Chapter 33
They woke me up in the morning. The Doctor came in and checked the incision in my chest. He was careful not to hurt me while he did it, and was all smiles. “Your EKG looks great, Dantan,” he said. “I have you scheduled for a dye test to see if the sutures inside are holding. How do you feel?”
“Tired. Pain comes and goes. The medicine makes me sleepy.”
“Morphine does that. We can cut back, but it will hurt worse. How’s your eyes?” He flicked a penlight in my brown one, which was the one with the most swelling.
“Did you see that man’s body?” I asked in a low voice.
“You mean the man who shot you, Danny?”
“Yes. He’s dead?”
“Yes, Danny. Your friend Jake James shot him through the heart, and he fell three stories to the concrete. Broke every bone in his body.”
“Good.” I closed my eyes. “How bad am I broken?” I didn’t want to see his face when he answered. His voice was kind, matter of fact.
“The bullet that hit you in the back, Danny. The first one – it hit your breastbone and ricocheted off to smash into your L3, right above your hips and destroyed your spine, fracturing your pelvis. If one hadn’t crippled you, the other would have. You won’t walk, you’ll likely be unable to control your bowel or urinary systems.” He hesitated. “You might be able to have sex. Sometimes, that still works if your partner helps… stimulate you.”
I laughed, and he thought I was being sarcastic. “Danny, have you had sex, yet?”
“Doc, I’m just fourteen. That’s a little young, isn’t it?”
“Your body is nineteen, Danny. You’re telling me you’ve never had a girl, or masturbated?”
“Maybe Daniel did but not me,” I shrugged my face turning red. “I mean, I kissed girls, but I never went any farther.”
“Felice?”
I looked shocked. “She’s the President’s daughter! You think I want to be hanged?”
“Well, I’m just saying, there’s no reason you can’t try.”
I snickered. “I think my Dad gave me this talk when I was twelve, Doc. I’m hungry. Any chance of a meal?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he smiled. “In the meantime, do what the nurses and therapists tell you. Ask for pain medicine when it hurts. Rest. Take it easy. I just stitched you back together only four days ago.” I waved my one good hand at him and never heard him leave my room.
*****
The physical therapist came in my room while I was sleeping and woke me up as I started to scream. I don’t remember why I was screaming, I only knew it was horrible. It brought more people in to find out what was going on, that the only one I wanted was my dad. I reached up to him, dragged his body close to mine and shuddered against his broad chest. He smelled so familiar that I started crying. He rubbed my head and the back of my shoulders, murmuring words I had listened to many times before when I was little.
“Dad,” I shivered, and he kissed me on the forehead.
“Danny boy, God, how I missed you.”
“Dad, Uncle Townsley?”
“He passed away two years ago, Danny. He was as with it as a thirty-five-year-old man in an eighty-eight-year-old body. He told me never to give up on you, you’d always be alive as long as one of us still believed in you. His last words were of you, ‘the birds of the air, the beasts of the fields, the creatures that swim in the sea.’ He mourned you, Danny boy. He blamed himself. So did I. I thought if you’d trusted me, if you hadn’t run off, you’d still be alive.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Dad. It was mine. I should never have run away. I’m sorry.”
“What kind of bad dream was it, Danny?”
“I was being chased by big black suited soldiers. They caught me, had no faces just black swords that ate my memories until all that was left of me was a faded photograph. Dad, will they come after me again?”
“Both Director Sustain and the Colonel have been arrested, Danny. The President has ordered the Secret Service to protect you the same as Felice. When you’re better, we’ll get you out of here and go out west somewhere where you can recover completely. Then you can decide what you want to do.”
I didn’t answer him. In truth, I had no answer to that question. I had been a track star, I had wanted to go into training for the triathlon and was now reduced to being a paraplegic for the rest of my life. “Will I be able to sit in a wheelchair?” I wasn’t sure how bad the extent of my injuries were.
“I think so, Danny. The therapist can explain it better than I.”
He introduced himself and told me the only person I would hate worse than he was the person who’d put me in the wheelchair and I told him that wouldn’t do me any good as he was dead. We did passive exercises with my legs, nothing strenuous as my bones were still healing. I couldn’t feel his hands on me below the waist. I could see his resting on the carapace. Asked if that line was in me.
“You mean the catheter?”
“Yeah. Is that why don’t feel like I have to pee?”
“Yes, Danny. Shall we try your arms?”
“Why? I can move those.” I could feel the pain creeping back up and my stomach hurt. Looking around the room at all the baskets and flowers, I pointed asking Dad if he could get me something to eat. He brought me a Dove chocolate bar and opened it for me. I chewed, let it melt in my mouth, and felt an odd jolt as someone’s thoughts intruded in my skull.
“Dad!”
“What, Danny? He looked up from watching the therapist’s hands on my calves.
“There’s someone out there who knows about me, Dad. He’s planning to steal me away,” I said in horror.
“Who, Danny? Tell me who?” He bolted up and headed for the door and the agent just outside. It was Mitchell and he came in like a charging rhino.
“I can’t sense him anymore,” I said in dismay. “Dad, you have to get me out of here. They’ll take me away, and I’ll never see you again. Or Felice. I’ll die if they lock me up in that cage!”
“Calm down, Danny. Tell us who. Who did you see?” Mitchell asked.
“I don’t know. He hid his mind from me just now. I caught traces of his thoughts. Curare, a body bag from the morgue. My name. A million dollars. Someone paid him a million dollars to acquire me.”
My blood pressure skyrocketed, an alarm sounded bringing in more personnel and the doctors scolded me for getting upset but my father quickly got them to see why I was so frantic. They decided to move me, bed and all to a private room in the VIP ward where past Presidents stayed when in need of rest or recovering. Every one of the guards were handpicked by Gaines and James, placed there by President Rickover.
“What should we do, Senator?” Gaines asked.
“Are Sustain, and Pierce still in custody?” My Dad asked in a low voice, but I heard him.
Mitchell’s answer made my blood pressure spike again, and I shrieked, loud enough to sound like a girl.
“Danny. Quiet!” My Dad’s voice was sharp and the tone cut through my hysteria like I was a ten-year-old caught with my hand in his wallet.
“Danny, I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe, I promise. Mitchell, called Jake and the President. Find out if I can bring Danny to the White House with his nurses. You’ll be safe there, Danny. Safer there than anywhere else. Call the doctor, see if Danny can be airlifted.”
“Yes, Senator.”
Dad came over to me and calmed me down. I felt so helpless, I couldn’t even lift myself up in bed. “Dad, I can’t get away if he comes for me.”
“We won’t let that happen, Danny,” he promised. The Doctor came in and Dad took him aside warning me not to listen in.