Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (5 page)

After taking a long slurp of coffee, Shoei turned to Shawn and replied. “After all the years I’ve been in the Service, I’ve learned to see where the lynch pins of a group or situation are. These people look to all of you. For want of a better description, you all are the Alpha animals of this pack.”

“The chief lemmings, you mean?”

“No, Bajali. Historically, groups that were headed by the people at this table, Frank included, have been instrumental in saving lives and protecting what you all have built together. That carries an immense amount of social weight.” He took another sip of coffee, breathing out across the surface of the liquid. “I’m not sure you understand my goals.”

“You are another pawn of the military-industrial complex that brought us to the brink of extinction. It seems very simple to me.” Baj’s voice was as flat and cold as an autopsy table in the middle of a pitch-black room.

“Dr. Sharma,” Omura responded with an equally frigid tone, “the irony inherent in your last statement is not lost on me. I am a pawn; that much is true. You, sir, stood much closer to the King on this chessboard than I did.” He pushed himself away from the table, stood up, and got right in Bajali’s face. “You have had your turn at keeping your loved ones alive, and I think you can see where that has left us. Now, it is MY turn to make the best out of a deadly situation.”

“What choice did I have?” He looked down into the granite stare of Shoei Omura, and I smelled the choking odor of terror. “I did what I had to do.”

“Bullshit, Doctor.” Shoei was not going to let a thing slide, and everyone at the table knew it. “You chose to drop untested technology on the heads of unsuspecting people. There was a choice. Give them a fighting chance or know they’d died on the orders of your former employer. You made the choice, and I am brokering a deal to keep all of us alive on the heels of your decision. I am fighting to keep MYSELF alive. Could it be that you don’t care if you live or die anymore?”

“No. Is that what you want to hear? I no longer care if I live or die after what I did!” Baj’s voice carried his despair to all of us, wrapped us up in it, and pulled us under. “I should be dead! I have cost people too much with my pride! I should be dead!”

“Listen to me, Bajali Sharma. Listen very closely. My father taught me to take responsibility for my actions. It’s a very Japanese thing, to take care of the mess you’ve made without making a fuss about it.” Omura assumed parade rest, standing in front of my distraught neighbor. “I am going to teach you about taking responsibility, starting right now. Shut up and watch how it is done.”

I don’t know what happened to me or to the repairs that were going on in my head at that moment, but the world vanished in a wash of white light. Whether or not I was conscious during my whiteout is open to debate, but for my part, I’m leaning toward believing that I was out like a candle. I had a brief sensation of floating, but that was it.

Maybe it was like dying, but I’ve never taken the time to ask a zombie prior to returning it to the Ever After. One moment I was there, and the next I wasn’t. No white light at the end of a tunnel, no angels, no God and, thankfully, none of my immediately deceased relatives to welcome me. I hold out hope that my father, mother and brother are roasting in Hell and I really don’t want to join them there.

A sensation drew me back to consciousness. There was a feeling of having something where there shouldn’t be anything. The locus of the experience seemed to be between my legs, and I was very clear on the concept of what legs were and what lurked north of my knees. Enough of my noodle was working that the thought of something awful occurring in that area snapped me completely awake.

“!”

Nancy Smith launched herself out of the chair beside the bed, squealing, “SHIT!”

I clawed the covers off myself and fumbled madly with the cord that kept the bathrobe closed. Nancy came over, breathing heavily, and tried to calm me down.

“Mr. Frank, you should lay down. Just lay down and I’ll go get Dr. J. Come on, Mr. Frank!” She pushed me backward, and I got a taste of how strong a nanotechnology-enhanced teenager can be. My head smacked the wall hard enough that I heard drywall crack. “Oh, fuck! I’m sorry, Mr. Frank! Oh, shit! Please don’t tell my parents that I’ve been cussing. Okay?”

“?”

“Thanks!” She smiled the smile that launched a thousand abstinence advertisements and burned the topless erections of adolescence. With a quick pat on my head, she scooted out of the room at speed.

With my perky guard absent, I got the robe open and found the source of my existential angst. Someone had stuck a tube up my Quixote. All I was able to do was stare at how it came out of me, meandered down the bed and dropped off the end… Tethered to the bed by my penis and this concerned me deeply.

“!” I squeaked.

“!” I squeaked again.

“Woo-woo,” I warbled. I also flailed a little bit with my arms.

As bothered as I was, it didn’t occur to me to simply tug on the tube to see what would happen. Instead, I batted at my bits, which only served to make me more aware of the distention of my urethra. Jayashri, Charlie, and young Nancy Smith arrived just in time to see my futile efforts.

“Francis, stop!” Jayashri reached me first and held my hands away from the offending parts.

“Frank, don’t do that,” Charlie chided and covered my groin with her hands.

“OMG! Ew!” Nancy stood to the side, eyes bugging out of her head at the unfortunate tableau. “That’s so nasty!”

“Girl, you aren’t even supposed to know penises exist at your age. Get gone!”

“But! Ew!” She tried protesting, but it was feeble in the face of Charlie’s Alpha Female power.

“Get!”

“Aw!” It was a sad parting shot, but she did as she was told.

For my part, I was strangely soothed and elated. I understood that I knew these women, and had context for their presence in the room. I knew them.

“Bbbbbbbbbb!” I babbled excitedly at Charlie. “Muh muh muh muh bbbbbbb!”

“Hey! You’re making noises! That’s new!”

“Francis, I want you to lay flat for a minute or two while I get gloves and then I will remove the catheter.” Jayashri smiled at me and squeezed my hands. I understood some of what she said, and complied.

“Hey baby,” Charlie said, and drew my attention back to her. “Where have you been for the past two weeks? We were pretty worried about you!”

I could see it on her face, but I could also see the relief as well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t answer the question, due in large part to not grasping the concepts. Sensing that she needed some response from me, I put my hands over hers and cooed at her. It got her to smile, and it meant the world to me to see it.

Jayashri reappeared with a towel and rubber gloves.

“?”

“Is that so,” Jaya asked me, by way of a reply to my interrogative noise. “I am happy to see that you are more animated now, but I will say I would prefer if you did not disappear into catatonia for weeks at a time in the future. Shawn was this close,” she held her thumb and index finger about an inch apart, “to standing you up and using your body as a coat rack.”

“Is that what he told you?” Charlie chuckled to herself. “He told me that he’d stick Frank under the front porch to grow mushrooms on. He misses portabellas.”

Since words weren’t appearing, and noises were easy to misunderstand, I stuck out my bottom lip and pouted with the righteousness of the Truly Offended. The women laughed at me.

“Well done! Ah, let us take that catheter out so that you can put on real clothes and join us downstairs.” Jayashri put on the gloves, lifted up Quixote and the Panza Brothers, and slid the towel underneath them. “Now, breathe normally and stay relaxed. Do not bear down as though you need to pee. Are you right?”

“.”

“Very good. Take a good breath,” she said, gently taking Don Quixote into her hand. I didn’t look down. “Relax.”

“Uh! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Ahhhh!”

“Jayashri, I don’t want to see anything like that ever again,” Charlie said, biting down on her lower lip.

Jaya patted me on the tummy. “Good job, Francis. That was well done.”

“?”

“No, I’m very serious! Removing one from a patient who is suffering from a urethral infection… Say, a vicious case of gonorrhea,” she frowned, “… is quite awful. This was so much more pleasant with a healthy and cooperative patient!”

“Fh,” I snorted.

“Why do you understand the noises he’s making? I don’t get any of it.”

“Francis is making vocalizations like a pre-verbal child. I was the star pupil of my pediatric rotation in medical school. I am using context to ferret out his meaning.”

“That makes me worry that his cognitive functions are impaired.” Charlie put her hand on my leg and gave it a squeeze. “Although, it’s pretty clear that he’s doing some thinking and not just reacting like before he shut down.”

“Indeed. He seems much more like himself than before. I will dispose of the waste and the towel if you would see that he gets dressed.”

“Deal.”

J. left the room, and Charlie embraced me as soon as the door closed.

“Frank, please don’t do that again,” she sniffled against my shoulder, “unless you give us a week’s notice. Okay? God, I missed you.”

I held her while she got some of the emotions out and made soothing noises, which she later informed me sounded like a cat with gas. Burbling felines or not, I needed to let her know that I cared and it was the best way I could express it at the time, until I had a brilliant idea. I kissed her.

As far as kisses go, it was not so grand that a sonnet was required in the aftermath, or so poor that licking the rim of a fish bowl would be an accurate comparison. I did my best to make it honest and loving, since all I had were juvenile noises to get my point across otherwise.

She got the point. It led to a few more honest, loving repetitions.

We made me presentable, all the while grinning like explorers in the land of exotic narcotics. Neurochemistry is a miraculous thing, and mine appeared to be back online.

“?” Eloquent, I know, but it was the best I could do to get across that I wanted to know what was coming next.

“Ok, I’m going to guess what you mean,” she said, taking me by the hand. “We’re going to go downstairs. Omura, Baj and Nate are playing cutthroat Scrabble. Buttons was teaching Chunhua, Jaya and me a little Krav Maga. You know, the Israeli combat system? Nasty stuff, I mean really nasty. No pretty circular movements or anything!”

I nodded, because I only grasped part of what she was talking about. The names made sense, and I got a little from context. “Playing” had meaning for me, but everything else may as well have been deep Differential Calculus for all I caught. Understanding or not, I did have a desire to see people, my people, so I didn’t resist as Charlie led me down the stairs.

We encountered Buttons first, chatting in a nearly animated manner with Chunhua over glasses of what appeared to be lemonade.

“Triple word score, bitch!”

Everyone turned to look towards the dining room.

“Sounds like Nate is winning,” Buttons commented in his typical flat voice.

“His wife would be upside his head if she heard him swearing,” Chunhua said.

“She has a problem with it?”

Chunhua giggled and replied, “A little.”

Both of them turned to see us reaching the bottom of the stairs. Buttons’ face assumed an impressively flat expression, but Chunhua squeaked and pounced on me with an epic embrace. Luckily for me, she’s small, but the force of the collision nearly knocked me off my feet.

“!!”

“It’s good to see you, too!”

“Chu, why does everyone understand him and I don’t?” Charlie asked, sounding miffed in the extreme.

“Grandpa Yan and I had a son,” she replied, and I felt the tension in her body increase by orders of magnitude. I knew something else was coming. “He chose to stay in Hong Kong when we emigrated.”

I felt the lie.

“Oh, so it’s a parent thing or experience working with babies?”

“Exactly.” Chunhua’s tension eased with the closing of the topic. “Let’s get Frank something to eat and drink. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“.”

“That’s pretty noncommittal for someone that hasn’t had a bite to eat in two weeks.” She linked her arm through mine and led me into the kitchen, leaving Buttons and Charlie behind. “Jayashri told me that you dissolved every needle she tried to use to run an IV to hydrate you. She started leaving 1000ml bags of saline on the bed after the second day, and they would be empty in three hours or less.”

“Nnnn?”

“Yes. That’s why she had to put the catheter in.”

“Uhhhh!”

Once we got into the kitchen, there was a bum rush from the table to greet me. Shawn slapped me on the back, nearly knocking me over and into Nate. Bajali waited until I found my balance again, and gave me a gentle hug. Nate messed up my hair.

“Look at the geeky white boy getting all the attention for being Mister Comatose Drama,” he said with a cheesy grin plastered across his face. “Most people pass out, wake up, and go about their business. Not my Frank! He’s got to show us all how it’s done and spend two weeks stretched out like a plank, all unresponsive.”