Vincent & The Doctor -- Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Vincent. I've heard this all before. I thought we were going to discuss what happened..."
"Doc, do you know why I'm here?" He interrupted. "I'm here because I'm not the kinda person who likes to be pushed around. I'll give anyone a fair shake, but I don't want to be messed with. I grew up on the dirty streets of New York and people ain't nice to kids like that so I learned to take what I needed, when I needed it."
"I remember this one time when I was a kid that my old man had me outside selling papers"

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"Hey Mister, Read about the Titanic. Biggest boat ever sailing into New York harbor." I hollars at a grizzly fellow walkin' by. I usually stood there with a stack of papers bundled with cord sitting at my feet. It's a cold morning, still early spring, and my coat ain't damn near warm enough.
"Biggest boat ever eh?" The guy stops and grabs a paper.
"That's two cents mister," I said to the guy.
"Sell many papers this morning son?"
"Yes sir," then that grizzly bastard clocks me as hard as he could. I wake up and I ain't got my coat on. Looks like I'm in a alley, not too far from where I was standing. My face is all swollen and I wanna cry, until I see the guy still standing near the edge of the alley. He's looking out to see if anyone is near by while he's rifling my coat pockets. He turns to look at me and catched that I'm awake and gives me this smile that makes me sick. It's the kinda smile a guy gives when he sees his kid playing with a puppy or when he learns to ride his bike. From this guy, it's not a nice smile at all. It's not the last time I'll see someone smile at me like that either. He starts smacking me around and I start crying and screaming, but no one comes to help me. He jams something in my mouth, slams my face in the dirt and starts doing some pretty unmentionable things to me, things no man should be doing to a thirteen year old boy and then just leaves me there and walks off with a newspaper.
I drag my bloody ass home and start telling my old man how it all went down and I get a beating from him for lying to him. Then I get another beating when I tell him I ain't got any of the money from the papers. Then I get another beating the next morning when I can't get out of bed to go sell papers. I laid in bed all day, hurting and crying. Come to find out that stupid boat sank and I coulda sold every paper I could get my hands on. When I got beat for that, is when I realized that people ain't nice to kids.

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"Vincent. That's not exactly why you are here you know."
"Yeah Doc, I know."