AWARE Chapter Eight

Link to Chapter Seven {bitem: 1508404}

Chapter Eight

Renown Medical Center
Reno, Nevada

Lise Marshal sat behind her desk trying to catch up with her paperwork. Her new patient had taken up most of her time over the last couple of days. She’d closed her door in hopes of plowing through most of the mundane stuff so she could get back out to check on JD11.

Her phone rang. “Dr. Marshal, your 12:30 appointment is here to see you.”

Lise sat for a moment before replying, “What 12:30 appointment?” She didn’t need an interruption right now.

“He says his name is Jack Barton and that you are expecting him.”

Lise’s mind couldn’t immediately recall the name. When it did, she felt her pulse ramp up. Emotional flip-flops went into high gear. She went between the excitement of seeing him to the resentment of being interrupted. He’d said he would show up and then he didn’t; typical male behavior. How did he get on her calendar? Where was he yesterday? How dare he show up unannounced. How do I look?

Finally settling on This should be interesting. she spoke into the phone “Send him in.”

Jack wasn’t the nervous type but he had to admit that he was feeling a little uncertain about this meeting. Colonel Lanier made it quite clear that there was danger afoot; danger that Jack was at least partially responsible for bringing to the Hospital’s doorstep. There was also the fact that he’d found himself attracted to the very same woman that he’d endangered. Who knows why one person is attracted to another? Jack was no authority on such matters. All he knew was that he spent way too much time thinking about a woman that he barely even met.

Jack found her office easy enough. He knocked on the open door and then let himself in. There she was. Lise stood up and walked around her desk, offering her hand to Jack. All very professional.

“Hello Doctor Marshall. How are you today?” Jack considered several different approaches but the handshake put off any chance of familiarity.

“I’m fine; just trying to catch up on a little paperwork. The man you found in the desert seems to be hanging in there. I am assuming that is what you are here for. He has proved to be much more interesting that we expected. By the way, how did you happen to end up on my calendar? Until today, I thought I was the only one with the ability to make additions to my schedule.”

Lise fought off a desire to say “Where were you yesterday? I thought you said you would come by.” She couldn’t let him know that she even noticed his absence. Jack, being the typical male, would use that to his advantage. No, it was best to keep him at a distance. She was busy now and didn’t have time for another flawed attempt at a relationship.

Jack could feel trouble brewing. She didn’t seem to be impressed with his ability to show up magically on her calendar; quite the opposite. She probably thought he was a stalker that hacked into her computer. And then there was the burn victim. JD11 was “more” interesting. What did that mean? Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Jack didn’t answer right away. He knew he had some explaining to do and she was right to question how he happened to “infiltrate” her scheduler. He’d expected the colonel to be a little more subtle. Still, there was something in her eyes. He could see that she was trying to put up a stand-offish front and yet…

Okay Jack, he told himself. It’s show time.

“Doctor Marshall, Lise, I need for you to sit down. I know I was supposed to be here yesterday but events dictated otherwise. There are things going on that you need to know about. Things that I am responsible for brining to your door. Things associated with your patient.”

Lise looked into Jack’s eyes. She could see the sincerity as well as the concern. He wasn’t like the others. He had something to tell her that wasn’t going to fall under the category of “Good News.” He was worried that she may not be up to it. His concern caused concern in her. At the same time, he seemed to be okay with whatever was coming. He was confident in himself.

As she walked around to take her seat behind her desk, Lise became aware of two things. First, her life was about to change in some way that may or may not be good. Secondly, she was glad Jack Barton was going to be on her side.

“Alright Jack, let’s hear it?” Lise was ready to be surprised. JD11 was not your ordinary John Doe. Was he a government experiment or something? While appearing outwardly calm, she braced herself for the worse.

“First of all Lise, have you noticed anything strange about JD11?”

“If you mean besides that fact that he has started to regenerate body parts, no nothing out of the ordinary.”

Jack couldn’t tell if she was being facetious or not. “Is it unusual for body parts to start growing back so quickly?”

“Jack, it’s not normal for body parts to grow back at all? At least not the parts he seems to be growing.”

Jack started talking. Lise sat silently as he recounted the details from the last forty-eight hours.

The mention of surveillance changed all of that.

“Wait!” Lise said, holding up her hand. “What do you mean by protective surveillance?”

“Colonel Lanier doesn’t want you to have to be concerned about your safety so he has assigned some people to be nearby should anything unforeseen happen.”

Lise sat back for a minute. She didn’t like what she was hearing. She understood that there were “crazies” out there. It seems as if you read about them in the news every day. Prior to Jack’s story, she’d no idea about how JD11 was found. The strangeness surrounding the location made the whole thing seem a little unreal. Her patient was her number one priority. He might need protection but the hospital had its own security. It wasn’t like an unauthorized person would be able to walk in and harm JD11.

Lise also found it offensive that she, herself, was under “protective surveillance.” What did that mean? Was someone peeking in her window at night? Has they searched through her home? This felt like an extreme invasion of privacy.

She looked up at Jack. She knew he thought this was his fault just as she knew it wasn’t. “Jack, what do you think? I am not at all comfortable with having soldiers come into the hospital to stand guard over JD11.”

“Lise, it won’t happen like that. They will be undercover. As a matter of fact, they have been in the hospital since yesterday afternoon. Here is a complete list of where everyone is at. All of the personnel assigned to this project are listed by name and job assignment. If, at any time, you want to eliminate your personal coverage, Colonel Lanier will make it happen. He will not allow any reduction in the protective coverage of your patient.”

Lise looked through the list of personnel and their assignments. There were two vehicles assigned to the hospital. One vehicle was assigned to her house. Apparently, there were three undercover positions filled in the hospital around the clock.

She felt as if everything was not quite real. This didn’t happen outside of the movies. There were no specialized government agencies and conspiracies and such. Guards in her hospital? A van the followed her wherever she went? It was too much.

And then there was Jack. He seemed to be on her side but then, how could she be certain. Maybe he was just another government stooge.

“Jack, I want to see one of the undercover guards. If I understand this list, there are at least three of them inside the hospital right this minute.”

Jack took out his cell phone and called Colonel Lanier. “Colonel, she wants to see one of the guards.” After a few moments, he hung up and said to Lise, “He said to give him a minute.”

Fifteen seconds later, there was a knock on the door. A large man in janitor outfit came in to empty her office trash can. Once he was near enough to the desk, he said, “Ma’am, my name is Sergeant Sanchez. Colonel Lanier said you wanted to talk with me.”

That didn’t take long, thought Lise. “Sergeant, why are you here?”

“I am here to protect you, your staff and your patient.”

“Are you armed?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He finished emptying her trash. “Will there be anything else ma’am?”

Lise looked at Jack as she said, “No, thank you Sergeant Sanchez.”

He left leaving Jack and Lise alone. Jack wasn’t sure where to go next so he just sat there. Lise, feeling pretty much the same way, looked over at Jack. Her experience told her that every man she was interested in was the wrong one for her. That being the case, she might as well cut her losses and tell Jack to hit the road right now.

She looked at the man across her table. Lise tried to look past the alert eyes. She wanted to see inside. Who are you Jack Barton? She decided to go with her intuition in spite of its poor track record.

“Jack, would you like to take a look at JD11? Normally, you would not be allowed but I think you may be the closest thing to a family that he has at this moment.”

A broad smile spread across Jack’s face. “That would be great.”

Colonel Lanier stood at the edge of the excavation, not quite sure what he was looking at. It looked like a giant cylinder, about five yards across and fifteen deep. The color was best described as blondish while the texture appeared to be ceramic. The top of the cylinder was level with the colonel’s feet as he stood on the dirt floor.

“Doctor, are you telling me that if I were to climb down to the bottom of this whole, I would not find anything underneath this thing?”

Dr. Szokoly took off his thick glasses to wipe them off. Wes noticed long ago that the things tended to fog up on the doctor when he got excited, which was quite often.

“That’s right Colonel. It is floating. Right now there is about two feet of clearance under its base.”

“Well that should make it a lot easier to transport. We can just throw a tarp over it and ease it onto the back of a truck.” Colonel Lanier knew there was something more here. The only way to hurry the doctor’s revelations was to play along as if this were no big deal.

Szokoly lit up at the Colonel’s last remark affirming that Lanier was right. There was more to the story.

“I am afraid that will not be possible, at least for the time being.” Szokoly paused waiting for Wes to ask more questions, thereby slowing down the exchange of information to it’s slowest exquisite state.

Wes said nothing.

Foiled in his attempt to bait the colonel, Szokoly continued, “It appears to have an infinite moment of inertia around all axes.”

“Meaning…” The colonel reluctantly pressed for more information.

“We can’t move it. It appears to like where it is floating right now. So far, every attempt to push or pull it in any direction has a negative result. It appears to be fixed in place. We even brought in a ten-thousand pound hydraulic jack. Nothing.”

Wes looked around at the hastily erected, prefabricated structure that housed the artifact. It looked like something a little more permanent was going to be needed.

“Keep me informed,” he said to the doctor as he turned and headed back to his office. On the way, he pulled out his cell phone. He needed to step up construction quickly. Security was also going to need to be expanded. Right now there were ten temporary structures and thirty men on site. He would need to triple that in the next forty-eight hours.

At a bus station in Miami, Florida, an elderly man purchased a ticket to Birmingham. He flirted a little bit with the female ticket agent. She took it all as good fun. He seemed like a nice old guy. He told her he was going to Birmingham to visit his daughter for a few days. That was sweet.

“There you go Mr. Roberts,” she said handing him his ticket. “Have a nice visit and enjoy your trip.”

Later that night, the janitor would dump the contents from the station bathroom trash can into his bigger cart of trash. Had he bothered to look, he would have noticed a ticket stub for an airline flight from New York’s JFK airport to Miami International. The name on the stub was Frank Thompson, a.k.a. Brad Silverstone, Mr. Roberts and … Rudolf.

Link to Chapter Nine {bitem: 1522094}



Link to Chapter Nine {bitem: 1522094}