Hellspital

*Season 3,* *Episode 2a*

**"Hellspital"** is the first segment of the eighteenth episode (and the thirty-fourth story overall) of *Close Enough*.

## Synopsis

The gang begs a seriously ill Alex to seek medical attention, but his fear of doctors causes him to avoid hospitals at all costs.

## Plot

The housemates are at Windmillions, a mini-golf park, enjoying their day until Alex begins having stomach cramps. Despite his friends concerns Alex shrugs them off. He tries to land a ball in a hole with his putter, but do to an especially strong cramp Alex instead propels the ball towards several obstacles and ricochets around until finally hitting him in the crotch. This then leads to him further injuring himself until finally falling in a nearby pool.

One morning later Alex is still feeling sick, barely able to move and continuously trying to eat from the same tub of chilly. In order to disprove his friends' concerns he goes to mail a letter, which he does by crawling out off the apartment and down to the sidewalk. Josh points out that along the way Alex had also vomited. He tells his friend to go see a doctor, but Alex adamantly refuses to do out of fear and paranoia. Despite some coaxing from Pearle, who regularly visits doctors for check-ups and is in a stable condition, Alex still refuses to go see one and brings up his father as a reason for not going. Later that day, Josh explains to the rest of the group about Alex's father. Mr. Dorpenberger died when Alex was younger and since then Alex had been scarred of medical intervention. In spite of this trauma his friends decide to get him to a medic anyway as his condition appears to be worsening.

In order to get him to the hospital, the group feign an apology to Alex and pretend to have tickets to go with him to a movie marathon of the *Viking* *Time Lord* franchise. Alex is placed inside Pearle's van by Josh and they, alongside Emily, Randy, Bridgette and Pearle, drive off to Pretty Good Samaritan Hospital. Along the way he becomes suspicious of their intention because he gets Google alerts for any movie marathons, as well as the fact that they were driving away from the movie theater. Alex quickly deduces that he has been tricked into going to see a doctor and jumps out off the van and runs into Griffith Park. His stomach aches kick in and he looses balance, falling down a hill and hitting himself repeatedly in the stomach until falling unconscious. He wakes up, only to find himself on a stretcher, inside an ambulance that is being driven by a demon orderly. The orderly refuses to let Alex go, has him strapped to the stretcher and proceeds to drive the ambulance into a fire and down into Hell.

At the Hellspital, a hospital run by demons who torture patients with medical equipment, Alex is rushed in an operating room wherein he is given to a nurse. But before she can take his temperature with a drill the orderly returns to inform her that Alex has a guest from Heaven, much to their chagrin. The visitor turns out to be Mr. Dorpenberger. After a brief and warm reunion, Mr. Dopenberger cuts his son's restraints with an ax from the *Viking* *Time Lord* movies. He takes a moment to apologize for causing Alex's death as well as his fear of doctors, but before he can elaborate any further the demon orderly returns in the room since visiting hours had ended. The orderly gets angry for the attempted rescue and attacks Mr. Dorpenberger by coiling around his body like a snake. Just as the orderly is about to bite into Mr. Dorpenberger's neck Alex grabs a nearby bed pan and hits him over the head. Alex and his father make a run through the Hellspital corridors but are soon enough surrounded by several three-headed dog orderlies. His father produces another time viking ax from his coat and hands it to Alex. And so the two men attack the orderlies, slashing and cutting at them, as well as using the weapons' signature time-travel related powers. The two make it to the stairs only to be chased upstairs by a mob of imps. They're forced to bar themselves inside a bedroom and escape through the window. Mr. Dorpenberger uses a blanket as a makeshift parachute and the two use it land outside, near the ambulance. Mr. Dorpenberger tells his son to drive out of Hell while he holds the demons off, but Alex refuses to leave him behind. At that moment his father reveals to Alex the truth: prior to his death Mr. Dorpenberger had been sick for months and intentionally refused to see a doctor out of fear. And although he was able to take his son to see his very first *Viking* *Time Lord* movie his condition had deteriorated so much that by the time he had been taken to a doctor it was too late and died. He apologizes for having giving him his fear of doctors and encourages his son to go seek medical help. And with that, Alex drives out of Hell as his father blasts the imps away with a super-charged attack.

Alex wakes up in Griffith Park, surrounded by his friends and housemates who had been searching for him with help from an Australian tracker named Lila. As he lies on the ground Alex gives a heartfelt apology for his stubbornness and agrees to finally go to the hospital for a checkup. At Pretty Good Samaritan hospital the doctor shows an x-ray scan of Alex's condition: an excessive amount of flatulence built-up from his chilly cleanse. He tells Alex to eat anything other than chilly and his condition should stabilize. Alex, Emily and Bridgette, who came to the hospital with him, frown at Alex do to his idiocy and Bridgette slaps him across the wrist after he tries taking another bite out of his chilly tub which he just threw away in the garbage bin.

## Characters

* Alex Dorpenberger
* Mr. Dorpenberger
* Hellspital Orderly
* Hellspital Nurses
* Cerberus Orderlies
* Imps
* Josh Singleton
* Emily Ramirez
* Pearle Watson
* Randy Watson
* Bridgette Hashima
* Candice
* Lila
* Doctor

## Trivia

* The episode centers around Alex's relationship with his father, their shared iatrophobia, as well as their appreciation for viking centered science fiction.
	+ Alex's passion towards science fiction and viking fiction was encouraged by his father, possibly even started by him.
* In the Season 2 episode Time Hooch it is revealed that Alex had been cloned from a time-displaced version of himself by a team of geneticists. Although Alex has a father in this episode it is likely that Mr. Dorpenberger might also have been a clone of the displaced Alex, which would make Alex his own grandfather.
* Alex uses Google alerts whenever there is marathon screening of the *Viking* *Time Lord* films. In Season 2's Cyber Matrix Alex is shown to be technologically illiterate. This episode and Where the Buffalo Roam show him using more modern technology, but in Summer Job he is yet again unfamiliar with current forms of electronics.
* According to the demon orderly the Hellspital uses the *A*merican Healthcare System, which has been heavily scrutinized for its disadvantageous payment plans.
* This episode touches on the Christian Heaven portrayed in this show:
	+ Saint Peter is described by Mr. Dorpenberger as being "kinda rude."
	+ In Heaven people cannot see you when you masturbate.
	+ It is decided in Heaven which people get to go to Hell based on their internet search history. And Alex's seems to qualify him for it.
	+ Several guards/orderlies of the Hellspital are three-headed anthropomorphic dogs. This is an allusion to Cerberus, the Greek mythological guard-dog of the underworld, as well as the universal religious concept of hellhounds. Cerberus appears occasionally in Christian depictions of Hell after having appeared in Dante Alighieri's epic *The Divine Comedy*, that blended historical, biblical and mythological characters in the same narrative.

### Pop Culture References

* Josh confuses Jack Nicklaus, a famous American golfer, with Jack Nicholson, a famous American actor, and Alex corrects him at that.
* Alex tells Josh to hold his chilly tub before trying to hit a golf ball in a hole, in the same vain as the "hold my beer meme."
* Lila, the Australian woman who helps the gang find Alex in Griffith Park, is dressed akin to the fictional Australian outback tracker Crocodile Dundee.