Glenroy Chapter One

First chapter introducing Glenroy, as well as some of the other minor characters.

Glenroy “Glen” Fitch knelt beside the unconscious form of the still-shaking blonde girl, currently lying on her side, face obscured by the mass of blonde hair that fanned out onto the tiles below; her shallow breaths barely a whisper over the ever-growing din of the crowd around them. He glanced up, hoping to spot another teacher that could call for help, and saw instead the faces of social piranhas, eagerly swarming before a gluttonous feed. Several red lights blinking the crowd confirmed his worst fear, and it was with great relief that Glen saw Jim Fisher pushing his rather stocky form through the crowd.

“Aw hell.” Jim muttered once he was within earshot of Glen and the girl. He crouched down next to her and rolled her on her back, brushing the hair out of her face so he could check her eyes. The two exchanged a knowing look and leaned towards each other.

“How long has she been like this, Glen?”

“Two, maybe three minutes, I heard the kids yelling louder than usual and…” he paused for a moment and looked down at the girl, and then deliberately at the sea of camera phones pointing at them, “I think she had a seizure.”

Jim gently rolled her back on her side and slipped her arm out of her backpack strap; he eased her back to the ground and repeated the process with her other side, entirely removing her bag and leaving her on her side. He handed the pack to Glen and stood up, turning to face the crowd of students.

“Mr. Fitch” the gym coach began, his booming voice silencing the hurried voices of those around him, “Would you please confiscate all of the cell-phones that are not in turned off and in the pockets of their owners, as directed by the student handbook?”

            There was a sound not unlike hearing a pin drop, and in an instant the students scattered in every direction, dozens of hands hastily slipped electronic devices into jacket and pant pockets. Guilty eyes hid behind convenient textbooks, and suddenly everybody seemed to either be hurrying towards their next class or studying a very interesting locker door.

            Jim turned back to Glen and the barest hint of a smile hung on his chiseled face, “Look at me” that look said to Glen, “Look at how smart I am”. He generally hated to see that look on anybody but himself in the mirror, but found it too hard to fault the man for being proud of clearing a hallway in less than twenty seconds.

            “You should get her to the nurse’s office” Jim said, wiping sweat from his forehead through his buzz-cut with an audible swick (an act that made Glen grimace slightly).

            “Me?”

            “I’ve already done the heavy lifting” Jim stated, scooping up the girl and gingerly depositing her into Glen’s unprepared arms, “If she has another seizure call 911.”

            Glen considered his limited options and mentally shrugged, an act made altogether easier by the surprising lightness of the girl. He reckoned that she couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, one-ten max As he walked the halls he found himself studying her features; he recognized her from his third period Advanced English Literature class, and although he wasn’t about to go digging through her pockets to find her student ID, he was pretty sure her last name was Beldworth.

            “You’re going to be alright” he dug through his memory and finally landed on a name, “Lucy, I promise you’ll be fine”. The girl didn’t respond, and Glen begrudgingly accepted the reality that he’d been absentmindedly reassuring an unconscious person.

            It wasn’t until he stepped outside into the snowy air that it dawned on him just how much hair the frail girl in his arms really had; every burst of wind brought another lock stuck in his beard, and after the first four times of awkwardly shuffling the girl in his arms to free a hand to brush his face he simply gave up trying. By the time he arrived at the door to the nurse’s lounge Glen felt fairly sure that his entire face had formed an icy shell of hair and snow. The nurse, a woman Glenn hadn’t had the chance to meet yet who bore a nametag reading “Ms. Scrintch” opened the door for him.

            His first and immediate impression was that the woman must moonlight during the holidays as Mrs. Kringle on the local fire truck parade; she had that motherly look about her eyes  that said she would not only invite a stranger into her home, but also already have a plate of cookies set out for them. Glen laid Lucille down on the already prepared cot, and sat down in the empty chair in front of the nurse’s desk. He placed his head in his hands and circled his finger-tips exhaustedly at his temples, the drumming of his heart syncing pace with the pounding in his head.

            “Is she going to be alright?” he asked after a moment, looking up in time to see the nurse check the girl’s pupils with a penlight.

            “Her airways aren’t blocked and she’s responding to stimuli…” the nurse started, thoughtfully prodding the girl’s head around where the “soft spot” would be on an infant, “and I’m not feeling any blood or breaks in the scalp; I want her to stay in the nurse’s office until we can contact a parent to be safe, of course, but I wouldn’t worry too much”.

            Glenroy Fitch sighed in relief and closed his eyes, sinking farther into the uncomfortable plastic of the rigid chair he sat in. His hands moved from massaging his forehead to just rubbing thoughtfully at his beard.

            “I think she had a seizure” Glen blurted, at a loss for what to say to the nurse. Small talk had never really been a skill that he had excelled in throughout his life (a fault that cost him some valuable networking opportunities during grad school), and when he tried to force conversation it often came out forced sounding and disjointed.

            The nurse nodded, and began to sift through the contents of the girl’s backpack front pocket. Glen watched the act with an almost unease, somehow feeling at some base level like he was watching an invasion of privacy on a incredibly personal level; the nurse pulled out a small handbag that was decorated with a cartoon caricature that Glen recognized as the pet robot dog of an incompetent alien on an old cartoon from the early 2000’s.

            After dumping the contents out of the girl’s backpack and handbag onto the counter (“It’s to check and make sure she doesn’t have any medications or drugs on her” Mrs. Scrintch had said when he voiced his concern) the nurse located a student ID, confirming her name as Lucille Beldworth. She sat in her office chair and rolled it closer to her aged desktop; ten seconds later she had the submitted medical records of the girl up on her screen.

            “I’ve got a free period coming up; would it be alright if I stayed for a few more minutes before going back out into the tundra?” Glen asked, eyes closed and hands rubbing at his forehead. He heard the rattle of pills in front of him, and through one cracked eye he saw the nurse holding a fairly large bottle expectantly in front of him.

            “Take two, Hun, and stay as long as you like”, she smiled and made a gesture with her thumb to a pile of boxes stacked neatly on the counter by the sink “If you feel like helping I could use a hand restocking the supply cabinet?”

            Glen nodded and took the pill bottle from the nurse, popping the child-proof lid off and fishing two red and purple capsules out of the half-empty container. He paused for a moment to gather enough saliva, and tossed the pills into the back of his mouth, swallowing at the same time in one fluid motion. He glanced over at the nurse to see if she had just seen his manly feat of dry-swallowing, and was a touch dismayed to find her reading the computer screen intently. She sighed and picked up the phone on her desk.

            “Well’ she muttered under her breath, pausing to punch a series of numbers into her phone, “Unfortunately Ms. Beldworth doesn’t have any history of seizures or epilepsy included in her medical history so...”

            She paused for a moment, her eyes giving Glen the exasperated look of someone who finds this whole business to be silly. Glen heard the sound of the line ringing on the other end, a long drawn-out whine that ended abruptly in a pre-recorded answering machine message. The nurse’s eyes hardened for a moment while the machine went through its spiel about pressing different numbers to do different things, and when Glen heard the beep he saw that cheery look spring right back onto her face

            “Hello this message is for Mr., Beldworth, my name is Anna Scrintch and I’m the nurse at your daughter’s school” she stretched out the last word in an almost sing-song fashion, “I’m calling to inform you that your daughter Lucille experienced what looks like a seizure during a class change today.”

            She paused for breath, and to read something on her computer screen, squinting in an almost mousey way while holding the receiver away from her mouth against her shoulder. Her lips moved silently as she flitted through what she was reading, and less than five seconds later she put the receiver back up to her mouth.

            “In accordance to school-board policy since your daughter doesn’t have a listed history of epilepsy or seizures I have to get her to a hospital. I’m going to have her taken to…”

            Glen stopped listening at that point, his hands back to rubbing his chin thoughtfully. His current period was a free one (he had graded all of the essays he was supposed to the night prior during a particularly unpleasant urge to have a drink), and the following period was Freshman English, and also the last one of the day. He ran through the syllabus for that course in his head and by the time the nurse had finished leaving her message he had formulated an idea.

            “Actually, Mrs. Scrintch-“

            “Anna, please” she interrupted him, glancing down at his nametag that was pinned to his tan sweater-vest, “Ah Mr. Fitch! You’re the new English teacher aren’t you?”

            “Oh please, call me Glen” he shot back, feeling more at ease, “and is it that obvious that I’m wet behind the ears?”

Anna chuckled lightly, a sound that closely resembled the tinkling of wind-chimes, and reached over to her dial-pad, her phone still in her right hand. Glen reached out and put one finger up in the universal “hold on a moment” gesture. She raised an eyebrow at him and moved the receiver away from her mouth, her lips pursed questioningly.

            “I have the next period off and my last period is watching a movie right now” he said, he motioned to the girl on the cot, “I’m the one who found her, and they may want to ask me questions at the hospital; ambulances are expensive, give me a moment to contact the head of my department and I’ll take her there myself.”

            Anna’s face blanched for a moment (Glen truly found her “in-between” facial expressions amusing) while she mulled over what he said. She looked back at the computer screen for a moment and scrolled the page using the mouse-wheel; the clacking sound echoing off of the walls of the relatively small room. Glen found his attention pulled inexplicably to the surprisingly in-depth anatomical posters that lined the walls. His focus landed on one plastered on the wall directly to his left; a rather descriptive dissection of the human optic nerves and eyes.

            “Hm, I don’t see a mother listed here and I was unable to reach the father…” she looked over the contents of the backpack that was over-turned. A hand-me down handbag from a show that was cancelled back in the early 2000’s, a beat-up cell phone from at least three years prior, a half-crushed pack of cigarettes, and old and ratty pencil bag with more holes in it than pencils.

            “If I see these for another ten seconds I’m going to have to put it in my report about this” Ann said, picking up the battered pack of cigarettes, she looked at Glen and raised an eyebrow, “I think this girl probably wouldn’t need that on top of all of what she already has.”

            She tossed the pack to Glen, who then pocketed it in his inner coat pocket. She gave him a knowing wink and turned back to her screen, her face dropping to a blank look again. After scrolling through her documents she turned back to Glen with a smile on her face.