,” she said
scornfully. “I was the only one who didn’t just speak a load of
fucking bullshit for the last two boring pointless hours. And I
know that
I’m
the only person I can trust in my life.”

She stalked out
of the room, quickly followed by Jorge and me. I threw a glance
back over my shoulder to see the smiles finally wiped off the faces
of the Perkys as they sadly stared after Felicia, pity in their
eyes.

Chapter 7

Instead of
taking us back to our room, Jorge led us both to a huge dining hall
where we joined a queue for lunch. It was a self-serve buffet with
an appetising array of cold meats, a variety of salads and breads
and rolls, with a lovely fruit and cheese platter for afterwards. I
helped myself to smoked salmon, low-fat pasta salad, green salad
and caprese salad, with some fruit afterwards. Felicia didn’t eat
much, merely picked at a piece of chicken and some potato salad,
but managed to drink four cups of coffee during the meal. Jorge
urged her to eat more, but she ignored him, staring vaguely into
the distance as if she was counting down the minutes, merely
enduring her time at the clinic.

After lunch we
were locked back in the room for another hour, for a ‘rest’. I
wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be resting from because we
hadn’t actually done very much yet. Felicia idly watched TV and I
read my book. We didn’t speak to each other.

I guess I’d
thought that she would come to regard me as a big sister and I’d be
able to get her to open up to me during our time together. I’d
hoped she would tell me what had driven her to become the person
she was. But it was glaringly obvious that notion had been nothing
but frivolous vanity on my behalf. She would never tell me anything
about herself and she would never regard me as a big sister or even
a friend. To her, I was an enemy, a spy for her parents.

She went to the
bathroom frequently during that hour and I became suspicious,
querying her repeated trips.

“I had a lot of
coffee at lunch, didn’t I? It makes me pee,” she said sullenly, as
she closed the door yet again. A minute later I heard the toilet
flush and the basin run and she emerged again. Not long after,
Jorge came to get us, advising that we were going for a ramble
around the grounds of the clinic as our activity that afternoon. I
was thrilled, glad to be getting out of the room for a while, and
surprisingly Felicia was also pleased. She too had obviously
started going stir-crazy being locked up all day.

I was already
dressed for walking in jeans and runners, but regarded Felicia
doubtfully in her high heels and miniskirt. Unwillingly, I offered
her my jeans again and this time she accepted, with a very nice
thank you. She went into the bathroom and changed into them. I
handed her a belt to keep them up. She exchanged her high heels for
a pair of flat ballet shoes, which weren’t at all suitable for
walking around outside in, but at least reduced the risk that she
would break her ankle as we rambled.

A group of us
assembled on the lawn and the atmosphere was light and excitable.
Jorge was the only carer on duty, as the other clients were all
judged to be low-risk and had admitted themselves into the clinic.
I promised to look after Felicia during the walk so that he could
keep an eye on the others. We went on a nice ramble around the
grounds, which were fairly extensive and well maintained. A dense
wood surrounded the clinic, sloping steeply down to the side of the
mountain. I enjoyed the exercise, the sunshine and the fresh
air.

As we walked
around the perimeter, Felicia told me that she had to pee
again.

“Oh, for God’s
sake!” I exclaimed, not able to suppress my exasperation. “Go over
there, behind that tree. And don’t you dare piss on my jeans.”

I watched her
as she entered the wood, keeping an eye on her moving behind the
large tree. She stuck her head out from behind it.

“I don’t like
this one. It’s not private enough,” she complained, and started
quickly moving further away from me, deeper into the wood.

“Hey!” I yelled
out, running towards her. “Get back where I told you to be!
Felicia! Stop now!”

She picked up
more speed, recklessly crashing through the trees. I didn’t know
what she was up to because there was no escaping the clinic in that
direction. It only led over the side of a mountain. She suddenly
changed direction and doubled back, heading through the wood back
in the same direction from which we’d just come.