Thread: Broken Dreams {Father Figure & AnnaBeth Belle}

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 247 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.