by Alex Myers
She stared at Jack’s face. “You’re still so young, still so beautiful.”
“This is all going to be okay, trust me.”
“I have been trusting you, since the day I married you. Besides, I’m not going anywhere…” She let out a small whimper and fresh scarlet seeped out of her hands.
“Please let me through, I’m a doctor.” The crowd parted and a man emerged. He stood tall and positively erect with perfectly groomed white hair and whisky long sideburns. He looked at Jack, then at Frances, then back at Jack. “Jack Riggs? I never forget a face, I never forget anything,” he said in an upper-crust English accent.
“Yes, it’s me. Can you help us please?”
“Of course, I’m Joseph Lister. You brought me here to America when I was thirty, to your medical facility in Norfolk, Virginia. You believed in me.” Jack had sought out Lister for his theories of antiseptic medicine and surgery, unheard of at that time.
He was looking at Jack more than he was at Frances. “You look… exactly the same?”
“I’ve just been taking really good care of myself.”
“No, it’s more than that.”
“Frances really needs your help right now,” Jack pleaded. “If you take care of her, I promise I’ll explain everything to you.”
“Frances? Frances Riggs?” He acted as if he was seeing her for the first time.
“Dr. Lister?” Frances said weakly.
“Frances is on the board of my institute. It’s right next door. I was eating lunch in the hotel and heard the shooting.” Dr. Lister turned his attention to Frances. “You’re talking, that’s a good sign. Are you breathing okay?”
“I don’t think so, doctor.”
“Can you move your hands so I can take a look at your wound?”
“I can’t.”
“It’s okay, Frances, I just want to take a look.”
“No doctor, I mean, I can’t move my hands or my arms.”
Dr. Lister flashed Jack a concerned look. “Let’s roll her a little.” Jack rolled her and Dr. Lister looked underneath. “There’s an exit wound and it looks close to her spine.” Looking to the gathering crowd he said, “I need towels, clean towels. I need clean linen of some sort, even a tablecloth will do.” Then to Jack. “We need something to carry her with, about two meters long about a half meter wide—get a door, small door something like that will work.”
Dr. Lister moved Frances’ hands away from the wound on her stomach and fresh blood seeped and pooled. He was handed towels and placed one under her and one on top of her. “Apply pressure,” he told Jack. He felt her forehead. “She’s clammy. Are you cold, Frances?”
Frances nodded.
“She’s going into shock.”
Two men returned with a thin door. “We got it from a closet,” one of the men said.
“Excellent. Let’s move her next door to my institute. We’re not set up for trauma care, but I’ll try my best.”
They eased her on top of the door and Robbie and Sam carried her.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Frances said, looking pale.
“Let’s move,” Dr. Lister said. “Has anyone else been shot?”
“Yes, but they are all dead,” Jack said as they headed out of the room.
“How did it happen?” Dr. Lister asked.
“Good shooting,” Sam said.
When they got her next door, Dr. Lister and another doctor took her into an operating room and went to work frantically. Sam, Robbie, and Jack paced the floor outside in the hallway.
After thirty minutes, Dr. Lester came out with his sleeves rolled up and blood on his shirt. “Excuse my appearance,” he said.
“We’re not much better.” All three men had blood on them.
“I’m afraid the bullet struck her spine on the way out, she has lost all mobility from her neck down. That could be permanent or temporary. She has received blunt force and penetrating trauma to her anterior and posterior abdomen, several of her internal organs, and perhaps her spinal column. We detect bowel and mesenteric injuries.”
Jack, Sam, and Robbie all looked helplessly at one another and then back to the doctor.
“The bullet tumbled and did massive damage. She’s lost an incredible amount of blood and we don’t keep any on hand. Do any of you know if you have O positive blood?”
“I do,” Jack said, looking suddenly optimistic.
“Don’t get too excited. Even with a transfusion, I’m afraid the prognosis is not good. I’m sorry, it could be all for nothing.”
“It won’t be,” Jack said almost cheerfully. “I have a little something extra in my blood. Sam can you chase down Edison and have him bring his cathode ray tube here?”
“Jack, you can’t,” Sam said. “He’s already killed Emerson, not Frances too.”
“Dr. Lister, I need you to be totally honest with me. Is Frances likely to survive this?”
“No. And even if she does she’s likely to be crippled and—” he stopped and looked Jack in the eye, “she lost consciousness about ten minutes ago, and I don’t expect her to wake up from it.”
“Call him, Sam. I didn’t come this far to get this close to losing her again. Dr. Lister, I’ll explain to you what we’re going to try to do while you’re doing the transfusion.”
CHAPTER 30
Jack was on a table lying next to Frances. Dr. Lister had a needle in both of their arms and controlled the flow of blood with a syringe and plunger that reminded Jack of a large crucifix. “I met you along with Louis Pasteur at a conference in New York twenty-five years ago. I hired you both to come and work at my complex in Virginia.”
“I believe you are Jack Riggs, I just can’t believe you have not aged. I’m not inclined to believe in the possibility of time travel, if for nothing more than my inability to come up with a better explanation.”
Dr. Lister removed the needle from Jack’s arm. The color had returned to Frances’ face.
“She looks better,” Jack said.
“I’m afraid we just bought her a little time. She’s bleeding internally almost as fast as were putting it in. And we’ve taken all the blood we can from you for the next twelve hours.”
There was a loud banging from the hallway and Sam and Robbie entered the room. Behind them was Thomas Alva Edison with his hat in his hand.
Jack sat up from the table so fast he got a head rush. “I guess you did take a lot of blood.” Then turning to Edison he said, “Did you bring the tube?”
“Yes, is this where we are going to set up?”
Sam and Robbie were each carrying a piece of equipment, as was a man who worked for Edison. Edison set up the tube on a chair about four feet away from Frances. Edison was looking at her as he prepared the tube.
“Is that Frances Riggs?” Then Edison realized the implication. “That’s your wife isn’t it?” he said, looking at Jack.
“Yes it is. If you let anything bad happen to her—”
“I know, I know,” Edison said throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “Robbie Sevenski over there already said he would kill me and everyone in my family if anything happens. Robbie also said that if I help you, you’d share with me how to make transistors.”
“If we can do this process with my wife, I’ll show you how to make resisters and capacitors too.”
Jack looked at Frances lying there with her guts torn into pieces from a bullet meant for him, and he wanted to scream. But instead, he said nothing. It hurt.
“How long should this procedure take?” Dr. Lister asked.
“I’m not sure. Once we get set up the actual procedure will take less than a minute. Now recovery is a whole other matter. When it was done on me, it took a year and a half to mend. The only other time I have seen it done, it failed miserably. It not only repairs damage, but stimulates new growth.”
Turning to Edison he said, “Do you remember the procedure?”
Edison pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it to show Jack.
“I don’t believe so.”
Edison had the on-off switch hooked into a wall receptacle and was about ten feet away.
Jack looked intensely serious at Edison. “Six seconds on is perfect, five or seven seconds even will be okay. We would be pushing it to four or eight seconds, but not three and not nine or something approaching the disaster we had with Emerson will happen.”
Edison was wearing a hearing aid, but nonetheless, he gave Jack his undivided attention. “You’re going to have to leave the room though.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack asked harshly.
“Didn’t you say you had to be a minimum of twenty feet away from the tube? Well, look around.” Edison said pointing out the close proximity of the walls.
“Sorry, I guess you’re right.”
“One question, Riggs,” Edison said. “What if my cathode tube would have been destroyed or unusable?”
“It wasn’t and it couldn’t be. You’ll be mass producing it within three months.”
Frances bucked on the table from an unseen spasm. “She’s continuing to bleed. We need to do this or I will need to go in and do some exploratory surgery to try to repair the damage,” Dr. Lister said.
“Let’s go,” Jack said. “Sam, Robbie, you be my eyes and ears. I’m going to wait in the hallway. Are you ready?” Jack asked Edison.
Edison gave Jack a slight thumbs up.
Jack went to Frances and kissed her on the lips. “See you soon, sweetheart.”
Jack exited the room by the giant wooden door. As hard as he tried to listen for voices, he could discern little more than muffles from inside the room.
He thought he heard Edison either counting down or counting out the procedure. He heard five, four, three, two, and then the lights went out in the hallway Jack was in near darkness. Yelling was heard inside the room.
Jack opened the door and the room was pitch black. There was a great commotion as the light from the open door revealed Dr. Lister, Sam, and Robbie trying to hold the spasming Frances on the table.
Two windows on the wall behind the operating table had closed blinds. He swung the door open to the hallway as wide as he could and dashed for the closed windows. On the way, his foot hit something and there was a loud crash and then breaking glass. Jack hit the wall, felt around, found the blinds, and opened them letting in the dim light of the afternoon. He opened the second blind and let even more light in.
The men holding Frances were easing their grip as the spasms seem to abate.
Jack had tripped on the leg of the stool holding the cathode tube and now it lay shattered in pieces on the floor.
“She spasmed just like Emerson did,” Sam said.
Jack turned to Edison, “What happened?”
“I was doing the sequencing and there must’ve been a power failure.”
“How far along did you get?”
“The power went off just as I was hitting number five.” Emerson said almost in a whine.
“Was it four or five? Come on man, four or five, because it makes all the difference in the world.”
“Jack?” It was Frances. “Jack are you here, I feel—” but before she could finish, an even more violent seizure struck and she started biting her tongue.
“I tell you, it wasn’t my fault. I did everything I was supposed to do.” Edison wailed, adding to the mayhem in the room.
“She’s burning up,” Robbie said. “She is on fire.”
Jack tried to hold her down and put his hand beneath her head so she wouldn’t slam it against the table. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be unconscious.
The spasm stopped as quickly as it started. Frances’s eyes fluttered open. This was exactly the way and it happened with Emerson. Frances was going to die, Jack didn’t have a choice. He knew, just like Emerson and Lidian, that this would be his last opportunity to talk with his wife.
“Jack?”
“I’m right here.” Jack grabbed her hand and it was on fire. He put his face in front of her so she could see him. He could feel the heat rolling off her. She smiled at him and he thought it was just perfect. He knew that the next time she spasmed, that would be it. She would bleed out just like Emerson did and die just like Emerson did.
“Jack, I feel…good,” Frances said. “I think I’m getting better.”
He smiled at her. It was just as well she didn’t know what was really going on. Jack’s mind was drifting. I wonder if I can come back and somehow prevent this from ever happening. In a version of this without him in it, the Woodrow Wilson would’ve never turned and shot at him and hit her. It’s funny how the world did have a way of righting itself—at least she never died in the other timeline…
“Are you listening?” Frances asked, looking puzzled.
“I’m sorry, Frances, I am here.”
“What happened to me?”
“You’ve been shot.”
She looked deep into his eyes. “You’re looking as if this was your fault. Did you shoot me?” Her voice was ragged, just barely a whisper.
“No, of course not.”
“Then don’t blame yourself.”
Jack nodded his head in agreement.
She looked around at the people in the room. “Sam, Robbie, Dr. Lister, why are you all here? Am I dying?” Her face looked panicked.
“No,” Jack lied. He didn’t know how else to answer her. “But you are really hurt bad—really bad.”
“But I feel really good.” Her voice did seem stronger.
“Frances, I love you.”
“I am dying aren’t I?”
Jack didn’t answer her. She gave a jolt and her feet raised off the table.
“Frances!” Jack said panicked. He kissed her lips and this time she kissed him back.
“Jack, I am not ready to go. I waited twenty-four years for you to come back to me. I don’t want to go yet.”
He felt a tear roll out of the side of his eye and turned to wipe it away before she could see.
“If I am dying, I want you to promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Go to Emily, look into her eyes, and if you don’t see yourself then nothing is lost. But if you do, then you’ve gained a daughter and she a dad. Jack, I’ve looked at her for the last twenty-four years and every time I have, I’ve seen you.”
“I will.”
“And one more thing.”
“Anything, what?”
“Never leave me again, please.”
And she started to spasm. It was the worst one yet. Jack, Robbie, Sam, Dr. Lister, even Edison moved over to the table and tried to hold her down.
Where did she get all this strength? She’s possessed, it’s like a demon has a hold of her.
She continued to convulse. White foam was coming out of her mouth. Her eyes rolled up in her head. Harder, faster, stronger, it was horrible and unending. Her hands started to curl in like claws.
And then it stopped. Frances went slack. She exhaled a giant breath and lay still. All the men looked at each other.
“We tried,” Sam said. “You tried. We did everything we could Jack.”
“We all loved her,” Robbie said.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Lister said, looking Jack in the eye.
“Hey, gentlemen. She’s still alive,” Thomas Edison said.
CHAPTER 31
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to breakaway sooner. The duties of a president are many and when there’s a presidential funeral to attend to, well, it makes it doubly so. Is there any change in her condition?” President Frederick Douglass asked. He was with the head of the Secret Service, Allan Pinkerton, a Secret Service agent
named Eben Harper and Teddy Roosevelt.
“We thought we lost her about a day and a half ago,” Jack said. “She is in a deep sleep, practically a coma. From what the doctor can tell, the internal bleeding has stopped, but he doesn’t know that for sure because all her wounds have healed.”
“I just wanted to thank you personally. Without you, Martin Riggs, and this man right here, Theodore Roosevelt, my new Secretary of the Interior, I wouldn’t be here, and this country would be without a president.”
Jack looked over at Teddy and was not able to catch his eye. The Rough Rider could only stare at the ground.
“Thanks to Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Pinkerton, we have both perpetrators, both of which were wearing blackface makeup. The taller of the two men was Woodrow Wilson, a well-respected and talented law student from the University of Virginia. He was the star of the debate team and the son of a preacher. The shorter man, and more disturbing of the two, was the president pro tempore of the United States Senate, Garrett Fairbanks.” President Douglass watched Jack’s face as he told him the names.
Jack looked from Douglass over to Pinkerton and then back to the president.
Theodore Roosevelt was watching Jack just as closely as he was the president. The silence in the room was deafening.
“You don’t seemed surprised,” Douglass said. “Is there anything you would like to share?”
“Nothing,” Jack said shaking his head, “nothing that I haven’t already shared with Allan Pinkerton. Mr. President, you have my pledge that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure your time in office is unprecedentedly successful.”
“I’m hoping we can talk further about this at a more appropriate time.”
“Absolutely. I don’t mean any disrespect, sir, but how could you succeed the president without taking the oath of office?”
“I did so in a private ceremony with Senator Fairbanks the day before the shooting. I was just going to retake the oath with the Chief Justice for ceremony.”
“Fairbanks knew this and he tried to kill you anyway?” Jack questioned.
“Mr. Fairbanks would have been next in line to be president. Besides, it’s been my personal experience that he didn’t really like colored people,” President Douglass said.
