Cast Plague, Part 6
Day 26
Number of infected worldwide: 4,387
Number of infected in the U.S.: 810
Location: CDC mobile lab, Bay City, WA

'Have any of you found anything already, Doctor?'

Annoyed by the ignorance of the local authorities, Sandra mocked Audrey with calling her a doctor, and whenever the team head addressed her friends in the most official way, it didn't mean any good for anyone. The number of people wearing casts kept increasing, and they couldn’t find the source. Time-pressed, Sandra put the target of her anger on the least blameworthy persons. On her teammates.

Thick-skinned, Audrey patiently bore the hectic mood of her boss. Sandra always wanted to get results. Fast. Not for today but for yesterday.

‘Karen has already analysed most of the air, water and soil samples from the town and the surrounding areas.' Uncomplaining, Audrey looked into the list of the examination results. 'Fertilisers and trace elements are in the normal range. But the level of background radiation is elevated.'

Sandra spun her swivel chair around. ‘Radioactivity? Elevated?'

'Just slightly. And this isn’t a new thing. Based on the isotopic signatures, it is from the fallout of the atmospheric nuclear tests, which were done over the Pacific in the 1950s. After all, not too unexpected.’

‘And Karen?' Sandra looked at the unoccupied workstation.

‘Gone shopping.’ The weak joke, which Audrey let out, bounced back beaten from the wall of Sandra’s seriousness. Putting right, she told more. ‘I mean she’s collecting food and drink samples.’

'How many interviews have we done in total?' Sandra inventoried the hundreds of patient files that Dr Roth's secretary had given to them. If this Cast Plague would be a kind of infection, finding the Patient Zero would be a priority.

'In two days? Only fifty-three. But there’s a lot of things to do with the samples and...’

'It isn’t enough. More than four hundred patients are out there. The New York team must be working faster.' Sandra unrhythmically wiggled her fingers on the tabletop.

But, secretly, she admitted that Audrey was right. Hers was just a three-membered team sent to a small town. The CDC directors had put their trust in Dr Richard Dean’s group, which had been assigned to contain the spread of the Cast Plague in New York. Swimming against the tide, Sandra had to move on with this under-resourced team. Therefore, she was in a terrible need of winning a victory. Solving the mystery of the Cast Plague would be a damn good one. As expected, she would be promoted to manage missions, which would be more challenging than checking broken bones in a dusty town.

'This isn’t a rat race, Sandra.' Audrey gazed at Sandra’s fingers moving up and down, hitting the desktop. 'Have you told Dr Roth that we’ve got two outbreak sites in the States?'

‘Oh, God, no! I don’t want to create a panic here. We wouldn't be able to control fifty thousand hysterical people. How are the interviews going? Have you found any patterns?' Sandra put her thoughts back to the path of professionality.

Audrey looked quickly into her file. ‘Nothing interesting. Most people have the usual junk food and soft drinks, and so on. No one of them was abroad. Only three of them were even in the state capital in the last thirty days.'

Just before the next round of Q-and-A, a quiet beeping interrupted their talk. After the sound alert, which came from Sandra’s computer terminal, the CDC seal appeared on the screen.

Leaning forward, the team head immersed in reading the file, which was attached to the incoming electronic mail. ‘Ah, a new messages from Atlanta. The daily sit-rep.’

‘Anything bad?’ Audrey asked because a frown of disapproval clouded Sandra’s face.

‘No, quite the contrary. Let’s throw a firework party.’ However, Sandra wasn’t as glad as her words. ‘Dr Richard Dean and his highly incompetent team have found the Patient Zero in New York.’

‘So fast?’

‘Our dear Dick wasn’t blind to connect the flashing dots. Firstly, they read the WHO Weekly Report on the unusually high number of bone fractures in a Central African jungle district. Furthermore, the Africans reported several cases from a province capital with an international airport...’

‘...and the next steps are easy to work out.’ Audrey nodded. ‘Richard knew where the Patient Zero came from. Then he compared the passenger lists of the airlines with the list of the patients, who were taken to hospital to get casts in the last three weeks in New York. And, finally, ta-da! He has found the patient, who is called...’

‘Mr David Grey, a businessman, who was in Central Africa about a month ago. They’ve found him in an intensive care unit. He’s in a full body cast.’

‘Holy casted cow!’ Audrey whispered.

‘This is not the worst part. Most of the medical staff, who cared for him, became infected, too.’ Skimming the text, Sandra jumped to the TLDR section written by their boss. ‘Dr Wells confirms that this is some kind of infectious glass-bone disease.’

Although the careerist part in Sandra’s personality was defeated, the scientist’s curiosity was still alive. Her first guess was right: the Cast Plague was a new disease. It was such a divine feeling to be right.

‘Well, this part of the job is done,’ Audrey said. ‘What should we do?’

‘Keep calm and carry on until further notice.’ Sandra reworded their boss’ instruction. ‘We must contain the illness, and we must go on collecting blood samples so that the guys in Atlanta can identify the new pathogen.’

‘That’s great.’

Being busy with her thoughts, Sandra leant her head against her hands. Audrey went back to her workstation to put a new blood sample under the microscope glass.

‘They are wrong.’ Loosening, Sandra’s lips accidentally let out the words.

Audrey moved away from the instrument. ‘What?’

The cogwheels in Sandra’s brain worked with incredible speed. ‘There is a low probability that David Grey is the Patient Zero, even if he is in a full body cast.’

‘Why?’

'This is clear as day. Just set the statistics of the two teams against each other.’ Sandra opened the reports from Bay City and New York, and she literally put them side by side. ‘The disease is spreading faster here than in New York. We've got more patients here than in New York. If the East Coast would be the primary outbreak site, it would be in the other way around. When a West Coast citizen comes home from Africa, he or she might go through New York. Furthermore...’

'Okay, okay. I get what you mean. However, we were told that the mystery is solved, and we aren't supposed to investigate any further. We can’t use the CDC databases because Dr Wells would be alerted,' Audrey said.

‘Then we should get access to the local police computer system. We can tell the cops that it's a CDC job.’

'Good idea.’ Audrey nodded. ‘And as soon as we find and identify the right Patient Zero, we should immediately report it to Dr Wells.’

Worn-out, Sandra couldn’t produce a confirming grin - a video teleconference with the head of the Response Team Department could wait. She stood from the chair, knifed sharply by a suddenly-born pain, which spread out in the upper part of her right leg. It was a thrust of a strange sensation, followed by paralysing numbness. Sandra limped with the leg, which delayed waking up.

'How are you?' Audrey asked, worried. With depleted energy, Sandra was just a shadow of her old-self.

'I can hardly sleep for days. And now, my right leg is numb.' Sighing, Sandra pressed her back against the wall to rub the unresponsive body part.

‘Just go out to get some fresh air.’

‘We must work.' Sandra didn’t want to make Dr Wells disappointed. Again.

'Where is the emphasis, Sandra? On "we" or on "must"?'

Sandra gave up her resistance. 'Okay, I’ll come back in five minutes.'

Dragging her lifeless leg, Sandra hobbled through the lab. After opening the door, she squinted, as the bright natural sunlight hurt her eyes, which got used to the artificial lighting of the windowless facility. Putting a pair of sunglasses on, she slowly looked around to absorb the scenery out there. Bay City was a peaceful town, indeed. Or it used to be. Now, the quiet place started turning into somehow worrisome.

The experts didn’t need to refer to bare statistics any longer. Out there, everywhere, the dry numbers became living people with casts... A couple in love, walking in the park, in slow motion since the girl’s both legs were fettered in a pair of short leg casts. Not far away, someone riding a bike, holding the handlebar with a casted arm. Probably, the patients with much larger cast(s) stayed at home. Fed up with thinking about the dire situation, Sandra stopped cast-spotting, and she took some steps toward the park. Moving away from the mobile lab, she put weight on the right leg, which began throbbing hellishly.

Next, a humming noise of an engine hit her ear. A truck rolled into the parking lot, in which the CDC Mobile Lab was settled. A broadcast van, with the Global News Network logo painted in the sides, hunted for an unoccupied place.

‘Oh, dammit.’ Sandra let out a muffled course.

Missing a tactful style, she had never had a good connection with the press. But now, it was more than a personal issue. The significance of the Cast Plague might have spilt over the threshold of broadcast-worthiness. From now on, one single misinterpreted word could cause a major panic. Sandra turned around to retreat to the sanctuary of the mobile lab. After taking snail-paced steps, she reached for the latch, when the door burst open. Audrey appeared at the entry, yelling:

'Sandra, I've fou...'

The opening door crashed into Sandra’s right leg above the knee. A sheet of metal hit a human bone, cracking it. Kicked strongly, Sandra staggered back. She got pale, her hands swept around in the air, and then she collapsed.

Lying on the ground, Sandra’s rational doctor-mind defied the panic-stricken part of her brain, which wanted to scream loudly. Fracture of the femur – Dr Watkins diagnosed her own injury. However, a simple door mustn’t be able to break such a strong and healthy bone - her calm doctor-mind noted, analysing the unexpected situation. That meant only one thing. She was infected by the Cast Plague disease.

Audrey’s eyes were glued on Sandra’s leg, which was positioned in a weird and unnatural angle under her body.

'Oh, Jesus, Audrey! Stop looking at me! Call the ambulance! Right now!' Sandra shouted to wake her up.

Come alive, Audrey stepped back into the lab to find the phone. Out there, the accident held Sandra nailed to the cold asphalt of the parking lot. The girl clenched her teeth to defy the growing waves of pain. Focusing through the fog of agony, she saw a small team of people approaching her. But they weren’t paramedics to provide first aid. It was a TV crew coming toward the CDC lab.

Instead of helping the injured scientist, the camera operator turned on his camera to film the CDC mobile lab and the woman, who was tortured by the ache of a broken leg. The torment overcast Sandra’s rationality, and experiencing the negligence of the journalists threw her off balance. Something goodness broke inside her, letting out a ferocious animal out of its well-guarded cage.

Accompanied by the dirtiest words, which had ever left her lips, Sandra unhurriedly raised both of her arms high in the air to show her middle fingers to the reporters of the Global News Network.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 5)     Next (Part 7)-->

The Plague, Part 7 - Unrevised

Day 26
Number of infected worldwide: 4,387
Number of infected in the U.S.: 810

'Have you found already anything, doctor?' Sandra asked her colleague Arthur in the CDC mobile lab. Her question sounded as serious as that of an interrogation officer.

She called Arthur 'doctor' and if she called her friends in this way, it didn't mean any good for anyone. They were pressed for time, feeling being late since the number of people wearing plaster casts didn't stop increasing, and Sandra and her team still wasn't able to find the reason why.

'Tom's already analysed the air, water and soil samples collected in the town and all around. There's nothing unusual,' Arthur said calmly since he was used to tolerate Sandra's incredible speed. She always wanted to get results fast. Not for today but for yesterday. He looked into the list containing the result of their examination. 'Fertilizers, usual trace elements, some radioactivity...'

'Radioactivity?' she asked amazedly.

'Oh, yes. However, it isn’t new at all. It’s the fallout from the atmospheric nuclear test explosions over the Pacific from the 1950s. Nothing really unexpected,' Arthur explained, shrugging his shoulder.

'Where are Tom and Karen now?' Sandra asked, looking at their empty workstations.

'They’ve gone for shopping... I mean, they’re collecting food and drink samples,' he corrected his sentences so as not to be misunderstood.

'How many interviews have we done?' Sandra asked, recalling the hundreds of patient files given to her by Dr Roth's secretary. If this Plaster Cast Plague would be a kind of infection, they would have to find the Patient Zero as fast as possible.

'In a half day? Only twenty. We're only four,' Arthur resented.

'It isn’t enough. We've got more than three hundred patients. The New York team must be faster,' Sandra supposed.

She felt her team would have to be more motivated or else she would lose again. A couple of years ago a b*tch called Dr Pamela Moore got a senior FEMA position for which she applied. Right now, she was in a terrible need of restarting her career. She wanted to manage a successful project, and solving this mysterious Plaster Cast Plague seemed to be a damn good one. Maybe, as a reward, she would get a more significant mission than examining broken bones in this dusty town.

'This isn’t a rat race, Sandra,' Arthur added, not knowing her secret drive. 'Have you told Dr Roth we’ve got two outbreak sites?'

'Do I look stupid? I don’t want to create a panic here. We wouldn't be able to handle fifty thousands hysterical people. How are the interviews going? Have you found any patterns?' Sandra asked, noticeably being in a hurry.

'Nothing really interesting. Most people eat hamburgers or hot dogs, drink soft drinks, and so on. No one was abroad. Only three of them were even in the state capital last month,' Arthur summarized, looking quickly into his file.

Their conversation interrupted by a quiet beeping, signalling a video call from their boss in the CDC headquarters, Atlanta. Noticing the CDC seal on the screen, Sandra finished interrogating her teammate, and she sat down before the monitor, trying to show an unworried face. So did Arthur.

'Hello, Sandra,' said Albert Wells, being the head of the Response Team Department. 'How are you doing? Have you found anything, yet?'

'Hello, Albert. We’ve been here for four days only and this is a very large district. We need to have more staff and more time. Our available resources aren't enough to...,' she said and she felt her sentences sounded like a premature excuse. A terrible and unacceptable apology for her menacing failure.

'Okay, Sandra. I understand. Don't worry, we’ve got some news for you. We’ve found the Patient Zero,' Dr Wells announced, almost solemnly.

'Impossible, Dick and his bumbling team in New York couldn't have been that fast,' she thought.

'Give my congratulations to Richard’s team,' she said neutrally, instead of saying her thoughts. She felt to be defeated. Again. For her, this mission, too, was a career backstep.

'It wasn’t exactly on their merit. We've received the WHO Weekly Report on some unusually high number of bone fractures in a jungle district in Central Africa. Furthermore, they reported some cases from the country capital as well. You’re right, Sandra, it’s some kind of infection.'

'Have they identified it?' Sandra inquired, almost regaining her force.

Although the careerist part of her personality was defeated, the curiosity of a scientist was still alive. And, of course, it was such a good feeling to be right.

'The WHO hasn’t got the suitable equipment to do it there. We’re gearing up to send a mobile lab to help them,' Dr Wells said.

'Okay, Albert, when should I leave?' Sandra asked, being ready for a new mission. Going to Central Africa sounded so exciting.

'Sorry, Sandra, they haven’t chosen you. You should stay there to help us. Please take as many blood samples as you can and try to find our new guest... this new infection,' Dr Well ordered, as being her boss.

Sandra was almost exploded with anger. The NY Team had found the Patient Zero faster than her team, and then, right now, they took away the Central African mission from her. Today, Life vs. Dr Sandra Watkins: 2-0. Her professional progress was in ruins.

'All right, Albert, I'll do... But if Richard didn't still find the Patient Zero, how did you identify him or her?' she asked.

'It was very easy, Sandra. Having read the WHO report we knew where the Patient Zero had to come from. We compared the passenger lists of the airlines coming from Central Africa to the list of patients who got broken bones in the last three weeks in New York and Bay City. We found only one person on both lists: David Grey from New York.'

The truth was, they still hadn't found the real Patient Zero since Jane Walker had already got her shoulder spica cast in Africa, and she wasn’t on the US hospital patient list. And as a strange twist of life, she lived just in the neighbouring street to their mobile lab.

to be continued

The Plague, Part 8 - Unrevised

Day 27
Number of infected worldwide: 6,481
Number of infected in the U.S.: 1,113

'I think they’re wrong,' Arthur said suddenly while carefully putting a blood sample under the microscope glass.

'What'd you say, Artie?' Sandra asked, without turning to him, her eyes glued to her microscope as well, sitting at her workstation in the CDC mobile lab.

They had been going on for a while on the task that Albert had given them: to identify the source of the infection. Instead of doing this unchallenging task in a town of no significance and working on a mystery which seemed to be solved, Sandra wanted to be somewhere else. No matter how hard she was working at this moment, the reward would be given to the New York Team. So being in somewhere else... in some, more challenging place. For example, in Africa, managing a WHO expedition. Seeing her hopeful career coming to a dead end, she decided to quit the CDC when this Plaster Cast Plague would be over. She's young enough to restart her line of work. Maybe, at a pharmaceutical research company.

'You can find the Patient Zero even now. David Grey is a bad result,' he told her.

'Why?' she asked, still not catching what he meant.

'It's very simple. The infection is spreading faster here than in New York. We've got more patients here than in New York. If New York were the first source, it would be in the other way around. When a Bay City citizen comes home from Africa he or she might go through New York. Furthermore...,' Arthur listed convincingly.

'Okay, okay. I get what you mean. However, it seems this mystery is solved and we aren't supposed to investigate. We can’t use the CDC databases to find him or her. Dr Wells would be alerted,' Sandra said, standing up. Having worked for more than twelve hours, she felt terribly exhausted.

'I could use the local police computer system. Could say it's a CDC job,' Arthur suggested.

'Good idea. Thanks, Artie,' she expressed her gratitude kindly, however she was too worn-out even to smile.

'You look so tired, Sandra,' he said. In real, she seemed to be the shadow of her old self.

'I woke up too early. And my right leg is going numb,' she told him, rubbing the named body part.

'Stand up, go out and take a fresh breath,' he recommended.

'I can’t do it, Artie. We must catch this little bastard,' Sandra said, being ready to continue her work. She didn't wish to disappoint her boss Dr Wells. Again.

'Where is the emphasis, Sandra? On "we" or on "must"?' he asked, jokingly.

'Okay, I'll take a five minute break.'

Sandra gave up her resistance. Having stood up, she opened the door of the lab. Sandra squinted, as her eyes unused to the natural sunlight since she got used to the artificial lighting of the mobile lab. Enjoying the scenery, she slowly looked around. This place was a peaceful town. Or it used to be. Peaceful, but worrying. She could see quite a few people wearing casts. There was a couple in love in the park, walking slowly since the girl was hobbling because of her short leg cast. Not far away she could see a cyclist, wearing a short arm cast. And she could keep going on and on... Maybe who had much larger cast, probably stayed at home, that’s why she could see only small casts, she thought. She walked around the park, but her right leg kept aching.

Suddenly a broadcast van, with the Global News Network logo painted in the sides, turned into their street, looking for a parking lot. Sandra thought the significance of the event might have reached the media threshold, and now they were turning their eyes to the source of the news. From now on, a single misinterpreted word could cause major panic.

She was about to return to the mobile lab, when Albert pushed out the door, yelling:
'Sandra, I've fou...'

The opening door hit her right leg above the knee. Arthur and Sandra only could hear a 'crack', and she collapsed instantly. At first, her rational doctor-mind defied her hysterical patient-mind which wanted to cry out loudly. A damned door shouldn't be able to break a strong and healthy femur, her calm doctor-mind noted, analysing the unexpected situation.

That had to mean only one thing. She was infected by the virus.

'Oh, Jesus, Arthur! Stop looking at me and call the ambulance! Now!' she cried out, lying on the cold asphalt of the parking lot, when her patient-mind struck back and won.

Instead of helping her, the TV crew started filming the CDC mobile lab and Sandra being in pain due to her broken leg, still sitting on the ground. Suffering, and seeing the recklessness of the reporter and the cameraman, Sandra lost her mind, she raised her right arm up high and she showed them her middle finger.

to be continued

Next (Part 9)-->

Cast Plague, Part 5
Day 25
Number of infected worldwide: 2,983
Number of infected in the U.S.: 587
Location: Dr Roth’s office, Bay City Hospital, Bay City, WA

Dr Allen Roth skimmed through the twenty-page summary, turning the sheets with slow hand movements. The author of the paper, Sandra sat on the chair opposite, with legs crossed, peering at the medical director, who pretended reading the carefully compiled study. After his eyes run over it, Dr Roth put down the document, whose cover had the seal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though their meeting was about serious issues, the fuss didn’t impress him too much. His demeanour, cold as ice since Sandra had introduced herself, had still not warmed up.

'What is a CDC Rapid Response Team doing here?' The way he asked the question was that of a determined man who vowed himself to unveil great conspiracies. 'You should tell me everything, Dr Watkins. I surely haven’t invited you here. It must've been Dr Brown, the new head of the surgery department. She's too young and inexperienced, so she probably called you...'

'Dr Roth, please, don’t start a witch hunt for any whistle-blowers. We’ve got our own reliable survey and alert system, which is based on regular medical statistical reports.'

Adjusted to this style of negotiations, Sandra couldn’t be easily kicked out of balance. Mostly, she wasted her time and talent on dealing with the stubborn members of the local authorities to offset the stigma of her age and gender. For the left-behind dinosaurs, she was too young and too female to be a team head of the regional branch of CDC.

Just to melt the ice, Sandra smiled. But she remained tough inside, showing him that she didn’t get the two letters, which stood before her name, by finding in the street. The scientist classified the old doctor as a ten-sentence man, meaning that it would take merely ten sentences to break his resistance.

'You can argue with me, Dr Roth. But you can't argue with reality.’ Sandra put her hand on the CDC Alert Report, which lied on the doctor’s desk. ‘Something here is out of ordinary. In this area, the number of patients with bone fractures is significantly higher than the long-term average. It is much higher than any previous maximum. And we couldn’t find any simple cause for this phenomenon. The winter is over, and the roads and pavements aren't icy any longer. And as the police report says, the occurrence of physical violence dropped to a historic low.’

‘Surely, you must have very big and expensive computers in Atlanta, but you do nothing else here but playing with statistical data, Dr Watkins. "I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself." Do you know this quote?'

Sandra nodded. ‘It's from Winston Churchill.'

‘Bravo.’ He imitated clapping. ‘Consider that you're right, and there's a significantly high number of fractures in the last two or three weeks. Let’s suppose that we’ll see a well-below-than-average number in the next month. What would you do?' The style of the question was nice, but the smile, which accompanied it, was that of a hunting wolf.

'I’d be very happy if this incidence would disappear without a trace, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. However, what's your opinion on this recent phenomenon, then?'

'It’s merely a short-term anomaly. It comes and goes. Ma’am, I’d like to ask you again. What are you really doing here? CDC has nothing to do with broken bones. This cannot be an infectious disease.'

Sandra sighed. His boss Albert Wells had sent her team here to clear up a medical mystery, and she would carry it through, no matter who or what would stand in her way.

‘The CDC wasn’t established only to deal with infectious diseases. Beyond the core task, we monitor environmental health and injury prevention, too.’

'And what would you like to find here?'

Listening to the questions, which Dr Roth asked to uncover the non-existing hidden reason, Sandra replanned the negotiating strategy. Obviously, she had underestimated Dr Roth's abilities. He proved to be a very hard nut to crack. To know him better, she flashed a glance at the room walls.

The medical director, who stood at the edge of retirement, was undoubtedly a hotshot. Postered on the wall, nicely framed photos depicted him meeting all the presidents since Jimmy Carter. The proud collection included several awards given by the governors of State of Washington. And the walls were wallpapered with the myriad certificates, as well, to prove that Dr Roth had been the doctor of the year for uncountable times since the middle of the 1970s.

Luckily, Sandra resisted the pressure, and Dr Roth's wall of memory didn’t impress her. She turned back to him. 'I wouldn't be a good researcher if I rashly drew the conclusion before experimentation.’

'You must have some theories in your mind, Dr Watkins.’

‘Of course, we’ve got hypotheses. Perhaps, it can be some chemical or biological agent, which weakens the bone structure. Or it can be a substance influencing the sense of balance.’

He smiled after hearing the bizarre idea. 'A stuff that makes people clumsy?'

'If you would like to say so. So, the contaminated patients fall, and they break their healthy bones.'

'Could I add more explanations to this list? It isn’t a biological agent but a North Korean agent.' Dr Roth laughed annoyingly on his own joke. 'Or this is an invisible, extra-terrestrial, bone-eating alien. Or, it can just be a statistical anomaly.'

'Thank you for these suggestions, Sir.' Surely, Sandra was not grateful, not comprehending the reason behind his strange behaviour. Could this massive resistance be an early symptom of Alzheimer's?

'And there's a fact about which I'm rather worried.' She opened the report at Page 3 to point at a chart, which depicted the number of cast-wearing people. Instead of randomly fluctuating up and down, the red line directly rocketed toward the top of the page. 'Whatever it is, it is growing exponentially.’

‘Well...’

‘Dr Roth, I’m sorry to tell you but our meeting wasn’t the first entry on my to-do list. My team members have been collecting air and water samples for three days.’

‘And what have you found?’

‘Nothing unordinary. Within a fifty-mile radius, there aren’t any significant industrial complexes or chemical factories that can be the sources of biological or chemical contamination.'

'You're voting for an infectious disease, as I see.’

‘Have you heard recently anything about any illegal waste disposal?'

‘Or is it from hazardous waste, Dr Watkins?' he guessed.

Sandra tried not to listen to Dr Roth’s sarcastic notes. ‘If it would be an external environmental pollution, the number of patients wouldn't change so rapidly.’

She was already fed up with the old manager, regardless of his local influence. No matter how many awards he had got, and no matter how many presidents had shaken his hand, Sandra had a secret 'weapon', still waiting to be used, with which she would easily destroy Dr Roth's bunker. Trying to get out of the mire of equivocation, she strived for useful information.

'Dr Roth, I’d like to run a full-scale study, thus I’d like you to give me the medical data of all the patients, who had been treated with fractures in the last four weeks.'

'Would you like to talk with each of them?' he asked in disbelief.

'We’d like to know where they live, what they ate, what they drank, where they were, whom they met. Maybe the illness isn’t from the air or from the drinking water. It can be found in some food, which all of them ate. And if this is a contagious disease, I want to find the Patient Zero, especially.’

'You’re burning the taxpayers’ money, Dr Watkins.’

'Thank you for being so worried about the budget of the CDC.'

Hindering her, it was an obstruction for its own sake. 'Finding the Patient Zero won't be too easy for your team because our hospital receives patients from a large district. Every day, the ambulances bring several injured people here. How can we tell the difference between the normal injured ones and the victims of the so-called Cast Plague?'

Sandra sighed. The clock was ticking, and every hour was too important to lose. It was the right time for her to use the power of her office, however, she liked finding support on reason and not on pure law.

'If you're still reluctant to give me the required data, please don’t forget where I came from. Do I really need to cite the law, Dr Roth?'

'Do what you have to do, Dr Watkins,' he said, antagonising. With clear aversion on his face, he picked up the phone to give instructions to his secretary. 'Hello, Rose... My guest, a CDC scientist, Dr Sandra Watkins will contact you soon. Please, give her everything she wants... Yes, really... Bye.’

Sandra worked hard to show her appreciation, knowing that her words wouldn't be too believable. 'Thank you very much indeed for your kindness.'

'My pleasure.' Dr Roth's sentence was born from mere compulsory politeness, too.

'Would you like to pay a visit to our mobile lab in the afternoon?' Sandra asked. No matter how icy their conversation was, she needed to maintain a professional connection with the local experts.

'I’m sorry, Dr Watkins, I can’t do that,' he apologised.

To show Sandra out, the old doctor leant on the desk to stand up. His steps turned into clumsy hobbling as he dragged his left leg, which thudded on the floor. The sound of the rhythmical bangs was familiar, yet Sandra flashed an astonished glance down at Dr Roth’s lower limb, which was concealed in a short leg cast. A black fibreglass SLC wrapped the leg, expanding from the knee to the toes, capturing the shin, fettering his broken ankle, and wrapping the entire foot, as well.

The cause of his stubborn resistance wasn't the Alzheimer's disease but the simple, childish denial.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 4)     Next (Part 6)-->

Cast Plague, Part 3
Day 10
Number of infected: 19
Location: above the Atlantic Ocean

The strange sensation of the big shell, which held Jane tight, slowly subsidised. Disabling her arms, the one-piece cast completely locked both of the upper limbs and confined the torso. In addition, the thin inner paddings rubbed her skin. Yet, little by little, she accommodated to the double restriction of the shoulder spica cast and the velpeau cast.

Sunk into the comfy seat in the business class, the girl fidgeted a bit to bore a deeper hollow in the cushion mountain. Seeing the squirms of the handicapped passenger, a flight attendant appeared, carrying an extra set of small and big pillows printed with the brandmark of the Oceanic Airline.

‘We’d like to make your flight as comfortable as we can, Ms Lawson. Would you need more pillows? Or something to drink? Or shall I help you out to the lavatory?’

The sight of the multi-coloured, plushy cushions seduced Jane. ‘Thank you, the pillows will be fine.’

‘Could you move forward a bit, please?’

Tightly packed in the solid piece of the body-and-arms plaster covering, it wasn’t easy for Jane to change her stiff body posture. The stewardess wedged the fifth pillow into the newly born gap between corset cast and the backrest. Thanking, Jane leant back to enjoy the new layer in the pillow cradle.

The helpful flight attendant went away. But their conversation woke up the gentleman, who was sleeping in the seat next to Jane. Called back from the nap, he yawned, then stretched out his legs to drive numbness away. Also, his arms moved up to take off the black sleep mask, which blindfolded his eyes.

The first thing the man saw was a floating white object, which was big and extensive enough to intrude into the personal airspace around his seat. He rubbed the last bit of sleep from his eyes to realise that the tube-like white thing was an immense plaster cast shell, which confined the entire arm of his fellow traveller.

Held far away from the cast-swaddled body, Jane’s plaster shoulder spica cast simply arched over the wide gap between the two seats. Stuck in the arm cast, the girl’s limb was elevated to shoulder level and was angled at the elbow at ninety degrees. Having the shape of a letter L, her whole arm was immobilised everywhere, excluding the palms and fingers. Flawlessly attached to the mass of the body cast, the SSC jutted out far away, propped by a long bar, which ran between the cast-wrapped wrist and the bound abdomen.

Silently, the guy studied his neighbour, who was dressed in a loose brown, sleeveless dress. However, the piece of clothes failed to fully conceal the corset-like cast, which encircled and captured her whole chest and most of her abdomen. What’s more, it was impossible to disguise the SSC and the support bar, especially. Making Jane absolutely helpless, the big half-cocoon robbed away all the functions of her arms and body. The shape, the thickness and the size of central mass resembled a piece of armour. It was flat like a plate, just giving rough hints on the fine contours of her feminine body. However, the cast accurately followed the shapes of her breast, forming two white hills.

Looking for the other, hidden arm, he spotted the pink tips of fingers, which strangely came out of the block of white cast surrounding the chest. Next, he could map the outlines of the strange arm cast, which was glued to the body shell.

Jane hated being in the focus of his non-stop interest. Embarrassed, she gazed back at the guy, who sat beyond her mile-long shoulder spica cast. Wilted, she waited for the series of boring questions. What happened? How? When? For how long?

However, choosing a different first topic, the man talked about the fashionable green neckpiece, which encircled the masterly shaped upper rim of the body cast.

‘Have you bought that fine silk scarf in Africa?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Relieved, Jane let the air out of the cast-confined chest. She was so grateful that she didn’t need to talk about this carapace. Obviously, she was a poster child of a damsel in distress.

‘I bet you don’t want me to ask any question about what happened to you. Don't worry, I won’t. Six years ago, I was in a similar situation. I was skiing in the mountains, and there was an evil tree, which couldn’t get out of my way fast enough. When I woke up in hospital, I was in casts up to here,’ he said, poking his lowest ribs.

Then he continued the story. ‘Because of the double hip spica cast, I had to ride a wheelchair for nine months. And in a short time, I got fed up with telling the same story again and again. I worked out tales. That I was a spy chasing the enemy. Or it was a failed stunt show. I worked up everything so that I didn’t tell the same boring story again and again.’

Jane instantly awarded the likeable guy with a wide smile. Encouraged, the man went on talking.

‘Was it your first time in Africa?'

‘Yes, the first. And maybe, the last, too.’

'Africa can be dangerous.’

'Not at all, I’m the one, who's dangerous.’ A bitter smile surfaced to Jane’s face.

‘Sorry, I missed the most important part of the introduction. My name is David.’

‘I’m Jane. Please, postpone the handshake for some time.’ She wiggled the uncasted fingers poking out of the padded openings.

‘And what was your business there?’

‘It was a biological research project. And yours?’

‘I hunted for treasures, Ma’am.’ David elevated his arm to adjust an invisible fedora hat. ‘To be precise, for natural treasures. I’m the owner of Global Resources Inc.’

Though David intended to have an impact on Jane, the company name didn’t mean anything to the girl, who wasn’t familiar with the business world.

‘Oh, my title isn’t as great as yours. I’m a simple research biologist from a small town on the Pacific Coast.’

‘And yet you could get a ticket to the business class.’

‘When I asked for two seats in the economy class..., oh, you can imagine, with this terribly big cast, I always need a space as big as a wardrobe... So, seeing my disability, the airline offered me a free ticket for the business class. And, look, there’s Suzy, a nice flight attendant, who buzzes around me all the time. She comes here in every fifteen minutes to ask how she could be of my assistance.’

Though the stewardess’ excessive helpfulness was disturbing sometimes, Jane appreciated the generosity of the Oceanic. Because of the huge shell, which was a literal obstacle, she considered her SSC as her conjoined twin. The cast had received its own place on the board of the airplane, and with its supporting bar and its large arm cast, it occupied most of it.

‘Maybe, you don’t need Suzy’s assistance anymore, because I’m here for you.’ David offered his full service. ‘Would you like to have something? Drink? Food? Another pillows?’

‘Oh, you’re so kind, but I can’t accept...’

‘Then let’s talk about something else. So, have you found some new species in the jungle?'

‘I was there just to study the good old ones. I’m afraid they might disappear soon. With the recent rate of deforestation...'

‘Ah, that’s so sad!’

‘If your miners ruin the forest...’

‘Hey, my company haven’t got mines there.’ David showed his open palms to prove his innocence, although green issues were an Achilles heel of the Global Resources Inc. Then he tried hard to put the derailed conversation back to the right track. ‘Beyond question, frontier markets offer me a good business opportunity. But you are right. Environmental protection is a serious issue nowadays. Would you like to be my special environmental advisor?’

‘Who knows?’ Jane let the door open for such a possibility.

David looked for a better topic. Charmed by her appeal, and impressed by her casts, he understandably didn't want to talk about green policy. ‘Could you fulfil any of your childhood dreams in Africa?’

‘Dreams?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Well, when I was a little girl, I dreamed about finding lost cities in the jungle.’

‘Oh, Miss Quatermain, personally? And have you found them?’

‘You can’t believe it, but I’ve seen ruins in the jungle.’

David laughed. ‘Fantastic! It’s said that even King Solomon's lost mines can be there. Ahem, and aside from your animal and plant friends, what about your human relations?' he asked, since he couldn't see a wedding ring on Jane's ring finger.

'Are you asking if I've got any partner?'

'I don't mean to be so direct, Jane. But, to be short, what about a face-to-face meeting?'

‘I’m not the kind of girl you think I’m. You don’t know me, David.’

‘We’ve got a plenty of time until this plane lands in New York...’

...and he talked and talked. Trained on convincing stubborn politicians, the refined businessman’s negotiation skills were polished to perfection. But, from time to time, he stole a secret glance at the 'frozen' waves of the well-shaped cast-bras, as well.

After experiencing so much suffering in the jungle, and handicapped in her cast, David’s soul-melting kindness was a safe harbour for Jane’s wrecked ship. Though meeting strangers wasn’t her business, it was time to try something new. Experimenting, she decided to spend a night with an unknown male, for the first time in her life.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 2)     Next (Part 4)-->

Cast Plague, Part 2
Day 9
Number of infected: 8
Location: General Hospital in a province capital of a Central African country

The well-padded seat enticed Jane to change her stiff posture into a more agreeable one. Yet, defying, she kept her aching back away from touching the backrest. She had a good reason to be so careful. Or, to wit, two reasons. Two broken shoulders.

A pair of temporary splints constricted both of her arms, tightly compressing the limbs to the body. Wearing this ‘straitjacket’, she didn’t experiment with exposing her throbbing body parts to any physical contact. Just ten minutes ago, she had yelled out, when a careless nurse had accidentally jabbed her injured limbs, despite the decent amount of painkillers she had received.

And this accident was already the second one she had gone through. Earlier, the expedition to the jungle hadn’t gone as smoothly as planned. After being attacked by a monkey, Jane had fought to survive the forest tour. Led, helped, and sometimes even carried and dragged by the jungle guide, she had struggled through the big swamp to get to a first aid centre to treat the bite wounds. Jane had had fever for a week, but the high temperature had gone by the time she had arrived at the province capital. In the hotel, the worn out girl had enjoyed having a hot bath again, when she had fallen in the bathroom, and, somehow, she had broken both of her shoulders.

To help the foreign guest, the hotel receptionist had told (and had bribed with Jane’s cash) the ambulance driver so that she could be taken to the best medical facility. And now, Jane was here in the examination ward of the first-class and well-equipped clinic, which was established and maintained for and by the local elite.

At long last, the young African doctor put aside the files and the X-rays images, which depicted the upper part of Jane’s skeleton, including the wounded arms.

‘What is this bandage for, Ms Lawson?' Dr Tatenda asked in nearly accentless English.

Jane looked down at her heavily bandaged left wrist, which stuck out of the confining arm straps and splints. Stricken with the new trouble of broken bones, she almost forgot the monkey bite.

‘I was conducting research in the jungle, when...’

‘Do you work for the Global Resources, too?’ From the intonation, it was obvious that Dr Tatenda didn’t hold the company in high esteem.

‘It wasn’t a geological expedition. I’m a biologist.'

‘I see. Well, the bandages, Ma’am?’

'A monkey bit my arm about a week ago.'

'Have you been to hospital?' The doctor watched carefully the dirty gauzes wrapping her forearm.

'Yes, my guide took me to a so-called district hospital, which was in a five-day distance, beyond a marshland. They gave me the strongest disinfectant and antibiotics that they had on hand.’

Jane remembered the poor place. Though it had been called a hospital, the building had been only a wooden warehouse on the edge of collapse, missing electricity and clear water.

He acknowledged her professional devotion. 'You must have been deep in the jungle.'

'I just looked for the most undisturbed environments. And strangely, I could stay alive in the jungle but I haven’t survived a slippery shower stall.’

‘And you have broken both of your shoulders.’ Dr Tatenda stated the obvious. Due to the accident, Jane’s immobilised arms were tightly pressed against her body. ‘This kind of double injury is very, ahem... uncommon. Have you ever had complications with your bones?’

‘What do you mean, Doctor?’

‘Fractures, mainly. How many casts have you had before?’

‘I’ve never broken any of my bones. Of course, before this morning.’

Jane fidgeted, and the slight movement lit the fire of a sharp pain, which ran from the injured parts up to the brain with the speed of light. The girl had to grit her teeth to stop herself from moaning.

‘No broken bones so far.’ The doctor wrote a couple of words on the margin of the medical case file. ‘And now, we should talk about the treatment. Well, the operation will begin...’

‘I don’t want to be operated. I do want to leave this country as soon as possible. There is a flight in the evening, and...’

‘Ma’am you can trust our expertise. We provide medical services even for the government members, and...’

‘I don’t call your skills into question, Dr Tatenda. Simply, I’d like to go home. I don’t want to wait until the next week for the next flight.’

‘Of course, we won’t force you into the operating room, Ms Lawson. But then, we have to step back to use an old and conservative way of treatment: application of casts to stabilise the broken bones.’

Jane nodded. With words, the doctor sketched the layout of the casts, which would be extensive enough to wrap the injured bones.

‘As you broke both of the shoulders, the casts must cover not only the arms but they must include most of the trunk so that we can create a firm base to capture the limbs. Have you ever seen a shoulder spica cast?’

Jane shook her head.

‘Then a picture is worth a thousand words.’

Bending down, Dr Tatenda pulled out the uppermost drawer of the table cabinet. He wiped off the dust from the old textbook he found there. Opening it, he looked for a certain chapter. Then he put the book to the other edge of the table.

The full-page image depicted a female patient or model, who sported a shoulder spica cast. On her upper body, she didn’t wear any clothes. However, the white plaster cast shell was big enough to veil most of the naked skin. The body cast tightly mantled the torso between the neck and the belly button, including the chest. The breasts, too, were captured below the two cast bulges, which half-spherically protruded out of the smooth surface of the medical armour.

Sticking out of the body cast perpendicularly, the arm was permanently held at shoulder level, fully moulded in a huge and weighty cast, which encircled and disabled each bit of the limb between the armpit and the wrist. Flexed at ninety degrees, the forearm pointed forward. Of course, the arm cast wasn’t a separate cast, but it was seamlessly merged with the rigid bandages enclosing the trunk. Besides, there was a thick bar between the trunk and the wrist to hold the whole structure away from the body.

'Ms Lawson, now you can see how big and extensive an old-style shoulder spica cast is.' He put his finger on the photo to highlight what he said.

'Is it going to be that big? I can’t do anything with them...' The shoulder spica cast was much more extensive than Jane expected. The small splints she wore was nothing, compared to the monstrous shoulder casts.

‘It is not too late to change your mind. We can operate on you today. But if you vote for casts, there are some more problems for us to solve.’

‘Ah.’ Jane turned up her head.

‘Because of the nature of the injuries, we should apply two shoulder spica casts. However, their extending posture would occupy a lot of space around you, and it would cause inconvenience for you, especially on the board of an airplane.’

Dr Tatenda stopped to let Jane imagine herself dressed in DSS. Her body and both of her arms would be totally confined in a contiguous stiff containment. Making utterly helpless, her hands would be kept far away from the body, locked in an awkward pose. Even a simple piece of movement, such as turning around would be rather complicated.

‘So, what can you suggest, Doctor?’

‘One of your arms can be in a traditionally posed shoulder spica cast. But for the other, we should apply a so-called velpeau cast.’ He stopped for a while to turn the pages of the textbook.

On the next photo, the patient-to-be saw what a velpeau cast was. The setting of this kind of cast was radically different from the noticeably big shoulder spica cast. Instead of keeping the arm away from the body, the velpeau cast united the wrappings of the body and the arm. Arm cast and body cast were fused into one single entity, therefore the bounded limb was almost invisible. Holding closely the arm to the chest, the combined shell encased both the torso and the limb. Merely the fingers jutted out of the massive block of bandages, which fittingly followed the contours of the patient.

‘Huh,’ Jane whispered. So, getting two big casts would be the cost of an early homecoming.

‘Sadly, we must use plaster of Paris, since our recent stock of fibreglass tissue wouldn’t be enough to build this big shell for you. As you probably know, plaster cast will be much heavier and thicker than fibreglass.’

‘I can survive it. If there’s nothing else, use plaster, please.’

'Finally, I must check those bite wounds. I can’t apply any permanent coverage if your wrist still needs treatment every day.' Dr Tatenda looked at her bandage-bound forearm.

Going around the table, he went to Jane’s chair. With careful movements, he cut up the several layers of bandages, which encircled the patient’s hand. During the last week, the horrible laceration had significantly improved, turning into just some minor grazes. 'Hm, your injuries heal fine! All right! I see no objections to using casts.'

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 1)     Next (Part 3)-->

Cast Plague, Part 1
Day 0
Number of infected: 0
Location: a jungle somewhere in Central Africa

Mbutu extended his arms to embrace the sight of the dale below his feet. ‘Welcome to the Forbidden Valley, Ms Lawson!’

Called, Jane went along the steep pathway, which the jungle guide created when trampling through the bush. From this narrow corridor, she entered the natural viewpoint, where Mbutu stepped aside to give room to her.

Jane stopped at the edge of the plateau. Before enjoying the panorama, the young woman wiped the sweat off her forehead, and she put her pair of glasses into the jacket pocket. After this ritual, she elevated the binocular before her eyes. The landscape was worth the trouble of the detour. Although the dense blanket of grass peacefully buried most of the ruins, grey wrecks of stone towers pierced through the green network of tree creepers, here or there, defying the deadly hug of lianas.

‘When did it happen?’ Jane asked while mapping the remnants of the ancient civilisation.

‘Maybe one or two thousand years ago. Or much earlier. It’s hard to tell. We haven’t got written history.’

The humid, crystal-clear air was a thin liquid flowing around them. Jane had to clean her forehead once again. Taking part in her first expedition, she wasn’t a proficient jungle walker. Unlike her guide, who was born in a close village, the girl was used to the pampering coolness of the air-conditioned hotel rooms.

Jane lowered her hands and gave the binoculars back to the guide. ‘Can we have a closer look?’

‘You will be called One-Legged Jane if you don’t stay here with me,’ he said to the woman, who was already going down the slope to see the ruins.

But, warned, Jane stopped to look back at Mbutu.

‘We can never get down there in one piece. There is a minefield all along this part of the pathway,’ he answered the unasked question.

As if walking on invisible eggshells, Jane moved back to the top of the hill to join the jungle guide. ‘Anything more to know?’

‘The daemons.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard about them.’ Jane laughed.

Mbutu didn’t copy her grin. ‘You shouldn’t make a joke of them. I’ve already lost two friends of mine, who went into the jungle and never came back to their families.’

Actually, this man had been the only chaperone, who hadn’t refused Jane, when she had talked about paying a visit to this part of the forest.

‘If you are afraid of the daemons this much, then why did you take the job?’ she asked. ‘For the sake of challenge?’

A bitter smile appeared on his face. ‘For the sake of money, Ma’am. I need money to keep my family alive. I was a history and geography teacher in the village school. Until it was burnt down.’

‘By the army or the rebels?’

‘Does it matter? Pure black and white pieces exist merely on a chessboard. If a civil war lasts for decades, everybody turns into grey.’

‘And what is the folktale for the daemons?’ Jane looked down at the ruins once again, just peering through the lenses of her glasses.

‘Once, a long time ago, there was a big city in the jungle. It was the prosperous capital of a great empire. Tens of thousands of people lived here, or maybe hundreds of thousands. This ancient nation was very wealthy, and their richness was based on piles of diamond and hills of gold. They terrible feared for their treasure, but they were merchant folks, and they didn’t know how to fight or how to use weapons. Therefore, they had to work out how to defend their city. And as the story says, they found the perfect mercenaries, whom the enemy couldn’t bribe with money. So, apes and monkeys became their guardians...’

‘Monkeys?’

‘Allegedly, this old nation domesticated monkeys, and they employed them to guard their cities. And it worked very well for centuries. However, on a nice day, the simian army turned against their human commanders. Possessed by daemons, the monkeys went mad, and they attacked everybody there. Within days, the monkeys took over the town.’

‘...and the people lived sadly ever after?’

‘No, this is not the end of the tale. The monkeys’ bites were poisonous. So, most of the men and women died, and my tribe is the descendants of the few survivors. Hm, what’s your professional opinion on our legends?’

‘Well, I’m not a cultural anthropologist but a research biologist. For me, it sounds like a vague piece of oral history, which is based on the experiences of several catastrophic events. Maybe, an earthquake destroyed the town, and before or after it, there was an early outbreak of an infectious disease such as Marburg virus or Ebola. In a figurative sense, this is a parable about doom, which follows hubris, and about punishment for our disrespect to nature. By the way, have any archaeologists seen this place?’

‘I don’t think so. The westerners are interested in our natural resources only.’

‘What a shame.’

Mbutu didn’t comment, but he followed the girl, who returned to the main jungle path. After the short sightseeing, Jane restarted her field research, until a deep, resonant sound hit her ears.

‘A storm is coming?’

Having asked it, the scientist stopped working in the bush. Looking for dark storm clouds, she turned her head up at the gigantic trees towering over them. But the dense canopy perfectly screened the sky, casting an eternal shadow on the soil of the rainforest. The bright sunlight was so dimmed that it seemed to be late in the afternoon, however, the time was just after three p.m.

‘This isn’t thunder. This is the echo of the air raids.’ Mbutu lifted his walking stick to point westward. ‘Beyond the mountain range, the air force bombs the rebels again. This is just the daily routine here.’

‘Is this place secured?’

‘Since the army reoccupied this province, this forest is safe. Except for the minefields there.’ He gestured back to the Forbidden Valley.

‘And what about the poachers?’ Jane didn’t want to cross their path, either. She liked nature, but she wouldn’t have liked to share Dian Fossey’s fate.

‘Even those brave hunters fear the invisible jungle daemons.’

‘That’s good to know, indeed.’ Jane murmured, but she didn’t feel comforted too much.

In case of any trouble, they had to survive on their own. The first outposts of any modern civilisation were about one hundred miles away. To divert her thoughts, Jane went on working in the last untouched part of the world. She took several photos on the trees, which were as high as sky-scrapers. After capturing flowers with all the colours of the rainbow, she collected green, yellow and brown leaves of the plants as research specimens. Most likely, the guys in the DNA banks would respect her job – she hoped.

The biodiversity of the Central African rainforests was an under-researched discipline, so Jane had bravely chosen this topic for her dissertation. Expectantly, her future career path would be smoother than this muddy track in the jungle. Firstly, she would submit the essay, and then she would get her PhD in Biology. And a bit later, she would have tenure as a university professor. But, right now, Jane was drifted away from her favourite safe campus, where she had lived in the circle of dusty books in the silent library.

‘We are done here.’ Jane stood up and put the camera back into the bag.

Mbutu waved to lead the scientist to the next forest clearing. But, soon, just after taking the first steps on the narrow path, they had to stop as a growling animal stood in their way.

‘This can be the grandson of the domesticated monkeys.’ Mbutu joked.

‘Still guarding the holy city?’ She flashed an amazed look at the animal that stood proudly in the middle of the trail. Next, she identified the exact species, having seen the olive-grey fur, the white breast, the light-coloured cheeks and eyebrows. ‘Oh, a Chlorocebus cynosuros.’

‘You mean a malbrouck?’

They slowly approached the monkey, whom their movement couldn’t chase away. Jane had never seen a simian posing like this, and she couldn’t remember whether anyone had ever warned her about such a phenomenon.

‘This behaviour is highly unnatural.' Jane crouched down, and, squatting, she attempted to make contact with the malbrouck.

'No, Ma’am, don’t do this.'

Despite the caution, Jane crawled toward the monkey. His warning words were born too late, and the scientist sadly realised she wasn't a visitor in a zoo with fences to separate Homo sapiens from wildlife.

With a sudden spring, the slim and agile primate jumped forward, almost flying through the distance between them. Baring its teeth, the monkey obviously targeted Jane’s unprotected neck. To defend the throat, the attacked woman raised her arms in a rapid reflex action. So, instead of munching her windpipe, the teeth of the monkey perforated the skin of her left wrist.

Pressed by the muscular jaw, the razor-sharp teeth sank deeply into her flesh. Quickly, her blood and the saliva that dropped from the monkey’s mouth filled up the severe wounds. Bitten, Jane let out an ear-splitting scream. The girl recoiled fast, however, the jaw didn’t release the firm grip. Horribly, the monkey’s muzzle remained in a firm connection with her arm.

‘Oh, geeeeez!’ Jane’s scream echoed in the forest once more.

She hysterically swung her arm forth and back, with the animal fixedly adhered to it. To respond, Mbutu jumped closer, and his hard walking stick cracked down on the attacker in its head and in its back. After the fifth or sixth hit, they monkey stopped biting and fell to the ground. Roaring through its bloody mouth, it retreated to the jungle to vanish among the trees.

The trauma pinned Jane down to the ground. Looking at the moaning girl with bleeding wounds and trembling legs, Mbutu muttered a sentence to himself, intentionally choosing a local dialect so that the scientist didn’t understand it. But she did.

Cradling her wounded arm, Jane looked up at him. ‘Stupid white b*tch?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt...’

‘Oh, you’re right. That’s me. I’d’ve been more careful.’

As the adrenaline reduced in her blood after the first wave of shock, the throbbing pain overwhelmed the nerves in her arm, and she comprehended how serious the bite wounds were. Jane fumed. The earlier ‘primate of interest’ turned into a ‘damn beast’ in her mind. Meanwhile, Mbutu fished for the first aid kit in the bag to find disinfectant and rolls of bandages to cover the lacerated skin.

'We’d rather go to hospital,' he said, after assessing the low stock of medical supplies.

Shaken, Jane watched as a red creek of blood slowly flowed along her forearm to cascade down onto the green glass between her legs.

Oh, going to hospital. What a good piece of advice. The nearest first aid station of the Red Cross was in a five-day walk distance. And the closest hospital with good equipment and trained staff was in the province capital, which seemed to be farther than the opposite end of the Milky Way.

to be continued

<--Would you like to read an other story?     Next (Part 2)-->

The Preventer, Part 22

To say farewell to this place, I stood in the middle of the imaginary room. Strangely, everything around me was the same, yet, at the same time, it all was different. In front of me, the unoccupied bed waited for a new patient in vain. I had done my job: I had saved seven women. My mission was over. I was waiting for my reward.

Gabriel stepped out of the wall, accompanying a faint and fading shadow of a woman.

‘Is she...?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly. Just a spectre built from your torn memories.’

But I didn’t care about Miranda’s state. I stepped toward my wife to meet her once again.

‘Forgive me, please,’ I said to her.

‘The accident was my fault, in part. I should have been more careful,’ Miranda said. ‘Anyway, I was only a body, which the doctors tried to keep alive. What did you say about me? “Not a human anymore but one hundred pounds of flesh”? It was very nice of you. But I have already forgiven everything.’

The echo of a stupid sentence that I had boldly said half a year ago hit my heart. Although her first words sounded rude and accusing, I obtained her pardon. Gabriel gave her back to me. Yet, I expected something else. Not a ghost haunting me.

‘Gabriel, I don’t want to be seemed to be ungrateful, but this only the image of Miranda. A copy of her. Like when I met Jennifer Bunny or Sister Mary Alice here. I hope that you wouldn’t like to deceive me.’

‘This phenomenon is just an appetiser. If you really want to get her back, you must go across the door with her.’ He pointed at the entrance.

‘There’s Nothing on the other side of the door.’ I recalled seeing the void when I had opened the gate.

‘You can always see there what you want to see there,’ Gabriel said. ‘You must check it once again.’

‘Is there any more possibilities to choose from?’ Hesitating, I would have liked to read the small print on the bottom of the page, too.

‘Of course, there is. Either you can go through the door with Miranda to get a second chance, or you can wake up from this dream to continue your life without her.’

Miranda was braver than me. Okay, it was easy for her since she was dead. Her ethereal cold hand took my arm to lead me toward the door. She opened it. Through the unlocked gate, I faced a chaos, which was different from what I expected. Instead of a starless blackness, I saw a disorder huddled from the previous stages of my life. Girls. Money. Meetings. Scenes. Events. Relatives. Buddies. However, it was overshadowed by price charts and business news.

‘Is it the hell?’ I asked. ‘Will you send me to the hell?’

‘Yeah, this is your personal hell.’ He smiled. ‘It’s called “your past”. How would you like to restart your life without going through the past?’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Miranda said, still holding my hand.

‘What is your decision?’ Gabriel asked. ‘With or without Miranda? The past or the present? Restarting? Or shall I set your alarm clock?’

I had nothing to lose. Hand in hand with Miranda, I crossed the door and entered the Chaos.

***

I hadn’t fallen into the abyss of Nothing. Instead, I found myself in the driving seat of my Porsche 911 cabriolet. Driven by the power of three hundred mad horses, the sports car rushed along the motorway, approaching my destiny. So, this was the place where I landed after going through the door of the imaginary room.

Once, Gabriel had talked about restarting my life. Obviously, he hadn’t meant kindergarten and the nonsense nursery rhymes by Nanny Nicolette. Now, I was forced to relive the minutes before the accident. Suspecting the doom, I noticed a semi-trailer truck coming behind the bend.

Seemingly, I rushed toward the finale unstoppably again. The hand of the speedometer kept moving up, freaking me out. The car flew above the empty road, faster than one hundred and fifty miles per hour. I moved up my foot, which kept pushing the gas pedal to the floor until now. The vehicle began slowing down, but we were still running killingly fast.

‘I’m so happy with you,’ she said.

Hearing Miranda’s voice, I shivered. I turned my head to the right, and I saw her sitting on the passenger seat, next to me. Miranda, alive, within my arm’s reach. The wind adorably waved her curly dark hair. Enjoying the air current gushing into our roofless convertible, she raised her arms high in the stream. Her smile could melt an iceberg. Maybe it could warm up even the icy Detective Hallmundsdóttir, too.

Having regained her, I didn’t want to lose her again. My eyes glued to my wife. I went crazy about the smallest bit of her appearance. I adored her long dark hair. Her eyes were patches of black velvet, mesmerising me. Her cheeks. Her face... I got immersed myself in her...

‘Hey, be busy with driving! You look at me as if you hadn’t seen me for ages!’ Obviously, she didn’t remember the Other Future Beyond the Fork, which had sent her to a coffin, and which had put me into a full body cast.

I didn’t obey her. She rewarded my revolt with an ear-to-ear grin. After checking a road, I stole a glance at her again. Gabriel had been right. Although blonde females were my primary targets, Miranda with her black hair was a love at first sight. With her playfulness, she compensated that she would lag behind any Bunny Girls in a beauty contest. A natural smile beamed on her face.

But we had to survive this day somehow so that I would have time to rediscover her. My attention moved back to the dashboard. 120 mph. We approached the site of our accident with a damn fast pace.

I decided to push down the brake pedal.

But the reborn Miranda and her doings distracted me. Making a sound of a click, she opened the latch of the safety belt. Unfastened, she climbed out of the passenger seat.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked in a terrified tone.

‘Do you remember what Rose did in the Titanic movie?’

Oh, yeah, very well. I remembered not only the film but our accident, too. Miranda would stand up in the seat, she would extend her arms. And when I would brake abruptly, she would simply fly out of this car. Again.

‘Please, sit back and fasten the belts.’

‘Hey, you have never been such serious with safety before.’ Her head was close to mine, but she didn’t try to put her lips on my face. She just whispered some words into my ear. ‘Look at me. I was able to change. You can change. You should stop using drugs.’

I nodded. It would be easy. In my mind, I was already drug-free, and I wasn’t a Wall Street broker anymore. However, I had to focus on staying alive. A new glance at the speedometer. 80 mph. Horribly fast to forcibly reduce the speed. And my passenger wasn’t in the right place, either.

‘Miranda, please,’ I begged. ‘Please, use your safety belt.’

‘Why are you so serious?’ she asked, however, she crawled back and secured her belt.

‘I feel that something will happen.’

Somehow, we had to get through this accident, without being taken to hospital in several pieces. Or, directly to a morgue. I didn’t want the fate to drift us apart.

60 mph.

‘No drugs. Anymore. Not because of me. But because of your child.’

Her last sentence caused an earthquake in my head. The memories burst into my mind – so, this time Miranda hadn’t been to an abortion clinic. Relished by this thought, I almost missed the right manoeuvre for the second time, too. With taking a brief look on my right side, I checked her safety belt, then I moved down the brake pedal to the floor. The wheels stopped running with terrible creakings. The ABS fought hard not to lost control over the vehicle.

I steered the car, which significantly slowed down, to the roadside. Ten seconds later, the speeding truck arrived quickly on the oncoming lane. Due to the blow of the strong side-wind, the heavy cargo trailer turned over. With making an ear-splitting noise, it hit the asphalt in the middle of the bend, and the wreck slid along our lane. It could have devastated everything, including both of us.

Merely two hundred yards away, the overturned big lorry blocked the motorway, and the road looked like a stage in a low-budget catastrophe movie. This heavy trailer could have flattened my Porsche. What a narrow escape!

For Miranda, I turned into a fortune-teller. ‘Have you foreseen it?’

‘I don’t know. Some sixth sense or what.’ I shook my head, looking at the mountain-sized wreck of the truck lying in front of us.

Chilled out, I tried to absorb the other sighting around us. Peering around, I spotted a familiar hitch-hiker, who stood in the shadow of a direction sign. Seeing our car berthing in this dry dock, the white-bearded man strolled toward us.

He greeted us. ‘Hello, Miranda. Hello, Alex.’

‘Have we met before, Sir?’ Miranda took off her sunglasses to see him.

‘No, not, but your husband kept talking about you all the time,’ Gabriel said.

‘Do you know this fellow?’ Miranda asked me.

‘Yeah, we had some mutually beneficial business together in the last months.’ After answering Miranda’s question, I turned to him. ‘Can we do anything for you, Gabriel?’

‘Surely. Would you take me to this place? It is merely five hundred and thirty-seven miles away.’ He gave me a card with an address, and he replied, using words picked out from my corporate vocabulary. ‘I must hire a new employee for the Prevention Inc.’

The End

<--Previous (Part 21)     Would you like to read another story?-->

The Preventer, Part 21

With an uneasy feeling, I kept walking around in the hospital room. My body was locked in a real-world prison cell, and my mind was called up into this imaginary place. Slowly torn apart, I found no escape from any of the worlds.

‘Gabriel, neither my confession nor the latest vision could convince the industrial robot.’

‘What robot? Do you mean Detective Hallmundsdóttir?’ He showed interest in the strange expression I used.

‘Whom else? She misses any kind of human emotions. But, right now, there’s something more important. She thinks that you broke Christina’s arms and legs.’

‘Oh, me?’

‘Of course, she didn’t mention your name. But she suspects that I’ve got an accomplice outside. And you’re my buddy, aren’t you?’ I poured sarcasm into this question, as much as I could.

What a nice trouble. I was in jail, thus I couldn’t save the Seventh Patient, and thus I would never meet Miranda again. Meanwhile, Gabriel was free. It would be rather hard even for a supercop to arrest a supernatural being.

‘There is a last chance to convert Annie,’ Gabriel said.

He turned away from me to step closer to the hospital bed. Copying his movement, I got impressed by the sight of what I found there. It was a frozen figure of a patient, who was fully coated in white plaster casts. Except for some holes here and there, the endlessly extensive and thick surface concealed every part of the body from top to down.

The biggest possible version of the Minerva cast was a massive compound of an ultimately extended helmet and a vast cast mask. Capturing the whole head, the overlapping layers of the bandages tightly encircled not only the skull but also they effectively veiled the entire face. The holes for the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth were so tiny that they were just hardly noticeable pinholes, which were bored into the cast mask.

The collar-like cast firmly secured the neck, and its rigid flow blended into the block of the body-hugging armour to swathe the trunk. Closely surrounding it, the flat and smooth cast jacket kept the trunk in its eternal and forceful embrace. Jutting out of this central medical shell, two shoulder spica casts disabled the arms, holding them in the air far away from the body cast with strong support bars. The voluminous DSSC was extended to cover all the fingers and thumbs, thus the ends of the arm casts were similar to a pair of white boxing gloves.

Down there, a gigantic double hip spica cast was an integrant part of the FBC, denying the patient of the slightest ability to move. The entire pelvis and both of the legs were deeply embedded in the stiff casing, which extended from the hips even to include the tip of the little toes. Due to the overdone unyielding gauzes, the patient virtually wore two white boot-like casts to wrap the wounded feet.

‘A full body cast.’ I said.

‘This is a full body cast, indeed.’

A light bulb went on in my head. Seeing the patient, who was buried alive in the sarcophagus, I worked out what the Game was about. After my accident, I had turned into this kind of medical sculpture, wholly rendered in a full-sized shell for months. The seventh patient had to be me.

‘Do you mean that I have to save myself?’ I asked.

‘No, what! You spend such a long time thinking of Miranda that you forget how women look like. You don’t need even to look beneath the surface.’ His fingers pointed at the blanket pulled over the patient’s loins. ‘Try it once again. Can’t you spot the hidden figure of a female?’

I grinned. Yeah, that was true. The thick shell was so roughly formed, and the fine contours were so indistinct that I failed to catch the details. Besides, I had to push my own FBC memories back to the basement of my mind.

Though her face was completely masked, additionally, I was blind to see the two unmistakable hillocks that were positioned on the featurelessly smooth body cast. Apart from these nice waves of firm cast, the big integument robbed away all the characteristics of a human appearance, and there was no other sign referring to her gender, either. Perhaps, this poor female’s shell could be bigger than all the casts of the previous six females added together.

‘She can be grateful for being alive.’ I eyed at the unchanging sarcophagus once more. ‘She’ll have some terribly painful weeks. And then she has to survive several long and boring months while being this cocoon. What will happen to her?’

‘She will be hit by a very heavy vehicle.’

‘Huhh. Do you think that I can win over Android Annie when I tell her a sad tale about saving this girl from turning into a mummy?’

‘Believe me or not, Detective Hallmundsdóttir isn’t a robot,’ Gabriel said, however, I questioned his statement.

‘She won’t believe this story.’

‘She’s going to listen to you this time.’

‘Why?’

Instead of answering, he gave me the medical folder. I whistled when reading the name printed on the first page. The patient was called Arngunnur Jóhanna Hallmundsdóttir.

***

‘Please, Detective, listen to me. It’s important. It’s about you.’ I begged to get her attention.

It was a pure déjà vu feeling because it all had already been happened before, when I had been talking with her about saving Christina Fowler. However, like earlier, Annie shut her ears to my words.

‘I must warn you, Mr Robertson, that threatening a police officer is a very serious crime.’

‘Read my lips!’ I shouted though I was sure that my harsh tone would make my position more difficult. Without her permission, I stood up from my seat. ‘It’s about your life. It’s about your future. I want to save you, stupid b*tch.’

With thudding steps, Annie returned to the middle of the room. Enraged, the detective raised her arm to slap me in the face, however, she peered up at the cameras, and she could stop herself in the last second. Harshly cursing, she lowered her hand, turned around, ready to depart. Somehow, my endless impertinence triggered the first genuine human response from her. But I had no time to mull over this phenomenon since I had to tell her everything I knew before she would leave.

‘There’ll be a new task for you soon. The Morrison’s Jewellery on Riverside Street was robbed at 3:26 p.m. Or, it will be robbed in twenty minutes, oh, sh*t, you know what I mean. You’re one of the first cops, who will arrive at the place. You’ll spot one of the criminals running away. You’ll get out of your car to chase him. At the junction of Riverside Street and Sail Street, you’ll try to go across the road to catch him. Carelessly. It’ll be too late for you to notice a SWAT van, which will come rather fast to get to the crime scene. And this vehicle will run over you.’

To listen to me, Annie stopped moving away, and her hand remained glued to the door handle. But she didn’t turn around, and I saw only her back.

‘Run over me? At the place where Riverside meets Sail? Will I die?’

‘You’ll stay alive, but you’ll suffer very serious and extensive injuries all over your body. To treat your fractures, the surgeons will have to encase you in a full body cast.’

‘A full body cast?’ she asked incredulously, moving around to see me.

‘This is one single shell, which is big enough to cover every part of a patient’s seriously injured body. It is a rigid piece of surgical armour to wrap everything between the top of the head and the tip of the toes. Head, face, body, arms, legs, fingers, toes. Everything and anything you have. You will be stuck inside, and you will be totally motionless and helpless for months. Captured in this cocoon, you won’t be able to move and speak. You’ll turn into a sculpture, an inmate of a body-sized cast prison if you don’t listen to me.’

‘Why do you tell it to me?’

‘There are forks in time when you can decide which road you choose. This is just a possible future. You don’t need to be in a full body cast. I can save you.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Watch out when you step off the curb and give way to the speeding police car. It will take merely five seconds. And you can still catch the criminal, whom you’ll hunt for.’

We exchanged glances. Annie was about to tell me something, perhaps about my weak state of mind, when a non-stop beeping noise broke the silence. Automatically, she grabbed the mobile to check the display. Her grimace signed that she received an urgent message on the phone. And, at the second time in history, she showed real emotions again.

‘I must suspend your interrogation, Mr Robertson. The jewellery shop on Riverside Street has just been robbed.’

She receded while keeping her eyes on me. Finally, getting to the door, she stepped out to the corridor, and she locked me down in the interrogation room.

***

I spend two lonely hours there, guessing in which state I would see Annie again. Maybe, she had turned into stiff-necked once more, and going against my prediction, she had sadly become a mummied detective, who had to be fixedly inserted into tons of casts. At last, the door unclosed. Annie wasn’t dressed in a full suite of plaster. Walking on her unbroken feet, she was far from being an assistance-dependant, bandage-bound wheelchair-dweller.

‘Thanks,’ Annie said.

Wow, I managed to save Annie. Or rather, she could save herself. ‘It’s so good to see you here in one piece, Detective.’

‘Everything happened exactly as you told me,’ she said but paused frequently. Mesmerised, she was still under the influence of the life-changing events. ‘The robbery and the chase... I ran after the criminal, and I arrived at the junction... and I stopped... and then the police van came suddenly from nothing... I was standing on the side of the street... the vehicle... was so close... that I could have touched its side... So, if I didn’t stop, it would have really smashed me into the road.’

She came to the table and took out the keys to open my handcuff.

‘Although I don’t know where your predictions came from, I don’t think that any senior police officers are involved in your weird crusade. You’re free, Mr Robertson. But, please, stop this prevention business or try to fly under my radar. I’m terribly grateful for what you did for me today. But I can’t give you any second chance tomorrow. Understood?’

I assured her. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll never hear my name again.’

Rubbing my wrists, I got up. This prevention business was finally over. I had saved all the seven females. Soon, I’ll get my reward.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 20)     Next (Part 22)-->

The Preventer, Part 20

‘...and I was looking for the ladder in Ms Brennan’s residence when you arrived to arrest me.’ I finished my story.

After I told Detective Hallmundsdóttir what had happened in the last months, she stood up from the seat to gain some distance from me in the interrogation room.

‘So, is it your confession, Mr Robertson?’ she asked, walking up and down. ‘For long hours, you’ve been telling this meaningless monologue about ghosts and monsters, determinism and free will, topped with a spoonful of woolly mysticism and a lot of casted women to be saved. I swear that I tried to carefully listen to this hotchpotch, but I lost the thread a long time ago. However, I’ve got a piece of good news for you.’

She leant on the table between us to declare the followings. ‘You will not go to prison. You will be taken directly to a madhouse.’

True to her name, Annie the Ice Queen showed no emotions, so I couldn’t find out how serious she was. Obviously, she didn’t trust any of my words, and her verdict about me was clear.

‘Is it so hard for you to believe it?’ I asked.

‘Is this weak story the reason why you stalked and harassed six females? This is why you attacked one of them? This is why you stole a bike and broke into a house? You did all this so that you can get your alleged wife back, who is already dead? Because there are some voices in your head?’

Pressed down by the weight of her questions, I dried up. Okay, my information sources weren’t voices but visions. However, what she told me slowly undermined my firm conviction. What if she was right, and I became really crazy? Could this entire prevention business be merely a side-effect of the brain damage I had suffered in the car crash?

I wasn't able to put away this explanation any longer. After the accident, I had very serious wounds all over my body. Also, my whole head had been nested into a one-and-half-inch-thick cast, and I had had acute memory problems after the month-long coma. One thing was out of question for both of us: seemingly I had molested innocent women, and I was arrested for it.

‘Mr Robertson, please, ask yourself this question. What if you’re a superhero only in your imagination?’

***

After Annie stopped interrogating me, I was sent back to my prison cell. In the night, I was called to the Empire of Somewhere Else. I blankly looked at the walls of the imaginary hospital room. Here everything was clean and neat every time. Being a cast-utopian place, it missed all the dust and dirt of the real world. Gabriel stepped beside me so that we could admire a painting together, which happened to be the copy of the picture that Ms Brennan had bought to decorate her home.

I tilted my head to follow the coloured sloped lines of the op-art painting. Patiently, Gabriel waited for me to speak. Turning away from the image, I asked the question that wore me away from inside.

‘What if I’m a superhero only in my imagination?’

‘Don’t worry. One thing is sure. You are not a superhero. A superhero doesn’t scare girls to death.’

‘Please, stop talking about what happened to Barbara. I’ve just run into the following problem. What if you lied to me to mislead me? What if Barbara could have walked along the passageway unharmed, and the gang wouldn’t have robbed and attacked her? You showed me Barbara with a double shoulder spica cast, but this was just an image of her. What is more, what if you are a byproduct of my traumatic brain injury?’

‘There are too many doubts in your soul. Have you seen Carla’s accident, haven’t you?’

I nodded, remembering the scene very well. I had been stirring a cup of coffee, terribly waiting to see what would happen in the junction of the 7th Avenue and the 12th Street. At that time, I hadn’t intervened as the Preventer, and I had watched as Carla’s car had been smashed by the crossing traffic. All this hadn’t been a hypothetic future but a present time seen with my own eyes.

‘I’m in a big trouble, Gabriel. I’m arrested. I’ve already saved six females from getting casts. And, according to your rule, I’d need the seventh one to finish the mission.’

‘This is not a big problem.’

‘Not a big problem?’ My loud shout turned the room into an echo chamber. ‘I’m locked down here. The detective thinks that I went crazy. I can’t finish this job, and I’ll never get Miranda back. Not a big problem. For you.’

‘There’s still hope. This is your seventh “patient”, Dr Robertson.’

I didn’t even smile when I heard him calling me a doctor.

‘Christina Fowler.’ He let me know the name of the female, whose 3D life-size image appeared in the bed.

I looked at the girl. Her long black hair flowed freely down to the shoulders. Stricken by an accident, each of the four limbs was injured. Christina wore fours short casts, which were fashioned from black fibreglass, matching her suntanned complexion. The two look-alike short arm casts captured each bit of the forearms between the elbows and the wrists. Having these medical handcuffs, the firm grip of the hard shells robbed her of the ability to move of the joints.

The solid shells, which confined the lower parts of the legs, were small but stiff. The upper rim of the dual short leg casts encircled the lower limbs just below the knees. Starting from there, and accurately capturing the shape of her legs, the rigid dressings went down to the base of the toes. To bind the broken ankles, the casts were especially bulky around them. A pair of rubber heels was attached to the thick soles of the boot-like applications. From the small openings, the toes shyly jutted out to rest on the fibreglass plates.

To avoid a bigger trouble, Christina could have sacrificed the soundness of her limbs: she was confined with having four small casts, instead of landing into a big one, which would have wrapped her figure from head to toe.

‘I hope that this isn’t a car accident again.’ I guessed for the reason.

‘It is the outcome of a failed downhill roller-skating.’

‘The next two months won’t be easy for her.’ I flashed a fresh glance at her arms and legs, which the four casts heavily debilitated. ‘Gabriel, thank you very much for showing it to me. But I can’t do anything to save her. I’m in jail, you know.’

‘That’s true. You can’t do it. But the detective can.’

***

The idea of convincing Annie of my innocence was as futile as closing my eyes to stop the sunrise.

‘Please, Detective, listen to me,’ I said to Annie in the interrogation room to call her attention. I tried hard to recall even the most insignificant detail I had memorised in the imaginary world. ‘There’s a female called Christina Fowler and...’

‘What is it about, Mr Robertson?’ she asked with her usual poker face. ‘You called me here to talk about your weird phantasy again?’

‘I’d like to show you that I’m not mad. I’ve seen this woman in my last vision, and I’m going to tell you everything about her. Please, try to do everything to save her.’

‘Is it a threat?’

‘I’m not able to do anything to anyone, aren’t I?’ To prove what I said, I raised my hands, which were secured with steel cuffs.

She sighed. Maybe, she would give me a last chance.

‘Tell me all that you saw and heard in your so-called dream. I bet that the criminal psychologist will be curious about this part of your confession, too.’

‘Christina Fowler is a 29-years-old female,’ I went on talking. Hopefully, Annie would comprehend at least a part of my message. ‘She lives in 269 Pine Street. Married with one child. Two cars, one dog, two cats.’

‘Fantastic. So, do you know her?’

‘I’ve never met her personally. I’ve just seen her. But now, her future is the most important. She’ll leave her home at about five o’clock this afternoon to go roller-skating. Running down a hill, she’ll be frightened by a careless biker. She’ll fall. Though she will wear a helmet, she won’t have protectors on her arms and legs. Unluckily, she’ll break all the four limbs. She’ll have two short arm casts and two short leg casts. Made from black fibreglass. Her medical file will be signed by some Dr M. Guevara.’

I expected that my detailed account would impress the cold cop. However, it’s damn hard to make an emotionless human excited.

‘This is b*llsh*t.’ After sharing her simple three-word opinion, she turned away to open the door of the interrogation room.

‘Please, write down everything and check it. And try to help Mrs Fowler on time. I don’t want her to break her bones.’

***

A couple of hours later, Annie entered the interrogation room, and she dropped a file on the table between us.

‘Your accomplices did a good job.’ She opened up the folder to show me what she was talking about.

I displayed a confused look. Who could my partner-in-crime be? Had Annie seen Gabriel? I turned down my head to check the set of pictures. So Annie failed to save Christina Fowler. Or she had arrived too late. Or she hadn’t been interested in fulfilling my ‘prophecy’ at all. Whatever.

On the photo, I saw that the images of a possible future had turned into reality. A tall, black-haired female settled on a bed. Her casted arms and legs rested on the top of four hills, which were piled up from pillows. The lower arms between the elbows and the wrists were firmly held in the hard-walled prison of inflexible tube-like bandages. Besides, a pair of short casts fettered the legs, expanding from the knees to the base of the toes. With four casts, she wouldn’t have easy months. Confined this way, she looked so helpless.

‘Why didn’t you help her?’ My question accused Annie.

‘Frankly, I didn’t want to be involved in your crazy ghost tale. Yet, I’ve been there to check your story. And it was real. Surprisingly, everything was correct in all details.’

‘Great. This is the proof that I’m telling you the truth.’ I elevated my chained hands to put them on the photo, which depicted the cast-wearing Christina. ‘Detective, now you can release me.’

‘Who is your accomplice, Mr Robertson? And where is he or she?’ she asked as if she hadn’t heard what I told her.

‘I haven’t got any friends out there. Do you really think that someone staged an accident to free me?’

‘Exactly. You and your friend knew the poor Mrs Fowler’s daily schedule. So, when she left home to go roller-skating, your buddies attacked her, and they pushed her off the road. She fell and broke her arms and legs.’

‘I’ve foretold that she would break all her limbs! Such an accident cannot be well-planned!’

‘What else could she break? Mrs Fowler had a helmet, and the hill was rather steep, and the ditch is deep.’

‘And what about the doctor? I’ve predicted his name, too: Dr M. Guevara.’

‘This is not a big business, either. You or your friend checked the names of the surgeons, who would work in the afternoon shift. You can’t deceive me by showing your weird theatre play, Mr Robertson.’

Hearing her dry reply, which came from rational deduction, I knew that I couldn’t fight her profane faith that was based on the principle of Occam’s razor. Oh, sh*t. The calm-minded Annie the Ice Queen was able to find fitting answers for all my questions. I’m lost. I’ll rot in jail.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 19)     Next (Part 21)-->

The Preventer, Part 19

When I got back to the dreamed-up world, there was no one to welcome me. The dimmed lights could cast merely my faint shadow on the floor. This time there was nothing to cheer about. All the room was down because I failed the previous stage of my test.

‘You’ve hurt Barbara.’ My guide blamed me, just after he materialised in the corner.

‘Me?’ I asked. Literally, the truth was on my side. Overdoing theatricality, I extended my arms. ‘I have not even touched her!’

‘You scared this poor girl almost to death. She ran away. Directly against a light pole.’

To show me how the yesterday’s adventure ended, Gabriel handed a photo over to me. The picture depicted Barbara, who sadly sunk into an armchair. She wore a wide headband, but this piece of fabric wasn’t an ornament to make her more attractive. Its material was fine and clean gauze. The freshly applied white bandages ran around the head to wrap the bruised forehead. Besides, she had a soft neck brace, which tightly encircled the neck. All in all, the accident had been unpleasant for Barbara, but nothing incurable had happened to her.

A soft collar and some bandages. They were not too much, especially, when compared to the double shoulder spica casts, which would fully imprison her if I hadn’t blocked her way toward the alley.

Apologising, I gave the photo back to Gabriel. ‘I am terribly sorry. Maybe, her head would hurt a bit for a couple of days. But surely, she’ll survive the soft collar, too. It’s much better than being confined in two shoulder spica casts for four months.’

‘You’re an unashamed machiavellist,’ Gabriel said.

If I had still been a stockbroker, his declaration about the core of my personality would have been praising words to me. But by now, as I had changed a bit, this title hurt me so much.

‘You must have used softer methods,’ he said.

‘Ah, using some different approach? But what? I kept calling her from the morning, and I bet that her mailbox is full of the messages, which I sent to her. You’ve never told me that even my doings could mess up her schedule. I become a Troublemaker and not a Preventer.’

‘Violence against Barbara mustn’t have been an option.’

‘There was no violence. She was deaf to all my warnings, and I had to do something... unluckily, she misunderstood it,’ I tried to explain the unexplainable. ‘However, let’s see the outcome itself. Is she confined in a double shoulder spica cast or not?’

‘No, not.’ My direct question could press these two words out of him.

From a certain point of view, I had succeeded. I had saved Barbara from big casts. Hopefully, my mission was still on.

‘Where is the next medical file?’ I asked, seeing no messenger in the room.

‘Don’t worry, the documents are here with me,’ Gabriel said, and a thick folder appeared in his hand. Showing me the case files, he introduced the next lady. ‘Monica Brennan.’

After knowing her name, I saw her cast-wrapped figure, too. As usual, she was settling already in the bed, by the time when our conversation ended. Monica’s future-self had to cope with one of the biggest possible single cast, which surgery could make for a heavily injured patient. Whatever happened to her, it must have been serious enough so that she had to sport a gigantic piece of a head-and-body encasement moulded from firm plaster.

Hiding the entire skull and concealing the scalp, the spheroid white shell crowned most of the noddle and ran around to capture the full forehead. Like a tailored helmet, it perfectly protected the head. The countless layers of the solidified plaster-soaked bandages surrounded the nice features of the face. Framed in the inch-thick, ball-like head cast, the face window was rather tiny, extending merely between the eyebrows and the lower lip.

The lower part of the Minerva cast, which went up to the jaw, was an overdone medical collar or scarf. The unyielding bandages snugly held the neck, and it smoothly fused into the body cast. To stabilise the wounded head and the injured neck, the Minerva cast had to restrain the trunk, as well. Tightly embracing each bit of the body, the magnificently applied shell corsetted the torso, impairing it between the neck and the belly button.

‘Ah, a Minerva cast?’ I asked, just to be sure. ‘This is very challenging. I know it from experience. What will happen?’

‘She'll fall from a ladder at home. Moreover, she'll badly injure the cervical vertebrae, thus she'll spend the next sixteen months in this shell. Please, help her.’

***

So, this mission would be the most serious case in my portfolio. Having read the medical report, I knew that Monica was (or rather, would be) about to make the biggest mistake of her life. Oh, no, I didn’t mean she would go to an exclusive art gallery (you know, the one, which is on the northern edge of the downtown) to buy the ugliest pop-art painting I had ever seen. But I talked about the tools she would use to put this picture high on the wall.

Monica would need nails and a hammer. But first, she would need a ladder. So, if she wouldn’t find the ladder, there wouldn’t be any accident. This plan was simple and feasible, and similar ideas had worked in the past. For example, think of what I had done with Naomi’s bike.

Valiantly, I was sure in saving Monica in advance. In my mind, the sixth female was ticked off already. And Miranda seemed so close to me. However, as you know: man proposes, God disposes. So, this plan didn’t run as smoothly as I drafted it.

The accident would happen in the evening hours when Monica would return from work. Well, I worked out that I would have enough time to find and ruin the ladder during the day.

From early in the morning, I stood behind a tree, eagerly waiting for Monica to leave her house. As soon as she disappeared, I jumped over the small fence. After sneaking through the garden, I broke into the building through a rear window, and I looked for the dangerous thing that could put her into casts.

I began the search in the basement. But I didn’t detect the ladder there. Next, I scanned the garage. I put my head even into in the kitchen. All these places were free of ladder.

I asked myself a good question. What if she had already put it in the living room? But the ladder wasn’t there, either. Disheartened, I stopped running up and down in the house. Thinking hard, I just stood in the middle of the room, gazing at the empty wall, which would be the new home for Monica’s painting.

Surely, there was a place, which I had missed to check. Suddenly, something inside me said that I should turn my head upwards. Oh, Monica’s ladder had to be up there. No, not in heaven. But in the attic... Perked up again, I moved around to get out of the room to see the upper rooms, when...

Well, I wasn’t able to get to the attic. Turning around, I faced a woman, who was standing at the door room to meet me. Unluckily for me, she wasn’t the host Ms Monica Brennan, but a female cop, who aimed her gun at my chest.

‘Kneel down, put your hands behind your head, and interlace your fingers! I’ve been hunting for you for months. You’re arrested, Mr Robertson.’

Everything ended. The Preventer was prevented from saving all the seven females. I would never get Miranda back. I couldn’t help but eye at the barrel of the gun, which Detective Arngunnur Jóhanna Hallmundsdóttir pointed at me.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 18)     Next (Part 20)-->

The Preventer, Part 18

‘Oh, are you a Preventer, too?’ I showed my respect for my colleague Sister Mary Alice.

‘Not exactly. I am not a Preventer right now, but I was the Preventer twenty years ago. I did my task, and I passed the baton for the next one.’

‘Is it like a relay race?’

‘Oh, yes. There were several Preventers before me, and there will be countless Preventers after you, too. As soon as you fulfil your mission, Gabriel picks up a new man or woman, who is in casts or in bandages, or who is confined to wheelchair so that he can make him or her the new Preventer. Mostly, they are seriously injured victims of accidents or fire. Broken, paralysed or burnt people with a big potential to be a better person. Like you.’

‘Thank you for your trust in me.’ It was nice of her to consider me a man with a big potential to have a hopeful future. She could do her job. Hopefully, I wouldn’t fail, either. ‘And if this is over, must I join an order as you did?’

‘This all is up to you. I chose this way of life since it was a wonder what he did to me. He raised me from wheelchair. I was quadriplegic, my face was heavily damaged, and I was half-blind. And now, look at me.’ She spun around to show her regained and timeless beauty.

‘Ah, and what about the sin of vanity?’ I mocked her.

‘Nobody is spotless. I’ve been working on myself for twenty years.’

‘If I can save three more girls, will I really get Miranda back?’

‘Indeed.’

‘But how? Will she resurrect? Or what?’

‘It’s too early to talk about it, Mr Robertson,’ the nun said. Seeing Gabriel in the room, she gave me the next medical case file so that I could care about my new assignment, and she exited.

‘It’s really too early to talk about Miranda’s return. You’ve got a lot to do, indeed.’ This was the third and last ‘indeed’ this day, said by Gabriel this time.

‘Hello,’ I greeted him, then I flashed a glance at the cover of the new documents in my hands. ‘Barbara Pope. Let’s meet her.’

‘Wow, are you in a hurry?’ Gabriel saluted to my tempo as I walked toward the bed with quick steps.

As we got closer and closer to the seventh patient, the level of motivation increased with the same speed. ‘I want to help her.’

‘Can you tell me something about her?’ He asked this question to small-talk with me, although he surely knew everything about her.

‘Well, she’s called Barbara Pope,’ I pronounced the name again.

I went toward the bed, in which a female in her late twenties rested. The body overlaid with the heavy cast almost sunk into the spongy field of pillows. A big item of a contiguous cast imprisoned most of her upper body. The immense and body-bounding white armour expanded from neck to belly, and ran from armpit to fingertips. Simply said, it was a double shoulder spica cast fashioned from fibreglass, supplemented with stiff bandages to fully capture each of the fingers and the both of the thumbs.

The core of the DSS was a figure-fitting capsule, which properly contained the torso, tightly following all the arches of the feminine body. Attached to it, two identical arm casts kept her limbs in check, taking away the ability to move and use her hands. The thick and solidified dressings flowed down, starting from the shoulders to disable every joint to the fingertips.

Symmetrically, both of the casts were bent at the elbow at a right angle, therefore, the lying female’s cast-covered palms pointed ceilingwards. The glove-shaped bandages were so extensive that they could easily keep rigid all the digits. Firmly held in their own separate casts, the injured thumbs were embedded in thick and straight tube-like dressings, which were set perpendicularly to the bulky build of the arm casts.

‘Wow, she’ll be really confined.’ I acknowledged the massive form of the shell, which was applied to encompass Barbara’s shattered body.

A double shoulder spica cast, which was big enough to confine every finger, would totally stop movement and would make her life damn hard and limited. With restricted hands, she would be reliant on permanent assistance all day and night for months.

Being curious about the accident, I turned the pages of the file. Then I got pale, having learnt the cause of her injuries.

‘Gabriel, I can’t prevent it.’ My eyes were glued to the written rows of the report. ‘I can’t defeat a whole street gang.’

‘I know that you’re a smart guy. You’ll work out something to help her.’ Gabriel put his hand on my shoulder to pour confidence into me.

Tomorrow, Ms Pope would work until late in the evening. To catch up in the delay, and to get home as soon as possible, she would dare take a shortcut through a dark and dangerous side street, where she would be attacked and robbed. I shivered - it wouldn’t be an easy task at all.

***

One thing was sure for me: I couldn’t defend Barbara in the alley. I had to do something much earlier to stop her from choosing the shortest route. So, already early in the morning, I began my campaign. I sent several e-mails to warn her. I called her from different phone numbers. This time, I was a bit smarter than I had been before, so I looked for three different telephone booths so that I could avoid using my private mobile number.

At first, Barbara was nice, and she answered my first calls politely. But, by noon, she got rather frustrated with my unwelcomed warnings, and she put down the receiver quickly. I stopped calling her, but I didn’t give up, and I stayed near the building where she worked. All in the afternoon, I was sitting on a park bench in front of her office, waiting to follow and protect her.

Well after sunset, already around seven o’clock in the evening, I was still down there. Yawning, I peered at the office block, where only one window was lit. Barbara was still working. Keeping watching at her windows, I realised what I had done. All that would happen to her would be my mistake. The uncountable e-mails I had sent, and all the phone calls I had made had turned Barbara’s fine-tuned schedule upside down. I myself was the cause for Barbara’s overtiming. She would be badly beaten because of me.

Can it be the proof of determinism? Or, simply, was it my miscalculation?

But I had to give a red light for this philosophical train of thoughts. Suddenly, I spotted Barbara leaving the entrance with hurried steps. I dropped the bottle of water I was drinking, and I rushed through the park to overtake her.

Really, I was the one, who arrived at the entry of the passageway faster. Leaning against the wall, I was waiting for Barbara, who appeared minutes later. The finely dressed female clerk left the main street to approach the alley. She nearly past me, when I stepped out from the shadows to halt her.

‘Ms Pope, you must not enter this place.’

Meeting an unknown man, late in the evening, close to a dark and empty street wasn’t the ultimate dream of any females. I acknowledged all this. So, I could easily understand her furious reaction.

‘Oh, you’re the madman, who sent me tons of e-mails and non-stop called me all day long?’ she fumed.

‘Please, change your mind, go back, and take the other way. This place is very dangerous for you,’ I said, however, either my style or my words weren’t too convincing.

‘I think you’re the one, who is dangerous.’

Yet, she stepped back. I hoped that she would turn around to choose the longer but safer route. But, after gaining some distance from me, she stopped receding, and her arm sunk in her handbag. I thought that she was looking for her mobile to call the police.

I got panicked. I can’t be arrested. There would be two more women to be saved. When sitting in prison, I can’t get Miranda back. What a dilemma! I can’t stay here to wait for the cops so that they could arrest me. However, I can’t run away, either, since Barbara would enter the passageway.

‘Forgive me but I do it for you,’ I tried to explain what I would do to her.

I stepped closer to the girl, whose feet rooted to the ground, and I grabbed her bag to take it away. But I seriously miscalculated the situation, and my hasty doings and her instinctive reaction launched an avalanche, and the next events, which happened afterwards, were so hard to describe with words.

I didn’t want to do any harm to her, but Barbara obviously couldn’t know my intention. As soon as I put my hand on her bag, she cursed. Determined, she didn’t give me her bag. The grip of her tiny hand on the handles was similar to a cuff. I stopped, not using my physical force to hurt the woman, whom I should have saved.

Sharp-witted, Barbara was already one step ahead of me. In the next second, I noticed the thing, which she was holding in her free left hand. And this thing wasn’t a mobile phone. But a tear gas spray.

Quickly, she elevated her arm against my face to put me out of action. While terribly crying for help, she pressed the button on the top of the small canister.

Released, the cloud of gas appeared between us, but it never got into my eyes. Luckily for me, Barbara was so alarmed that she didn’t notice that she held the canister in the worst possible position. Pressing down the button, she sprayed the gas in the wrong direction. Instead of me, she became the suffering target of the lachrymatory agent.

Irritated by the inflammatory effect, Barbara was forced to shut her eyes tightly. The drops of tears rolling down her checks were creeks at first, but they turned into wide rivers within seconds. As she temporarily lost her vision, her arms swept around in the air, and she let out a terrible wailing.

Totally panicked, she didn’t care about her favourite reticule anymore. I stood frozen there, with the bag in my hands, seeing as my ‘protégée’ was escaping.

Barbara moved away from me, but she was still sightless. Just after ten steps, cartoonishly, the bewildered female ran straight against the steel pylon of a light pole. Hitting her head hard, the poor woman collapsed to the ground. She remained there, sprawled, lying on her back down in the dust.

It would have been a damn good scene in a comedy movie, however, I wasn’t in a mood to laugh on it.

Oh, holy sh*t! What have I done? Instead of saving her, I chased her into another accident.

To make it good somehow, I opened her abandoned bag to find her mobile. I called the emergency services, and then I galloped away from the place of the mess.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 17)     Next (Part 19)-->

The Preventer, Part 17

‘Beatrice, darling, there is a gentleman waiting to see you.’

Light poured into the shadowy place when Mrs McLean opened the door of the room, in which her daughter was hiding. Though Trixie heard what her mum said, she didn’t give a damn about meeting the visitor.

Standing by the door, Mrs McLean just stared at the backrest of the moveless wheelchair, since Trixie didn’t activate the tongue-drive system. Instead, peering through the small window, the girl kept watching the snowflakes, which slowly put their kitschy white shroud on the street out there.

The winter mood called up nice memories, from the time when Trixie’s days had been quite different. From the time when she could speak and move. Memories of skiing. Having friends. Having a life. Now, the tetraplegic girl was a sharp mind trapped in the dying body of a withering flower.

Trixie looked at the pavement in front of the house, and she recalled the accident, which had taken away everything from her. She re-lived the hour when she had woken up in a hospital, finding her shattered body held together by casts and bandages. With so many tractions and slings around her, she had been a mummy trapped in a metal web of an iron spider. Although her head, body and all the four limbs had been tightly wrapped in casts, she hadn’t felt any sensation, be it good or bad. The explanation had been a terrible one: she had been told that she had become quadriplegic.

Months later, the surgeons had peeled off her medical sarcophagus, and even the big cast crown had been removed from her head, too. Gentle hands had transferred Trixie’s cast-less but lame body into a special wheelchair to roll her out from the intensive care unit.

Her life had drastically changed, mainly because of being wheelchair-bound. She had needed permanent care, but the money taps had been turned off. To fund the costs, Trixie had to sell the modern loft apartment, which she had resided before. But it hadn’t been enough. The sum of money she had received for the flat had been pretty high, however, the continuous nursing, medicines and all the other stuff consumed it up fast.

Finally, Trixie had dismissed the private nurse, and she had moved back to live in her old kid’s room in her parent’s flat again. Although Trixie lived in poor conditions, her main problem wasn’t material. As her body had been destroyed, her earlier vim had died with it. The fully crippled girl hardly left her room, and she spent most of her time watching TV or spying on the traffic in the street. Although the old friends came here once or twice a week to wheel Trixie out to a cinema or a café, she became more and more embarrassed when she had to leave her hideout. She had lost so much, and she wanted to forget everything.

‘Beatrice, please!’

Mrs McLean got tired of waiting for Trixie’s never arriving response. She stepped behind the wheelchair, and grabbing the handles, she moved it around.

As the wheelchair turned around, the visitor could see Trixie in her wretched state. Though the girl was out of casts for a long time, she wasn’t able to get out of the full paralysis. Her untoned arms and legs rested on well-padded platforms, kept in place with loose Velcro straps, which arched over her atrophied wrists and secured the thin ankles. To keep the handicapped body in the chair, a wide safety belt fastened the torso, pressing it against the cushioned backrest.

The man, who came, was an old male with a white beard. He eyed at the girl, thinking that her attractiveness had gone away. Besides, her complexion was leaner than healthy, and it missed any kind of makeup. Even her hair was cut too short, without any special fashion.

And her face... Well, Trixie considered herself so ugly that her mum had to cover every mirror in their flat all the time. As the neurosurgeons hadn’t been able to reconnect the brain with the rest of the body, the plastic surgeons had failed to restore the earlier nice look, too. Trixie hadn’t recovered from the wounds when her face had smashed the windows.

A canyon-wide, deep scar ran across the front part of the head, starting from the right temple, going through the right cheek, almost ruining the nose to stop at the base of the left ear. To conceal the seriously damaged and blind right eye, she wore a pair of glasses, whose right lens was tinted black. Beside this most apparent disfigurement, there were numerous short and long cut wounds on the skin of the visible parts of her face, neck and arms.

‘Shall I...?’ Mrs McLean asked.

‘No, thank you, Ma’am,’ he said.

Trixie’s mother stepped out of the room, letting the guest talk to Trixie in private.

The old man took place opposite to Trixie’s wheelchair. ‘Hello, Beatrice! My name is Gabriel.’

Unable to speak, the girl blinked blankly. To give a hint, she moved the good eye to the direction of the table, where a piece of sheet was put, containing all the printed letters of the alphabet. It was the only way, which connected her imprisoned mind to the outer world. Picking up letters one by one to forge words and sentences. Very primitive and slow.

‘I don’t need your alphabet chart,’ Gabriel said. ‘Let’s say I know exactly what you think.’

A spark of curiosity and disbelief lit in Trixie’s uncovered eye. Yet, her broken body defeated the mind once again. Involuntarily, her head tilted, leaning against the wing of the headrest. Due to the sloped position, a creek of saliva flowed from her mouth uncontrollably.

‘Oh, my poor Beatrice.’ Gabriel got up and went closer to the wheelchair. He readjusted the straight pose of Trixie’s head and wiped off the drools from her face with a tissue paper. ‘Please don’t cry.’

But it was too late. Drops of tears appeared in Trixie’s eye, as she was aware of her total helplessness.

‘I am here to help you. I can give your full life back if you help me.’

‘Really? How?’ The relit spark in her eyes asked.

Instead of replying, Gabriel removed the straps fettering and cuffing Trixie’s crippled arms and legs. Then he gently took her thin hands. Slowly, he elevated the lifeless arms up in the air, saying:

‘Get up and walk!’

After the words, Trixie felt strange things, as if electric currents had been running along the paths of the nervous system wired in her figure. She re-experienced the long-forgotten sensation of having and controlling a body. She smiled at Gabriel when she lumbered out of the legrests to place her legs on the floor. Raised from the wheelchair, she heavily swayed on the numb feet, while finding firm support in Gabriel’s hands. However, after taking three steps, she got to the limit, and she nearly collapsed. Seeing her weakness, he tenderly released Trixie back to the seat.

‘Oh, it is a bit early. But just have some training, and you can walk again,’ Gabriel said.

Though Trixie got back to the wheelchair, she beamed, because she could spend five seconds on the floor, standing on her legs, and feeling the load of her body again. The mesmerised female elevated both of her hands to hold them in front of her face.

‘How can you do that?’ the girl asked, using her own voice for the first time after the accident.

‘We’ll surely talk about it later. And there’s something more.’

His hand holding a paper tissue glided over Trixie’s face, clearing away the scars, which disfigured the girl for a year.

‘Would you like to see the result?’ Gabriel asked.

He put a mirror to Trixie’s hands, who saw the reflection of the natural scarless face of a twenty-four-year-old girl. Gabriel’s supernatural intervention removed all the inoperable wounds, which no earthly surgeon could wipe off.

‘And the glasses are unnecessary, too.’ Gabriel gently took off her spectacles, which were used to hide the blind eye.

Though the room lights hurt her eye, Trixie wasn’t half-blind any longer. Miraculously, in seconds, she was cured out of all the impairments plaguing her life. Filled up with grace, she decided to serve the one, who was able to help her out of the depth of paralysis and a wheelchair-bound life. Certainly, there were millions of question in her head, but she could ask only one of them.

‘How... How can I reward you?’

‘I don’t need any reward. But there is something you can do for me. You should prove that you’re a good girl. Try to do your best to help and save seven paralysed people. If you are able to do it, you will never have to use any wheelchair. Congratulations on your new job, Miss Preventer.’

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 16)     Next (Part 18)-->

The Preventer, Part 16

‘Stealing a bike, Mr Robertson, hm, hmm, hmmm?’

The theme of the question, which the imaginary Sister Mary Alice asked in the virtual world, made me think that she had to be a projection of my living conscience.

I defended myself. ‘I am not a thief. I don’t want to keep that bike forever. I’ll give it back to Naomi as soon as possible. Maybe, tomorrow. Of course, not personally. I’ll leave it in her garden.’

To award me for this reply, Sister Mary Alice presented a smile. I looked at her. She stood by the other side of the empty bed, carrying a folder that had to be written about the next ‘target’. However, she held the file back so that she could talk to me. Perhaps, my subconscious, which felt so ashamed, sent the nun here to teach me a lesson.

I had learnt Mary Alice last year when she had visited me almost every day when I had been in a full body cast. I had no reason to deny the fact that, at that time, I would have been more pleased if I had seen her twenty years younger version. You know she had told me that she had been a Bunny Girl two decades ago.

‘I sense that you’ve got indecent thoughts about me,’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ I said as it would be hard to deny. But I turned away so that I didn’t eye at her all the time.

‘I thought you were looking for your wife Miranda.’

‘Forgive me for not being blind.’

‘Have you found my photos in the Bunny Magazines?’

‘Unfortunately for us, not.’ I said, stricken. I had really worked hard to find the pictures depicting her being a naughty girl.

‘You always wanted to ask me how I turned into a nun from a whore, didn’t you?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You couldn’t read my name in any table of contents of the Bunny Magazines, because Mary Alice Bunny didn’t exist. Twenty years ago, my name wasn’t Mary Alice. As you probably know, nuns mostly change their names when they join the order. A new name is a symbol of a new life. So, in my old life, I was called Beatrice McLean. But men like you knew me as Trixie Bunny, and I was one of the best call girls in this town. Or, perhaps, even the Number One.’

***

The second blow was much harder than the first one, which was just a light slap in Trixie’s face. It was so strong that the girl lost her balance and fell out of the bed. As a reflex response, she extended her arms to soften the landing. Finding herself on the floor, the naked girl sat up to peer up at Ralph, who went mad for no reason.

‘You are a damn Mafia informer!’ The man yelled at her from the bed, while he accusingly pointed his arm at her. ‘You are sent here to spy on me!’

His tantrum, which burst out of nothing, perplexed Trixie. Just a minute before, Detective Ralph Montana was a simple client wanting to have sex with the most beautiful girl in the Bunny Girl list, but now, he turned into a raging madman.

The bruise on Trixie’s face throbbed like hell. Hit hard, the girl was silent, thinking about how long it would take for the wound to heal. Surely, she wasn’t a rat of the Mob, but she was smart enough to know that denying it would make the cop more aggressive. Casting her head down, she saw the first red drops appearing on the carpet between her legs. Strangely, her nose got so numb that she didn’t feel the pain. Maybe, the damage had to be more serious than she supposed, but she didn’t have any mirror to check it. Her hand moved up to touch the tip of her bleeding nose.

Probably, the drugs or the alcohol simply over-revved Ralph’s mind. Or it was the stress, as he was an anxious police officer in the organised crime department, who waited too long to let some steam off. But digging deep for the reason couldn’t rescue her – Trixie stopped psychoanalysing him. From the corner of her eyes, she flashed a short glance at the door, but the exit was too far from her.

Escaping or calling for help? Perhaps, she should call Jack and the boys, but her phone was in her bag put in the cabinet, and Trixie had no opportunity get it in time. Okay, back to Plan One.

While Ralph crazily mumbled something to himself, Trixie crawled toward the door. But the cop had a clear moment again, and spotting her, he jumped off the bed to block the way. Grabbing Trixie’s long hair, he wrenched the call girl up from the floor. Somehow, Trixie prevised that this night would have a terrible ending, and, compared to the finale, a bleeding nose would be just a minor problem.

‘Ralph, you know who I am. I don’t work for the Mafia. I’ll give your money back. Please, let me away,’ she cried. Fearing, tears welled up in her eyes.

‘There is no mercy for a rotten rat like you,’ he said, and he pulled Trixie toward the window of the room.

Suspecting the doom, Trixie fought hard to halt the man. At each step, she kicked his legs, but her soft naked feet couldn’t do any harm to the muscle tower. Utterly despaired, Trixie even sank her teeth deep into his hairy arms. But nothing could loosen the grips of the iron fists cuffing her hands.

‘You must die!’ he told the verdict to her. Ralph became the lawyer, the attorney, the judge, the jury and the hangman in one person, and there was no chance for Trixie to lodge an appeal.

Shouting this, Ralph continued to drag Trixie toward the place of execution. For a moment, they stood in front of the window, being a strange couple of a self-appointed executioner and an innocent convict, when he suddenly released her hands. But the girl had no time to go away. Ralph touched Trixie’s chest to push her through the floor-to-ceiling window. Heavily tossed, the girl flew through the double-glassed panes. Breaking through them, the razor-sharp glass shards ploughed deep wounds into the skin and flesh of her face, hands and body.

Cut by hundreds of splinters, Trixie felt an excruciating pain. But it was nothing, compared to the agony she experienced when she touched the ground, after falling from the third floor of the luxury hotel.

***

The outer and unchanging surface was composed of heavy casts, extensive bandages, a system of a fine-engineered head traction, four slings for the limbs, and an ever-working respiratory machine. Nested in its centre, there was the badly damaged but living figure of a young female. Assembled from shattered body parts and medical instruments, this was the miserable being whom Trixie had become.

Unable to move and talk, she peered at the ceiling, and then at the only body members she could see. Locking the whole arms, two long casts confined her upper limbs between the armpits and the wrists. The arms, which were just hardly flexed, were rocked in heavily padded slings, pulled up to forty-five degrees in the air.

But, besides the arms, most of her body was in strict confinement. Wrapping the legs, she sported two long leg casts, which started from the loins and captured every bit of the limbs, running down to the feet. The weighty shells rested on two separate foam rubber scaffoldings. Invisibly for her, merely the toes jutted out of the openings, unmovingly leaning against the lengthened toe platforms.

During the fall, Trixie had broken each joint of her arms and legs. Fractured elbows, wrists, knees and ankles – all this would mean a long time of hospitalisation. However, Trixie wasn’t in despair because of her cast-wrapped limbs. But she was shocked by the knowledge of her most serious injury. She was fully paralysed.

Even if her arms and legs hadn’t been locked in casts, she couldn’t have been able to move. From the head down, there was nothing. No movement, no feeling, no sensation. No temperature, no pressure, no pain. Her own body didn’t belong to her anymore. Landing on the street, she had hit her back so hard that the impact simply had ripped apart the cervical vertebrae.

A great set of massive dressings firmly and deeply fixed her head, and embraced the neck and encircled most of the torso. But despite this big Minerva cast, there was no chance to redo the horrible damage. Even her breathing had to be assisted continuously. Right next to her bed, there was a medical ventilator, which periodically moved air in and out of her lungs, saving her from suffocation. From the machine, a plastic tube meandered toward an oxygen mask, which covered the lower face.

‘Hello, Trixie!’ Her boss Jack appeared by the bed and peered down at the girl.

Trixie moved the unbandaged left eye to see the visitor. There was no reply with words, just the hiss of the medical ventilator.

Jack looked at the unfortunate girl, who had been the best in her profession until she had met a crazy client. Though the head cast left a small face window between the eyebrows and the mouth, Trixie's face was only partly exposed. Many layers of dense bandages swaddled the front part of the head to heal the deep and severe cut wounds, which the sharp shards had ploughed into her face.

An especially bulky bridge of bandages arched over her nose, connecting the white fields of thick wrappings that covered the cheeks. Casts and gauzes masked most of her face, except for the left eye. The other one was hidden below a big eyepatch since it had been heavily damaged by the broken glass.

‘Me and the boys were faster than the police. We’ve caught Ralph, and he’s received what he deserved. We’ve done it all for you.’

Tearing, Trixie shut her only one eye. Maybe, she should have been grateful for Jack’s revenge. But, being a fresh tetraplegic, she was too despaired to be happy for the retaliation. Nothing could change anything anymore.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 15)     Next (Part 17)-->

The Preventer, Part 15

At the end of the day, when I saved Ms Martina Lemmon from casts, my mind shuttled back to the imaginary world. This time my steps echoed in the empty room, where nobody was to receive me. Casually, I looked around, and I ventured to check the unoccupied bed when Gabriel appeared.

‘Oh, where are the nurses?’ I asked.

‘Because you know who Miranda is, you don’t need them any longer.’

‘Then how will I get the medical files of the next patient?’

‘Please, let me be your messenger this time.’

Gabriel extended his arm to deliver a stamped envelope to me. Heatedly, I opened it to find the newest patient case file there. A new female to be saved – it meant a new step toward getting Miranda back.

I skimmed through the summary. ‘So, our next patient is called Naomi Young.’

Page one: basic personal data with photos. Page two: a detailed description of the incident, which would put her into casts if I would fail. Page three to ten: a fully comprehensive account of the treatment, illustrated with colour pictures taken on all her casts.

‘Let there be Ms Naomi Young,’ my mentor said, putting her 3D image on the bed from nothing.

I couldn’t help but adoring the girl, who suddenly become visible. I merely guessed the blurred outlines of the well-shaped figure, which was almost fully captured in an immense-sized cocoon.

‘Heavenly.’ The word slipped out of my mouth.

‘Please, save this word for the right time.’

‘Okay, okay. I know we are here because of her accident and casts.’

Recalling Miranda, I knew what my end goal was, so I concentrated on the job. I turned my attention on the hard surface, and not on the sexy figure buried below it. Focusing, I acknowledged the dimension of the big shell, which swaddled a good part of her body.

‘By the way, she wears nice large casts,’ I said.

‘Ms Young will wear nice large casts,’ Gabriel picked out a better tense, talking about a possible future. ‘This is exactly what will happen to this lady if you fail to help her.’

‘I try to do my best,’ I promised.

‘What can be not enough.’ He told me, but I didn’t care too much about his friendly mocking.

‘This is a shoulder spica cast and a one-and-half hip spica cast, merged into a big shell.’ Since the casts perfectly overlapped each other, I couldn’t decide whether I would talk about two pieces of casts or about only one.

So, let’s deal with the patient. With closed eyes, the imaginary Naomi rested in the imaginary bed in our imaginary room. Her long, curly brown hair cascaded down, touching even the upper part of her the violet-coloured body-fitting shell, which strictly confined her figure. Unluckily for Naomi, her two casts were made so huge that they seamlessly converged to shape one single construction, which encapsulated the complete left part of the body from neck to toes.

Anyway, a shoulder spica cast was an enormous cast, so Naomi’s medical dressing couldn’t be small, either. To give a stable base for the arm cast, the rounded uppermost edge of the medical armour ran around the neck. Like a pullover woven from rock-solid threads, a big piece of fibreglass dressing closely encircled the upper part of the torso between the neckline and the loins. Flawlessly attached to this body-hugging corset, the entire arm was in the stiff hold of the firm bond. Robbing away the movement ability, the SSC swaddled the limb between the armpit and the knuckles, freezing both of the joints of the elbow and the wrist.

Positioned in a pose, which was perpendicular to the trunk cast, the violet shoulder spica cast was kept far apart. To maintain the fixed pose, there was a strong rod bridging the gap between the end of the arm cast and the big shell overlaying the hip. Flexed in a right angle by the elbow, the exposed palm pointed ceilingwards. The uncasted fingers unmovingly jutted out of the narrow but well-padded cast opening.

Creating a thick, firm, and vast custom-made suit of fibreglass armour, the SSC and the hip spica cast overlapped each other on the torso, where the tightly arranged bandages disguised all the pretty curves and contours of the body. The rigid layers of the torso cast encircled each bit of the trunk, making such a surface, which was mostly smooth and flat, except for the place over the breasts. There, the two tough domes arching over the bosoms were unmissable for anyone.

The lower part of the body was wrapped in a solid cast capsule, as well. Made from violet fibreglass, the one-and-half hip spica cast held the pelvis in its long-term firm grip. The cocoon fastened the hips, and it flew down all along the left leg, disabling it from thigh to toes. This shorter extension of hip spica cast restricted merely the upper part of the right leg. The two asymmetrical casts were connected with a knee-to-knee rod.


‘Indeed, she’d better stay at home next morning.’ Gabriel, too, watched the large cast, which perfectly pinned the girl down. ‘You know... Naomi is a bit important to me because she and I share the same job.’

‘Oh, are both of you full-time supernatural beings?’

‘She is a messenger, too. A bicycle messenger.’

‘I hope his husband isn’t a boxer. Or a karate champion,’ I said, remembering one of my earlier adventures when I had received one or two head-shattering punches from an angered partner, who had misinterpreted my actions.

‘She’s got no husband.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Do you want to date with her?’

I sighed. ‘Oh, dear, I just want to know what danger I have to face!’

‘Don’t worry. She’s single, and she’s got only a cat,’ Gabriel assured me.

‘Hopefully, it’s not a mad kitten.’

***

But it wasn’t Naomi’s cat, who got me into trouble.

Like a novice spy, I walked up and down on the streets around her house. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and at this moment, Naomi was still healthy. According to the time schedule, she would leave home about at half past eight to go to the head office of the company. By bike. And her bicycle was in her house.

This was my problem. I want to have her bike. No bike – no accident: this logical deduction sounded simple even for a philosophically challenged people like me.

8:27 a.m. The door opened. Pushed by Naomi, the first wheel of the bicycle appeared in the entrance. So did Naomi, wearing a bike helmet.

Hey, girl, you would end up in casts, despite being so careful. However, I amended my teasing thoughts. Without this temporary plastic head protector, she could easily get a permanent plaster one. I knew it. Six months had been more than enough for me to experience how confining a head-wrapping Minerva cast could be.

I just watched her, but I couldn’t stay there forever, doing nothing. I had to act. Standing on the other side of the street, I grabbed my mobile phone to call her landline phone number.

Hearing the ringing of the phone in the living room, Naomi stopped rolling the bike out of the house. She turned back to answer my fake call. Luckily, she forgot to close the door, and she left the two-wheeler at the opened entrance. Redialling her number again and again, I let her telephone ring non-stop. Of course, I didn’t want to talk to her, but my plan was about creating a kind of diversion. While Naomi was in the house, I ran across the street to get to her door to put my hands on her bike.

Most likely, Gabriel would remind me of one of the Ten Commandments: ‘You shall not steal’. Honestly, it wasn’t about stealing. But it was an unusual form of borrowing. I didn’t want to own her bicycle. Instead, I worked hard to keep it away from Naomi’s disposal. I swore that I would give it back to her when this dangerous day would be over.

To disappear from the crime scene, I calmly sat on the bike to ride it. Pushing the pedals like crazy, I moved away from the scene with the speed of the light. By the time Naomi returned to the entrance, her bike was far away. With me in the saddle.

However, unfortunately, I left some traces behind. As I told you, I wasn’t a professional criminal. I hadn’t mapped the place before committing this crime. Among other things, I hadn’t spotted the surveillance camera installed on a pole, which had recorded all that I had done. And what the worst was, my mobile phone number remained in Naomi’s incoming call list, indelibly.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 14)     Next (Part 16)-->

The Preventer, Part 14

To my surprise, Jennifer Bunny’s imaginary copy was a spotless, beautiful woman, being hotter than even the real one. However, this fact could be a breach of the law of nature, since the original one was overperfect already.

Jennifer stood before me in a modest set of clothes, carrying a file in her right hand. Dressed in the style with which she imitated a university student, she reminded me of the Original Jennifer whom I had met in the ‘bad old’ times when I had been stuck in a full body cast. I knew her pretty much because we had spent some time together in the real world, therefore my imagination could build up a more or less coherent personality, making this female phantasm an enjoyable talk partner. Indeed, talking with her was a lot more entertaining than speaking to the blank-minded fashion magazine girls.

‘Hello, cousin!’ The girl teased me by calling me this way.

Of course, Miss Bunny wasn’t a member of my family. This title had been her disguise so that she could meet me in the medical centre, where we had had pleasant hours together, behind a shutdown door. Well, it was her profession to make the clients of the Bunny Club happy... Yes, you are right. I feel ashamed. Though nowadays I always talk about Miranda, back in those days I hadn’t had any clue about my lost spouse.

But now Jennifer was here, and her long blonde hair reaching her shoulder drove me crazy, almost blurring Miranda’s faded remembrance. To fight back, I recalled every tiny detail about her. However, it could hardly help me.

‘Your next mission or what,’ Jennifer said mysteriously. She hopped forward to study me closely. Next, having checked my shape, she handed me the folder. The girl saw the discoloured mark on my face, where Mr Swanson’s fist had landed in the final stage of my last mission. ‘Nice bruise. Have you tussled with somebody?’

I decided not to reply. Instead, I ran a kind of test to see her fidelity to the Original Jennifer. I wanted to assess this phenomenon to learn if she was much more ‘real’ than the other girls. But talking about authenticity and originality in an imaginary room is a bit weird, isn’t it?

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘You’re much sillier than you were a year ago, Alex,’ she told me after a good laughter. ‘When the doctors removed your head casts, then they took out your brain, too?’

‘What is your name?’ I repeated the question.

‘I'm Jennifer Bunny. I can’t tell you anything else because you don’t know the right answer to this question. I’m only a creature of your superficial imagination.’

‘Superficial?’ I asked as this expression was familiar. ‘Has Gabriel talked about it with you?’

‘You firmly believe that this place is yours.’ She extended her arms to spin around. ‘Forget it. It doesn’t belong to you. No, he didn’t need to talk about it since we came from the same place. Of course, you are superficial. We just made love for a couple of times. You don’t know me at all. How could you copy what in my head was? You can recall only my physical figure and some of my words.’

‘I know you. You like music. Your life is an endless video clip.’

‘And something more?’ She cutely put her fingers below her lips. ‘What is my favourite genre of music? Books, movies, hobby? What will I do when I will be too old or too ugly to be a Bunny Girl?’

I failed her fidelity test. I didn’t know even Jennifer Bunny, although I had been with her. Again, I changed the topic.

‘Do you know what this place is?’ I asked.

‘This is the place where you can get a second chance!’ Jennifer replied, then she vanished into the air, leaving a laugh and the medical case file behind.

As soon as the first ‘ghost’ went away, the other came. Gabriel put his hand on my shoulder to signal his arrival.

‘Don’t worry. It’s damn hard to know someone,’ he comforted me.

‘Gabriel, you should have told me that Gina’s husband is a bodybuilder. My chest and my nose still hurt.’ I checked the bruises in the middle part of my face, afterwards, I rubbed the aching ribcage, again.

‘Why do you let it hurt? It’s your imagination. Imagine that it doesn’t hurt, and it won’t hurt.’

Oh, really. I could never find out how easy it could be for me to fix things in this world. Pulling down an imaginary potentiometer, I decreased the volume of the throbbing I felt. Accordingly, the pain of my injuries faded out.

Then I glanced at Gabriel. Though I couldn’t read his mind, I worked out that he would talk with me about a terrible mistake. Like an earnest teacher, he showed me a thing, which he was hiding behind his back until now. It was my screwdriver, and there was still blood on the tip of the tool, proving the crime I had committed.

‘By the way, what is it?’ Gabriel asked.

I showed him my most innocent look. ‘A screwdriver, I suppose.’

‘Eh, I found this thing in Mr Swanson’s leg. Alex, your task is to prevent injuries. You must not cause new ones.’

‘We focused on the girls with casts so far. Gina is saved. She is healthy, isn’t she? She doesn’t wear any cast, does she? First-class job, isn’t it? Mission accomplished.’ I could be proud of my performance. Except for the tiny incident, which had happened to her husband.

‘We don’t need any more collateral damage, okay? You must regret it, and you must make it good. Or else, I must look for a new Preventer,’ Gabriel reminded me of the rules. Then he went toward the bed. ‘This is the third female to be saved. So, what can you find in the file you got from Jennifer?’

‘Martina Lemmon.’ I began assessing the patient.

To be frank, the female wasn’t too likeable for me. The serious woman was dressed in the suits of the dull downtown-dwelling businesspersons.

As a result of an accident-to-be, a big chunk of a blue fibreglass long cast encased her whole right leg. The tube-like shell was so extended that the rounded upper rims of the thick dressings nearly rubbed her loins. Flowing down from there, the rigid coating encompassed the whole thigh and froze the knee. The straight cast was shaped nicely to follow the faint arch of the slightly flexed joint. Running down, the cylinder leg cast fixed the shanks, but it stopped just over the ankle. Free from the medical confinement, the uncasted foot and toes were exposed to air.

From a certain point of view, her left leg was a bit luckier than the other one, since it sported merely a short yet confining leg cast. Tightly encircling the wounded body member, the stiff bandages locked down everything, which was below the knee. The SLC started at the middle part of the leg, below the joint. The shank, the ankle, and even all the toes were in its firm hold. Restricting the foot, the cast ‘boot’ finished in something that was a dumpling-like knot of bulky bandages, which embedded each bit of the lowest part, including the crushed extremities.

Missing either a toe opening or a toe plate, the SLC was fully closed, and all the digits were buried deep in their separate gauze-cells within the inch-thick fibreglass prison.

‘Martina was... or will be run over in a pedestrian crossing,’ I read out the facts. ‘Right after having lunch, she'll rush back to her office.’

***

So, Martina Lemmon was having lunch by the table in the opposite corner of the restaurant. Looking at her, I found a better name for this serious woman. I called her Miss Lemon. Glancing at her, I couldn’t see anything attractive on her. Insignificant pastel brown dress. Boring. Hair in a decent bun. Dull. Neat but unfashionable pair of glasses.

I watched as she called the waiter there to settle the invoice. Martina was about to leave to walk under a car in the nearest zebra crossing, so I had to do something. As if we had been synchronised swimmers, we moved in parallel. While she stood up from her seat, I got up, too, keeping an eye on her.

I left my box, balancing a cup of coffee in my hand. Imitating that I was looking for a more suitable place, I crossed the whole restaurant to get closer to her. I was casually walking past her table when my right leg elegantly tripped over the left one. Of course, this almost-fall was intentional. To find support, I grabbed the edge of her table, but (un)fortunately, with a well-planned motion, I dropped the coffee cup. Stumbling over the table, I poured the whole content of the mug onto her clothes. The dark fluid landed on Martina’s lap and quickly gushed down on her clothes, creating a gigantic brown stain on the light-coloured blouse and skirt.

Shocked, Martina looked down at the soaked dress, then she peered at me, the barbarian, who devastated her expensive designer suit.

‘What have you done, mister?’ Ms Lemmon shouted to my face.

Well, she wasn’t the calm and quiet lady anymore, whom she looked to be. Once again, Martina checked her clothes to assess the disaster, which happened to her. With despaired hand movements, she tried to wipe off the dirt from the dress. Of course, in vain.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I lied.

‘Sh*t, I must go home to change clothes,’ she hissed with a low voice. Not for me, just for herself.

Oh, yes, I did it! I managed to turn upside down her daily schedule. Fantastic. Martina wouldn’t go back to the office. She wouldn’t go across the zebra crossing. If I hadn’t been here, she would have been yelling from pain in an ambulance. This woman must have been grateful for me because I saved her. Well, dealing with a coffee stain would be much better than living with two leg casts and attending business meetings with a pair of crutches or in a wheelchair.

But Martina didn’t foresee the future, but she was aware of her sad present very well. Her glance nearly killed me because I dared ruin her two-thousand dollar business dress.

‘I’m so sorry. Certainly, I’ll cover all your cost, Ma’am.’

Also, I gave her my business card to let her know my address to where she would send the invoice of the dry cleaners or a new set of clothes. But disclosing my identity was the first mistake I made, and this very card was one of the proofs, which helped Detective Hallmundsdóttir to arrest me.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 13)     Next (Part 15)-->

The Preventer, Part 13

My consciousness drifted into the imaginary hospital room, where the first person I met was a nurse. This time I looked bored at her. Her attractiveness wasn’t able to captivate me anymore. Analysing, I figured out why I had wanted to change her hair colour and why I had wished a pair of glasses for her. Somehow, my subconscious had aspired to recreate Miranda. The hair colour and spectacles... This was everything I knew about my wife. Just some worthless pieces of memory, torn parts of a bigger picture that had been destroyed aeons ago. Her hair was long, curly and black. And she wore glasses. Damn memory. Damn accident.

‘My name is Miranda,’ she echoed the thoughts I had planted into her earlier.

I greeted her with a short ‘Hello’.

‘Here’s the newest case, Doctor.’ Her intonation was seducing.

Gabriel had been right. This cute nurse was merely an empty shell. I missed Miranda, although I didn’t know her. I missed so much. Sounds paradox?

‘Gabriel, I saw that you sent this girl away,’ I said to my ‘advisor’ as he appeared on the stage. ‘Have you called her back to put me to a test?’

‘We do not lead you into temptation, Alex.’ He looked at our strange couple, namely me and the nurse. ‘Your old-self has just recreated this ersatz-Miranda.’

‘You should have chosen somebody else to be a Preventer. I’ve saved Shelly’s arms, but I’ve broken her heart.’ I could have been proud that I had prevented my first ‘patient’ from suffering an accident. However, I had hurt her soul while saving her body.

‘I’m sorry but I’m not the one, who chooses the patients for you.’ After the apologising words, his next question mocked me. ‘And, wow, are you able to feel sorry for someone?’

‘Incredibly, she fell in love with me. I think it was a love at first sight, or rather at first touch or what,‘ I told him the story about the strange ‘date’ with the blind girl. ‘I had to refuse her. Because of Miranda. Does it sound crazy enough?’

‘No worries. Shelly won’t kill herself because of you. She’ll find her perfect match next month. He’ll be much better than you.’

‘Can you see her future?’

Gabriel nodded. ‘Of course, I can.’

‘Can you see my future, too?’

‘Yes, but I can’t tell you anything about it. Or else, what would happen to your free will?’ He tried to lure me into an endless philosophical discussion about the freedom of choice and determinism. ‘You can’t know what is going to happen to you, but you can see her future.’

He pointed at the hospital bed. In the middle of the room, the next ‘patient’ was waiting for me. I had her medical report in my hand already, received it from the imaginary nurse, who had already gone away. I enthusiastically opened the folder.

‘You slowly became a real Preventer,’ Gabriel praised me for my devotion.

Well, right now I knew what would drive me forward. I wanted my wife back. Instead of blood, 100% motivation circulated in my body. Gabriel headed to the bed, and I faithfully followed him.

‘So, this is Mrs Gina Swanson.’ I peered at the female having a light brown hair reaching her shoulders. Then I read out the first page of the file. ‘Aged 31, two fractured shanks.’

The woman wore dual short leg casts. The size and the shape of the twin casts were the same. Constructed from fibreglass tissue, the two tight-fitting shells encased the entire lower parts of both legs. The well-shaped and padded upper rims encircled the limbs around the knee joints. The rigid casts started just below the kneecaps, leaving them free, and then they solidly flowed down, closely following the fine outlines of shanks. The firm grip of the medical fetters cripplingly imprisoned the ankles, and locked the feet in a fastened position, enfolding everything, and finally ending up at the toes.

Due to the overly reinforced and thick soles, the leg casts were similar to a pair of shoes with ultra-high platforms, completed with palm-sized rubber walking heels, which were glued to the undersurface of the DSLWCs.

As an extension to the left cast, enormous toe spica casts were created to keep fixed all the five extremities. Tenderly swaddled in the soft cradle of the inner gauze layers, and securely captured below the outside protective shield of casts, the toes were mostly invisible, so, only their tiny tips could be seen. Differing from the closed cast disabling the left leg, the leg cast on the right leg had an opening for the toes. Here the extremities freely expanded out of the well-padded ‘cave mouth’ of the fibreglass shell, and they rested on a big, balcony-like cast plate, which safely sheltered them from being rammed into anything.

‘A car crash. Again?’ I said after reading the rest of the report.

‘Traffic is a dangerous business. Drivers must be careful.’

I turned the pages of the case file, trying to memorise the exact place and date of the accident before my vision would be over.

***

In the real world, I sat in my real car near the real house of the real Mrs Gina Swanson. Keeping my eyes on the building that was on the opposite side of the road, I was forging nonsense ideas about how I could prevent her accident.

I looked at my watch. The time flew away, and I still had no usable plan. Merely thirty minutes left until the crash. Gina would leave home soon. After driving along a street, she would be busy with sending a text message, and she would miss stopping before a ‘Stop’ sign and... bang. You can easily figure out what would follow. She would crush both of her legs, and she would get a lovely pair of short leg casts, and she would be confined to beds, wheelchairs and crutches in the following months.

So what to do to prevent all this from happening? Would I knock on the door, and when she would appear, would I directly tell her not to go anywhere? I bet she wouldn’t believe me. Or should I try to follow her with my car, and overtake her before the stop sign? What if we would push each other’s car into the busy traffic of the main road? Honestly, I didn’t want any cast to disable me anymore.

Merely twenty minutes left, so I had to do something. And I voted for taking drastic measures. For some reason, Gina’s red Chevrolet didn’t park in the garage but it was left on the drive in front of the house. Unattended.

Great! Having a weird idea, I smiled. Though my action would be a bit extreme, Gina wouldn’t go anywhere this afternoon.

I got out of my car with a screwdriver in my hand. This time, instead of being a low-budget Preventer, I would have liked to be some Grade ‘A’ Superhero, let’s say the Invisible Man. But I crossed the road unnoticed (or, at least, I thought I could), and I sneaked to the vehicle. When I got there, I crouched down at the left front side. Next, with all my force, I pushed the sharp tip of the tool into the tyre. I was so relieved when I heard the hissing sound as the pressurised air was escaping its rubber prison. I managed to pierce one out of the four tyres.

But I didn’t stop. I went around the front side to kill the other wheels as well. The plan was brutally simple. And easy to carry out. With four punctured tyres, Gina had to remain at home. As an option, she could call a taxi. Hopefully, she would hire such a cab driver, who wouldn’t miss the stop sign.

I worked hard, and I could already tick off three flat wheels in my short to-do list. Eagerly, I was about to deal with the last one, when a couple of unnecessary things appeared in my field of view. Two black shoes, and a shadow of a sturdy man.

‘Hey, buddy, what the hell are you doing with my car?’ a deep voice thundered down to me.

From my frog perspective, I looked up at the source of the sound. Then I made a mistake. I stopped crouching, and I tried to stand up when a stone-hard fist fell on my face. The hit smashed my nose, and its momentum pushed me back to the ground, where I sprawled out. I couldn’t defend my body from even the second wave of the strike when the kick of the heavy boot arrived at my stomach.

But the third blow missed me because I could crawl toward the attacker, and I still had the tool in my hand. For a minute, the simple screwdriver turned into a dangerous weapon, and I wasn’t afraid to use it. The attack is the best form of defence – I murmured since I didn’t want to return to a full body cast.

Forcefully, I pushed the screwdriver into the flesh of the attacker’s right foot.

Oh, what a yell I could hear! Receding from me, the assailant staggered back to find support at the side of the Chrysler. He was tortured by the pain radiating up from his wounded leg, from which a screwdriver was sticking out.

For long seconds, the stabbed man was occupied with his throbbing injury. This short intermission was enough for me to exploit the window of opportunity. Mr Swanson was stronger than me, but with a screwdriver in his foot, I was the one who the faster was. I stood up from the dusty ground, and I ran away like the wind.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 12)     Next (Part 14)-->

The Preventer, Part 12

Although I returned to the unreal place, my thoughts flew far away. My mood was different from the confidence of the first days. Stricken, I didn’t tramp proudly in the room. Instead, I was sitting on the floor, collapsed, waiting for Gabriel to appear.

Knocking of heels, sounds of approaching steps woke me up. I didn’t raise my head to see her. It was useless because she couldn’t be Miranda. Having opened my eyes, I saw only the legs up to the knees, dressed in black silk stockings. She was a nurse, an ordinary one, bringing me the dossier written about the next assignment. I didn’t greet the messenger, either. Being a creature of my imagination, she mirrored my rejecting emotions. Impolitely, she dropped the file, which thudded on the floor before me, and she turned around to leave this weird place without telling me anything.

But I didn’t give a sh*t to it. Miranda’s death tore a part of my soul away. I was in a downturn, so deep that there was nothing in this or that word that could compare this terrible feeling.

Sounds of steps again. Not as loud as high heels. More silent. Sports shoes. This time, it was Gabriel, who was coming.

‘This is crazy. How can I miss somebody, whom I even don’t remember? Bring her back,’ I begged.

‘Please, stand up.’

‘Bring her back.’

‘This is not so easy to do, Alex. Raising Miranda from the dead is beyond my authority. And I’ve told you that you must save seven females to get your reward. You must prevent their accidents so that you can get your wife back.’

‘Really?’

Gabriel bent down to pick up the file lying on the floor before my legs.

‘For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together and stand up. You should see her.’

‘Her? Miranda?’ I didn’t hope in such an early reunion.

‘Oh, no. Just the next female to be saved. Please meet Ms Shelly Fisher. He gestured at the hospital bed.

I got up, and I turned around to see the next patient. Shelly was probably in her late twenties, and she had broken both of her arms. And all her fingers, too. Because of their bright yellow colour, the two long arm casts were impossible to miss. Moulded from fibreglass, the vast pieces of casts started below the armpits. It encased the fine shapes of the upper limbs, creating a pair of identical solid full shells, which flowed down to cover the lower parts, too, just to wrap every bit up to the fingertips.

Considering their features, such as material, size and colour, the two arm casts were basically the same. However, there were striking differences. The right one was just slightly flexed at the elbow, so the arm was frozen in a nearly straight pose. The bandaged limb rested on a row of pillows along the body. This LAC finished in a boxing-glove-like set of dressings. The roundish form tightly held all the fingers, which were bent toward the palm. Even the wounded thumb spica was integrated into the block of cast, being together with the other digits. As such a bulky cast sphere engulfed the right hand, it was impossible to locate the individual extremities.

The cast on the left arm was unlike in position. Neatly flexed at the elbow, the classically shaped LAC was a big yellow letter ‘L’, rocked on her lap. The stiff bandages restricted the limb from shoulder to fingertips. The injured extremities were straight-posed within the medical embedment, whose shape was similar to a gargantuan kitchen glove. Appearing to be a short but sturdy pole, a separate thumb spica cast poked out of the bulky base of the cast swaddling the hand.

After seeing her casts, I checked Shelly’s face too. Strangely, the girl wore a pair of pitch-black sunglasses even when being in bed. The reason behind this wasn’t an excessive fashion awareness.

‘Is she blind?’ I asked. Weirdly, the stylish glasses perfectly suited her dark wavy hair.

‘It isn’t easy for a blind to look after herself when both of her arms in casts, which includes all the fingers. Alex, you must prevent this accident.’

Shelly slept or just lied motionless in the bed. I couldn’t talk to any of these patients since they were only images borrowed from a possible future. I looked at the DLAC, which would make her totally dependent on non-stop help.

‘What will happen?’ I asked.

‘Just read her file, and you’ll know everything,’ Gabriel said and disappeared.

***


The time was late in the afternoon, and the tired Sun projected long shadows on the walls of the outdoor flight of stairs. Escaping from the daily round of squirrel cage, the nervous people were hustling each other in the crowded streets. Pressing my back against the wall, I tried to keep away from the chaotic stream. It was so hard to believe that I myself had been a part of this pushy crowd a year ago.

Countless men and women rushed past me. I damned, thinking it wouldn’t be easy to spot Shelly in this horde. However, it wasn’t her face, which I noticed for the first time. But a rhythmical sound of ticks... Tick-tick-tick... It was the repeating noise she made with the white cane. Coming toward the subway, Shelly walked tightly along the wall. She kept swinging the thin stick to kick it against the concrete pavement or the bricks of the building or eventually against the legs of the careless people.

Suddenly a businessman got there to cross Shelly’s way. Hunting for an unmissable money-making opportunity, he was talking on the phone. Immersed in the conversation, he heavily gesticulated with his free left hand. Doing so, the fellow inadvertently pushed the blind girl’s back when he was hurrying away behind her. Without turning around, he said a hardly audible ‘Sorry!’, and he walked away without looking back.

But, for Shelly, the elbowing incident was serious. Standing on the top step of a steep staircase, she was kicked out of balance. Her arms swept around in the air, finding nobody and nothing to help her, and she began falling down the stairs. The businessman’s short apologetic word, which he had automatically produced, wasn’t able to save Shelly. Either, they couldn't have comforted her while she would have to cope with the plague of two long arm casts in the next months. However, I was sent here to change her future.

Instead of taking a tumble, and rolling down the stairs to break both of her arms and smash all the fingers, Shelly directly landed in my hands. It took a couple of seconds for her to assimilate what happened. For a short time, I held her in my arms, but soon I helped her to stand on her own legs.

‘Thank you very much, mister.’ Feeling in safe again, she leaned against the wall. Casually, she pushed up her sunglasses back to the bridge of her nose. ‘You’ve saved my day.’

Maybe your arms, too, I added in my mind. I grabbed for the stick, which I brought back to her.

‘My pleasure,’ I said since it was a real enjoyment to hold this girl in my arms. It’s worth doing business with Gabriel?

Tick... tick... With short and quick movements, she mapped the place around us with the cane. Regaining her confidence, she was about to descend the stairs to go away. Yet, she stopped and turned back.

‘What about having a coffee together? I hope you aren’t a pushy capitalist like that asshole, who almost killed me.’ Shelly awarded me with a nice smile.

‘Eh, capitalist? You mean that...’ I asked in amazement. Maybe wasn’t she totally blind? ‘Have you seen the one, who...? Oh, I thought you’re...’

‘Yes, I’m blind.’ She checked the position of the dark glasses once again. ‘Money doesn’t stink but they do. I know a good cafe near here. I’m Shelly. Come with me.’

‘My name is Alex.’

Contrary to the famous saying, now it was the blind, who led me, the two-eyed one through the labyrinth of streets. After getting to the outlying yet fine café, Shelly greeted the waitresses, who told her that the table nine was free. The blind girl stopped sweeping the floor with the crane. She elevated the white stick with confidence, and she walked straight across the place to find the unreserved table easily. Twenty-six steps forward, then five more to the left. The layout of the familiar coffee-house had already been burnt into her memory.

Feeling home in this friendly corner of the world, Shelly looked like an over-fashioned young girl with her black-tinted spectacles. Not weird, but a little bit strange. She leant the white stick against the wall of our box, however, she didn’t take off the sunglasses.

‘Okay, Alex, I’d like to thank you once again for saving my life,’ she chatted.

To sweeten the coffee, her tiny hand started clumsily hunting for a sugar cube on the table. Touching her thin fingers, I guided her hand to find it. I sensed the silky softness of her palms. I was proud. I could save from this fragile girl from the peril of casts.


‘Of course,’ I said, instead of simply moving my head.

She stretched out her right hand, toward the direction of my voice, with fingers wiggling in the air. I helped her to find my face. She smiled, without saying one more thank-you. With her fingers, she ‘scanned’ my look. The skimming began at the forehead, and it went around the eyes, touching my cheekbones to end at the jaw.

‘Handsome.’

‘Thanks.’

Her arms moved back to find the coffee mug. Her look changed, as Shelly prepared for telling me something important.

‘Please, don’t think that I went crazy... but I feel that you were sent from heaven to save me. Can you imagine... Can you imagine that you can love me?’

Her question was a lightning striking directly into my brain. Maybe, Shelly had special gifts, but she misinterpreted the reason why I was here with her. Or was it Gabriel’s newest trick to test me? Or was this girl terribly lonely? Cornered, I didn’t know what to answer.

‘Shelly...,’ I said.

And I stopped since you didn’t need to tell anything more for a blind. It was only a short word, yet she was able to process the intonation. There’s a problem on my side.

‘There’s a problem.’ She stopped stirring the coffee. Next, she guessed randomly. ‘Because I’m blind.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘You’ve got somebody.’ She lifted her head as if she could look into my eyes. I saw my reflection in the black lenses.

‘I’ve lost somebody whom I must find. My life is too messy, and you are a better person than me. I don’t deserve you. I’m sorry,’ I whispered and I got up.

Personally, my straight answer troubled even me. Before my accident, I used to screw almost every girl I had met. How could I refuse her? I was terribly missing Miranda. The woman whom I didn’t know. The wife whom I had killed.

Hearing the noise of my leaving, Shelly began to weep.

to be continued

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The Preventer, Part 11

I found the blonde nurse in the Imaginary Place. Although I had made the girl different when I had modified her hair colour, now she was the same again. The tall, unchanged chick without spectacles was standing in the middle of the room to receive me.

‘Dr Robertson, here’s the file for you,’ she said, smiling.

Having done her job, she turned around to leave. I halted her. When we had met earlier, I could alter some of her features. Right now, it was the highest time to try out what would happen after a bold wish.

Please, be naked. Following my untold instruction, the tight nurse uniform, which dressed her cute figure, disappeared, with all her underwear. The power of my thoughts took her clothes off, yet she remained standing in front of me, calmly yet twinkling, naked as if this scene had been so ordinary for both of us. A naked nurse in the middle of an imaginary hospital room, talking to a false doctor. Stunned by the sight, I adored the nearly perfectly shaped parts of her body. Her velvety skin was just lightly suntanned, since, of course, she was the output of my adult dreams.

I looked into her eyes. ‘What’s your name?’

She didn’t reply. I worked out that her name was missing from my memories. Clearly, her stupidity was my mistake. I had forgotten her name, as it hadn’t been important for me, though it had been written in the caption below the photo in the fashion magazine that had fascinated me so much a decade ago.

‘Your name is Miranda,’ I wished, untold.

Embarrassingly, I picked out this name again. I didn’t find the reason. Simply, sometimes this name raided my mind, forcibly gushing up from my unconscious, and I wasn’t able to get it out of my head. But why not?

‘My name is Miranda,’ she said.

‘Do you know what this place is?’

‘I know what this place is,’ she echoed my words.

‘Stop it, please.’ Coming from nothing, Gabriel came between us again. He addressed the first sentence to me, noticing the naked nurse in the room. ‘Alex, you’ve gone too far this time.’

Then he spoke to the girl, too. ‘Please, leave this room and never came back.’

The clothless girl, whom I called Miranda, turned around and went to the door. With a graceful movement, she opened it and stepped out to disappear in the black emptiness beyond the gate.

‘She had black hair last time.’ I secretly mourned the gorgeous woman, but I decided not to complain about her dismissal to Gabriel.

Meanwhile, my companion bent down to reach for the abandoned file on the floor.

‘Blonde chicks, this is your default setting. You forgot to save changes. You abused my trust, and you don’t deserve to meet your imaginary girls ever again. Anyway, you shouldn’t have talked to them. It was not forbidden, but it was useless. They’ve got cute figures, but their insides are empty. I mean you knew merely their body configurations, but you couldn’t learn their personality from a printed magazine page. Thus, they always mirrored your emotions and echoed your words. They were nothing more than the creatures of your superficial imagination.’

I felt insulted. ‘You could be more polite.’

‘Why? This is the truth. It’s clear that you’re still obsessed with your pretty imaginary chicks. And you don’t even notice how incredibly hard I work to change this attitude. Oh, I promised that I would show you something motivating so that I can fully involve you in our prevention business, didn’t I?’

‘Do you want to shock me with an empty bed?’ I asked, missing the patient-to-be. In my previous visions, there was always a broken female in the room.

‘What empty bed?’ Gabriel stylishly swung his arm in the air. ‘Of course, this trick works without hand movements, too, but it’s more spectacular with them.’

‘What trick?’ I was hardly able to ask since somebody appeared on the bed.

The patient, who arrived there was my nameless passenger in a coma, who had suffered very serious injuries in the car accident. In my accident... in our car accident, which had seemingly happened a damn long time ago. Now I was already free of casts, while she was still captured in the land of dreamless dreams. Understandably, without a working brain, it would be damn hard for her to stay alive. Thus, she was kept alive by machines. But could this medically supported existence be called ‘life’ at all? Literally, it was an endlessly extended dying.

A cabinet-sized medical ventilator had her breathed, pressing air into the lame lungs via a wide plastic tube. The pipe ended in an oxygen mask, which was big enough to cover most of the lower face. Her chest periodically went up and down, according to a boring, mechanical rhythm, which the medical air pump beat.


Gabriel gestured toward her. ‘This is Ms Jane Doe.’

‘I know who she is. Or rather, I don’t know who she is,’ I said in confusion. ‘Oh, sh*t, Gabriel you know what I mean.’

This time Gabriel didn’t warn me about using a dirty word. He just nodded.

‘Do you really want to motivate me with showing her to me? I can’t save her. The accident happened almost a year ago. This is not her future but the present. Give me a time machine, and I’ll prevent it.’

‘It doesn’t go so easily, Alex.’

‘If you know all my thoughts, you know what I told Dr Rehnquist about her.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘She is still alive.’

‘You told me that you would show me the possible future of the patients. This is not the future.’ I pointed my arm nervously at the girl, who limply lied in the bed. ‘I can’t do anything for her.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. This isn’t her future but her miserable present,’ Gabriel said. ‘Her future isn’t a coma care department but... this place.’

The image of the tidy hospital bed disappeared. Instead of it, I saw a small and insignificant tombstone with a short inscription. The sight of the lonely grave, which stood in a hidden corner of an emerald-green meadow of a cemetery, was endlessly sad.
Jane Doe
No. 2/2015

‘Will she die?’ I asked.

‘Of course. Within hours. As you wanted.’ His silent reply accused me.

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t my mistake.’

‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to yourself, either. You’ve killed her.’

‘Dr Rehnquist and the other doctors will kill her when they unplug the breathing machine.’

‘Alex, Alex, you’re lying again.’

‘Why do you show her to me? I can’t do anything to save her.’ I insisted on saying this, and I was sure that I was right. ‘The accident has already happened. I don’t know the name of this b*tch. Even the police weren’t able to identify her.’

‘Stop calling her b*tch. She is not a b*tch at all.’

Feeling disgusted, Gabriel repeated the dirty word I used. However, he did it just to prepare me for the next stage of the lesson. And he accomplished his mission excellently: the next sixty seconds threw a new light on my miserable life. Suddenly, the writing on the memorial changed. The old letters faded out, and new signs appeared on it. Though it was still a short inscription, I had to read it twice to grasp it.

There were five words and two numbers engraved with golden letters on the weather-worn gravestone:
Miranda Robertson
the forgotten wife
1987 – 2015

Gabriel’s words stabbed a cold knife directly in my heart: ‘I’d like to introduce your late wife to you.’

***

‘This must be one of your cheap tricks. That girl cannot be my wife,’ I shouted at him.

I didn’t look at Gabriel, who was sitting in the passenger seat, because I had to watch the road. Dodging the city traffic, the car rushed toward the hospital at a crazy speed, and my feet nervously pushed the accelerator pedal down to the floor. Unfortunately, Dr Rehnquist answered none of my phone calls, so I had to go to the hospital personally.

‘Why cannot Miranda be your wife?’ my companion asked.

‘Where is my wedding ring?’ I put my ringless right hand directly before his face. Juggling, merely my sweaty left palm grasped the steering wheel.

‘You bought a pair of extra expensive rings for Miranda and you. Both of these luxurious jewels were stolen while you were treated in hospital. You know, there is always someone who can be greedier than a stock exchange broker.’

‘Photos?’

‘It was a fresh marriage. You took just a few pictures. And your computer and mobile were destroyed in the car crash. This is the drawback of living digitally. And you home was burnt down. No pictures left.’

‘The police couldn’t identify her. What about the marriage registry?’

‘She’s a foreign citizen, and you got married abroad. There had to be an administrative or computer error, and the info didn’t get through the bureaucratic labyrinth to the federal authorities. No system can be perfect.’

‘I don’t believe any of your words.’

‘Yet you’re rushing to the hospital like a madman. Please, slow down if you don’t want to get into a full body cast once again. We should be visitors and not patients.’ He grabbed the safety belt, being a bit concerned about my overspeeding driving style. ‘By the way, if you don’t trust in me, ask yourself why you don’t stop longing all the time to meet a black-haired and bespectacled girl called Miranda.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,’ I kept repeating to an empty seat because Gabriel had already vanished.

The brakes let out a loud screech as I halted the car in a no-parking zone by the hospital entrance. Without closing the door, I jumped out to run into the coma care department. Building B, Second Floor, Room Sixteen. I still remembered where the room was, though I hadn’t been here for months. Since my trial, I didn’t need the living dead girl. The girl, who might be my wife.

After the rush, I didn’t open but tore out the room door to see her. A soul-killing darkness received me there. I didn’t need to switch the light on to find out how the things stood. I arrived too late. The room was cleared out by now. Turned off, the monitoring devices didn't wink with their fade lamps, and the rhythmical noise of the artificial respiration was missing, too.

‘Oh, Mr Robertson,’ Dr Rehnquist said, finding me in the room. His voice coming from the corridor almost haunted me. ‘Sadly for us, it’s too late to change your mind.’

Telling me nothing more, he left. I went into the room and turned on the lights to be sure. Deadly silence embraced me. The world was a bare place without Miranda. In the room, there was nothing else but an empty bed. The bed was made, with fresh and good-smelling white bedclothes, waiting to caress the next coma patient.

The quietness and emptiness drove me crazy. Her absence stroke its sharp axe deeply into my soul. I’ve killed my wife.

to be continued

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