Out of the Black (13 page)

Of course, in her mind, the kindness of her coworkers wasn't due to an easy-going nature or kind motivations. She imagined them pitying her. 'Oh, that poor Anne, we've got to be sensitive to her disability. She's got special needs and special challenges we need to appreciate.' She could picture their condescending faces as they discussed her obesity, '...perhaps she needs to rest more frequently when walking, or maybe the elevator in her building has a weight capacity that keeps her waiting for an empty car.'

Of course, none of this was fair. They probably were just kind, easy-going people. But Anne couldn't shake the picture of them talking about her tripping over the fat rolls on her ankles or some such... "Eeeow!"

A bee, probably on his way home after an early-evening nectar binge, flew into her forehead, its buzz interrupted by a slight tick as it bounced off of her skin. She only let out a small scream, but the flailing of her hands about her head was entirely involuntary. In the middle of her flailing, the buzzing stopped. Maybe she'd hit it?

Ninja hands, she thought, partially recovering her composure. She looked about, embarrassed. The park was mostly empty, but there were a few people close enough to stare at the jumpy fat woman.

She tried an embarrassed chuckle and shrugged her shoulders. She took a few more steps before she felt something move between the index finger and thumb of her left hand. She brought the hand up to investigate, and gave the full belly scream.

The bee was caught, it's wings pinched neatly between her fingers. It was wiggling its little pointy butt, looking for some payback. She flung her left hand away from her, trying to pitch it as far away as possible, while sweeping the air with her right hand, hoping to shoo the little hungry devil away. As she did this, she felt the most disconcerting click between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

She brought that hand up- now the bee was caught there, its stinger useless between the tips of her right thumb and forefinger.

More screaming, more flailing. Now her left fist closed with the bee held gently between her third and fourth fingers. Still screaming, she shook her left hand, forcing the fingers wide apart.

She looked at her left hand... nothing. Whew! When she felt something crunchy pinched between her right thumb and index finger again, she was too shocked to scream. Slowly, she brought up her right hand- sure enough, there was her little pal, waiting patiently with its wings pinched between her fingers. It wasn't wiggling, wasn't looking for payback- honestly, it looked like it was praying for death. Poor little guy.

She watched the bee intently as she slowly forced her fingers apart. It fell to the ground with a barely audible pop. It lay there for perhaps five seconds before it righted itself and began to crawl away. Fascinated, and just a little shell-shocked, Anne watched as it crawled about a meter away and then took off, staying low and heading directly away from the bee juggler.

Awww...
A large weight of realization pushed aside her curiosity and confusion. She looked slowly about at the people staring at her slack-jawed. Some had risen to their feet in alarm, there was a ball of ice cream on the ground next to a little girl holding an empty cone in her hand. Ok, so that was a lot of screaming and flailing. Nothing to do now but look at her shoes and walk away. She'd had a fairly embarrassing life to this point, but the last two days had been a crescendo of humiliation.

"Don't do drugs kids." She said into the shocked silence. She hurried away; gaze locked on her shoes, hand shielding the side of her burning face.

***

Well, that was pleasant, Ping thought as he descended the stairs feeling about a meter tall, which was a few centimeters shorter than usual. What was in those cornflakes? In one of his more amusing moments, Captain Hafiz had postulated that it might have been distilled stupid.

Ping was sure that the Feds were now rocketing out to Rosemont College, calling ahead for backup. He wondered what they would find. Magic cornflakes or no, Ping hoped Alexander and Rae had made it away safely. Of course, he wouldn't mind running into them again- he still had issues.

"How'd the cavity inspection go, Bannon?" Audrey said as he passed the security booth.

"It was a real monkey trap." Ping managed a smirk. "Little guy just wouldn't let go of the nut long enough to get his hand out." There were some people in the world that were just fun to make laugh, Audrey was one of them, and Ping couldn't stop trying.

"You think they'd cover that in orifice inspection training." She shook her head, smiling. "Buck up little camper. You remember the reaming the Cap gave you during Three Rings?"

Ping nodded. "Now that was spectacular."

"But it ended up okay, right?"

He nodded again.

"So will this. Go out there and get back on that horse."

"No more horses for me today."

She gave him a curious look. He continued, "I'm heading to the lab... Cap ordered a mandatory drug test... 'for actions unexplainable by the usual stupidity' the order says."

He left her laughing in her bulletproof booth. Yep, always worth it.

***

The lab was dazzling fun.

The automatic doors swooshed open before his extended key could touch them. The keys were equally useful as he attempted to open the bathroom door, plastic sample cup in hand. After a fifteen-minute wait, he was as surprised as anyone that his results came back clean. Both blood and urine were free of drugs.

A few minutes later, Captain Hafiz called for a little more sadism. He'd received an electronic notification of the test results, so he'd called to point out that now there was absolutely no excuse. He told Ping to go home and try to sleep the stupid off. Tomorrow would supposedly entail some exciting deskwork involving parking violations.

Of course Ping knew better. His Captain liked to blow hard, but not long. Tomorrow all would be forgiven- that's just how he worked.

He checked his thumb watch: eleven in the morning. He was exhausted; he was starving. He had time for both food and sleep. The Feds and the Captain had relieved him of his current case, and he had ten hours before he was supposed to be in the Rosemont college library.

Though Ping now had enough presence of mind to realize he wasn't going there to meet 'Sparky', he had a hunch that he would be glad he went.

Of course, that might just be the cornflakes talking.

***

Anne hustled through the door and into the nurses' lounge. She had exactly negative thirty-five minutes to get clocked in and she had a hunch she wasn't going to make it on time.

She hurried to the small bank of half-sized lockers on the far wall, located hers near the center of the top rack, swiped her thumb across the lock pad and jerked on the handle. Two sounds registered essentially at the same time: the failure buzz of the biometric lock, and the pop of the locker opening. Then came an oddly lucid moment: Anne stood, holding the opened locker in her right hand, her left hand still holding her jacket, while three small irregular pieces of metal seemed to float lazily toward the ground.

The bits of metal hit the ground with three distinct ticks and a minimal amount of bouncing. The next five seconds passed with no further motion as Anne tried to assess what had just happened. Finally, she turned her attention to her locker. The handle was slightly bent and the door itself bowed out in the middle where the handle was attached. The metal on the inside of the door at the top and bottom where the latches had been was bent and broken- apparently the metal bits on the ground were the missing parts of the latches.

She swung the locker closed with a labored creaking sound. The hinges were bent and the door no longer closed completely. The e n swung back open twice as she tried to get it to stay closed. She banged the door with her palm to try to seat it, but the door bent too far, now bowing in at the center. The door stayed closed, but the top and bottom corners protruded perhaps three centimeters.

"Aw crap!" she hissed, looking around the empty lounge.

Blushing furiously, she pried at the bottom corner of the door. Finally, her fingers found purchase and she managed to get the locker door open. Unfortunately, she also managed to break the bottom hinge and further bent the bottom of the door outward.

She dropped her coat on the floor so she could work with both hands and took a deep, not so calming, breath before continuing. She gently opened the door as far as possible so she could examine the damage to the hinges. As she did so, she noticed the contents of her locker: a king-sized Snickers bar, half a six-pack of Mega Slim Quick chocolate flavored shakes, and half of an eight pack of Diet Coke.

Aw, she thought, private stuff- secret stuff. She reached down with her left hand to grab her coat, planning to throw it over the locker's contents, but when she stooped down, she heard another pair of snaps and winced. The detached locker door hung in her right hand, it's final hinge broken.

Several more seconds passed as she reeled between denial and deep anxiety, rocking from foot to foot and tapping the broken locker door against her hip. Then she had a hopeful idea, and pinched her right forearm with her left hand.

"Ow!" she whispered as her pinch resulted in pain rather than waking.

She jumped when her tablet chirped in its holster at her hip, her eyes jerking to the doorway. Her eyes rolled toward the heavens, though she knew there was no help for her there. "What now?" she whispered. After taking a few seconds to get her breathing under control, she propped the locker door against the wall and pulled out her tablet.

"Kelley. Go."

"Anne, I need you in 1003 when it's convenient... I need a complete panel and a tumor screen." Dr. Wyler's friendly voice crackled from her tablet. "No hurry though, I'm headed downstairs for a shift in the ER. I won't get a chance to look at the results until after that's over... hey, you feeling better?"

"Doing great. Thanks." Anne said, staring into her broken locker. "I'll be there in five."

"Great. Thanks, Anne."

Anne clicked off her tablet and holstered it. After a few more seconds of anxious thought, she picked up the locker door and tried unsuccessfully to wedge it in place. She thought she had it once, but it fell off as soon as she turned away, clattering noisily on the tile floor. She tried several more times with increasing speed and frustration, only managing to further deform the door.

She gave up and leaned the bent locker door against the wall. She then tried to arrange her jacket so that it covered the contents of her locker. Finally, she threw the candy bar and the Slim Quick shakes in the trashcan and hurried out of the lounge.

There was silence for several seconds in the empty lounge, but then the door opened again and Anne rushed back in, even more flustered. She tried adjusting the coat to better cover her remaining stash, but eventually she threw the Diet Coke in the trashcan and hustled back out the door.