Curing Crime

Dreaming of being an astronaut or making paintings as a job keeps a child sane. Children tend to be inspired by their parents or that one neighbor who enjoys his life to the fullest. They look at adults with interesting jobs with longing in their eyes. It is a child’s nature to lean towards creativity and innovation and fantasize about an appealing future, but only if it were that simple.

It is quite unfortunate that there is this huge difference between the world a child or even a teen visualizes and what is actually waiting for them in reality. The weight of responsibility shatters all those fragile dreams that we see in our childhood. Our priority changes from being happy to being alive and having people who are proud and happy because of you. We are expected of things we are not sure we can achieve.

Not unlike every normal child with great ambitions, Aviara Rave wanted something to make her happy. She also wanted a life that not only had a purpose but also felt exciting. It was not until an upsetting incident took place in her young life that she finally found out what made her happy. She had a firm belief in pursuing her desire, and it would be wrong to say that she didn’t overcome every obstacle to achieve her ultimate goal. Almost.

But sometimes the enemy is your friend. Sometimes, you cannot overcome an obstacle because that obstacle is very close to your heart.

Aviara’s father was a well-known politician who was brutally murdered during political conflicts. Mr. Rave was a pleasant man, considering he was a politician. He never hesitated to play with dolls because his daughter wanted him to, never even thought of denying something Aviara longed for. But just like many kind people, his life was also taken away by the harsh world.

“Try to find his killer, officer. He deserves that much,” his wife, Alice, pleaded in the police station when his body was found.

Aviara was the oldest child; she had one brother who was a troublemaker. Rhode Rave had arrogance due to his father’s wealth, and that made him a bully in school. All Alice ever did to stop him was tell Aviara to take care of him. It was always she who got in trouble due to his actions. Even now, Rhode was nowhere to be found when his father was dead. He, as usual, had probably got himself into yet another mess.

Aviara waited for hope. But even she, a child, knew hope was only there for you half of the time. Nobody had any idea who killed her father. It was an important question that needed to be answered, but it couldn’t be. Not until Wayne Park came into view. He wasn’t invited to the police station, nor was he related to the Rave family in any way. But like all heroes, he was there, and he saved the day.

Detective Wayne was a humble man, although his talent was something to be proud of. He gave hope where there was none, a name where nobody knew the criminal, and inspiration to people like Aviara who were desperate for help. He took Mr. Rave’s case and worked it out, spending days and nights reviewing speeches and his meeting schedules.

The day Detective Wayne bent his knees in front of little Aviara was still vividly present in her mind.

“Sweetie.” He guided her eyes to his as he rubbed his thumb across Aviara’s tear-filled face.“We can’t bring your father back. He is in a much better place than this cruel world. But I will make sure that he gets his justice.”

Aviara sobbed and cried, but a part of her believed in Detective Wayne, and he did everything to keep the little girl’s trust. Every day since the incident, Wayne would come over to Aviara’s house, go to her room, and talk to her about her father’s case. Aviara was a young girl, but her father’s death made her mature enough to understand all the harsh truths of this world. She became brave and exceptional.

After a month of consistent hard work, deduction, and detection, Wayne came into Aviara’s room with answers this time instead of confusion and questions. He told her about everything. He made her understand the whole case. After showing her all the evidence, he noticed her reactions and finally asked her who the killer was.

“Brother.” The word rang in her ears. The brother she had always trusted killed her father.

The case was run in court. A life penalty was imposed on Rhode Rave. The case was solved. The killer was behind bars, but the problem was that the enemy was Aviara’s friend, her brother. She was devastated and alone. Her mother was going through a financial struggle and a mental one as well. She didn’t have time to help her young daughter deal with the trauma that was dumped on her. That’s when Detective Wayne became a hero once again.

He told her he was there for her if she wanted to talk about her father, and she did. Detective Wayne wasn’t the therapeutic kind, but he was kind, nonetheless. He took her to parks and spent time with her in the library while he had to do his job, examining criminal cases. There was a strange attachment he felt towards Aviara, like she was someone his own daughter could have been.

Wayne never shared his personal life with Aviara, but she had once seen a baby picture in his drawer. On asking, he totally abandoned the topic as if whoever that baby was, was not worth mentioning. On many different occasions, Aviara had blurted out questions about why he helped her and taught her so much, and all he said to that was that she was the daughter he wished he had.

On her 15th birthday, Wayne gifted her a series of Sherlock Holmes novels that they then read together at a beach house beside the Coral Sea, Queensland. He made sure Aviara didn’t ever feel the absence of his father, and in some ways, he succeeded. One day, at the Coral Sea, while dipping her feet in the waters of Sarina Beach, she heard a voice from inside her mind. I want to be a detective. She ran to the beach house to tell Wayne about her dream, only to see him lying on the ground.

All the next memories that Aviara had were clouded; the ambulance, the tears, the pleas, the desperation for one last talk about a case or for reading one last chapter of Sherlock Holmes. That’s when Wayne took a long, deep breath while the sirens of the ambulance rang in his ears, and the panic-stricken girl in front of him was done dealing with more misery.

“You have a tumor in your brain, Mr. Park.” The doctor testing Wayne in the Logan Hospital was a female with a subtle kindness to her voice.

Now, nobody is happy to know they have a tumor, but Wayne smiled like he always knew this was coming. He looked at Aviara sitting next to his bedside, his face still holding a sad little smile. Tears were dripping down her cheeks, but she was smiling too.

The doctor with blonde hair and pretty eyes continued, “We will have to do a biopsy to know whether it’s malignant.”

So basically, they wanted to open up his brain, take a part of the tumor inside, and test it. No, thank you, Wayne thought. Even if the tumor was benign, Wayne knew there was a great risk of death during the biopsy, and the major thing that was on his mind was Aviara.

The doctor had already left after hearing Wayne’s response. It was simple; he didn’t want the biopsy because he needed to spend the rest of his time with Aviara, making sure she was ready for another loss. Wayne glanced at the unfortunate girl sitting beside him. It looked like she wanted to confess something, so Wayne nodded to show her that he would hear what she had to say.

“I wanted to be a detective,” she said in between sobs, rubbing her tear-filled eyes. “But now you’re dying.”

Wayne held up his hand, injected with IV drips, and ruffled her hair like he always used to do for the past 5 years. He saw desperation and longing in her eyes, and he believed for once that this girl in front of her would one day be the reason people would be given justice. The thought made him tear up.

“You will be a great detective.” He looked at her with tearful and sad yet hopeful eyes. “I believe in you.”

Days went by fast, and Aviara started believing in reality, like we all have to do one day. No matter how attractive our fantasies are and no matter how happy they make us, they can never be real, and the sooner we understand that, the better. Not accepting the reality did nobody any good, except that it made it even harder to cope with the world. The world isn’t a precious place; from the moment you enter crying till the moment you leave dying, you’re in pain.

Detective Wayne Park was discharged from the Logan Hospital after a few days with a shadow of death hovering over him. He knew he could leave this world any minute, but hope is a thing that performs miracles, although it abandons just as fast. As they both left the hospital on a bus, Wayne stared at his hands, trying to figure out what he had to say and how to put it into words.

“Avie,” he didn’t look up at her, but he knew she was listening to every word that was coming out of his mouth. “Your mom must be concerned. You need to go back.”

Aviara had stayed with Wayne until she got over her father’s death, which turned out to be more than a few years. Although hurtful, her mother knew Aviara would be better off with Detective Wayne than with her at home. The reason was simple; Aviara needed to escape reality for some time, to pretend to be happy, and that everything was fine when actually a young little girl’s world was falling apart.

But now was the time to rebuild all those fallen and fragmented pieces, and Aviara had to finally face the reality. This was a fact both she and Detective Wayne knew. She had learned a lot from Wayne: detection and deduction, the significance of justice, and reading a person like a book, and she was influenced well enough to pursue a career in it. And it was finally time to move on and bring her family into her life.

She nodded her head in understanding.

It was only after she was given all the important papers Wayne wrote about detection and examination that he finally took his last breath.

Apparently, the tumor was malignant, and it was huge. He started losing his memories and forgetting where he placed certain things. In his last days, Aviara was with him, eyes filled with tears, seeing a remarkable person who saved many lives and gave justice to many more, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Finally, the world fainted before his eyes. Before he could say a word, the light that guided people toward justice and honesty was nothing more than a corpse. Aviara was left alone once again.

After the funeral, she took a drive back to her house in Burton, where she had lived before. The streets held memories of her father, and so did their garden and the swing in it. She hesitated a bit before knocking at the door behind which the core memories were hidden. She felt like being born again after a crisis, all new and fresh.

Her mother opened the door and held her tight in her arms. All the different feelings came crashing to her: happiness, sadness, and anger, maybe. But she held her mother with all her heart. Before she realized she was crying, sobbing. She had a new and huge chapter of her life starting before her, and the fortunate thing was that she had her mother with her to support her every step of the way. And she was going to make her proud.

“Mom,” she said finally. Her voice was filled with belief and faith. She was going to confess her desire to the most important person in her life. “I’m going to be a detective.”

Alice Rave was a calm woman, but at that point, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She took a step back from her daughter if she had said something unusual.

“No, you’re not.” Her voice was unkind and unfamiliar.

The words of her mother shattered a part of the hope she had always clung to in all the difficult parts of her life. Sometimes, you cannot overcome an obstacle because that obstacle is very close to your heart.