Broken Dreams {Father Figure & AnnaBeth Belle}

[AnnaBeth]

"This can't be right," she muttered, looking down at her phone and the walking directions it was giving to her destination. The arrow on her GPS pointed straight into what looked like part of a botanical garden; an unkempt one. Giant elephant ears and other plants she didn't recognize limited vision to mere feet, inches in some case, and there was no sign of the office. Noel frowned and turned in a slow circle, trying to orient herself. That was a joke, she thought. North was there, South was there, she was roughly 250 feet above sea level and the wind was 5 knots at 30.

Okay, the last was cheating since she'd just heard the same information repeated in the wireless headset lodged in her right ear and hidden by her dark hair. It was receiving streaming tower chatter from the international airport on the east side of town courtesy of an app on her phone. In her head, clear as if it were on screens in front of her, Noel visualized the air traffic governed by the ATCs on duty. She recognized their voices and usually hers would have been one of them. Noel was an Air Traffic Controller, an extremely gifted one with the spatial reasoning and attention to detail and, above all else, calm that was required to keep the planes in the country flying. Young for the job, recruited so that her first day of training and last day of college were the same, Noel was a prodigy and absolutely loved her career. If she could, she'd stay in the tower day and night because when it came right down to it, Noel was the only one capable of keeping everyone safe and the flow of traffic going. No one was as good as her and she didn't trust anyone else to handle it.

Which was why she was currently on administrative leave, banned from even visiting the tower, and required to go visit a shrink.

If she could only find him.

Just as Noel was about to push through the brush she spotted the red cinders of an unpaved pathway leading in the general direction she needed to go. A few minutes walk and the GPS said that the building that was ensconced in the trees and plants like a jewel in a ring was the doctor's office. Funny, it looked more like a house. Or maybe a plantation. It was hard to tell because of all the vegetation. The path ended at a bank of floor to ceiling windows with a door set in one side. Noel opened it and stepped into what could have been a sitting room. Only the clipboard waiting on the edge of the couch, with her name - Noel Renard - already filled in at the top, told her she was in the right place. A Post-It was attached to the form.

Answer honestly was all it read, writing firm and bold and obviously done in a man's hand.

Snorting quietly through her nose, Noel took the clipboard and began to fill it out. She didn't sit, didn't even stay in the same place, but paced randomly around the room. It was clear she was multitasking as interesting bits of radio talk between pilots and controllers flowed into her ear. Most of the questions were routine; allergies, medication, surgeries, medical conditions, all the fun stuff. There wasn't any mention of insurance though. Probably that was worked out since she'd been referred here by...

An email, actually. No one called her and told her where to go once she'd been placed on leave, just an email that gave the directions to report to this office on this date at this time to be evaluated and potentially cleared to return to work. Who had sent it? She was sure it had an FAA email address but couldn't recall what it was.

"No, you idiot," she said out loud. "You've got an A380 Heavy taking off in two minutes and that will lock down the runway for your next in line for three minutes. Let the G6 go first and you save two minutes in your queue. It's like you don't even think!"

Shaking her head at the mess she heard developing, Noel picked up the speed of her pacing as she got deeper into the form.

Phobias? Um, did clowns count? Bees. That was true. Bees freaked her out completely and she'd wrecked her first car when one flew in the window. Though she'd never been stung by one they just scared her to death. Noel didn't even like to eat honey.

Compulsions? That was easy. Making sure the job was done, and done right, and done by her and only by her. She often came in behind others and redid their work just so it was correct. Control, she answered in big bold letters and underlined with three precisely parallel lines.

Number of sexual partners? Ever, in the last year, yesterday? she wrote, hating the lack of precision in the question.

Then the questions got really odd, like she was taking some kind of personality test. It reminded Noel of the psych exam they'd all taken during training. If you were going to trust a person with multi-million dollar aircraft and hundreds of lives you wanted to make sure that the person you gave the job to was stable and not into self harm or harming others. Those she answered properly, knowing that they cross checked somehow with one another and you couldn't lie consistently enough to not be caught lying. Noel was smart but she'd never figured out how to beat them.

Finally she was done and signed at the bottom, not reading the very dense and very fine print at the bottom. It could have obligated her to anything but, just like a computer software agreement, no one really read them. After looking around for a moment she saw that there was a slot in the wall, like a mail slot on a front door, with a small plaque over it that said "Completed Forms" Noel pulled hers off the clipboard and slid it through the slot then resumed pacing.

Kept slender by nerves, genetics, and often forgetting to eat, Noel still possessed the subtle curves of a woman and wasn't a stick, but they were subtle. Her hair was black, cut short although with long bangs that she kept out of the way with headbands or bobby pins or clips. Porcelain skin that was kept that way by liberal use of sunscreen and long clothing and hats when she was outside and, her best feature in her own opinion, pale blue eyes. Sure, that meant she often got headaches but even Noel admitted they were mesmerizing. And why not? She was pretty, even if she hadn't dated anyone in, well, a long time. It wasn't her fault she was too busy with work and that other people didn't understand Noel's need to be connected 24/7 to the tower and her sporadic sleep schedule and they were just stupid. All of them. They didn't understand how crucial her work was. How important. How she was the only one that could do it and get it right.

Sighing in frustration, Noel finally sat down on the couch then pulled her feet up to her right side and hugged one of the pillows into her tummy. When was the doctor going to call for her? She'd been here thirty-three minutes already and wanted to get it over with.

Yawning, she shook her head side to side, ebony hair flying then falling back into straight orderly rows. A little pick me up is what she needed. Unfortunately her bag only produced three empty bottles of 5 Hour Energy and an equally empty can - a big one - of sugar free Red Bull. Why had she kept the can? Oh, yeah, she was walking and didn't see a trash can nearby. There wasn't even any gum.

Yawning again, longer this time, Noel decided to make the best use of her time and catch a nap if the doctor was going to be so slow. Leaning to the side, she rested her head on the arm of the leather sofa, pillow still hugged to her body, and closed her eyes. While she slept, the faint sound of the headset in her ear continued and though she didn't realize it, Noel occasionally opened her eyes, looked around, and immediately went back to sleep. It was entirely unconscious but it was evident that something was indeed wrong with her.

 

[Father Figure]

Everyone had something wrong with them.

That was the truth and never let anyone tell you differently, though it hardly mattered if they bothered to do so. People, he had often found, were intractable animals that were stuck into their ruts and were hardly ever going to find their way out of them. It was something you could never convince them of, that was the problem in the end, that the human animal had to ensure it's own mental safety by providing a rationale for it's insanity. It was a defense mechanism, some psychological equivalent of survival of the fittest, and as it served no reasonable purpose to make yourself feel that you were wrong...you always tried to justify you were right. You could take addicts, murderers, abusers, manic depressives, and pedophiles and once you sorted through all the bullshit that they espoused they inevitably blamed something outside of their control for the actions that they engaged in. They always shirked the responsibility, passed the buck, and rationalized that it could be no other way.

This man was a cynic, but he was a strange kind of cynic, he was the kind that actually felt a human being could grow...truly grow, but it was such a rarity as to be unnoticeable by most of society. People always pointed towards the soaring heights that the human condition could achieve, but that was not where growth occurred for a person. No, growth occurred down in the chasm...where someone had fallen so deeply that it shattered them, where someone had finally hit rock bottom that their only choice was to change or to continue the way they were. That was where you found the people where you could make a difference in their lives. It was those people that you stared at and politely asked if the pain of remaining the same outweighed the pain of change...and it was only when it did, only when remaining in the cycle of their lives was so unbearable that they could break free and become something magnificent. Something truly human.

The Philosophy of Dr. Robert Ingram.

The name had come with the accolades some might not have expected from a person willing to see private clientele, and yet this man had taken what would have been considered an award winning career at the top of his field and decided that he would directly reach out to others. From all rumors it seemed he was picky, that he was quite choosy about who he decided was going to receive his attention, and whatever about Noel that had stood out was perhaps something she herself did not know...yet he had contacted her and the appointment had been arranged. Perhaps it had been the job choice she had taken, perhaps it had been the strange mental acumen she held, or perhaps it had been the fact that she was obviously suffering because of both her choice and her world view. He was not about to second guess himself when he had looked at her file, he merely had given it a once over and realized that this person might be someone he could help.

The next time she opened her eyes he was sitting across from her in one of the chairs, his eyes thoughtful as they stared at her. Whatever she had written down he would review later, it was all make work really, and for now he just wanted that opening dialogue with her. Those eyes were sharp, yet the man that they belonged too hardly seemed to be the owner of them. No, this man seemed surprisingly mundane. Slightly below six feet in height, broad shouldered and heavy set, the gentleman in question was every bit the proper professional middle class man. He might as well have screamed conservative Christian from every inch of him. He was dressed in business casual, one leg crossed over the other, and he gave a small smile of his full lips as he saw her finally realize he was there and he spoke with directness...there was nothing hinting at the typical bullshit counseling a person expected to receive.

"Noel, I'm Dr. Ingram. I would say I was here to help you, but I can't...only you can help you. I'm just here to listen as you figure that out. So...let's just start simply, why were you sent here and why do you think you were sent here?"

 

[AnnaBeth]

"I'm on administrative leave as the result of an investigation into irregularities in my reported hours on shift," Noel replied without hesitation, "leading to a situation where my actions allegedly," she emphasized the word with disdain, "may have compromised aircraft safety due to fatigue." She sat up, both feet flat on the floor, knees together, not touching the back cushion and sat the pillow aside to clasp her hands in her lap. Her nails were trimmed short. No, they were more likely chewed short looking at the rough edges. "A condition of my being cleared to return to work is that I undergo a full physical and psychological evaluation and when they certify I am just fine," her voice rose at the last two words, "then. Then they'll reinstate me."

"That's why I'm here," she concluded, looking Dr. Ingram in the eye, though her own flickered nervously away when she sensed the calm and power in them.

Noel waited and when it became apparent that Dr. Ingram's silence compelled she answer the other question, she tossed her head angrily, black hair flying like silk in the wind before a storm. Now Noel stood and began to pace, though not in any discernible pattern. "Why do I think I'm here? I think I'm here because they're all intimidated by me and snitched me off so I wouldn't be able to tell them the mistakes they made every second of every day. So I wouldn't show them up and make them look dumb. I think I'm here because pilots like me, they trust me, fuck some of the even ask me out and want to be with me without ever seeing my face."

"They're jealous and they're stupid and why can't they do anything right?" she asked angrily. "I'm really, really good at what I do, Doctor. You can appreciate that, right?" Noel felt like she was talking into empty space for all the reaction she could sense from the Ingram. Maybe this appeal to his own competence would get her what she needed.

"It's like," she ran her through her hair, the ebony strands slipping silently between them and the action pulling her shirt tight across her breasts. Noel sat back down on the couch only this time her legs were crossed at the ankles and knees apart. "It's like triage, okay?" she said in a forced calm and lower volume tone. She needed to look like she had it together. "Only, not really. I mean...you have to prioritize. Deal with emergencies first then everyone else in order of need. You just have to know what's really an emergency and what's really important and balance that with the schedule and traffic patterns and coordinating with other towers and pilots attitudes. Imagine that there's a patient only you can take care of, right?" Noel nodded, willing Ingram to nod along with her. "And if you don't do it then they don't get better. Or they get sort of better but you know you could have done it better, more better, and done it the right way. So do you want to do it right the first time or let someone else do it and then clean up their mistakes."

"I'm fine," she said, drawing out the last word. "I would never put my planes or my passengers in danger. Just sign the form and give me a prescription and I promise I'll fill it and take them like I'm supposed to. Okay? Okay. So just...make your notes or whatever and I'll be on my way." Noel smiled and stood up, feeling like the session had gone well and already planning how she'd clean things up when her next shift began. Reaching for her phone, she thumbed the volume up so she could hear the radio traffic better and half turned away from Dr. Ingram.

 

[Father Figure]

He was not necessarily keeping quiet for the reason she assumed, it was not some psychological technique like he was attempting to dissect her, but it was a technique that would allow him to get to the bottom of everything. Nature abhorred a vacuum. If he remained silent then she would fill it, and fill it she did with her words, with her thoughts, as if writing them out for him to see. There was no judgment necessarily in his face, nothing but that calm resoluteness that she had detected in his eyes, and it was that calm which was the part that she had never experienced yet, someone so certain of the fact that they were right in their approach that there was no room to maneuver around them. It was why he was not liked by other medical professionals, why he was not appreciated by his friends for his directness, and yet countless time and time again he was proven to be fundamentally correct in his perceptions of the world.

Yet this was not about him, for now this was about her.

Her. As she spoke he could not help but appreciate who she was, the way she moved, even if it was a bit frantic and uncertain. It was like seeing a vulnerable animal, prey, just waiting to be pounced upon and every moment that she moved merely emphasized that fact. Her uneasiness, her uncertainty in her own skin, and the quick changes of emotion and position. It was all designed to express the one inherent underlying fact that she had not even bothered to mention...that she felt an emptiness in her life, that she felt a loneliness, and that she hid it behind her work. Her work allowed her to ignore that truth, that fundamental underpinning that she could not face, and that was as an outcast she felt no connection to anyone....and if she was forced to face it she was not sure she could continue to survive. So she mired herself in the idea that somehow she was better than others, that somehow she was needed, and ignored her own pain.

Once she was done he gave a small smile at her final words as if she was being humorous, even though he knew she wasn't. He lightly bobbed his foot up and down, having long ago crossed his legs before he made a small motion of one hand. "Sit down and turn your phone off. In this office you'll show me the measure of respect I deserve." He didn't follow it up with anything, there was no threat involved. Oh, threat existed to be sure, after all she had been sent here by her work and needed his approval in order to return to it. He could have held that back from her, told her if she didn't behave that he'd have to punish her, but he didn't bother saying that at all. He merely demanded respect from her and there was little doubt that if he did not receive it that he would not put up with her attitude in the slightest. He did not wait for her to reply, instead he merely spoke further, following up his statement with some inherently brutal truth.

"Things aren't going the way you want them too, Noel. No matter what you think, no matter how hard you imagine you've got it all under control. They are spiraling out of control and this is just the first step to the plummet. So, you can decide here and now...right now, if you want to pull back up from the freefall you're in. You see for me it doesn't matter, I can wait until you crash and burn if you want me to do so. Or...I can do the job you need and guide you back on course. Your choice, but you need to make it today. I don't have time to waste on people determined to destroy themselves."

 

[AnnaBeth]

His voice was perfect. She hadn't really noticed it before, not the first time he asked a question, but Noel noticed it now. Calm and steady paced, each syllable crisp and perfectly enunciated. On a radio he'd be understandable by anyone who even had half a headset and a jacked up comm cord. There was a gravity to it, not arrogance but a certainty that what Dr. Ingram said was right. Like she was. Like the pilots she directed with her equally calm but much much faster paced voice and less rich tone, Noel complied with immediate trusting precision. Fingers not wholly her own flicked the app into the ether and her other hand dug the earpiece out. It felt cold to have it gone and the surrounding sounds outside the office were suddenly clear. Frogs maybe, something that wasn't a bird or a cat anyway. Noel didn't get out much into the woods or jungle or whatever it was he had going outside his office. Far above she heard a plane passing over and her fingers twitched but stopped when Noel saw his eyes follow her gesture.

She sat, as bidden, and balanced her phone on her knee while Dr. Ingram continued.

As if he held the strings to her psyche, Dr. Ingram plucked at her emotions and the core of her being with his cunningly chosen words. Everything was a play on planes, flying, control, disaster. It was so obvious that Noel should have caught it on the conscious level and sneered at the therapist for being so clumsy in his approach. Dr. Ingram was anything but clumsy though and he got the words past the girl's defenses and stuck them deep inside.

It was intimate and uncomfortable at the same time and Noel flushed.

"I don't want to destroy myself," she said, voice much slower and less certain than it had been when she felt like she was managing the situation. "I just want to get back to work. I mean," her hands fluttered before her in uncertainty of how to express herself. "That's not bad, right? There's nothing crazy about wanting to go to work. They need me," Noel asserted. "They trust me to take care of them, Doctor."

 

[Father Figure]

The effect that he had was immediate and recognizable and in truth it was something that he'd experienced before when working with a woman. He understood what he was, deep down, and that people responded to it with unconscious obedience. It was not even something he tried to do, no attempt to manipulate the other individual, it was a mere natural outgrowth of the human need for someone to lead them...a pack mentality calling back to the earliest aspects of their humanity, their animalism. It was not something to be ashamed of, no matter what society tried to teach women nowadays, that they would respond biologically to a confident and assertive man. That aggression was somehow wrong. It was survival to attach yourself to someone who could protect you, it was instinct to understand that a person knew what they were doing and to yield control, and this man...he knew what he was doing on more than the instinctual level. He had control of that side of himself, that natural dominance, and he used it to good effect to get his way.

Thank God for the world that getting his way entailed helping others.

There was something different though in this instance, something that he himself did not quite want to address, and that was when Noel did as he bid...when he saw the flush in her face, he himself felt something that he was not supposed to indulge in. It was in the litheness of her form, the way she smelled...a scent in the air that he caught, and just as he demanded dominance....she demanded something else. It was in every line of her body, the wish for someone to come along and show her that she was worth more than just her job. That she was worth more than her loneliness told her she was. It made her vulnerable and like any predator he responded to it. He felt that stirring deep down in the pit of his stomach, his brow furrowing just slightly before smoothing out so that he could maintain an air of control. It was unseemly to think of doing anything with her, unprofessional, but...he had been unprofessional in the past had he not?

However, he wanted to address her words and address them properly, his voice holding that same directness. "They don't need you, that's the problem and that's the problem you are afraid to face. You are already facing it right now with the fact that they've put you on leave, that there is a level of distrust, your obsession is beginning to cause problems at work...or you wouldn't be talking to me." He idly watched her so that she could take that in, his eyes narrowing just the tiniest of bits as he spoke. "The truth though is I don't give a damn about your work, I could care less about airplanes or what happens with them, because I'm not here to fix your job...no matter what your employers say. I am here to fix you and after that you can make the determination as to whether or not that job is what you want, after that you can decide if you need to move on or want to invest once more, and that is the crux of the problem...everything you do relates back to something else, but it doesn't relate back to you."

His eyes were perhaps a bit frightening in that moment, intimidating as he leaned forward in his chair to gaze at her, his voice compelling...almost hypnotic as he continued his words. "Tell me what you need inside. Don't think about it, don't stop, right now. Tell me!"

 

[AnnaBeth]

No serpent since Satan seduced Eve had held a woman's eyes the way Dr. Ingram held Noel's. Unaware she was doing so, the young woman leaned in as he spoke, her pupils dilating so that her pretty blues were intense thin rings around their dark centers. Her throat was tight, her face paler than usual, making it almost white, and Noel's fingers trembled in her lap, one nail she hadn't managed to quite eat down to the quick rattling against the screen of her phone. "I-," hesitating, not willing to put it into words but deep down realizing this might be a safe place, a safe person to tell, the thoughts in her mind vocalized themselves without her consent. "I want someone to make me stop!" Too late to contain them, her free hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened even more over the top of her fingers. Shocked, she just looked at Dr. Ingram in horror at being betrayed, being made vulnerable and...and stupid!

"What the fuck!" she blurted out and stood at the same time. Noel's movements were quick but uncoordinated, instinctive rather than graceful. Her right hand came back, phone clenched in it, and her arm swing in an arc level with her shoulder. At the end it paused, Noel clearly on the verge of either slapping Dr. Ingram or clouting him on the side of the head with her fist of phone. Instead she trembled and then let it drop, not defeated exactly but the pressure of civilized behavior keeping her from striking another person. "This is bullshit," the young woman said. "I'm leaving. Sign the fucking form or refer me to someone else."

It was a good thing the wall had a round rubber pad affixed opposite where the door handle landed. Noel tested the limits of it as she swung it open and it bounced off in a shuddering smack in her wake as she left, feet speeding up from an angry walk into a stumbling trot of flight. Occasionally a leaf or branch slapped at her as she paid little attention to her progress along the path, speed being more important than sticking to the middle. Eventually Noel reached her car. Shutting the door after she sat down behind the wheel, she breathed erratically as panic and fear battled with determination and anger inside of her head. Moment to moment the battle surged back and forth with both sides winning and both sides losing. Shaking from the intensity of it, unable to fully catch her breath, Noel grabbed both sides of the steering wheel and pulled her head down hard onto the upper rim, keeping it there as she trembled.

They didn't need her. They didn't need her. They didn't need her. Noel felt the bottom falling out of her world and didn't know what to do. There wasn't a crisp command to issue, someone to come to her with a problem for Noel to solve, or a crisis that she could fix and receive praise, even grudging praise, from them and bank it inside as proof of her self worth, as evidence she was good! If she didn't have that, Noel couldn't function. She needed to be needed. Needed structure and approval so she could go on living.

Shakily, taking three attempts, Noel managed to get the key in the ignition and start the car.

 

[Father Figure]

He'd known.

Of course he had, that was why he was here. He was not being cruel towards anyone in understanding that there was no such thing as a special snowflake, that individuals often took many of the same paths in life, and that like the biological computers that they were...if they exhibited certain traits and were impacted with the same variables then they would arrive at the same solutions. So he had gauged the proper amount of input he had to provide in order to get the output that he had expected, in the end it had nothing to truly do with him, but that was something she would realize when the time came. For now he had to be patient and allow her the ability to come to that realization. He couldn't let her know yet that the realization was something integral, something important, something that would let her understand that just because you were not some unique creature...that you could be. That as a species they were wasting their lives as animals and being trained to believe that there was nothing but the flesh and that they no longer could become greater than the sum of their parts.

So he had pushed her. He had read her like a book and her anger had come on like a freight train, not towards him no matter what she wanted to say, but towards herself. This had very little to do with him in the slightest, it was all about her revelation and facing it and the fact of the matter was that she wanted just for once to not be in control. That all her effort into her work, all the hours spent, all the endeavors to just be recognized by her peers were nothing more than her attempt to stop herself from realizing that she was out of control. That she needed that bridge, that moment of clarity to find some way to come to terms with what was happening in her life. He contained his physical reactions as she moved, not flinching when she got ready to hit him, merely giving her a long look of understanding. He watched her as she began her little temper tantrum, his eyebrows raising just the tiniest of bits as she slammed his door rather breathtakingly, and he heard every word she said...though he opted to ignore all of it.

It went deeper than that. She wanted peace.

So he had a choice. He understood the correct decision but he still had a choice. He could either walk out after her and provide the lifeline that she so desperately needed or he could just shut that door and let her come to her senses and make her own decisions for herself. He knew the former was what was required and that the latter would just lead her further down the wrong path...but was she the kind of person who could actually make the changes she needed to in order to survive. Just as she was coming to terms with something he was as well, and it was the opposite side of the equation...because she was vulnerable, she was beautiful, and he could already feel the hint of pheromones in the air that was driving him wild. He wanted her back and that was the dangerous part. He paused, looking down at the ground, before he followed her out to the parking lot. As the engine revved he came round the corner, pausing to merely look at her as she sat there, his dignified frame silhouetted in the shadows.

He was waiting for her.

 

[AnnaBeth]

The front of the car dipped as Noel braked hard. Never in danger of hitting him, Dr. Ingram wouldn't have been so foolish as to permit that, Noel stopped the car with twenty feet to spare. She was thrown forward by the motion, not having put on her seatbelt, and thumped painfully into the steering wheel. "Fuck!" she cursed and pushed herself back in the seat then swept her black hair out of her eyes. I should have never gone for bangs, Noel groused. Though she was deep in the process of growing them back out, her hair still had a tendency to get in the way. Whether it was the adrenaline of seeing him appear and having to stop, or the physical pain of hitting the steering wheel, Noel was able to pull a little bit of self-control back around her. Doing so meant she trapped the hateful, hurtful words inside, the words that said they didn't need her.

The sunlight caught the dirt on her windshield and gave a golden tint to her normally pale skin. It also showed her eyes, eyes that were so clear and bright they almost shone, or was that reflection from not yet shed tears filling them and threatening to spill over? Noel stared over the top of the wheel at the doctor while in the background Bad Things played on the radio. "...Don't think that I can explain it. What can I say, it's complicated...". Without looking away from Ingram, Noel reached over and pushed the knob to turn the radio off. Hum of the engine, dry wheeze of the AC, a thumping heavy hammering in her ears that was her heart. Finally Noel turned the wheel, angling so that she could drive past Dr. Ingram. Her head tracked to follow him and just when it seemed she'd pass on, bright red lights flared as she braked and came to a stop with her window even with his body. Through the glass the young woman looked over, looked up like a penitent, into the calm eyes of the doctor. Foot still on the brake and transmission in gear, she pushed the switch and the window went down with an electric grind.

"Get in."

 

[Father Figure]

Get in?

This was more than unexpected, this was incredibly unprofessional and unorthodox no matter what reasons he wanted to use in his defense for doing so. For the briefest moment something touched that face that had not been there before, a brief hint of indecision as he tried to determine what he was going to do with the request. His body paused in that second from doing anything, perhaps a bit of worry creeping in behind those glasses, but whatever thoughts were truly there were gone and he had one inevitable choice. Get in and help her or let her go and see if she just self-destructed and never returned. It was that last part that bothered him, because deep down he had to ask himself if he could live with the idea of never knowing...because if she did fall apart nobody would be calling Dr. Ingram, nobody would be letting him know a single thing, he would be left with just the silence of an voice mail box that had gone full. His lips pressed together and he reached out to the door, opening it and slipping in beside her.

As he slid in next to her he glanced over at her, a moment of gauging whether or not she was in any condition to drive him around anywhere. She hardly looked like it, hardly looked like she was capable of making her own decisions with any amount of coherency. She looked like she had in the office and that was what happened when you took away the life preserver that someone had been holding onto with desperation...you finally got to see what they looked like when they were drowning. It was what she was running from, what she was struggling with, and it wasn't truly the idea that others didn't need her. It was the idea, deep down, that she didn't need them...that she needed something else in life, something more to make her whole, and that lack of it was chewing her up inside. His eyes were almost soft at the way she offered herself up to him, how she had looked like a supplicant asking whether or not he approved of what she was doing. The patent truth was...he did not.

His voice mildly asked. "Where are we going?"

 

[AnnaBeth]

"Airport," she answered tersely, voice still trembling and on the verge of losing whatever vestige of control she held over it.

Noel might have lost it earlier, might be completely broken inside as Dr. Ingram knew and she was in denial of. The FAA might have suspended her right to direct air traffic and banned her from the tower but what they couldn't take, what Noel never lost control of, was her spatial reasoning. It tested off the charts, putting her in the savant range, and it was why she worked at the business airport in the US and why its safety record and audits were as clean as they could possibly be. It manifested during the drive as Noel navigated the dense, fast moving traffic and confusing interchanges without seeming to give them thought. Ingram noticed Noel's eyes never stopped moving, going from mirror to mirror to mirror and then to the windshield and down to the speedometer. Somehow all that information flowed into the young woman, was processed with uncanny speed and precision, and let Noel anticipate traffic patterns far in advance of the other drivers. Before many of them made their decisions, Noel would sharply but smoothly change lanes, brake, accelerate or twitch her car aside enough to avoid a problem and to slot them into a new, safe lane. Lights were never red for her and once, when a hill afforded a split second glimpse of stalled traffic ahead, Noel twitched them onto a series of side streets and came out ahead of the mess. Nor did she drive slowly, except when it actually made progress faster. Not reckless but on the verge of it, Noel pushed her little car hard.

At the checkpoint to get into the restricted side, Noel's credentials opened the electronic gate and she drove them on a winding, single lane asphalt road to the very far end of one of the enormous runways. Though still behind another fence, it was as close as you could get.

Noel stepped out of the car and turned, facing into the sunlight and shading her brow with her hands. "Watch," she told the doctor and motioned with her free hand towards the distance.

Seeming to sink towards them in slow motion an enormous wide-bodied airliner floated out of the sky, engines barely audible. The pinprick of a sun bright light shone from the front wheel and it sank, and sank, and sank until it seemed it would crash on top of them, it's leviathan bulk far bigger than it ever seemed when boarding through a jetway. When it passed over it blotted out the sky and it was so close that most people instinctively ducked. Noel turned to follow it and when the blast of its idled down engines reached them along with the thunderous noise it blew her black hair away from her face. In that moment, when its wheels touched safely, Noel smiled and seemed relaxed for the first time.

"I make that happen," she said without looking at Dr. Ingram. "Every day. Over and over again. And they want to take it away from me."

"You asked me what I needed. Either I need this back," she turned and her eyes were freely streaming silent tears, "or I need someone to tell me what to do and how to be good again. I don't know how to do it by myself."

 

[Father Figure]

He had said nothing on their way there, allowing the silence to stretch out between them so that she could have time to compose herself. It was not a matter of comfort one way or the other for him, it was a matter of ensuring that she had that brief respite that would allow her to find some solace for herself. If she was going to be in public then it was important that she composed herself and put on her public face. The Doctor had disagreed vehemently, though privately, with the new wave of societal "bravery" which shoved everyone into the limelight with their mental and emotional disturbances. It allowed for no true means of a person working through their problem, it did not give that space to let a person come to the right rational decision, instead it put everything on impulse. Just like the Facebook and Twitter feeds of modern society, now decision making was an impulse buy as easy as a click on Amazon, and he could not stomach it. He said none of this to Noel, not yet, instead he just let her drive.

Though he could not quite stop the small tensing of his muscles everytime he felt she was being a bit...aggressive in her driving.

Finally though they arrived at their destination and he did as he was bid, stepping out with her and raising his own hand up to shield his gaze so that he could peer up. He already knew what was going to happen, there'd be no purpose otherwise to all of her actions, and what was an attempt to explain something to him was merely one more step in the cycle of this young woman's life. No surprises, no hiccups, and that was what gave her safety. It was in the words she spoke, that need for order and controlled structure, and while she watched the plane move across them and cloak them in shadow...he instead turned his gaze to her to admire the svelte figure. His eyes traced down over her curves, before giving a small noise of response to her statement. It was obvious he was trying to approach this the right way, yet something was already tickling in the back of his mind, the feeling and undercurrent of what it meant to be in the presence of someone who needed so badly to be told what to do.

And how much he wanted to tell her what to do. Unknown to him it started turning just the tiniest bit as to what he could get out of this, and his teeth clamped together, because everyone had needs did they not? Just as Noel was attempting to come to terms with hers, Dr. Ingram was struggling with one of his own...however, she was waiting for a response, like a computer waiting for input from the user before it could do it's job. Finally he spoke in that direct fashion that was his manner, hiding nothing from her as he leaned back against the hood of her car. "You don't make that happen and that's the problem. Someone else can do the job, maybe not as well as you can, but someone else can. You rely on structure, you need it, and I can respect that. You have to ask yourself deep down, completely and honestly, how far would you go to convince me to let you go back to work? Seriously consider what that response is...and you'll understand how bad things really are."