The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Three

by Randall Farmer

  The FBI’s problem with him came from earlier, when he had still been at the St. Louis Detention Center.

  “I have a phone number for Professor Rizzari’s office, a phone number for her department secretary and department head,” Dr. Zielinski said, angling for time. “In addition, I have a glossy Boston College recruitment brochure in my office with her name and picture in it.” Buried on the second from last page, all of an inch by three quarters of an inch, right next to a picture of their one Oriental Professor.

  “Let me have it,” Dr. Josephs said, which brought on the Chinese Fire Drill routine with the unlucky Dr. Green – who had been available, walking down the hall – and Marion, the department secretary. All because Dr. Josephs refused to move from his desk, and refused to let Dr. Zielinski out of his sight.

  Five minutes later, Dr. Josephs slapped the brochure shut, defeated but not cowed. “Tokenism at its worst. Does she even teach anything a grad student couldn’t teach?” From the lofty ivy of Harvard, Boston College was no better than a Midwest land-grant public college.

  “It’s her first year there,” Dr. Zielinski said. He once shared Dr. Josephs’ opinion, but he had seen enough to respect the quality of Rizzari’s academic talents.

  “We’ll need a written statement from her regarding your whereabouts on the night of the fifteenth,” Dr. Josephs said. The night Hancock escaped.

  “I can arrange that,” Dr. Zielinski said. If he got lucky. Focus Rizzari played her cards close to her chest about her security. She might even claim that a stranger could use samples of her handwriting, an exquisite cursive worthy of being an expensive typeface, to breach her security by doing handwriting analysis.

  Besides, he still had problems using the telephone to talk to his Network contacts. He wouldn’t be able to call Focus Rizzari to ask for her help. The Arm Stacy Keaton had ordered him not to call others on the phone about Transform business, to keep Hancock’s rescue secret from the Focuses, because some unknown high-ranking Focus decided Hancock would be better dead. He didn’t know what the Arm had done to him, but he still couldn’t call in his standard reports to his Focus Network contacts. They had to be getting frantic.

  Or was that just his arrogance talking? For all he knew, the Network might not even have missed him yet. Or maybe they didn’t even care. He hadn’t received a call from any of his Network contacts since he finished up with Focus Rizzari. No contact from Stacy Keaton, either. He had expected her to call him in to help train Hancock, but he hadn’t received any phone calls or messages from her. Not a thing. Damn it, didn’t she realize how useful he would be? He hoped Josephs was done.

  “On to the next question,” Dr. Josephs said, and began to leaf through his notes. “What in the hell were you doing at this ‘Stoneham’s Bar’ place?”

  No, they weren’t done today.

  ---

  Dr. Zielinski awoke to the sound of nearby footsteps. For a moment, he didn’t remember where he was. He sniffed and recognized his Harvard Medical office smells. His head rested on his desk. To avoid Glory’s wrath, he spent as many evenings as possible here.

  Had he heard something?

  Before he fully awoke, someone pushed him to the floor, and he fell with a hard crash. A brief moment later, two people grabbed him and twisted him into a fetal position, sliding a thick cloth over his mouth. He smelled antiseptic, and then someone, a third person, lifted his shirt and bared his back to the cold air. The sharp pain of a spinal injection followed a swab of antiseptic cold. Dr. Zielinski tried to struggle, but the two holding him kept him in place. He tried to scream, but only managed a muffled yelp because of the cloth over his mouth. He saw nothing but the rough fabric of someone’s sleeve. The spinal injection seemed to go on for days.

  “A bullet to the brain would have been better, scum, except for the attention,” a flat voice said. “Accidents do happen, though.”

  A swab of antiseptic cold on his arm was followed by a sharp hot pain as the flat voice said “Say hello to Jesus for me.”

  Whatever they injected him with took over, weakening him. Dr. Zielinski got a glimpse of two of the men as they left. Both wore the sort of standard issue dark navy suits favored by the FBI.

  A tunnel of light, narrowing, narrowing.

  Darkness.

  Dr. Zielinski awoke, stared up at the underside of his desk and watched it spin. Why would someone want to kill him?

  He thought up far too many reasons.

  The attack might be a continuation of the faction fight in the FBI over the treatment of Transforms, Dr. Zielinski decided woozily. The Director of the FBI and his faction viewed Transform Sickness and its byproducts as a law and order problem. Agent McIntyre supposedly belonged to this faction. He had hammered Zielinski for hours about the nurse, a random nurse, killed outside a random hospital with no involvement with Transforms. The killing didn’t make any sense to Dr. Zielinski, either. He couldn’t say, “Keaton killed the nurse”, because the FBI hadn’t mentioned Keaton. McIntyre also hammered Zielinski about Keaton’s escapades with the bugs in the Clinic, but never asked the right questions to put Zielinski in a position to lie to McIntire about the bugs. FBI and beat cops weren’t people you ever wanted to baldly lie to, Zielinski knew. Their instincts were honed too keen. Luckily, McIntyre never directly asked him “Did you reattach the bugs after Keaton ripped them out of their hiding places?” because Zielinski had.

  Special Agent Bates belonged to a small FBI faction who viewed Transform Sickness as a humanitarian disaster. Several of them had Transform relatives. Others had attended too many funerals of those killed by Transform Sickness. Still others remembered the early years, when they had to clean up when people suspected of being Transforms got themselves lynched. The humanitarian disaster faction went out of its way to be helpful, especially to the Focuses and their households. In fact, they were extremely protective of Focuses, and years ago had been instrumental in the creation of the Transform Network.

  Unfortunately, a third faction in the FBI viewed Transform Sickness as a moral plague. They wanted Transforms shot on sight, or put into permanent protective custody. They hated Focuses passionately, because the success of Focuses in keeping Transforms alive gave a moral imprimatur of acceptance to Transform Sickness. The stridency of this third faction often took on absurd overtones. To them, Focuses were witches, in the medieval Christian sense of the word. Zielinski suspected Dr. Fredericks, the FBI doctor he had met in St. Louis, belonged to this faction.

  Then…then…

  Hell.

  His vision blurred and a loud roar built in his ears. He needed to stop woolgathering and start trying to get someone here to help him, or he would end up being a very dead doctor.

  He managed to crawl several feet before he passed out again.

  Dr. Zielinski awoke in agony, drenched in sweat, his arms itchy. He opened his eyes, then shut them again immediately. Painfully bright colored auras surrounded the objects around him. His heart raced. He checked his wristwatch, and through his blurry vision he guessed the time as about two-thirty in the morning. He tried to stand and fell back down, his extremities shaking.

  He wasn’t dead yet.

  This was the FBI’s work. After so many interviews in the past weeks, he had developed a sort of sixth sense for FBI agents, though he doubted he had ever met these agents before. The attack was especially irksome, as he had been officially cleared of suspicion in the Hancock case five days ago.

  Someone in the moral plague faction didn’t believe his story. He guessed they finally decided to fire him, with prejudice.

  Dr. Zielinski crawled across his office to the door of his lab, and managed to get up on his knees enough to open the door. The motion rocked his stomach, and he heaved, dry and useless. Eventually, his stomach settled and he pulled himself up into one of his lab chairs. After a short search, he found the equipment he needed and ran a short test.

  He had been injected with juice, as he suspected. From the effects, pro
bably tainted juice from some Monster. The juice reading was seventy-two, a meaningless number. Any reading above zero was impossible. Fundamental juice, supplemental juice, it didn’t matter. His body wasn’t equipped to cope. For a normal, juice was a poison.

  He would die unless he managed to conjure up a miracle.

  He had a good guess about the second injection. His attackers had every right to think their attack was a death sentence. If he hadn’t been so close to death from the tainted juice injection, he could have laughed at their second measure. That part of their little game wasn’t going to work. All the doctors working on Transform Sickness had used methods to increase their resistance to the Listeria bacteria. These repeated vaccinations often gave them meningitis, and the vaccination wasn’t safe enough to release to the general public, or technically a vaccination at all. On the other hand, the side effects were significantly safer than Transform Sickness. His attackers must have thought they would trigger a transformation when they injected him with the Monster juice and this particular Listeria variant, but they were mistaken.

  No matter, he decided. The tainted juice would do him in first. He crawled back to his office, the blurry auras strengthening. A roaring noise grew in his ears, trying to drown everything out. His mouth was now wooden and dry, his nose fully clogged. Sweat poured off of him as he crawled, leaving handprints on the floor.

  I should have already died, he thought. Pretty good for a fifty-year-old MD.

  When he reached his desk, he pulled on the wire to drop his phone to the floor. He dialed the first three numbers of his home phone, and realized Keaton’s induced phone willies had vanished. He stopped and put his finger on the buttons and got the dial tone back. “’ve got a better place to call,” he said, and dialed Philadelphia.

  “It’s the middle of the night, Hank. This had better be important – did you finally find Keaton or Hancock for me?” Biggioni said.

  His thoughts swam. Finding Keaton was one of his assigned tasks. “Ahhurrghhh, no. I’m in big trouble. Attackers injected me with juice.”

  He made out some rustling and thumping on the other end of the phone line, and Tonya said something about trouble, but he couldn’t make it out. He faded.

  “You’ll have to speak up,” he said. “I can’t hear very well.”

  “Zielinski?” She had to be shouting; the roaring in his ears continued to grow louder. “Pay attention!”

  Suddenly, his hearing cleared up. “Yes. I’m here. Injected with juice.” Had to be her charisma, a decent trick over a long-distance phone call.

  “Damn!” Pause. “What can I do to help? How much danger are you in?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve read that the Stasi,” the East German secret police, “inject victims with juice to torture them. Some die quickly. Others turn into Monsters and die slowly. Some get Transform Sickness. That’s all I know.”

  “I can’t get to you,” Tonya said. “Can you get to us?”

  “I don’t think so. I can barely crawl, and I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to do even that much.”

  “Damn. Damn. Damn!” She paused and said something to someone else on the other end of the connection. “What about your colleague, Dr. Sellstrom?”

  “Pete’s in California, attending a conference.”

  Tonya read down some sort of list, he guessed. “Dr. Kochanek?”

  “New York City.” Dr. Zielinski spasmed and dry heaved for a moment. “None of my trusted colleagues are around. Too much family business this close to Christmas.” He paused. “Where do you have Dr. Kepke stashed?”

  Tonya muttered something, perhaps obscene. “You’re not supposed to know about him,” she said. Dr. Kepke was an old colleague of his, who had supposedly quit dealing with Transforms during his residency. He knew otherwise. “He’s working on a project for me in the CDC’s Transform lab in Virginia.”

  Too far away, as well.

  A long pause followed. “How about Focus Rizzari?” Tonya said. “Can you get to her?”

  “We’ve always met in neutral locations,” he said. “I don’t…” He paused to collect his thoughts. “I don’t know where her household is, or any of her household’s phone numbers. Just her phone number at Boston College.”

  “She hasn’t shown you her household? You’ve got to see it, Hank. It’s a zoo. You would love it.”

  “I haven’t earned her trust, but I do thank you for the introduction,” Hank said.

  “I didn’t arrange that contact, Hank.” Frosty. Had Tonya been the one who made sure he and Focus Rizzari never made contact before? “Flo Ackermann did.” Flo was his most frequent Focus contact. As Region treasurer, she counted as politically well connected, another of the regional Network leaders, but lower ranking than Tonya and Focus Rizzari. Unfortunately, Flo was too squeamish about the reality of life as a Transform. If he called her about something like this, she would panic.

  He suspected Tonya and Focus Rizzari didn’t get along. He suspected Focus power games, since Rizzari was the Region VP and Tonya was the Region Council Rep. He hoped that the rumors of Tonya’s organized crime connections weren’t true. Although he knew it was unfair of him to jump to this sort of conclusion, his first guess was that if someone named Biggioni was having problems with someone named Rizzari, there might be some organized crime problems in the stew pot, as well. Though weren’t the Irish in charge of Boston’s mobsters?

  Damn. I’m not thinking straight, he thought. Not able to keep focused. Tonya said something, and he missed it, despite her strange charisma trick.

  “Help! I think I’m passing out, Tonya!”

  “Is this your office or home phone, Hank?”

  “Office.”

  “I’ll have Rizzari call you. Immediately.”

  The phone went dead. He hung up, waited, and perhaps blacked out for a few moments, because it seemed like the phone rang immediately.

  “Dr. Zielinski speaking,” he answered, unthinking.

  He could not make out any words in response.

  “I can’t hear. Scream.”

  “I’m on my way,” he thought he heard a voice say.

  ---

  “Probation?” Dr. Zielinski asked. Opposite his office desk at Harvard Medical, his lawyer, Mr. O’Donnelly, nodded. Hank’s gray hair came loose from where he combed it to fall across his narrow forehead. “You mean I need to plead guilty?” The damned FBI tried to kill him, and after they failed they had arrested him on ridiculous moral charges. Among other things.

  Dr. Zielinski’s office was far less sterile than Dr. Josephs’. Diplomas, awards, and magazine clippings covered his walls. A leather cover surrounded the desk pad, and an elegant wooden stand held the pens Glory had given him one Christmas many years ago, in happier times. A letter opener sat on top of the papers held in his carved wooden outbox. Behind him hung pictures of every Arm he had worked with. Five pictures, because he couldn’t admit to Stacy Keaton.

  “Actually, ‘no contest’,” O’Donnelly said. “I’ve got it all worked out with the judge and prosecutor.” O’Donnelly was a youngster, barely thirty, but sharp and aggressive. He cost, but Dr. Zielinski was willing to pay for brains, and an infinite supply of energy.

  Dr. Zielinski had spent only one night in jail before O’Donnelly bailed him out. The punks and hoods he shared the city jail cell with were enough to convince Dr. Zielinski of his unsuitability for jail.

  “What about my medical license?”

  “Consider it gone,” O’Donnelly said. He sat on the edge of his chair, too energetic to relax. He made Dr. Zielinski feel old. “You should feel lucky the FBI didn’t bring up any federal charges. I think they’re waiting to see if you beat the Massachusetts charges.”

  “My reputation?”

  “It could be worse,” O’Donnelly said. “Trust me, you don’t want the publicity of a trial on these asinine sodomy charges if we want to have any chance at all of retaining your medical license, or if that fails, getting your medical l
icense back later.”

  Ever since the start of the Hancock project, his life had gone downhill; now, the slope deepened. His days of helping the FBI were over. The Network wouldn’t talk to him, unable to afford the publicity. Even Keaton wouldn’t talk to him, though he doubted she cared about his legal problems. He had hit up damned near every Network contact he knew in the last two weeks, delicately trying to figure out what happened to Hancock. Nothing. As far as he could tell, Keaton hadn’t told anyone she had Hancock, much less discuss her plans for the young Arm.

  Or talk in more than grunts to any of her standard contacts.

  “Any word on my position here at Harvard Medical?” Even the colleagues he called ‘friends’ ducked him now. The two days of picketing outside Harvard Medical by a Monsters Die throng when the scandal went public didn’t help. He hadn’t appreciated the ‘Throw Him to the Monsters’ placards or their silly threat to boycott Harvard because Harvard had Transform-loving staff members. Or the Tennessee Congressman toady of Monsters Die, who wanted to expand the network of opprobrium to anyone who merely dealt with Harvard Medical. All because of him.

  O’Donnelly looked away. “Harvard’s going to put you on indefinite leave of absence. They can’t afford to publicly support you either.”

  Dr. Zielinski sat and put his head in his hands. The Monsters Die idiots would celebrate, though he doubted their opinions mattered to the Harvard administrators. “What am I going to do?” The AMA would take away his medical license, he knew. He would be a doctor no more. Of all his recent miseries, losing his license would be the worst.

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  There was a knock at his office door. Dr. Zielinski looked up, and saw an unfamiliar man in a blue suit. “Come in.”

  The man looked dour. He held out a sheaf of papers to Dr. Zielinski, and stepped back. Dr. Zielinski took the papers, slowly fanned through them, and abruptly sat down on his office chair.