by Osborne, Jon
That was when the front door slammed open with a violent bang.
“James? Sara? What the hell’s going on in here? It’s Ralph Wilson from next door. Elizabeth and I heard screaming and called the police. Is everything all right?”
Nathan Stiedowe froze in his tracks for the briefest of moments. And then he suddenly reacted in another blindingly fast flash of black movement.
Undisguised hatred flashed across his handsome face as he bolted past the now-catatonic little boy and dashed into Dana’s childhood bedroom before pulling himself up through the open window and dashing across the yard, disappearing into the darkness.
From the corner of her right eye, Dana watched a dark circle of urine spread across the front of Bradley’s pajama bottoms, just like the urine that had spread across her pajama bottoms thirty-five years earlier.
The accusing glare in the little boy’s traumatized eyes was impossible to misinterpret.
How could you let this happen to me again? his look asked her. You were supposed to protect me.
Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.
CHAPTER 15
It had taken about a hundred days for the wound from my unorthodox bris to heal fully. More than three months of walking bowlegged around the house and feeling like an overworked cowboy who’d spent a long day of busting broncos on his isolated ranch out in Wyoming with no one else around to lend a helping hand. More than three months of not daring to step so much as a high-heeled foot outside the confines of our oh-so-peculiar domestic living arrangements. More than three months of having my mother clean my private parts with a solution of rubbing alcohol mixed with water while I sat on the toilet in front of her with my legs splayed wide.
The burning sensation I’d felt when the rough cotton cloth made first contact with my horribly blistered skin was intense – no debating that simple fact – but it was absolutely nothing compared to the searing gratitude I felt inside for the kindly woman kneeling before me.
A concerned look of concentration colored in my mother’s gorgeous face as she lovingly tended to my injury. God, how I adored her. She was my own personal angel of mercy; had showed me unimaginable generosity by giving me life for a second time. Because, cheesy as it might sound – and even I knew it sounded hopelessly cheesy – I’d truly been born again, only this time as a woman.
And thank God in the heavens above for that! Lord almighty, thank the heavens above! Because finally my outside matched the way I’d always felt on the inside, down in that special place between my legs where I’d never felt especially comfortable before.
Things weren’t all good as a woman, however. Quite the opposite, actually. Through a great deal of trial and error on my part, mostly error, I found out the hard way that women didn’t bitch just to hear themselves bitch, after all.
As with all newborns, I’d needed to learn how to do everything again for the very first time. Silly little things like learning how to pee while sitting down and getting used to the uneven trickle that sprinkled forth from between my legs now as opposed to the steady flow of urine that had come from my penis. Silly little things like needing to lean how to mop up the excess moisture with toilet paper as opposed to the way I’d done it before with a few quick shakes of my sinful, dangling appendage.
Silly little things that – added altogether – had transformed me into a living, breathing lady.
Home schooling was the answer to hiding my physical transformation from the education authorities. Over countless cups of tea, my mother and I passed long afternoons learning the same information they taught the other children – the so-called normal children – in the public schools.
She tutored me extensively in English and math; chemistry and engineering; history and philosophy. In addition to that, we also learned about such famous castrati as Farinelli, the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, an Italian man who’d become one of the most popular singers of the 18th century despite – or rather because of – his unusual deformity.
Not that my mother and I had any plans for me to become a singer in order to achieve my fame, however. That method of achieving fame was much too pedestrian for people of our refined tastes, much too ordinary. Instead, according to my mother’s carefully crafted plans, my future lay in stripping people of their undeserved fame.
People like Timmy, people who didn’t possess one single iota of talent inside their worthless bodies yet got by in life simply because some cosmic force out there had randomly decided that they were somehow better than the rest of world. More deserving.
But that shit was about to change. In a big way.
And I considered myself just the girl to change it.
Just as soon as I finished growing up, of course.
Chapter 16
Dana bolted upright out of her coma and ripped blindly at the thick plastic tube shoved down her throat.
She gagged hard while the cylinder seemed to take forever to slide up her esophagus, lubricated with stomach acid and some kind of sticky white paste they’d been feeding her. A high-pitched alarm filled the room with frantic beeping, followed almost at once by a stampede of medical personnel storming into the room.
“Jesus Christ!” a woman yelled. “Get a sedative!”
A man with a deep baritone voice overruled the order at once. His harsh tone left no doubt as to exactly who was in charge here. “Are you out of your mind, Jean? She just came out of a coma, for Christ’s sake. The last thing in the world we want to do right now is put her back to sleep.”
Dana coughed painfully. The lining of her throat felt raped. Like she’d just swallowed ten gallons of high-grade gasoline.
Gradually, she became aware of a catheter between her legs, of more plastic tubes in her arms. She ripped at those, too, but the large man who’d just barked out his stern command that she should not be injected with any sleep-inducing drugs pushed her gently back down into the bed.
“Easy, Agent Whitestone,”’ the man said, resting his huge hands lightly on her shoulders. “Easy, now. Everything’s OK. You’re OK.”
Dana’s vision sharpened like powerful binoculars abruptly coming into focus, hurting her eyeballs and sending a searing jumble of confusing images racing through her brain.
She glanced to her left and saw snow falling lightly outside the window, collecting briefly on the glass before melting away. More confusion clouded her mind. She tried to speak but a hoarse croak came out instead.
The man in charge – Dr. Aloysius Spinks, according to his nametag, a large African-American with a shiny bald head – poured her a glass of water from the plastic pitcher on the bedside table and held it up to her lips. Dana drank deeply before coughing again.
“The little boy,” she finally managed, forcing out the words even though it hurt like hell to talk. “Did the little boy make it?”
Spinks frowned and motioned to a nurse. The woman left the room in a scuffling of feet before Spinks looked back at her. “What little boy, Agent Whitestone?”
“From the plane,” Dana said. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes. Her skull throbbed like it had never throbbed before. A powerful storm of nausea boiled in her gut, threatening to explode from her gullet in a disgusting rainbow of projectile-vomit. “He was sitting directly in front of me. I was in seat 32b. The little boy was right in front of me with his mother. Did he survive the crash?”
Spinks lifted his right arm and adjusted the wire-framed glasses on his face. As he did so, ripples of sinew danced just beneath the surface of his skin like minnows darting through a shallow pond, letting Dana know that the good doctor had most likely played football in college. Probably linebacker.
“I don’t know, Agent Whitestone,” he admitted, shaking his head slightly with the words. “Most of the passengers made it, but a few perished in the crash. Six, I believe, didn’t make it. One child died. What was the little boy’s name? I’ll have someone look into it right away.”
The accusing look that had flashed
across the little boy’s blood-sprinkled face in Dana’s horrific nightmare bolted back into her mind.
Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.
She wretched hard, nearly throwing up again. Her temples ached as though powerful drills were boring through the bone on either side of her head.
Spinks held up the glass to her lips again and she finished off the remaining water with a few hard swallows. It helped.
“Bradley Taylor Thomas,” she whispered, swallowing back the acrid taste in her mouth and remembering how the little boy’s mother had used his full name while admonishing him to not talk to strangers. “His name is Bradley Thomas Taylor. About four years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.”
Spinks waved to an orderly standing near the doorway. “Get on it right away. Check back with me just as soon as you find out anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the orderly had left the room, Dana’s scrambled brain finally started working again. Her heart flipped over inside her chest as the stunning realization hit her with all the subtlety of an aluminum baseball bat slamming into a plate-glass window, sending sharp shards of glass cascading across her mind.
She’d boarded the plane out in Los Angeles on May 12th. It had been sunny outside then, bright, warm. The snow falling outside her window now indicated that a substantial chunk of time had passed since that day and this one. Not even Cleveland’s weather was that bad.
More nausea boiled in her stomach. “How long have I been out of it?” she asked weakly. “What’s today’s date?”
Spinks lifted a medical chart from her bedside table and flipped it open. A sympathetic look flooded into his warm brown eyes. “The date is November 16th,” he said. “You were in a coma for twenty-four weeks. You sustained massive head trauma in the plane crash that fractured your skull. You were life-flighted to Fairview General Hospital ten minutes after they fished you out of the water and we immediately performed a series of life-saving surgical procedures on you, including a craniectomy, a craniotomy and a cranioplasty. Basically, that means we relieved the pressure inside your skull caused by the bleeding and inserted temporary metal plates while the bone healed. The good news is that you’ll make a full recovery, Agent Whitestone. As a matter of fact, you’re almost there already. It’s quite remarkable, really.”
Somehow, Dana wasn’t surprised by the news. What was there for her to be surprised about here? All things considered, serious thought should have been given to changing the term “Murphy’s Law” to “Whitestone’s Law”, considering the way her life had unfolded. After all, whatever the worst possible outcome in any given scenario could be, that was the one she could usually count on.
“So, now what?” she asked as a wave of utter exhaustion washed over her body and suddenly made her want nothing more right now than to go back to sleep again – maybe even forever this time.
Spinks laid down the medical chart on her bedside table and lifted her left wrist to check her pulse. “Well,” he said, “now we’ll monitor you closely for the next several days to make sure that no additional swelling occurs in your brain. After that, you’ll spend a couple weeks here in the hospital rehabbing. Still, you’re one of the lucky ones, Agent Whitestone. You’re something of a medical miracle; you really are. Your recovery speed has been absolutely astounding. Before you know it, you’ll be up and about and as good as new.”
Dana closed her eyes. If Spinks knew just how far off the mark he’d been with that statement, he’d probably blush about nine shade of purple. Wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know her horrible history, though.
Still, “good as new” wasn’t all that terribly good when it came to her, now was it?
Sure wasn’t. Not even close.
She opened her eyes again when Spinks dropped her wrist. “I’ll alert Bill Krugman that you’ve emerged from your coma,” he said. “His name is listed at the top of the emergency contacts in your cellphone. Or is there someone else you’d prefer for me to call?”
Dana shook her head. The head of the FBI – known to everyone in the Bureau simply by his title of “The Director” – was the only living person left on her emergency-contacts list. All the others were dead now.
Another thing Spinks had no way of knowing.
“No,” she said, sinking her head back down into the pillow and feeling her eyelids droop. “That’ll be fine.”
Spinks’s voice filled her brain again as the murky world of dreamland dragged her off into its warm embrace. Dana only prayed that her destination this time would be a much more pleasant place than the horrific nightmare world from which she’d just emerged. Only time would tell.
“Fine,” Spinks said. “I’ll leave you alone to rest up now then, Agent Whitestone. Even though your recovery has been amazing, I don’t want you overdoing it.”
Dana’s eyelids flew open again when she felt his hand reach behind her head.
Spinks pursed his lips and handed her a call button attached to a length of plastic-covered wire. “Relax, Agent Whitestone. Just press this button if you need anything.”
Dana’s cheeks flushed hot with blood. “Of course, Doctor. Sorry about that. I guess I’m just still feeling a little shaken up.”
Spinks waved away her apology. “Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly understandable considering the circumstances. Anyway, just press the button if you need anything. I’ll be back to check up on you in just a little bit. And Agent Whitestone?”
Dana looked up at the kindly medical professional. “Yes?”
Spinks held her gaze. “You’re a very lucky woman, ma’am. Don’t ever forget that.”
When Spinks exited the room, Dana let out a deep breath that deflated her chest and closed her eyes again, this time for good. Despite the doctor’s encouraging words, however, the plain truth of the matter was that she didn’t feel so lucky right now. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.
Then again, life was funny like that sometimes, wasn’t it?
Sure as hell was.
Damned shame there was no humor in it most of time.
CHAPTER 17
Bill Krugman hurried into Dana’s hospital room the following morning, holding his trademark briefcase in his left hand and a colorful bouquet of flowers in his right.
“Dana,” he said, rushing over and laying down the flowers on her bedside table. “Thank God you’re finally conscious.”
The Director put a warm hand on the side of her face and leaned over the metal bedrail to kiss her softly on the top of her head, a grandfatherly look of concern deepening the already impressive menagerie of creases lining his weathered forehead.
“Thank God,” he said again, shifting his dark brown eyes back and forth between her pale blue ones. “That’s all I can say. Thank God.”
Dana smiled thinly at her boss. She was happy to see him, of course, thrilled, actually, but she had an eerie feeling that “thinly” was the only way she’d be able to smile at anyone for a very long time to come.
Wasn’t all that much for her to smile about lately, after all.
She pushed herself up straighter in bed and felt a nagging ache in her underused muscles. “Thank you so much for coming, sir,” she said, not wanting to sound rude here but also wanting to get the pleasantries out of the way as quickly as possible. Dr. Spinks had told her that six people had died in the plane crash, and Dana still didn’t know if Bradley had been among them. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “It really means the world to me to see you here. I hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle for you getting here.”
Krugman shook his head and pulled a plastic chair over to her bedside, setting down his leather briefcase on the tiled floor next to his feet and taking a seat. He waved his left hand in the air, showcasing the silver wedding band sparkling on his ring finger. “Of course not,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous. I only wish that I could have made it here sooner.”
He paused and stretched his neck. “Anyway, I’ve got some good news for you, Ag
ent Whitestone – mixed in with a little bit of bad news – if you think you’re feeling up to hearing it.”
A nervous tickle fluttered Dana’s chest. “What’s that, sir?”
Krugman beamed. “The little boy from the plane crash,” he said. “He’s alive and well. Not a scratch on him.”
Tears of joy flooded into Dana’s eyes. Overwhelming relief coursed through her veins. For several long moments, she couldn’t even breathe. “Thank God,” she finally whispered, echoing Krugman’s earlier sentiments. “Just, thank God. Where is he now?”
Krugman rolled his muscular neck on his sturdy shoulders. Even in his late-sixties, the guy was in great shape, and Dana only hoped that she looked half as good at his age.
“Well, that’s the bad news,” Krugman said uncertainly, rubbing the left side of his throat with the palm of his right hand. “At the moment, the little boy’s living in a foster home in Parma. Unfortunately, his mother died in the plane crash and he had no other relatives to look after him. The mother died of head trauma very similar to yours, Dana. Her skull slammed against the window and she didn’t survive the impact. FAA investigators say the little boy’s body bounced off hers and that’s what saved his life.”
Dana closed her eyes and felt her heart shatter into a million tiny pieces inside her badly constricted chest like a fumbled dinner plate. The poor baby. Not only had he lost his mother now, she remembered all too well how he’d recently lost his father too, though she didn’t know any of the details surrounding that death yet.
He was completely alone in the world.
More tears flooded into her eyes. Every last cell in her body ached for the little boy. And why not? Seemed to her that she was intimately familiar with someone else who’d lost both of her parents at the tender age of just four years old.
