Chapter 6: Doctor, Oh, Doctor!

GUILTY

The scream snaps Samantha out of her pitiful trance right before she could start her breakdown. She feels alarmed and before she could even grasp the situation, her body starts to act on its own. Before Samantha could even think of a reason why, she was already running towards Victoria's scream.

꧁_꧂

Victoria was crying and screaming for her life as her blurry vision shows a man crouching before her. The man tries to reach for her as if everything was set in slow motion until Victoria hears an all too familiar voice. "Victoria?" that soothing and oddly heart-warming groggy voice of a man she had just met had spoken. "Hey, it's okay. It's me, Roscoe. What's wrong?"

It was the doctor.

"I was walking around the mansion when I stumbled upon you making your way ahead of me towards the dining room. You suddenly started rushing without even looking back, and now this. Is everything alright?" the doctor offers to explain, soft gazing eyes glimmering with worry and sweetness under the pale glow of sunlight as they pose so still in the middle of the empty hallways.

It was like a scene straight out of those sappy romance novels you might've had come across in the teen-fiction isle of your favorite local bookstore - everything was slow, and the doctor's face was so close to her that they were basically breathing against each other and Victoria would swear Adam Roscoe could hear her own heart pounding its way out of her chest.

Victoria seemed to have misunderstood her sensing the killer to actually be Adam Roscoe as she had previously tried to scream her lungs out. She almost couldn't believe herself when she realized that paranoia had taken such a good hold of her, she even mistook this beautiful excuse of a human being to be the demon of her nightmares.

Or at the very least, if he were the devil anyway, then surely Victoria wouldn't mind actually spending an eternity in hell, nope, no siree. To wake up to a face like that? I'd be the biggest sinner just to be with you, sir! - Victoria's mind had manifested.

Her worry all faded into a dizzying cloud in her brains as she could do nothing but get lost in that heavenly sight of Adam Roscoe's worried face looking at her like she was his whole world. Victoria's mind would create whatever images she wanted out of this, but her creativity will always fall pale in comparison to the reality of this moment that she thinks she can never want to come to an end.

But as soon as Victoria could carelessly hope for something more, another voice of a woman piques from the end of the hallway, "Doctor! Victoria!". This releases Victoria from her trance leaving her confused as she and Adam Roscoe both whip their heads to the direction of the voice.

A young girl in a maid outfit runs to them, seemingly to be on the brink of crying, "Doctor, I've been looking for you! You need to help me! Damon.." she says panting in between. "Damon's in trouble!" "Wha-" Victoria manages to let out, still recovering from the sweet mixture of shock, trauma, and dizzying desire.

"I think Damon might be dead." Samantha says wearing a serious look on her face with tears threatening to roll down her cheek as she looks straight into the doctor's eyes, and this immediately brings Victoria back into reality, full disclosure.

This was no joke.

Samatha hopes for a quick response, and the doctor does. "Pardon me? Where's your brother?" he asks. Samantha gets up, the slightest glint of relief and desperate hope in her glassy eyes as she nods and wordlessly leads the doctor to their shared servant's quarters, with Victoria following closely behind.

They tread carefully with pace, silence becoming a home, until they reach a single leaf wooden door, and Samantha carefully swings it open revealing a lifeless pale doll, Damon Pear, with the slightest hint of cold lingering on his delicate skin.

The scene was obscene in a sense and if the room's air conditioning had caused the slightest drop in temperature, neither the doctor nor Victoria had felt it seep through their comfortable warm clothing as the information laid in front of them filled their hearts with disbelief though they were both well aware and convinced that something unspeakable might've had happened.

Adam Roscoe had swiftly taken a step forward towards the boy and firstly tried to check for a pulse. His eyes widened as he felt not a tinge of it anywhere, his reaction beginning to alarm the girls present. He lowered his head down, hovering just over the boy's face, ear near Damon's lips and nose, desperately trying to sense even the lightest breeze of breath coming out, but nothing.

The doctor had tried to make sense of the servant lying so peacefully, and oh so gently yet firmly, he placed a hand on the boy's cheek. The soft tender and careful touch sending the teensiest buzz of electricity through the doctor's fingers as his mind started to become hazy once again being reminded of the dire situation they had gotten themselves in on the island.

The thought of the cold sensation had started to seep in through Roscoe's head, but as a doctor he did not believe that the boy was finished right then and there. He tries to inspect the boy for any signs of wounds or anything of the like but to their dismay, he was clean - not a single scratch on Damon's limp body.

His skeptical nature seemingly getting the better of him, Adam Roscoe decides to take a stand - straight and tall as he lifts his hand thoughtfully to his chin, a face so unreadable, neither confused nor fazed, the doctor was thinking and you could see him smoldering with that gorgeous brain of his.

The silence - so thick, you could hear a pin drop - blanketing the characters suddenly breaks apart so sharp, as the doctor directs a query towards the maid Pear.  "Had your brother shown any signs of... Well, anything at all, lately?" The doctor speaks, eyes looking intently back at Samantha's.

She refuses to falter at the unnecessarily dagger-esque gaze and replies, "Well for starters, he did have a mild fever in the morning," she mentioned, eyes wandering around the room at the recount of possible signs of anything Damon might have been showing. "he also had lost his appetite recently, but really, who wouldn't have after the given events?" Samantha continued.

"I think he mentioned having a headache too, as well as frequent trips to the washroom but, I'm pretty sure that's all. He seemed pretty normal to me." Perhaps Samantha was starting to make up words and stories in her head but she did not like the idea of her brother leaving her to the bowl in the sky so soon.

She'd give anything to keep her brother alive, even if it meant her own life. "Why are you asking? Do you think he can recover?" Samantha asks, innocent desperation evident in her voice. "My dear, your brother seems to be of beyond recovery. With no breath, pulse, and even temperature gone low, I believe he is presumably dead, or at least it seems safe to say so." the doctor replied.

The news gave Samantha a solid stab right to the heart and, "What? T-this can't be..." she says in a voice nay above a whisper.

"However, the symptoms you've mentioned..." Victoria muttered in a low voice. "we might be able to, at the very least, figure out how this happened, yes?" She carefully suggests, taking a small peak towards the disheartened look of the young maid, hoping it would care for even the slightest bit of comfort.

"Yes." the doctor maintained composure, not waiting for an answer from the baffled and disdained young girl. "The symptoms you mentioned were that of what you could closely tie down to perhaps food poisoning, my dear." Roscoe stated in his deep voice so confidently as if to speak of the obvious, like it was just that - a fact of life: the sun rose in the east and it set in the west, the skies were blue and water was wet, and Damon? Well, he had just died from food poisoning.

Food poisoning? Really?

Samantha's blood seemingly started to boil. Like a sudden turn of anger that she had been bottling up for years had finally decided to surface. Her face was slowly turning tinted with red and the look in her eyes had changed drastically in a split second from a disheartened little girl to that of pure spite and infuriation. She had been holding out her patience for far too long, her whole life and finally, the last straw had been drawn.

"You think he died from food poisoning?" Samantha, that sweet little maid they knew, had yelled back. This caught Victoria off guard making her wince at the physically contradicting volume of the quiet room and Samantha's sudden outburst. "For Christ's sake, food poisoning? Really? Come on, doc, you have got to be kidding me! Ha!"

"Dear, calm dow-" Victoria tried to protest to what might happen next but the young rankled maid had cut her off. "We've spent our lives trying to survive together in this cruel unkind world and just so easily, Damon would die from food poisoning? Don't make me laugh. You think I'd believe that?

"What do you think could have caused this in the first place? For the past week we've only been on the island preparing for this damned 'birthday party' that turns out to be a mindless trap of circling death, so what could he have eaten that caused this? Everthing he had, I had too! We made sure everything was safe even for you, and just so suddenly he'd leave me like this? Wow, what a story!" She said, eyes red, voice cracking, and cheeks damp from the warm tears streaming from her eyes.

"I'm not accepting this nonsense..." Samantha had started to break down, "not that easily... It's not fair. I should've gone first. He had so dreams to accomplish. - More than I ever had!" she said in a shaky voice slowly finding her legs growing weak until she had been down on the floor, messed up.

The doctor let out an exasperated sigh, crouched down to Samantha's level and said, "I understand your pain, dear, and I am deeply sorry for your loss." but in a manner so declarative and heartless with his voice so belittling and cold, so distant and low, and not a hint of sympathy left in them.

The doctor stands up once again, and makes his way out the door. The two girls left in silent sobs, Victoria and Samantha, stay behind as he makes his way back to his quarters, not a single word uttered and not turning even the slightest glance back at them. Adam Roscoe leaves.

***

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