Chapter Thirty-Four
Waiting for me was hard. I’d spent almost two years of my life waiting for something and to lose even an hour now drove me crazy.
The only clue I had that someone had returned was when the door opened. I raised my head off the flat pillow to see the doctor pushing a young man seated in a wheelchair. He had that blank-faced frozen look of someone with a traumatic brain injury. From the scars on his head and face, the accident must have been horrific. His arms and legs were drawn up in contractures, he was perched in the chair more than sitting in it.
He wore hospital scrubs in a dark navy with booties on his feet. His forearms were bare so that I could see his tattoos. He had been in Afghanistan with Special Forces.
“He’s one of the SEALS, isn’t he? Let me guess, someone’s rich and famous son? Won’t that bring you unwarranted scrutiny, Dr. Albans? When he shows up on two feet and completely recovered?”
“I see your aphasia has disappeared. I knew it would. You’ve healed that part of your brain. You’re amazing, Lacey. I foresee a long and profitable relationship between the two of us. Say hello to Michael Faraday, Master Sergeant. His father is CFO of Black River Pharmaceuticals.”
“Who supplies drugs overseas to third world countries, I know. How did he get hurt? IEDs?”
“Suicide bomber on a motorbike. Rode over the hill into the ravine where the men were patrolling. Right into the middle of Faraday’s squad and blew himself up. Six men and women died. He was one of the lucky ones.”
He went on to recite the litany of the sergeant’s injuries which included total destruction of his spleen, most of his bowels, part of his liver and amputation of his genitals. I winced. He would definitely have wanted to die along with his team rather than live like that.
“Bring him over here,” I said and Albans looked surprised at my cooperation. I ignored him as I pulled at the restraints impatiently. The doctor released my arms and the security people stepped closer, one closing the door. They held Tasers at the ready.
I took hold of his contracted arms, my palms cupping his elbows. Slowly, his head turned towards my face but there wasn’t anything behind his green eyes. Warmth spread from my hands and bathed both of us yet I was careful not to let the glow touch either of Alban’s men.
His brain was open to me; my blood did not need to circulate through him to heal these injuries. I started with the organs first, a relatively simple task of forcing his own cells to replicate and regrow new tissue. Every human has the ability stored in their lizard genes but not the knowledge to turn them on. I repaired his genitals making sure that I did not turn on the gene that would open his ability to do what I did or to make it inheritable. I kept him wholly human, homo sapiens, not homo superiors.
The last thing I tackled was his brain because that was the hardest. So much was blank and dead, many memories lost and gone forever. He knew his name, rank and the faces of his buddies. He knew they were dead. He knew he was gravely injured and wanted to die. He knew his mother and his childhood address. The name of a bar in D.C. and a girlfriend named Ivy. He remembered BUDS training but not that he had passed. A field of bluebonnets in the spring. A cotton candy cone of clouds out of an aircraft’s window. Wearing his dress blues to a funeral but not whose funeral it was.
I knew him better than he knew himself as I slowly retreated reiterating that all would be well, that he was well and not as he remembered.
I slumped onto the gurney in a faint so missed seeing him explode out of the chair and nearly take out both men before they tasered him to the floor. He was handcuffed and watched as Albans picked himself up, rubbing his chest and jaw where Faraday had punched him.
Albans slapped me gently on the cheek, bringing me around. I blinked weary eyelids. I couldn’t see through him so I wasn’t sure how the Sergeant was.
“Mickey?”
“How do you feel?” His fingers were at my pulse. “Jacobs, get my bag,” he ordered and the man left the room at a trot. He left the door open. “Lacey, your heart rate is 32!”
“I’m tired.” I closed my eyes. “Go away.” He slapped me again and I felt my heart skip a beat. Pain radiated in my chest and spread down my arm. Sweat beaded instantly on me, soaking my clothes.
Things got hazy after that. Albans stuck me with several needles but they didn’t hurt. The first one made my heart jump like a frog stuck in an electric socket. It raced and it hurt. My brain calmly told me that I had gone into bradycardia and with a shot of adrenaline, I was now experiencing tachycardia, the end result of which was heart failure and death. Although I wasn’t sure if I could die that way. I thought only the complete destruction of my brain would ensure death. And maybe not even then.
“Goddammit!” Albans cursed. “Don’t you dare die on me!” He was about to stick this enormous needle in my heart and I reached up with my left hand to hold his away from my chest.
“Stop.” He did. I sat up, lines and leads trailing. He had found an old EKG machine and had hooked me up to it. I slowed my heart beat to 66, my BP to 112/68 and raised my core temp to 97°. Then, I looked over at a wide-eyed Mike Faraday who was now sitting in an old, dusty folding chair. In handcuffs and sandwiched between two of Albans’ men.
“La -,” he started and finished. “cey.” He had been about to speak my real name ‘Lakan’ but had changed it with my subconscious warning. That connection would slowly fade but right now, he could almost read my thoughts and me, his.
He knew I wanted to escape and his eyes promised he would try to help me. He moved his arms and legs tentatively, gaped his mouth to ask the doctor who he was, where he was and what were they doing to the both of us.
Albans answered him patiently, explaining that Faraday’s father had arranged for a new treatment for wounded veterans of which he, Mike Faraday was the first to be experimented on. With spectacular results. He was now heading home after a short physical. Mike knew that Albans was lying but he also knew that he had to go along with it as he was almost powerless. No clothes, no money and two big dudes with Tasers beside him. He had no clue where he was or what direction he could run.
Faraday looked at me. “My team?” he asked with an audible thickening in his throat. He knew my answer but he wanted to hear it, like picking at the scab even when you knew it would hurt.
“The bomber. All six and the Major, too,” I said. He closed his eyes, remembering the flash as the bomber exploded and pieces of human flesh, bone, and metal sheared through him and his friends with the force of a hurricane’s wind. And then, the flames as his flesh caught fire. The smell of roasted pork and sizzling blood.
He was wheeled away and such was his sorrow that he didn’t object as they removed him. Immediately, Albans restrained me in the ties bolted to the floor and we waited for the guards’ return to repeat the process with me.
Parked in the drive next to my ride was a brand new, state-of-the-art ambulance manned by paramedics and more security guards dressed in three-piece suits. There was also a stretch limo with blacked out windows. I watched as the sergeant was helped into the car and the fancy ambulance drove away empty. No one said anything, no comments on Mike’s changed looks or status. I wondered if they thought he was someone else but that changed when the back window rolled smoothly down and a distinguished white-haired man leaned out. I recognized him, Charles M. Faraday, CFO of Black River Pharmaceuticals. I couldn’t believe Albans was stupid enough to let them see me. He studied me with an appraising eye, speaking quietly to the doctor but I could hear every word.
He promised Albans that a million dollars had been deposited to the Bahamian bank of his choice as of five minutes ago, matching the good faith deposit earlier in the week.
Albans replied that Senator Lourdes had recommended his case and had asked him to look into it as a favor to him.
“Someone will call you later this week,” the senior Faraday returned. “He has a son that OD’d and is brain damaged - on life support. The doctors told him to pull the plug but he refused. His son can’t leave the facility. Can you do your treatments there?” His eyes swiveled to me waiting on the gurney. “Is he another one of your patients?”
“Yes,” he lied smoothly. “Automobile accident. He’s recovering nicely but I have to get him back before he misses his PT.”
“Thank you again, Dr. Albans. You have no idea how much this means to me, to have my son back whole and sane.”
The window closed and the door opened as the CFO stepped out. He extended his hand and they shook. Albans waited for him to return to the seat and drive off before they loaded me like cargo into the ambulance’s bay. We followed the drive out to the state highway and back towards Pine Valley. The drive took several hours and drove through two states. I dozed most of the way, waking only when they stopped for bathroom breaks and twice to eat at rest stops. Murray brought me MacDonalds and fed me Big Macs with fries and a green shake. St Patrick’s day, he said. I ate until I polished off every bite and he went back for seconds, bringing out three more full-sized meals. I ate those too. My caloric requirements after a healing must have been astronomical. He told me if he ate like that, he’d weigh four hundred pounds.
“Help me,” I said softly so that only he could hear me.
He hesitated. “Can’t. He owns us.”
“It isn’t right, what he’s doing to me. I’m no better than his slave.” The rest of them climbed in and he shut up, roughly wiping the salt off my face and sitting back against the steel wall of the unit. We rode in silence into the afternoon and night. The only break in the monotony were the lights bouncing into the back of the rescue bay.