by Elias Horowitz
Those few months for Peter were filled with more excruciating pain than could be suggested by the nonchalant words of Dr. Jenson. Much of the time later blended into an unclear haze of uncontrollable convulsions and the knowledge he was going to die. Yet one event stayed etched in his mind. Melissa walked through the door of the hospital room with a dark look on her face.
“I can’t wait for you anymore Peter,” she said. “It’s been over three months already. I’m sorry. I don’t want it to end. I’ve visited you so many times, and I doubt you even remember. I’m sorry.”
“What? Melissa?” Peter mumbled. “What do you mean?” He knew perfectly well what she meant. While he was debating with himself whether or not to welcome the end of this relationship with open arms, Melissa spoke again.
“This is exactly it. I doubt you remember even one of my visits.”
“I remember. I remember all of them,” he countered weakly. While he surely didn’t remember all of them, he knew exactly how many he wanted to remember. He struggled and fought down the urge to let her know just how much of their relationship had been platonic.
“I don’t even know if you’re conscious right now. I, just, Peter, I’m sorry. Goodbye.”
As she walked out the door for the final time, Peter thought he saw a wisp of red hair whip around the corner.
Progressively over the next few months, his condition worsened. Peter lapsed in and out of consciousness, screaming things while passersby glanced for a few moments. Two months after Melissa had ended their relationship, he had another round of convulsions. Except now, instead of merely falling unconscious, he had flashes of colors and images, turning into scenes, almost recognizable, but never quite. Had he thought it would have made a difference, he would have mentioned it to the doctors. He knew what their response would be; he was dying, and that death was coming along, even closer.
It was in those rare moments of lucidity when the true pain set in. “I’m going to die, Dr. Halpert. No one will ever know,” he muttered to the psychologist they had assigned him.
Dr. Halpert merely nodded, saying the prepackaged words by rote, “You matter… You have a job, a family, they care about you. Now that’s all that really matters.” Peter had some rather interesting daydreams and panicked assertions, followed by unhurried memorized responses by Dr. Halpert, altogether lasting the better part of an hour. Towards the end of their session, a man walked in. While otherwise unimposing with a crisp suit and unimpressive physique, his eyes flitted across the room, from Peter to Dr. Halpert. They were piercing. However nondescript the man seemed, he carried an aura about him, and knew it. With the tone of one who carries authority in any given situation, he growled at Dr. Halpert, “Out. Now.”
“Excuse me, I’m with a pa-“
“Leave. Don’t you have a patient you could be getting to in the Oncology Wing?”
“Wha? Who are yo-”
The question had not yet finished forming on the psychologist’s lips when it was halted by a devastating stare from the man. Rolling it over in his head for a minute, the psychologist decided he could ignore a patient just as well in another section of the hospital.
Left alone with Peter, the man sat down for before stating matter-of-factly, “Doesn’t listen, that one.”
“You have no idea,” came Peter’s swift reply. Grateful though Peter was for the man shooing the psychologist out, thoughts went buzzing through his mind as to who this man might be or what he could want. Trying to form the question in a way that wouldn’t seem as if he were afraid, the man replied before the words left his mouth.
“You mean you don’t recognize me, Peter? That’s sort of shocking,” the man replied, leaving Peter with a fearful look on his face as realization dawned. “Well, not that you don’t recognize me. We’ve never met. What’s shocking is you don’t recognize my voice.” The end of the sentence dribbled into Peter’s ears as he went into the convulsions that had become so common for him. He lost consciousness once more, but not in any way similar to the times he had passed out since coming to the hospital.
Peter saw the man sitting next to himself, next to an IV that had been set up on the other side of his bed. But not from his own body; he was watching the scene from the top of his hospital room. “What do you mean, Byron?” Peter heard himself say. He had a strange familiarity with the words issuing from the mouth he assumed was his. “The doctors said I was terminal. That’s why I’m in here, isn’t it?”
“I meant exactly what I said.”
“Bu-”
“Listen to me.”
Peter’s mouth closed abruptly.
“All the time you’ve spent in here, all the money you’ve paid, or not paid, since I assume they wouldn’t throw you out.” At this, Peter gave Bryon one of the most unconvinced looks he could manage, forcing a grin onto Bryon’s face. “That they haven’t bothered to even tell you what you are dying of?”
This question struck Peter as obvious once it was voiced, though he had never thought to ask it. “Well what do I have then?” asked Peter, looking as dumbfounded as he felt. “And are you sure it isn’t terminal?”
“To be honest, we’re not completely sure it isn’t terminal. But one thing I am sure of; you don’t have to suffer like this. And you don’t have to die, at least not here. Not now.”
But this last piece of news fell on the deaf ears of Peter’s body, which had fallen into sobbing at the thought of dying from this horrible disease. On the contrary, Peter, or, whomever he was right now, heard perfectly well.
“I believe we have some things to talk about if you’ll come with me,” said Byron to the sobbing wreck of a man. They walked slowly from the room.
Peter woke from his trance with a start. Looking about, panicked over his hallucination, he thrashed about. The man held him still, to keep the IV which hadn’t been there several minutes before from falling out of his arm.
“DAMMIT, STOP BYRON!” Peter shouted.
Byron smiled. He slowly took a card out of his pocket, and handed it to Peter. “My name is Byron Hoppman. I believe we have a few things to talk about.”
Chapter 2- Christine
Leaving the hospital had happened more quickly and unexpectedly than entering it. Byron waved away the nurse proffering a wheel chair, and set a quick pace with Peter towards the exit. When they reached the parking lot, they began walking towards the most crowded section. All the while, not a word was said. Byron stopped as they reached a black SUV without a license plate; he opened the passenger side and waited for Peter to enter.
“Who are you?” Peter demanded. “I’m not getting in that car until,”
“You’ll get in that car if I say you will.”
“Make me.”
“You don’t want that, believe me.”
“How do I know you aren’t some sort of kidnapper, or something,” Peter said shakily, his confidence wavering visibly.
Byron smiled. He didn’t seem fazed in the least by this exchange, which all combined to unnerve Peter even more. He braced himself for an unsatisfactory answer, or one just downright scary; he prepared to run. Could it be that someone so calm as to walk uninvited into a hospital and promptly remove a terminal patient from the care of the hospital would work for someone legitimately employed? Byron’s confidence seemed more characteristic of a mob hit-man than any other profession Peter could think of.
“I work for the CIA,” Byron said, the amused smile gone from his visage. “Now shut up and get in the car.”
With her finger tapping a monotonous beat on the desk as if waiting for other instruments to join in and create a melody, Eileen Jorgens watched the pair enter. “Name?” she asked, the answer of “Peter McCowley” already in her mind even as he said it. “Have you briefed him yet, Byron?’
“I thought I’d give you the honors of briefing the new one.”
“The little we have to brief him on, you mean. Should’ve been able to figure it out on his own; though by the look of him I might just need to tell him which foot to put in each shoe.”
Turning towards Peter’s clenched face, she began to explain, “We are not completely sure what’s happening to you just yet. We don’t even know what to call it. But we do know that it is lethal, and that it has the effect of giving strange visions. It seems these visions are of the near future around the one who is having them.”
He opened his mouth to interrupt, but before voice came out Byron placed a firm hand on his shoulder to preempt him. Eileen and Byron seemed quite used to plowing through these interviews in a matter of minutes.
Eileen leafed through the folders, quickly, but Peter still managed to catch a glimpse. Inked in carefully on the manila folders were not names, but numbers. 629, 630, 631, 632, 633, 634.... Eileen paused at this point, staring at the large bold number with hollow eyes. “You’re number six-thirty-four, I believe,” she said. “So you might hear that occasionally.
That look. Peter knew something was wrong. Flipping through the numbers, no names, a lethal disease. It can’t just be that this thing is dangerous. That type of risk doesn’t empty a person’s eyes of feeling like that, Peter thought. Not unless you already know how it’s going to end, before you even start. Peter knew. The survival rate was zero.
She began to explain the nature of the disease, but they had already told him everything in the hours spent studying his central nervous system, the pages and pages of results from MRIs, and the extensive genetic analysis. All had shown the same as every single other victim brought before this motley pair. Nothing had pointed to a common cause of the constant convulsions. Nothing. Once again, the room grayed.
Peter saw himself writhing, flopping his limbs wildly like a fish out of water stranded in the middle of the floor. Eileen was trying to hold him still, and Byron running out the door, presumably for help. Once he stopped struggling and lay still, Eileen got up and looked at the corner of the room. “I don’t know where you are, Peter, but I know you can hear me. Let’s continue your briefing,” she said as Peter jumped at hearing his name. Contrary to hitting his head on the ceiling, he got a dusty view of a pipe between the ceiling and the floor. Though his head was stuck halfway through the ceiling despite his flailing arms trying to push him back down, he could still hear Eileen clearly as she continued, “While we have tried to control and induce these convulsions which cause the visions in the later stages of the disease, as of yet, we’ve only succeeding in decreasing the lifespan of the subject. But despite these setbacks, this disease grants you tremendous potential. It is a shame that you are going to die, yes. But before that can happen, we want to use you in a government program for developing these... talents... that you’ve been given for the remainder of your life. Do you love your country, Peter? Would you give up a few pain-filled years if it could mean a chance you could serve the nation in the greatest way imaginable? Not that your patriotism matters much, unless you have the means to pay for your time in that wretched hospital you’ve been staying at. Otherwise you’ll be a corpse on the side of the road in twenty four hours.”
To Be Continued...
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