The Neighborhood

Nurse Abra Ahrens is hired to care for a man she believes is HIV positive but it’s a lie perpetrated by his brother, her boss, the chief of staff at the hospital. He chose Abra because she has a reputation as a recluse and has no real relationships outside the hospital besides her mother, noted psychiatrist Lee Ahrens. That changes when Abra meets handsome next door neighbor, Zane Campbell, an ex-detective turned ocularist and medical artist. Like Abra, Zane doesn’t get out much, primarily because no one can understand his speech when he talks, thanks to the bullet in the face that ended his police career. His youngest son Eli makes fun and mimics his father, but is sobered by his older brother Holt’s news that a girl from their neighborhood has gone missing. Another neighbor, a retarded adult named Chance finds a bike near a bridge and when Eli sees the bike he recognizes it as the missing girl’s. Neighbor Mark Vaughn, a car dealer with a criminal past would love for the swarm of police that descends to deal with the deafening bird problem caused by the people next door to him. Craig Peterwell’s dozen exotic birds screech, squawk and scream day and night, making sleep impossible for Mark and his wife Valerie’s baby daughter. When confronted, Peterwell becomes angry. Craig Peterwell has been getting angry a lot lately. He can’t understand why no one listens to him. He wants his wife Louise to listen but she doesn’t, and in the space of a few minutes on a warm summer evening Craig Peterwell sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life, and the face of the neighborhood, forever.

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