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Ainsley Whitly thought that daddy’s ‘new home’ was very big, and very dark, and very scary. Her mother had been right about that. The five year old worried that her mother had been right about all the other things she’d said too. That daddy was a monster. That daddy was evil. That daddy was a ‘bad guy.’
‘Go see for yourself,’ her mommy had said. It was the same thing she’d told Ainsley’s older brother when she’d sent him to visit daddy’s ‘new home.’
‘It’s not that scary,’ Malcolm had mumbled upon his return. Ainsley had wondered if he was telling the truth, or if he was just acting brave and trying to comfort her. ‘There’s a really nice guard there. He’s tall, and he doesn’t have hair, and he has a special badge that makes the doors go click and open up –all by themselves, like magic.’
Her brother had been telling the truth about that. Ainsley hovered beside the tall guard’s legs and his hand hovered behind her shoulder, gently guiding her through the long, cold hallways. At the swipe of his badge, doors clicked and beeped as they automatically opened up for them to pass through.
They came to another red door, but this one did not open. The guard placed her in a spot off to the side and told her to stay there. He looked at his watch, pressed some buttons on it, then opened the door, poked his head in, and said, “You have a visitor. Three minutes. That’s it.” When the guard motioned for her to come, the girl hesitantly stepped over and walked with him into the room.
Her father was wearing orange pajamas that were unfamiliar and harsh on the eyes. But he did wear a familiar, welcoming smile. His chestnut hair was sprawled in the way it was always sprawled in the mornings before the sleep was brushed from it. It was probably difficult for him to brush his hair with handcuffs on. Especially when the handcuffs were also attached to the chain belt around his waist. Ainsley struggled to decide which feature to focus on; his smile, or his chains.
Or the giant cage that he was stuck inside.
“Ainsley!” he beamed from behind the bars. “My little angel.” He lowered himself to her height, kneeling at the front of the cage. “Hello, sweetheart!”
She didn’t say anything. She simply held her stuffed animal tight with both arms and stayed next to the tall guard’s legs.
“Oh, you brought Mister Giggles with you,” her daddy grinned, pleased to see the plush creature again. “How is Mister Giggles doing?” he asked with a colorful voice. He spoke as if they were playing in her bedroom, not as if he was in a very big, very scary prison.
“Good,” she mumbled, her tiny voice taking up a very small amount of space in the wide, foreboding room.
Her father’s smile remained as he asked with slightly more awareness of the situation, “And how are you doing?”
She nervously shifted her arms around Mr. Giggles. “Okay,” she mumbled again, burrowing her face in the animal’s synthetic fur.
He shook his head with a longing look. “I miss you so much, darling. I want to hug you so desperately.”
The truth was, she felt the same. But she didn’t respond, only hugging Mr. Giggles tighter. The child wasn’t as talented at hiding her emotions as her father was at hiding his. He saw them, and asked, “What’s wrong, angel?”
“Everyone… keeps telling me… you’re the bad guy,” she struggled to admit.
He hesitated before inquiring, “Do you think I’m the bad guy?”
Ainsley didn’t answer.
Martin waited.
Still, she didn’t answer.
He blinked and lowered his gaze to his cuffed hands for a second. “Sweetheart… I may have done some… bad things, but…” he struggled to admit. He renewed his smile and shone it at her, reminding, “I’ve done a lot of good things too.” Lifting his brows, he tilted his head and added, “In fact, I’ve done a lot more good than bad.”
She thought about that, and asked, “How much?”
“How much more?” he clarified.
The girl nodded.
He glanced to the wall. “Well… they’re saying I… hurt twenty people, is that right?”
“Twenty three,” she mumbled. It was nearly as high as the young girl could count. Mommy had told her that it was all of her toes, and all of her fingers, plus three. That was a lot.
“Yes, so…” Martin eased, “If I’ve done twenty three bad things, can you guess how many good things I’ve done?”
The girl thought deeply, making a face similar to that which Malcolm made when he thought deeply about something. “Thirty?” she guessed, knowing that was the next highest number from twenty.
“More,” he encouraged warmly, prompting her to raise her number.
She chose the next biggest number in her head and winced, “Fifty?”
“Hundreds,” he grinned, professing, “I’ve done hundreds of good things, Ainsley.”
She didn’t seem to believe him, or at least, she didn’t seem able to wrap her head around that big of a number.
He shifted on his knees, gesturing gently with his hands in their limited range of motion. “Think of every day that I went to work at the hospital. Each of those days, I helped probably five, sometimes ten people.” He held two fingers in front of his chest, the highest point at which he could lift them. “So, in only two days of work, I helped just as many people as I hurt,” he told her, as if his virtues canceled out his sins. “You could think of it as; I had two bad days. But all the rest were good.”
Ainsley thought about that. Two was a much smaller number than twenty three. And everyone had ‘bad days,’ didn’t they?
“And I worked a lot of days,” Martin nodded. “I’ve been going to work –doing good work, as a doctor– for longer than you’ve been alive,” he explained, putting it into perspective for her.
She felt a lot better, hearing that. Her daddy was right. He had done plenty of good things. Much more good things than bad. In fact, when he put it like that, this was all starting to seem almost unfair, to the little girl. “Then why do they still say that you’re a bad guy?” she asked, confused.
“Well,” Martin tipped his head and explained, “Sometimes people like to only focus on the bad, and ignore the good.” He made a face and teased, “It’s a terrible injustice of society.”
The girl didn’t know what those big words meant.
Above the child, Mr. David shot a look at his patient. Dr. Whitly caught it, and refrained from preaching further. He kept his attention locked onto his daughter.
“Have I ever done anything bad to you?” Martin asked her, feigning worry.
Ainsley thought about that. She thought very hard, and then she shook her head.
“No. Of course not,” Martin grinned affectionately. “You’re my little girl, and I love you very much.”
Ainsley curled her fingers around her stuffed animal.
“I would never hurt you, sweetheart. Do you know that?”
She nodded.
Mr. David’s watch beep-beeped, beep-beeped.
The girl looked up at the device as the guard silenced it, and Martin’s smile fell from his face as her eyes were briefly averted. He quickly concealed his dash of panic as Mr. David murmured, “Time to go,” and told them both to “Say goodbye.”
With a grin big enough to disguise the pain glistening in his eyes, Martin re-equipped his cheerful facade and urged in a fond rush, “Ains, you can come back again whenever you want. Alright? I’m always going to be right here, waiting for you.”
Mr. David placed his touch on the child’s shoulder, but did not usher her out yet, giving her a moment to respond. She did not. She was too consumed by the overwhelming thought of her father, being there, in that cage, with those chains, for always.
“Okay?” Martin prompted fearfully. “Ains?”
“Okay daddy,” she mumbled distractedly, staring at the chains around his wrists.
Mr. David murmured a low reminder as he guided her toward the door, “Say goodbye.”
Operating on auto-pilot, she did as she was told and followed his guiding hand. “Bye daddy.”
Her daddy’s smile crumbled. “Goodbye, my angel,” he whispered, moving his hands to hold onto the cold iron bars in front of his knees. He wanted to say so much more. He wanted to say everything except ‘goodbye.’ He was dying to tell her so many things –anything to make her stay. Anything to keep her, there and as his own.
He yearned to scoop her up and ball her body in his arms and hug all of her, so tightly. He yearned to kiss the thin, blonde, baby hair on her head, and smell the faint scent of applesauce and peanut butter that naturally perfumed her scalp. But he knew that if he ever did those things again, then he’d never let his child go. Nothing in the world would be able to pry her from his arms. They could kill him, and he still would not let go of her.
Perhaps they knew that too, and that was exactly why it was forbidden.
Ainsley kept turning around to look over her shoulder. Her daddy forced a smile to remain on his face, but she could tell that it was a difficult, heavy smile to bear. It threatened to break and he was doing everything he could to remain strong, despite his anguish. He was hurting, maybe even enough to cry after she left.
The girl squeezed Mr. Giggles. He made her feel better when she hurt and when she wanted to cry. But her daddy had nothing to squeeze.
She glanced back one last time, then faced forward as the guard led her through the door. But she couldn’t leave, yet. In a blur, she slipped under Mr. David’s arm and ran back into the room, straight to the cage. The child reached out and pushed Mr. Giggles through the bars, and then she ran back to the guard so she didn’t get in trouble.
She moved so quickly that her father didn’t have time to react. She darted so close, but he didn’t know what to say. The soft toy fell into his hands and he glanced at it before staring after her again, slow to realize she was giving it to him as a gift. It made him smile again, like a syringe of happiness had been stabbed and injected into his dead, dried-up heart.
The girl looked back to watch her daddy’s expression mend, and it bred a small grin of her own. Mr. David tossed Martin a look that promised a discussion about that stuffed animal later, and then closed the door.
Martin continued to smile as he held that silly toy in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over its synthetic fur before pressing it to his chest.