“Then find out where Julie is really from,” Barbara said.
Samantha thought for a few moments.
“This may sound crazy,” she said, “but I’m growing very attached to this little girl. She’s so much like me! It’s almost like we were meant to be together, and yet I know she’ll eventually have to go back to her own family.”
“And that bothers you?”
Samantha began to twist the phone cord.
“A little,” she said.
In truth, it bothered her a lot, though she couldn’t say why. After all, Julie wasn’t her child, not even a relation or a friend. She hardly knew her. But somehow she felt protective of her.
“Julie is too intelligent to be lost in the shuffle of the system,” she said at last. “They’d put her in some institution until her family was found. I don’t think it would benefit her. No, I’m going to have to handle this in some other way.”
“When do you plan to do all this?” Barbara asked. “When’s your next shift?”
“Monday afternoon,” she said. “So you can see I don’t have a lot of time to deal with this. I certainly can’t bring Julie to the hospital with me.”
“Why not?” Barbara asked. “The way you described her, she sounds like a miniature doctor already. A sort of female Doogie Howser.”
Samantha laughed. “Well, I guess I’ll do what I have to. It’s my last day before vacation, so I’m sure no one will mind her being there. Oh, I hear her coming back now. I’ll have to hang up. Good-bye, Barbara.”
She set the receiver back on its hook and turned to Julie with a smile. The smile quickly faded when she saw the look on Julie’s face. Her face was drawn, her eyes glazed over. Beads of sweat had broken out on her forehead.
“Julie!”
“I . . . I had another bad dream,” Julie said. “I fell asleep drawing.”
Samantha went to take the child in her arms.
“You shouldn’t be falling asleep so much,” she said. “You’re too young.”
Dear Lord, she thought, on top of everything else don’t let this child get sick on me!
She felt her forehead and took a close look at her.
“You don’t seem to have a fever,” she said. “But let me check you out. Come back to my office. I’ve got my medical bag in there.”
In the office she sat Julie down on a comfortable chair and began to check her over very carefully. By now the child’s color had come back to her and her eyes had cleared. Everything else about her was normal, as far as Samantha could tell.
“Maybe you’re just worn out from this ordeal,” Samantha said, tucking her stethoscope back into her bag. “But if this happens again, I’m taking you over to the hospital for further tests.”
Julie looked up at her, wide-eyed.
“Tests? I don’t want to have any tests! They’ll hurt!”
“Well, maybe there’ll be a little prick for the blood test,” Samantha said honestly. “But it won’t be too bad. I’ll be right there, and—”
“No!” Julie screamed, jumping up from the chair. “No! No more tests!”
She ran from the room, then from the house, screaming this over and over. Samantha watched her through the window as she headed toward the path to the playhouse. Chills ran through her as she wondered what sort of hell the child had been through to make her so terrified.
Out on the path, Julie raced toward the relative sanctuary of the little adobe. She didn’t know what she was going to do there, or why it made her feel safe. Lady and Sunday, thinking it was a game, barked playfully and followed her to the building. Julie seemed unaware of them. She huddled up against the toy chest and buried her face in her knees. Her whole body shook with fear. She didn’t want to go to any hospital! She didn’t want anyone doing more tests on her!
Befuddled, wondering if the running game was over, the dogs whimpered and nudged her. Absently Julie began to stroke Lady’s fur.
For a few moments she just sat there, her mind a flood of unconnected thoughts. But after a while she began to calm down, and to think as reasonably as a young girl could. She was afraid of tests, so that meant someone had actually done tests on her. But why? Who had done them? Was it the man she kept seeing in her “dreams”?
It hadn’t really been a dream that sent her out of Samantha’s office. It had been a kind of vision, a picture of being forced into a little box.
Sunday’s warm tongue washed her small hand. But he stopped suddenly, making Julie open her eyes to see what was wrong.
Somehow, she wasn’t in the playhouse anymore. The dogs had also vanished. She stood in a long hallway. It stretched without end into a dark oblivion that seemed to hide all sorts of childish nightmares. Julie looked at the door she was standing before and read “NO ADMITTANCE” on the brass plate. Now she heard footsteps approaching. Suddenly a voice bellowed: