Chapter Thirty-Three
Albans had the nurse and one of the Secret Service agents prop me up on the couch. I was as cooperative as a doll; a puppet being manipulated by its strings. He tied off my arm, drew up a vein and popped an IV port into my elbow. First, he took a pint of blood from me which had the effect of making me even more light-headed than I already was. He hooked me up to fluids giving the Senator my pint of blood.
We were tied to each other like a bizarre set of conjoined twins, our tether the lines and fluids going from me to the other. “There are markers in his blood, Dr. Taylor that will destroy any carcinomas in Senator Lourdes’ cells but the amazing thing is this.” He taped my hands to the Senator’s upper arms so that we were literally joined face to face, an uncomfortable and repulsive position for both of us.
Unwanted and uncalled for, the glow from my body brightened the room and bathed both of us in its brilliance. I felt my consciousness slipping away and into another man’s body. Traveling at the speed of a neuron’s flash, from the brain to nerve cell, I was in his blood and system before I could blink. A blink was a snail’s pace, an eternity.
His cancer had metastasized and was invading everywhere except for his brain. Curiously, I could not breach the blood/brain barrier and I wondered idly if Albans knew that. My blood entered his bloodstream and ate the cancer cells and tumors with a voracious appetite, hunting them down to the last defective gene. We waited at the gate to his brain until my blood cell warriors signaled the all-clear before the WBCs dissipated from his body. As the last one died, so did my connection to him.
I looked out of my own eyes and shoved him away from me. The tape holding us together had melted leaving only a residue of glue. He fell onto the carpeting and his agent hurried to help him up, at the same time shoving me away.
I was already sinking back into the cushions, more exhausted than the drugs had made me. Nausea assailed me and I vomited, just missing their shoes. Albans quick action pulled a small trash can in front of me just in time to catch the puke.
Taylor checked Lourdes out while Albans ministered to me. Taking the sample vial of blood from Lourdes, he then proceeded to give him a physical exam palpating the Senator’s abdomen.
“Any pain?” he asked.
Lourdes shook his head. “I feel funny.” His face twisted and he gasped. Albans stepped in and helped the man over to a plush lounger, taking his vitals.
“It’s normal,” he said hastily as the agents became agitated. “It’s a shock to the system. He’ll sleep and when he wakes, he’ll be fine.”
“And the boy? How is he?” Taylor questioned.
“Don’t worry about him, Dr. Taylor. He’s my little golden goose and he’ll be treated like the treasure he is. It knocks him back, too but takes only a day or so to recover.”
“Jackson,” Taylor spoke to the agent still inside the room. “Take this blood vial to the lab on Clinton St. They’re expecting it and know what tests I want to be done. Tell them again it’s STAT and to deliver the results to you.”
“I’m to wait for it, Sir?” the agent asked.
“Yes. It’s a rush job, shouldn’t take more than a half hour. Till then, we wait for the results.” I heard the door open and close but I had closed my eyes and opening them again seemed to be one of Sisyphus’ chores.
Albans had chosen to use me to make himself rich off the diseases of the wealthy and powerful. “How munch?” I asked quietly and both of them heard me.
“Munch?” Taylor looked puzzled.
“He’s aphasic when he’s tired. It takes a lot out of him to do this.”
“How often can he do it? How does he do it? Produce that blue light? Is he…human?”
Albans laughed. “I’m still not sure. His DNA is human; he has 23 pairs of chromosomes but he has markers I’ve never seen before. We know nothing about his family history; even his name is an alias. We only know that he is of American Indian extraction and Anglo/Saxon heritage from the British Isles.”
“Red hair and blue eyes are Indian?”
“Red enough to be seen as black sometimes. His eyes - we tested them. He can see at night as well as an owl.”
“Where did you find him?”
Albans shook his finger in the other’s face. “That would be telling. But his exploits have him saving the lives of several accident victims, one of which was clearly deceased with a broken neck from eye-witness reports.”
“He can raise the dead?” His voice sounded terrified.
“I’m the second coming,” I said loudly enough so that both of them heard me. “I won’t spare you in the Apocalypse.”
Albans taped my mouth shut. “That’s enough out of you, goose.”
I couldn't move, spit in his face or even moan. I let my mind drift and where there was once a rich internal landscape, now there was only a gray mist.
It was closer to an hour before the agent returned with a large manila envelope. Taylor opened it and swiftly devoured the results. He gently shook the Senator’s shoulder. “Jaimie, wake up.”
Lourdes woke easily, his dark eyes sparkling and his skin had a healthy bronze glow as if the sun had kissed him. “Your blood tests have come back negative for the carcinoma markers, Jaimie. No sign of any elevated PSATs but to be absolutely sure, I want X-Rays and ultrasounds of your liver.”
“Release the money, David,” he said. “I feel great. Better than I did when I was 18.”
“Are you sure, Jaimie?”
“David, most mornings when I got up, I could barely stand, my guts hurt so much. Even the pressure of my waistband hurt. Now -,” he pushed hard on his belly and then proceeded to thump himself. He grinned, did a few deep knee bends and then an athletic flip over backward that jarred the floor.
The door flew open as his other agents hurried in because of the noise. Lourdes waved them back. “It’s okay, guys. I was doing backflips.” And just to prove he could, he did a series of them across the carpeting.
“I need to get my patient back to his hospital room,” Albans said. “If you’ll excuse us?”
Lourdes helped lift me back into a wheelchair holding the IV bag over my head. I still had my eyes closed so I didn’t see the look from the Senator to his doctor but I could sense that something was out of place.
I went down the elevator in the chair surrounded by their agents and Albans’ guards. Once they put me back on the gurney and locked me in place, I heard the doctor softly warn the men to take a different route home as he did not trust the senator or his men.
As the diesel engine started, it covered the sound of the doctor’s cell phone conversation yet I knew he was checking to see if his money had been transferred to his offshore bank account. I knew that he had started it years ago scamming money off Medicaid fraud but it was small potatoes to the scheme he had running with me. I could almost see his brain working and picking out his next customer. There was a huge pool of old rich people with health problems who would pay dearly for what I could give them.
“You’re scum,” I said and he sneered at me.
“Rich scum, something you’ll never be.”
“I was rich,” I said and stopped before I said too much. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.” He turned away from me and sat in the front with the driver. It was not the same pair of EMTs that had brought me - these were the hospital security staff that had accompanied me to the hotel. I looked out the windows and saw that we were heading north, not back west towards the hospital.
I tried to question one of them but no one would speak to me. Eventually, I let my exhaustion carry me into a nap where my dreams frightened me. I woke up as two things happened. The first was that a particularly ugly demon thing was eating me piece by piece and I woke to scream as his teeth bit into my groin just as the security guard called Brian Murray dropped the gurney onto the sidewalk. It was warmer here but still had the chill of late winter. Everyone wore heavy coats. We were in the driveway of an older nursing home set back in the woods which surprised me. Anyone wealthy enough to pay Albans for the use of me couldn’t be living in such a dump. It was drab and rundown.
I was sweating and shaking in the aftermath of the dream; aware enough to feel the weakening of the last dose of sedative. I pretended that I was still under its effects.
“Nightmare?” Murray asked and locked the legs so he could drop the head part. He pushed me inside under the portico towards the automatic doors even though an aide stood there and held them open. We entered a dark, dreary lobby with the receptionist’s desk on the left. It smelled like pee and disinfectant but the pee was winning.
A woman sat behind the circular desk, her hair pulled back off a face that had been severely burned but made somewhat normal by plastic surgery. She had been beautiful once yet she made no attempt to hide her scars or deny them. Her eyes were a sparkling hazel and they lit up when she saw the doctor.
“Dr. A, how are you?” She stood up and came around the counter to hug him. Only then did she look at me. “This is your patient? We have a room ready for him on the first floor of the Hoboken Unit, F Wing. 121.”
“Thank you, Mary-Margaret. It’s good to see you, too. You look wonderful.” He sounded sincere and she smiled. Her muscles pulled her lips up and it was a lovely smile.
“You’re blind as usual, Dr. A but thanks anyway. You want me to show you the way? It’s a bit of a mess, been closed down for ten years.”
“I remember, Mary-Margaret. Thanks.” Albans led the way down a wide corridor, the walls covered with artwork done by the patients. Some were childish, others exemplary and some the product of a deranged mind.
After a five-minute walk, he turned right down a series of other hallways. This part of the home was nearly empty; the rooms needed painting and plastering, water stains marked the ceiling and the linoleum cracked with missing sections. Plywood closed off some of the doorways to abandoned rooms yet he pushed me deeper into the wing’s heart turning into the corridor after corridor until we were lost.
The room he chose was once a large private one and it must have housed a severely deranged individual. The walls were padded and there wasn’t any furniture in it; just locking stanchions on the floor and wall where handcuffs could be run through and bolted. Nothing removable that a patient could tear off and use to assault staff or themselves. No windows, and bars across the doorway with an intercom next to that. I was sure there were cameras in the room but I doubted that they still worked.
Albans shoved me into the center of the room and locked the wheels of the gurney. He ran the belt restraints from me to the anchors on the floor. I tried pulling and he’d left me no give at all. Ordering his men to follow, they exited.
I shouted. “Hey! Are you going to leave me here alone? What if I get loose?”
He turned at the door. “Try. Murray and Jason will be just outside the door which I am locking.” He slammed both bars and steel door. I heard the distinct clunk as the locks engaged yet I heard nothing from the other side. The room was sound-proofed. No one could hear me screaming nor could I thump hard enough on the gurney to make any noise that would travel. I tried. After an hour of fruitless straining, twisting and hollering, all I had to show for it were sore wrists, throat and some pulled muscles.
I was sweaty, too but that wasn’t a problem in the dry, dusty room. Although it wasn’t heated, my exertion kept me warm. I was ravenously hungry which made me more exhausted than before my tirade.