To keep you going till then, here's a small tidbit..
Day Two: Saturday, August 11, 3100
"Mr. President…your wife is dead.”
Silence.
The doctor shifted from one foot to
the other. “Sir?”
John sat perfectly still with his
eyes focused on the clean white floor in front of the surgeon’s blood stained
boots. How did he get to that moment? Only one hour before they had been eating
dinner and Mary was fine, perhaps shaken by the day’s events but certainly not
injured or in pain. Yet, there he was. “I’m sorry...I didn’t hear what you
said.”
“We couldn’t save her, sir, we…” He
wiped at his forehead. “I’m so sorry, sir, we tried everything we could to
revive her, but the internal damage was too extensive…there was no way to
repair…”
“Wait…” John looked up at the
surgeon that stood in front of him wearing a look of great distress and
exhaustion. “What you are saying is not possible. Mary wasn’t injured in the
attack. I was with her and she was fine. We were having dinner when she started
feeling lightheaded, that’s why I brought her in.”
The doctor’s agony was compounded by
the president’s reluctance to believe what he was being told. “I understand
that, sir, and though on the outside she did appear fine, when we looked
inside…” He stopped. “Sir, I know you have some medical training…” He hesitated,
and then finished his thought. “Would you like to see for yourself?”
See that the doctor was wrong? The
answer was obvious. “Yes.” He rose to his feet and started quickly down the
brightly lit tunnel towards the surgical ward, knowing full well that when they
reached the room, Mary would be sitting in there…fine.
“Excuse me, sir, I need to get in
here for the eye scan,” the doctor explained, stepping in front of the
president as they reached the door. “It’ll be quick.”
The barely discernible beam of light
shot directly into the doctor’s eye revealing to the computer not only the
specific makeup of his iris, but the minutest details of his occipital lobe, as
well, authenticating the physician’s identity and his right to enter the
secured space. And though the procedure took only a few seconds, it seemed an
eternity to John who stood waiting for the very large and round steel door to
open so that he could finally see for himself, that Mary was well, and the
doctor, wrong.
“Mr. President,” the surgeon said
quietly, “normally I don’t bring family members into the OR, because for one
thing it’s a highly sterilized area, but more than that it’s because seeing
their loved ones on the table can prove to be too much for some. But for some
reason I have a feeling that this will be the only way to convince you.” He put
a hand on John’s arm. “Are you ready, sir?”
“Yes, of course.”
A big rush of cold air accompanied
the sliding open of the door.
“This way, sir.”
The brand new state-of-the-art operating
theater was a large, frigid room with sleek black furnishings and instruments,
surrounded by a massive domed imager that covered the walls and ceiling. With
the touch of one button it would display scenic panoramas designed to relax the
patient before being put under, and the surgeons while they worked. At present,
expansive green hills encircled them with bright yellow wildflowers growing
from the tall grasses that swayed gently in the unseen breeze.
“We thought she’d like the flowers,”
the doctor clumsily explained. “That’s why we…um…” He stopped when he noticed
the president wasn’t listening.
Instead, John’s eyes were on the
metal table where Mary lay covered almost entirely with a black sheet. “Mary?”
he implored breathlessly. Her exposed and pale face looked serene, as though
she were peacefully napping, dreaming of being in the beautiful countryside the
room had brought to life. But as hard as he tried to see her chest rise and
fall, he could see no movement. He swallowed hard, and then asked, “Where…where
was she injured?”
Stepping up beside him, the doctor
slowly pulled back the sheet revealing her discolored shoulders and chest. “The
contusions were caused by the restraints she wore in the shuttle’s cargo hold.”
The sight of the very dark and ugly
bruises crossing her chest brought instant moisture to John’s eyes. “I had no
idea,” he said, under his breath.
“This is the only outward sign of
trauma on her body, however, when we looked inside the extent and seriousness
of her injuries became apparent.” Pressing a button on the control console, the
physician activated two highly reflective slabs that rose upwards on either end
of the table. Once in place, hundreds of minute beams shot out from microscopic
holes embedded within the glass panel at the head of the table, passing through
Mary’s body and striking the angled mirrors on the opposing plate, which then
projected a perfect three-dimensional representation of her body that hovered
three feet over the table.“Let me adjust the contrast.”
As the natural lighting from the
imager was dimmed, the floating image of Mary grew brighter and more detailed.
But just as quickly, the layers of skin and muscles disappeared leaving only
her skeletal system and internal organs on display. And though he was not a
doctor, John could clearly see the damage done. He wiped at his eyes, letting
out a shaky breath.
“Sir, if you look here,” the surgeon quietly said, pointing towards her broken ribcage, “you can clearly see the traumatic pneumothorax that was caused, I’m assuming, by the impact of the crash landing, which then forced these two fractured ribs to cut to the pleura causing air to be trapped…”
John stopped listening. Rather than
look at where the doctor was pointing to indicate the severe hemorrhaging
throughout the chest cavity and into the abdominal cavity, he focused on her
serene face. “Mary, wake up,” he whispered, despite knowing that she would not.
“Please.”
The physician went on.“…hypovolemic
shock stemming from hemoperitoneum…”
In other words, she bled to death.
Mary bled to death, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to change what was so
obvious. She was gone. Barely able to utter the words, John said, “But she
seemed fine an hour ago.”
The physician turned to him. “If she
had only gotten here sooner...”
The words struck him like a violent
blow, leaving his eyes blurry and his mind spinning. “I…I didn’t know…I…” He
stopped. There was no point in going on. The doctor was right. Mary died
because he hadn’t brought her in time. He was to blame, just as all the
failings of the past day could be attributed to his shortsightedness. The
ambassadors. Glen and Frank. The passage of the GRP. All of it. Overcome, John
fell to his knees. The pain of the last several hours had been so intense, so
overwhelming, but as he thought of Mary’s lifeless face, the pain he had
experienced throughout those torturous hours paled in comparison to the
insurmountable anguish he was feeling at that moment. Closing his eyes he
pulled at his hair. “Mary.”
There was no answer. No sound,
except for the barely detectable trace of static discharge crackling somewhere
in the room.
“Please, please, please, let this
not be happening,” John said, trying with all his strength to wake himself up
from the nightmare he prayed he was having. But as he opened his eyes, he found
himself kneeling on the same hard floor of the same sterile room. However,
something was different. Above him the rolling hills and their flowers were
gone, replaced on the imager by a different scenario entirely. It was as though
the walls and ceiling had been taken off the hospital exposing him to the
environment outside. City lights glowed everywhere around him, and in the sky the
moon was near full and shining brightly, competing with the aurora borealis to
be the most prominent feature in the night sky. There was no contest. The lunar
orb was merely a footnote to the night’s spectacle and would only be noticed
for the briefest of seconds. Then the eyes, and all the attention behind them
would focus, and stay focused, on the undulating greens and reds. It was a
strange phenomenon.
Somewhere a door closed.
Turning, John glanced towards where
the doctor had been standing, but not seeing him, his attention was quickly
drawn back to the mesmerizing luminosity that danced silently above him. So
beautiful. So eerie.
"Renton.”
There it was again. The same voice
that had called him during the Cabinet meeting. Whose voice was it? He turned
and looked around the room.
“Renton.”
As he searched for the one speaking
to him, the lights of the aurora suddenly filled the room, blanketing
everything with its moving glow and accompanying crackling sound. “Mary?” he uttered,
reaching up onto the table that was quickly becoming blurred patches of greens
and reds.
She wasn’t there.
Rising quickly to his feet and with
his hands outstretched in front of him, he felt around the table. “Mary? Where
are you? Doctor!” Becoming desperate, he felt his way around the room as the
lights became brighter and brighter, blinding him to everything beyond the
illumination. With his heart pounding so loud he could hear it, he tried once
more, “Mary! Where’s Mary?!”
“She’s
dead, John.”
The sound of his voice chilled him
completely. “Warren?”
“I
tried to warn you, but because you refused to listen, she’s dead. So what will
you do now?”
Searching frantically around the
room, John could see nothing beyond the moving colors. “Where are you?!” he demanded, frustrated by
the mocking laughter that echoed around him.
Very suddenly, the imager shut off
and John was left standing in the empty operating room.
“I’m here,” Warren replied calmly,
switching on the lights in the observation area above. He smiled down at the
president. “There’s no need to panic.”
“Son of a bitch!” John ran for the
stairs, but when he reached the observation room, it was empty. Throwing chairs
aside, he made his way out into a very long, white and vacant hallway with
narrow doors lining both sides. To his left there was no movement, but to his
right he caught sight of a distant door slowly sliding shut. He ran fast,
reaching the portal just before it closed and with a burst of energy, forced it
open. Stepping through, he found himself outside on one of the hospital’s
landing platforms. He searched the darkened tarmac for signs of Warren, but saw
nothing. Only an air ambulance and three police units stood on the windy
plateau, with the lights from the surrounding skyscrapers reflecting brightly
off their gleamed surfaces. Squinting his eyes he thought he saw movement
inside of one of the police crafts. Starting towards it he saw more movement
and then a second later the ship was taking off in an accelerated climb.
“Bastard!” Running over to the unit that was nearest to him, John forced the
canopy of the single-seater open and jumped into the pilot’s seat. Five seconds
later he was in pursuit of the other craft.
“Catch
me if you can!” Warren jeered, heading vertical towards the aurora......
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