Two weeks had passed, since the entire incident involving Jeanette being kidnapped, and held for ransom by a man named Craig Bromson. The last any of them saw of the man was when he insisted on seeing Jeanette in court, and during the trial, he died from a heart attack. At least that's what the autopsy reported. Another thing that was reported, when the police department got ahold of his medical records, was that Craig was, indeed, mentally unstable. Like Jeanette had suspected, his instability was the root of his multiple personalities, the one thing she remembered so clearly about him, when he could be quiet and calm one minute, loud and violent the next, and even perverted the next. Jeanette still has nightmares about this man. She wishes with all her heart that she could forget him, and what happened, but she never will.
"It's the day!" Brittney squealed, as she ran over to Jeanette and embraced her. "It's the day! It's the day! It's the day!"
"What day is that?" Jeanette asked.
"How could you forget?" Eleanor asked, as she walked over to join in on the group hug. "Today's the day you get your stitches out!"
"Oh yeah!" Jeanette exclaimed. "How could I forget that?"
Miss Miller walked into the girls' room, "Jeanette dear, your appointment is at three o'clock."
"Goody!" Jeanette squealed, finally sounding more like her old self again, as Brittney and Eleanor continued to hug her.
The day seemed to pass very slowly as Jeanette awaited her appointed, then waited once more for the doctor to see her, which he finally did at around three forty-five.
"Alright, young lady," said the doctor, in a friendly tone of voice, "what can we do for you today? Free appendix operation? Nose job? We have a special on tonsilectomies this week only..."
Jeanette couldn't help but giggle at the doctor, who obvious had a sense of humor, so she decided to play along... "Lately, I've been thinking about having my arms extended," she joked, "you see, sometimes I have trouble reaching certain things..."
"We can take care of that," the doctor said with a laugh, "if you'd like, we can do something about your legs, too, make you even taller."
"Ooh..." Jeanette responded, playfully, "is this covered by my H.M.O.?"
"Hmm, good question," replied the doctor, "I'll check..." He looked through Jeanette's medical chart, humming as he did so. "Uh oh..."
"What?"
"Ooh, this isn't good..."
"What?!"
"Not good at all..."
"What?! What?!"
"You've got stitches in your leg..."
"Yeah..."
"Well, we need to do something about that, I better get the nurse..."
The nurse simply held Jeanette's hand, as the doctor removed the stitches from Jeanette's thigh. It didn't hurt too bad, but it didn't feel too good either. Jeanette moaned through out the whole process, but she was so relieved when the doctor was finished.
"Aren't you a brave, little soldier?" He said, again, in his playful tone of voice. "Nurse?"
"Yes doctor?" The nurse responded.
"A girl this brave deserves something a little extra special, don't you agree?" He asked.
The nurse smiled. "Completely."
Jeanette walked back into her bedroom, holding at least half a dozen balloons in one hand, and two giant lollipops in the other.
"I see everything went well!" Eleanor exclaimed.
"Yeah!" Jeanette responded.
"Did it hurt?" Brittney asked.
"Not too much," Jeanette told her, "it didn't hurt, persay, but it was a bit uncomfortable." Jeanette said, as she let go of the balloons, and watched them flutter towards the ceiling.
"So, you going to be alright?" Brittney asked.
"Yeah," Jeanette replied, "I'll have to live with this scar for the rest of my life..."
Jeanette lifted up her skirt, and showed her sisters the unsigthly scar across her right thigh. Brittney sat next to Jeanette.
"Hey," Brittney started, "it could have been worse... he could have chopped your whole leg off... he could have killed you..."
"Yeah, I know," Jeanette said softly, "but... something tells me he wouldn't even have tried to kill me... he just wanted me so badly..."
"At least he's gone, Jeanette," Eleanor said, sitting next to Jeanette as well, "you don't have to worry about him anymore." Eleanor embraced her older sister. "I'd hate to think of what more that creep would have done to you!"
Brittney embraced Jeanette as well, "I'd never be able to forgive myself if I never saw you again... and never got to apologize to you for all the terrible things I did to you..."
"Thanks, girls..." Jeanette said, almost in tears, "you're the best sisters ever!" She said, as she wrapped an arm around each of them.
Simon knocked on the door, before entering the room. "How did it go?"
"Just fine," Jeanette said, as Brittney and Eleanor went to their own seperate parts of the room.
"Look at the balloons..." Simon remarked, as watched them dance across the ceiling from the air conditioning blowing.
"Go those at the doctor." Jeanette said.
"It didn't hurt you, did it?" Simon asked.
"No..."
Jeanette lifted up her skirt, and showed Simon her scar... so afraid it would disgust him, and turn him off.
"At least you're still alive," he said, showing her that the scar doesn't bother him, "I don't know what I'd do without you."
Jeanette smiled, and embraced her boyfriend.
"I love you, Jeanette." Simon said softly.
"I love you, too." Jeanette responded, with a tear in her eye.
Simon, Brittney, and Jeanette gave off a wonderful presentation in class for their ecosystem project...
"And as you can see," Brittney added, "in order to show how an oceanic ecosystem really works, we made our plants and animals out of modeling clay, and gave them all a careful coating of... of... what is it called again?"
"Polyurethane," Simon continued, "this helped us make our flora and fauna waterproof."
"We know we didn't have to actually use water," Jeanette spoke up, "but we wanted this to be as realistic as possible."
"Well you three did a wonderful job," the teacher complimented, "and that especially goes to you, Brittney, I haven't seen you work quite so hard at your school work before."
Brittney smiled, she was smiling even more when she got an A, for once, on her report card, because of the project.
"We did a great job, didn't we?" Brittney asked her group mates.
"We certainly did," Simon added, "that was a great idea of your's to use actual water in a plastic case, we got extra points for that."
"Hey, the ocean's wet, isn't it?" Brittney asked.
"Sure is." Simon replied.
"I wonder what the chances are of the three of us ending up in the same group for our next project?" Jeanette asked.
Another week had passed, when the teacher gave out another project to the class. This time, wanted the class to make a diorama of the food chain, and because they did such a wonderful job on their last project, she assigned Simon, Jeanette, and Brittney to the same group again. After school, that day, the three of them got together at the library, to discuss their project.
"So," Simon began, "I was thinking if we made some little fish out of recycable material... maybe work up some kind of mechanism that will allow us to show each fish eat the smaller one before it, by the pull of a string...
"Oh please," Brittney butted in, "that's a little too complicated, Simon, besides, why do we need to focus on just fish?"
"We don't," Simon responded, "I was just suggesting..."
"What we need," Brittney interrupted, "is to make a big poster, showing little bugs eating plants that are being eaten my a little rabbit, which gets eaten by a hawk, which gets eat by a wolf!"
"Don't you think that's a little simplistic?"
"Well at least it's a lot less complicated than what you're talking about."
"If complexity bothers you, I can work out the mechanism myself..."
"But then you'd be doing most of the work!"
"Not necessarily, you could make the fish."
"But we don't want just fish in this project..."
As Simon and Brittney continued bickering, Jeanette simply shook her head. Just like the old days, she thought to herself.
The end.