Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom Page 4

  “Wonderful!” Gail’s mother clapped. “I must say, Dr. Fell, I’m so excited to see you in action! You’ve been such a boon to the neighborhood.”

  “I do thank you for your praise, Madam Bloom,” he responded. “However, my responsibility as an upstanding member of the medical profession demands that I allow your child the luxury of privacy during her examination, should she wish.”

  “Do I really have to have a full physical?” asked Gail one last time. “I feel fine. Honest.”

  “I am afraid I must put my foot down,” said Dr. Fell, who then spent a good minute in an attempt to demonstrate putting his foot down, an activity that involved a fair amount of wobbling before he leaned on one of his purple chairs to steady himself. “A young one’s well-being is best served through preventative care. I would be remiss to allow you to neglect your health. Fret not—we will not be long.”

  He reached out as if to pat her on the head, but the shriveled muscles of his arm protested the effort and he eventually stopped trying.

  Gail came very close to frowning in front of her mother. Out of ideas, she visibly deflated, ready to accept her fate, though not without the simplest of precautions. “Mom can come,” she said quickly.

  “Indeed,” agreed Dr. Fell. “For her sake as well as yours, as I’ve yet to accumulate a proper collection of magazines. I’m afraid the only periodical I could offer you, Mrs. Bloom, is the latest edition of Blimp Enthusiast.”

  “Blimp Enthusiast! One of my favorites!” cheered Stephanie Bloom, spying the lone magazine sitting on one end of the couch.

  “Is it really? I am so pleased.” Dr. Fell did not look so much pleased as amused. “What a coincidence. I, too, find comfort and pleasure in reading about zeppelins. That is my personal copy, but you are welcome to examine its pages whilst I examine your daughter, if you like.”

  Gail furrowed her brow with apprehension. Of all the magazines in the world, what were the odds that Dr. Fell would own a copy of her mother’s favorite?

  Again. Creepy.

  “If we’re all set then,” said Dr. Fell with just a hint of eagerness, “let us commence.”

  Gail looked at the large door with the dancing kitties, then back at her mother—already on the couch and devouring the latest issue of Blimp Enthusiast. This was a bad idea. Something was wrong. Something important.

  “Do I have to?” she asked her mother, grasping at a final straw.

  “Yes, sweetie,” answered her mother without looking up from the engrossing pages of her magazine. “You have to.”

  And for Gail Bloom, that sealed the deal. Resigned, she walked over to the heavy, ominous door, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

  “AND THEN WHAT?” ASKED Nancy Pinkblossom as she and Jerry sat across from Gail at lunch and listened to her story.

  “And then I had my examination,” said Gail.

  “Yeah, but what happened?” pressed Nancy.

  “What, you’ve never had a routine physical?”

  “Of course I have, but I haven’t had one done by Dr. Fell.”

  “Did he check your blood pressure? Look down your throat? Listen to your heart with a stethoscope?” asked Jerry.

  “Yes,” replied Gail.

  “What was the room like?” asked Nancy.

  “It was a room,” answered Gail.

  “But what kind of room?” begged Jerry. “Sparkling white like a doctor’s office? Purple like his living room? A big room? A little room?”

  “It was a room.”

  Feeling the matter settled, Gail took a bite of her ham-and-cheese sandwich.

  Nancy and Jerry shared a look, and for one of the first times in their squabbling lives it was a look of neither venom nor disdain.

  “Oh, I see,” said Nancy, who did not see. “We’re just really curious about the guy, that’s all.”

  Somebody nodded. Somebody else nodded. The subject was dropped and more food was eaten in silence.

  So awkwardly quiet was the remainder of the three children’s lunch that Nancy and Jerry were able to hear Gail quietly mumble to herself, “What a nice man is Dr. Fell.”

  “I’m worried about your sister,” whispered Nancy when she managed to catch Jerry alone after school as they waited to board the school bus. “She just acted so weird at lunch when we asked her about her appointment with Dr. Fell, and then she seemed totally not there during class this afternoon. I tried to get her attention a couple of times, but she just smiled at me. And I’m pretty sure I caught her mouthing ‘What a nice man is Dr. Fell’ to herself a few times. That’s just not like her. I mean, you know her pretty good, being her little brother and all. What do you think?”

  Jerry’s first thought was to point out that Nancy had just spoken to him for twenty-one seconds straight without calling him a name, but he chose instead to focus on their mutual concern. “She didn’t eat all her lunch,” Jerry pointed out. “She usually feels obligated to eat everything because Mom goes to all the trouble to pack it for her. Something’s definitely wrong.”

  “Do you think Dr. Fell got to her?”

  It was the undeniable conclusion, but before Jerry could answer, Gail joined them in line.

  “Hi,” she said with a dreamy look on her face.

  “Hi,” said Nancy and Jerry carefully in response, as if afraid to make any sudden movements around their friend and sister.

  Gail smiled. Nancy and Jerry smiled—on the outside. On the inside, they nervously waited for a sign either proving or disproving that Gail had fallen under the spell of Dr. Fell.

  For her part, Gail was smiling on the inside as well.

  “What do you want to do when we get home?” asked Nancy, testing the waters.

  “Play on the playground of Dr. Fell!” cheered Gail.

  It appeared that Dr. Fell had indeed cast his spell.

  So it was that for the first time since its magical appearance, the playground of Dr. Fell hosted Gail and Jerry Bloom and Nancy Pinkblossom. They joined the dozens of other children scrambling over its offerings. Gail hit the playground with abandon, leaping from platform to platform, swinging from bar to bar, and climbing up wall after wall. Like the rest of the children at play, she moved with a fluidity rarely seen in a preteen—her body contorting and bending in all the right places and at all the right times to take full advantage of the wondrous structure.

  Nancy and Jerry were more deliberate in their play, with Nancy doing her best to keep up with Gail without knocking anyone else over and Jerry doing his best not to get knocked over himself, since as usual nobody seemed to notice he was even there. Each kept an eye on Gail at all times, each did their best to keep up with the frantic flow of childish glee on display, and each silently admitted that it was, indeed, a truly awesome play structure. The large number of hooligans-in-training cavorting on the playhouse made it difficult for the two sworn enemies to find moments alone to compare notes on Gail’s actions and movements, so they tried their best to keep a mental list of everything they saw, with the hope that they would be able to meet up at a later point in time to discuss their findings about their friend and sister.

  As luck would have it, Fate chose this particular afternoon, rather than any that had come before, to unveil the first true medical emergency to occur on the playground of Dr. Fell. This was not lucky for Bud Fetidsky, the injured child in question, but rather for Nancy Pinkblossom and Jerry Bloom, who witnessed the traumatic turn of events.

  The incident began with Bud swinging head over heels on a bar while squealing with glee. He was currently saving Planet Earth from an invasion by the Mighty Meaty Insect Empire (with the help of both Randy Macabrador and Albert Rottingsly), blasting his invisible ray gun at invisible Mighty Meaty Insects while zipping through the atmosphere in his invisible solar-powered rocket jet.

  Suddenly Randy called out that a patrol of Mighty Meaty Insects had landed near the boys’ interstellar space rocket. Bud knew he had to join his fellow Earth Protectors and blast some bugs, so
he twirled, spun, and leaped off the bar to a nearby platform.

  Except the platform wasn’t where he thought it was.

  So rather than landing catlike on the platform and running to Earth’s aid, Bud Fetidsky slammed a knee against the edge of a wall. This caused him to slam his other knee against a bar he didn’t remember, to bang his head against a platform he did remember, and to land very, very poorly on the shockingly hard ground he wouldn’t soon forget.

  Almost every child on the playground heard the telltale snap of bone and Bud Fetidsky’s scream of agony.

  Nancy and Jerry were quickly by Bud’s side, seemingly more concerned about their peer than any of the other children. Not that the others didn’t also gather around their fallen friend, but most of them, including Gail, seemed content with standing around waiting for somebody else to do something.

  “Are you all right?” asked Nancy, though she knew it was about as dumb a question as one could possibly ask a child who was writhing on the ground howling in pain.

  “Get back! Give him air!” yelled Jerry. “He may have just had the wind knocked out of—”

  None of the children ever learned what Jerry thought Bud had had the wind knocked out of. Not because they weren’t really paying attention to Jerry (though they weren’t) but because Bud rolled over, and everyone could see that his leg was bent in cruel and inhuman ways.

  “My, my,” wheezed Dr. Fell, seeming to appear out of nowhere, then kneeling by Bud’s side. “You’ve taken quite a tumble, my dear lad.”

  Bud screamed as if to confirm the true extent of his tumble.

  “Yes, I imagine you are in a great deal of severe pain at this particular moment, my fine young rapscallion,” continued Dr. Fell. “You’re going to require medical attention. Happily, I have an opening. Come, let us see to your most unfortunate injury.”

  Showing far more strength than any of the kids had thought possible, Dr. Fell scooped his arms under the wailing child and lifted him into the air.

  “Could one or more of you fine young children inform this poor lad’s mother of both his current state of physical torment and his whereabouts?”

  With the children by now used to the odd way in which Dr. Fell spoke, several of them turned and ran to fetch the Fetidskys.

  “There, there, young man,” said Dr. Fell soothingly to his miserable charge. “We shall have you fixed up in no time.”

  Dr. Fell carried Bud Fetidsky into his home. Show over, most of the other children returned to their play. Nancy and Jerry, however, stood rooted to the spot.

  “His leg…,” began Nancy.

  “…not supposed to bend that way,” finished Jerry.

  They remained standing at the scene of the accident for some time in an unspoken desire to watch events unfold. Soon, Mabel Fetidsky came hurrying down Hardscrabble Street, her immense bulk jiggling as she ran. She launched herself up the front steps and into the home of Dr. Fell, her face a mask of worry.

  She was still in there when the coming darkness forced Nancy and Jerry and most of the other kids to finally head home.

  —

  Bud Fetidsky was not at school the next day.

  “He probably won’t be back for a while,” reasoned Jerry aloud at lunch. Neither Nancy nor Gail was paying him any attention, however. Nancy was busy scrutinizing Gail, and Gail was busy smiling to herself. “A broken leg can take forever to heal, and Bud’s leg was about as broken as you can get. He’ll probably be on crutches for months. Do you think he’ll let me sign his cast?”

  Neither girl answered him.

  Bud Fetidsky did not let Jerry sign his cast.

  This was not due to any animosity Bud felt toward Jerry, but rather was due to the fact that when Bud Fetidsky returned to school a single day later, his leg was not in a cast. Instead, he wore a simple wooden splint that caused his leg to itch so badly, he removed it during fifth period. That afternoon he was once again saving the Earth from the Mighty Meaty Insect Empire with the help of both Randy Macabrador and Albert Rottingsly.

  The only indication that he had literally snapped his leg in half two days earlier was a slight limp that itself was gone in one more day.

  “That’s…that’s impossible,” said Jerry, standing with Nancy and Gail in front of the always-crowded play structure.

  “Maybe it wasn’t as bad a break as we thought,” suggested Nancy.

  “No way,” refuted Jerry. “You saw it. He snapped it in half.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” said Gail. “He went and saw Dr. Fell, so of course he’s OK.”

  With that, Gail joined the other children on the playground.

  “MOM? DAD? HAVE EITHER of you noticed anything weird with Gail lately?” Jerry stood just inside the kitchen Friday morning while his parents busied themselves with their rituals of drinking coffee and surfing the Internet on their iPads.

  “Weird?” grunted Jonathan Bloom, who needed at least three cups of coffee before he could speak in multiword sentences.

  “Your sister is the same sweet young darling she’s always been, Jerry,” answered his mother. “Why do you ask?”

  Jerry dropped his gaze and kicked absently at the floor for a moment. “She just seems…I dunno…I was just…” He gave up. How could he tell his parents he thought Dr. Fell had brainwashed their daughter if they were also under the odious man’s spell?

  “ ’S fine,” mumbled his father as he poured his third cup of coffee.

  “But…but…” Jerry’s increasing sense of desperation caused him to stumble over his words. “I mean, where is she right now? It’s almost time for the bus! Gail never misses the bus!”

  “Your sister ate her breakfast almost an hour ago,” purred Stephanie Bloom. “She got up early so she’d have time to play.”

  The blood drained from Jerry’s face, turning it a sickly shade of pale. “Play?”

  “She’s outside on Dr. Fell’s playground,” his mother confirmed.

  —

  Nancy Pinkblossom was grumpy.

  For some reason, her mother hadn’t yet left for work when Nancy came out of her room, which had created an awkward period during which they each sat at the table eating breakfast feeling like they shouldn’t ignore each other but not having anything to say. It wasn’t that Nancy and her mother disliked each other; it was simply that ever since Mr. Pinkblossom had left a few years ago, Nancy had resented her mother for whatever she assumed her mother had done to drive him away. Mrs. Pinkblossom, for her part, had taken her daughter’s resentment personally and had spent the better part of the last couple of years trying not to further upset her. The result had been an awkward truce in which the two tended not to interact all that much. So a breakfast of staring at each other across the table was a rotten start to each of their mornings.

  And then there was school. Nancy was not a fan of school on the best of days, and today was not the best of days. For one thing, she had gym, and she hated gym. For another, the cafeteria was serving its infamous cardboard-cutout pizza, which was perfectly barfworthy. Also, Assistant Principal Richman was wearing a hideously ugly Jabba the Hutt tie in a lame attempt to be cool. Normally, Nancy would have turned to Gail and mocked their nerdy assistant principal to brighten her mood, but that wasn’t possible—which was actually the worst part of the day.

  Her friend was not acting like the Gail Bloom Nancy had known since she’d moved into the neighborhood during kindergarten. Instead, she was wobbling about as if in a dream, glassy-eyed and bubbleheaded. It was almost like someone else was wearing Gail’s body—someone very boring. Nancy was not a fan of this new Gail, and she hoped the old Gail would show up soon and kick the imposter out.

  Making things worse, if that were possible, was that every other child at McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School seemed equally out to lunch. They walked the halls with blank grins on their faces, oblivious to their surroundings and often bumping into one another. Sometimes an adult would steer a child away from an impend
ing collision, but just as often the adult would simply stand and smile as one child bounced away from another with an audible thunk like a pimply pinball careening off an equally pimply bumper.

  And then there was all the talk of Dr. Fell.

  “Dr. Fell once saved the president’s life,” said fifth grader Aiden Grand.

  “Dr. Fell always washes behind his ears,” said fourth grader Shelly Plentyson.

  “Dr. Fell is a friend to puppies,” said third grader Jewel Sparkledink.

  “What a nice man is Dr. Fell,” said absolutely everybody.

  Topping it off was the perfectly healthy Bud Fetidsky, who spent the day acting as town crier, heaping loud, public praise on Dr. Fell while leaping about on his perfectly healthy leg, which only a short while ago had been perfectly shattered.

  Nancy wanted to scream.

  “Don’t scream,” said Jerry Bloom, coming up behind her during lunch.

  Nancy spun around, eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?” she asked suspiciously, annoyed that she hadn’t noticed him behind her.

  “So you wouldn’t scream,” he answered. “When I came up behind you. I didn’t want you to be startled and start screaming.”

  “Why are you sneaking up behind me?”

  “I didn’t want to, but you weren’t turning around and I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to you. Lunch’ll be over soon.”

  The ten-year-old girl eyed her eight-year-old archnemesis warily. She noticed he carried a large cafeteria tray laden with not only the disgusting pizza but also three large chocolate chip cookies. “How did you get three cookies?” she asked. Lunch Lady Fortunato was notoriously stingy with the cookies, hovering over them possessively like a cat curling up around its own tail. She had even been known to hiss at children who asked for a second cookie.

  “I took advantage of Lunch Lady Fortunato’s fatal flaw,” explained Jerry. “She has a phobia about mice in her kitchen. I released a spinning top just before I reached the cookies, and the noise drew her attention away long enough for me to grab extras.”