The lost ones

“I want you to tell me why you do the things that you do, Charlene.” The question came from a short man. He was overweight and watched his patient from behind a pair of thin-rimmed glasses.

“What things are those, Doctor Evans?” A coy reply.

“The thefts, the kidnappings, the murders. What is it that makes you feel that you have to do those things, Charlene? Does it make you feel powerful?”

Charlene, as he called her, was a shapely blonde dressed in dingy prison grays. She was lying on the maroon patient couch by the door. Her pale, scarred hands rested comfortably behind her head. “I don’t really know what you’re getting at, doc,” she said, brushing strands of hair away from her round face. “I did what I had to. That’s the way things are.”

“I don’t believe that, Charlene. I don’t believe you did those things purely out of need. I think you wanted to do them. A person has to want to kill in order to take a life. I believe that you wanted to kill, so you did. What’s important here is that we find out why.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “What’s this supposed to be, an expositional? You really expect me to pour my heart out to you and tell you that I did all those things because my mother didn’t love me or because I saw my father get gunned down from the corps? Well I guess we’re drek outta luck then, aren’t we?! ‘Cause none of that stuff ever happened.”

Doctor Evans nodded slowly, absorbing his patient’s comments. He let her laughter die to a soft giggle before he began to speak again. “Something had to happen in order to make you this way, Charlene.”

“Charly.” She bit back forcefully. “I told you before to call me Charly. Nobody ever calls me Charlene. Nobody ever uses my real name.”

“I can’t call you that, Charlene, because that isn’t who you are.”

“Do you even know who I am, Doctor Evans? I’m a Shadowrunner. That’s what I do. Do you even know what that means?” The anger flickered in her blue eyes like torchlight.

The doctor pondered for a moment, nodding his head in that slow methodical way that all doctors do and said: “No. No I don’t. Why don’t you explain it for me.”

“A shadowrunner is someone who doesn’t exist. We don’t cater to those bulldrek laws that society hands down. We serve something greater than that. We work in places that most people won’t even have nightmares about. We’re grunts, heroes, the people who get the job done.”

He stopped nodding long enough to scratch his hairy chin. “Sounds romantic. Knights of a new age, harbingers for justice. Do you ever wonder what justice there was for all the innocents you killed?”

“Nobody’s innocent anymore, Doctor Evans.” She replied quickly. “You give that up when they cut you free from the umbilical cord. From then on you’re guilty–everybody’s guilty of something.”

Doctor Evans leaned back in his own maroon chair. He swiveled it slightly so that he was facing his computer terminal. Typing in a few words he addressed his patient. “You killed a pregnant lady once. Teresa Landon. Married, 2 kids not including the one on the way. She was caught in the crossfire while you were trying–”

Charly sat up quickly, cutting the doctor off mid-sentence. “I remember what I did, Doctor Evans. I remember all of it. You don’t need to remind me of who died or how I ended up in this hellhole. There isn’t any point to it. I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”

“Don’t you, Charlene?” The doctor asked with a frown. “If you don’t regret anything you’ve done then why are you here?”

She chuckled and lay back down. “That’s easy. I’m here because I have to be. Psych help and good behavior may be the only shot I have of the parole board letting me out early.”

Doctor Evans shook his head. “Come now, Charlene. We both know that there is no way that they’ll ever let you out of here. You came to me because you were lost. You wanted me to help you understand yourself, didn’t you?”

She sighed loudly and ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s you people who are the lost ones.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Doctor Evans.

Charly shook her head. “Milling around in your pathetic little wage slave lives, never even stopping to think about what’s really happening all around you. I understand myself, doc. I understand that I got caught by your laws and you’re gonna do what you can to make me suffer for that.”

He stopped typing. Doctor Evans turned back towards his patient and folded his hands on the desk. “Ok, Charlene, if you know so much about yourself, then tell me who you are. Tell me who Charlene McFerrin really is.”

“What?”

He repeated the question to her.

“I heard what you said the first time,” she muttered. “I’m Charly. Whether you like it or not, that’s my name, doc. That’s what they call me on the streets so that’s who I am. I’m a shadowrunner, just like I told you before.”

His lips parted into a smile. “Is that it? I thought shadowrunning was a job. You make it sound like your entire way of life.”

“It is a job!” she spat back angrily. “But it’s more than that. It’s a way of acting and thinking. I can’t just leave shadowrunning at the office when the clock hits five. I live it. I mean I lived it.”

Doctor Evans could only smile.

“What’s so damned funny?”

He shrugged. “You sound just like me, Charlene. I can’t stop being a psychiatrist anymore than you can stop being a shadowrunner. You were trained to do it so now you’re doing it. You’re living it, just like me. I can’t leave being a psychiatrist at the office. People are going to ask me questions wherever I go. How can I make my boyfriend be faithful? Is my anger caused by my mother not loving me?” He chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe the questions some people ask. I’ll always be Doctor Evans to people. You’ll always be Charly. You’re just another wage slave, Charlene. Just like me.”

“Frag you, doc.” She gave him the finger and stood up, heading for the door.

“That isn’t a very nice thing to say,” he replied with a smile. He made no motion to stop her from leaving.

“Frag you very much. There, is that better for you?”

He shrugged. “You can’t leave yet, Charlene. You haven’t answered my question.”

“And what psycho-babble question was that, doc? Did you want to know why I killed that pregnant lady? Accident. Why don’t I regret it? Because I shouldn’t. She got in the way of business and now she’s dead. That’s the end of that and that’s the end of our conversation.” Charly reached for the door to leave Doctor Evans’ office.

“No it isn’t,” he said. “That isn’t the question at all. I’ve talked to runners before, Charlene. I understand that a lot of you feel like innocent death is just a part of the business that you have to accept. That doesn’t mean that I think it’s right–”

Charly spun around to face Doctor Evans. “Nobody’s talking about right or wrong here, Doc. I–”

This time he cut her off, raising his voice above hers. “I also understand that Shadowrunning was a large part of your life; you did what you did to get a paycheck. Maybe you had some twisted sense of chivalry in it as well. I can understand that. I have a certain sense of chivalry in what I’m doing too. But it’s just a job, Charlene. A line of work, same as mine. I have a family. I have stories I could tell you about who I am and what I do when I’m not counseling people. So I’m asking you, who are you when the job’s done? Outside of shadowrunning, who is Charlene McFerrin?”

She stood silent for a moment. The first time all night. Her hand was resting on the knob but she made no effort to turn it. The only place she had to go back to was her cell. She thought about it long and hard before she made her answer. It was the only thing she could say, and the answer that Doctor Evans has been waiting all night to hear.

She said, “I don’t know.”