Firestone Rings (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 4) Page 19

  A patient started banging at the window.

  “What is it, Neniver?” Noka asked. Neniver was one of my guys. He was from Talas, and his skin was slightly green.

  “I didn't get my pills,” he said. “And strange doctors here.” He pointed across the room to the door where two men were standing.

  “Who are they?” I wiped my face and was about to head toward them when the Big Doc joined them.

  “This is our dayroom,” he was saying. “Patients who are able to remain calm and in control of their faculties may come here for a few hours at a time.”

  I stopped in my tracks. One of the men looked familiar, and I was wracking my brain trying to place him. He was a nice looking Human guy in an expensive suit and tie. He could have been on a ship but my gut was telling me no, because Spaceforce guys generally didn’t have that kind of fashion sense. I had seen him somewhere else.

  “Let me show you the cafeteria now,” the Big Doc said and took the man’s arm.

  The man I sort of recognized looked around. He saw me and held my gaze for a moment. His brow furrowed. I think he knew we had met too but didn’t remember where either.

  “Coming Thad?” the other doctor said in English.

  “Sure,” Thad said and then with one last look, followed the Big Doc down the hall.

  Thad. How did I know a Thad? It wasn’t a common name. I ought to remember, but my brain wasn’t what it used to be after years of too many pills.

  “Nurse Caroline?” Neniver pulled at my sleeve. “Anna's crying.”

  “Who's Anna?” I said as Noka came running out of the office.

  Neniver pointed at a woman kneeling on the floor by the vid. Her face was turned to the door. Her hand was out reaching. There were tears streaming from her eyes.

  “Anna never cries,” Neniver said.

  Noka knelt down by the woman and took her hand. She murmured something I couldn’t hear.

  “Is that Anna?” I asked Neniver.

  “Anna's a zombie,” Kira said next to me. “She's been Spacesick like forever.”

  “Anna?” Noka called. “Anna? Will you stand?” Noka took her arm but Anna did not stand. Anna turned to me and reached again with her hand and I saw her eyes, her beautiful almond shaped sea blue eyes and I screamed.

  “What the hell is wrong with you today, Caroline?” Kira snapped. “You want to get yourself transferred back to wiping dirty asses in the vegetable ward?”

  I was speechless because my tongue didn’t move as Noka took Anna's hand again and pulled her to her feet.

  Kira returned to the office with a sneer upon her face. “You're crazier than the patients, Adamson,” she said.

  For a few moments there, I thought surely I was. Neniver look at me and cocked his head to one side.

  “What Neniver?” I snapped, burying my eyes and nose in my apron.

  Noka led Anna from the room. Anna walked like a zombie and her eyes were like glass.

  “Cap'n Katie,” Neniver said.

  I stared back at him. He was Spacesick. He didn’t know how many toes he had.

  “Did you know, Katie?” I whispered.

  “Cap'n Katie and Dr. King,” he said proudly.

  “Neniver, tell Nurse Caroline it's time for your bath,” Kira yelled from the office. “Get yourself together, Adamson, or you'll be back on the other side in no time.”

  “Nurse Caroline, it's time for my bath,” Neniver repeated obediently.

  I had to take him for his bath, and Samuel, another one of my patients, wanted a bath too. For the rest of the afternoon, I was busy fetching towels and soap and telling those guys not to splash. By the time I got to my own bed that night, I was mentally and physically exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep a wink.

  All night long, I was thinking about Dr. Ron, who wasn’t a doctor anymore, but the Emperor of Rehnor, which was taking over practically the entire galaxy and poor, poor Captain Katie, who died in a spaceplane crash on none other than this plane. But, maybe she didn't.

  I thought about that man, Thad, and I remembered how I knew him. He was president of SdK Medical Corp. He was with Katie when Dr. Ron was attacked by the Rehnorians on that spacebase and there were heads rolling everywhere. Thad's father was an Admiral and the one who Katie worked for at Landbase Rozari.

  “I want to see your patient Anna.” I pulled Noka aside in the corridor the next morning. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Kira says you are funny for Anna,” Noka smiled. “Anna doesn't talk at all. Why do you think you need her?”

  “I don't think she's anybody named Anna. I think she's somebody else, and I think she doesn't belong here.”

  “You can't get her out,” Noka laughed. “She’s Big Doc’s patient and ward of state. How do you know anything when you only saw her the first time yesterday?”

  “I recognized her, okay? She's somebody I flew with for many years. She's from Spaceforce, right?”

  “Yeah, she’s from Spaceforce.”

  “What drugs is she on?” I whispered in Noka's ear. “She on Catlizone and Remicol?”

  “Yeah,” Noka nodded. “Maybe she screams like a crazy woman if not on the drugs.”

  “What does she scream about?”

  Noka shrugged and looked down the hall. “I got work to do. I don't know how you found out she is in room 24-B. I never told you this.” She walked away.

  Catlizone and Remicol were used only with the patients with severe brain sicknesses or injuries. If she was uncontrollable, if she was screaming and had to be constantly bound and sedated, they would have put her on this. If she was saying things the Big Doc didn't want to hear, he would have put her on this. A few months on this stuff, you wouldn't know your own name. A few years on this stuff and your brain was equivalent to that of a jelly fish. I thought if you went off of the stuff, your brain would come back along with your madness. Jerry would know. He'd know how much was treatable and recoverable. Damn, I wished I could ask him.

  “Ask who what, Nurse Caroline?” It was the Big Doc. I was walking down the corridor to the women's ward, and he was coming around the corner.

  Was I speaking aloud? How stupid of me.

  “Nothing, sir,” I replied.

  “You said you needed to ask the doctor something. What do you need to ask me?”

  “Nothing, sir, I was just thinking out loud I guess. I was remembering Dr. Waldman aboard the Discovery and thinking I needed to ask him how he was doing. I should probably email him sometime.”

  Big Doc nodded his head. I wasn’t sure he believed me.

  “Aren't you assigned to the men's ward, Nurse?”

  “Yes sir, I am. Surely, I am, but I am here for just a moment looking for Nurse Noka on account I forgot to give her back her…er…hair clips that I was…er…borrowing yesterday.”

  “Hair clips.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “You had an accident yesterday in the dispensary.”

  “I did, Doctor. I slipped by accident and knocked over a whole bunch of pills. Noka and Kira were there and they helped me clean them up.”

  “You didn't keep any for yourself?”

  “No, sir.” I shook my head emphatically. “I swear to the Good Lord Almighty, I did not keep a single pill. Temptation did follow me but I fought it off, I did.”

  He nodded his head. Again I wasn’t sure he believed me.

  “Don't do it again.” Thankfully, he walked away.

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief but not too loudly because I didn’t want to risk him hearing me and turning around. Hair clips. How stupid was that? Noka had short blue hair and mine was almost always in a rubber band pony tail.

  I continued down the hall toward room 24, bed B. On the wall were the names of the patients. In bed A lived Marisa McKinley. She was a young gal from Earth who got serious spaceworms while on shore leave from the Excelsior. The worms infested her brain. She was on meds to keep them quiet but it was a nasty bit of business for her. Once a month or so the wo
rms started breeding and biting and Marisa had to be strapped down in isolation for a few days until they quieted again.

  Bed B said Anna with no last name. I flipped through the chart. We still wrote things on paper here, and I saw that she’d been here for nearly eight years. Her diagnosis was mental Space sickness of middle grade severity after coming in with broken legs that were set poorly and three cracked ribs that healed badly. Her legs had to be re-broken and reset. She had nearly a full body cast on her to set her ribs right for the first six months of her stay. She didn’t speak but she was ambulatory and could care for herself. She obeyed instructions if spoken in English. She worked in the laundry washing linens. She would look at you if you said her name, fifty percent of the time. She was estimated to be in her mid to late forties and there was evidence of having given birth within the last fifteen to twenty years. Other than the injuries she came in with, she appeared to be in excellent physical condition for a woman her age with strongly developed leg, arm and abdominal muscles. Some movements had shown evidence of possible training in martial arts. There was no indication in the chart as to why she was on these heavy duty meds, only what her dosage was which was basically enough to keep her semi-comatose.

  I looked around the corridor and since it was empty, I stepped into the room and shut the door. Like most of our rooms, there were two beds separated by a curtain. Each side had a small bureau, a vid and a chair. Bed B had the window. Marisa was sitting in her bed watching a game show on the vid but Anna's bed was empty.

  “Hello,” Marisa said. “Do I know you?”

  She looked normal. It must have been a good day for her.

  “I'm Nurse Caroline,” I said. “Is Anna around?”

  “Anna is working today. She works Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8AM until 4PM. On Sundays, she goes to the dayroom and on the rest of the days she stays here with me.”

  “Okay,” I said and started to back out.

  “Will you stay here and talk to me?” Marisa asked. “I have seen this game show before. It is a rerun. The fat blonde lady wins.”

  “I have to get back to the men's ward,” I replied. “I work over there. I only came to see Anna for a minute.”

  “Is Anna your friend?” Marisa inquired. “She is my friend. She was my friend when I was on the Discovery.”

  I stared at Marisa. “You were on the Discovery?”

  “Only for one tour. I wish I stayed on the Discovery. I wouldn't have worms if I stayed on the Discovery.”

  “When were you on the Discovery? How long ago?”

  “I don't know,” Marisa shrugged.

  “Anna was on the Discovery when you were there?” I came closer to the bed and stared at Marisa's eyes. Behind the whites, I could see wavering lines. I shivered. I hated space worms. It occurred to me that Marisa could be dreaming up all of this.

  “I told you,” she laughed. “Anna was my friend on the Discovery. Except she wasn't called Anna then.”

  “What was she called?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Yes Ma'am.”

  “She was called Yes Ma'am?”

  “Mhm. Oh, I like this show.” Marisa pointed at the vid. “This one they flip all those cards and there is always a surprise underneath. My friends like to watch that. They like the surprises.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Mhm.”

  “I need to go,” I said a little loudly and started to back out. “I'll come back when Anna is here tomorrow.”

  “Ok,” Marisa smiled. “My friends like you. They want you to visit again.”

  “I will,” I tried to smile too as I backed to the door.

  “My friends would like HIM to come visit too,” she sighed wistfully. “But he hasn't come in a very long time.”

  “What?” I turned around and stared at her again. “Who?”

  “HIM,” she repeated. “He came to visit Anna, but of course he doesn't call her that either.”

  “HIM?”

  “Well isn't that what they call him now?” she laughed. “He's so beautiful. Can you see the light that shines around him? I think he's an Angel.”

  “Huh?”

  “He was so sweet and kind.”

  “Him?” I gasped.

  “HIM.” She nodded and laughed at something ridiculous happening on the vid. I thought something more ridiculous was happening in here.

  “Did you talk to him, while he was here?” I asked cautiously.

  “Of course!” she cried. “He always asked how we are and once he even asked where we are.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “We don't know where we are!” Marisa cried. “Now do we?”

  “Neniver?” I said. It was the next morning, and I was bringing him his morning pills with his breakfast. He was sitting on his bed counting his toes. He had twelve. He counted them over and over and over until he was satisfied that all twelve were there.

  “Hi Nurse Caroline. I have twelve toes.”

  “Yes, you do, Neniver. Neniver, how did you get here? Did you get spacesick?”

  “Nope. I have twelve toes, Nurse Caroline.”

  “Your chart says you are spacesick.” I put his tray on the table.

  “I came with Anna. Anna is my friend,” Neniver said. “Yum!”

  “Anna is everybody’s friend,” I mumbled and wondered how I could have lived here for so long and never even heard of her.

  “Anna saved my life,” Neniver informed me, putting jam on his toast very carefully. He spread it all the way to the crust but did not let it spill over.

  “How did she do that?” I asked casually as I straightened his bed.

  “I was full of water. Glub, glub, glub.” He drank his milk.

  “You were in the water? Drowning?”

  “Zoom!” He started to make noises like an engine. A spaceplane engine? His hand was flying through the air with these noises, and then he cried “Splash!” and his hand dove into the table. “Ow! I am full of water, but now I hurt my hand.”

  “Was Anna full of water too?”

  “Nope,” he said, gulping down his eggs. “Anna was broken. But, her hands still worked.”

  “Did she pull you out of the water?”

  “She pulled my hair.” He demonstrated by pulling the hair on the top of his head. “I am full of water.”

  “How did the water come out of you?” I opened his window blinds and looked out at the sunny courtyard.

  “The angel man pushed the water out of me. I am full of water.”

  “That was lucky,” I said.

  “Yep,” he said happily. “I promised Dr. King to take care of Cap'n Katie, but the angel man took care of me.”

  “You did what?” I gasped.

  “I am full of water.”

  “You promised Dr. King…”

  “Dr. King said, ‘Zem, I trust you' but then I am full of water and no more Zem.”

  “Zem? Zem, you were on the Discovery!”

  “Zem was on the Discovery, Nurse Caroline,” Neniver laughed.

  “And you promised Dr. King you'd take care of Captain Katie?”

  Neniver was making sounds like a ship engine again.

  “Is Anna Captain Katie, Zem?”

  “Zem is full of water.”

  “Neniver!” I gasped. “Who is Dr. King?”

  “I have twelve toes.”

  “Yes, you do,” I sighed.

  “I am full of water.”

  I took his empty tray and left the room.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Kira pushed me against the wall.

  “I need to talk to Anna,” I said and tried to push her off. She was a lot stronger than me.

  “You can't, you idiot. Those asshole orderlies have instructions to keep you away from her. Big Doc has figured out what you are doing.”

  “Well what am I doing anyway?” I practically screamed. Big Doc had figured out I wanted to talk to Anna, and he didn’t want me to because he was hiding her? Was there
some giant conspiracy keeping her here? “Who the hell is Anna anyway that you all seem to think this is such a big deal?”

  “I don't know who she is,” Kira snapped and released me. “You tell me.”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her into a linen closet.

  “If I tell you, you have to swear that you won't say anything to anyone and that you'll help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  “Get her out of here!”

  “You are going to break a patient out of here? Are you totally and completely gone?”

  “Listen, Kira,” I hissed. “If we are not part of the Alliance any more, I don't know how we can incarcerate Allied patients unwillingly. Who's paying for them to be here?”

  “How the hell should I know,” Kira said and reached for the door handle. “But somebody is paying Big Doc to keep Anna here, and he's not going to let her go. She's practically a vegetable anyway. Once you get her out of here what do you think you're going to do with her?”

  “She's on Remicol and Catlizone. If she stops taking it, her mind will come back. Then she will tell me what we need to do.”

  “I don't get you, Caroline.” Kira shook her head. “You see her for the first time yesterday even though she has been here forever, and now you think she's, I don't know, Captain Katie maybe?”

  Kira stared at me.

  “You do, don't you? Shit! You think she is Captain Katie. Take a closer look at her, Caroline.”

  “I've talked to Marisa, and I've talked to Neniver. I'm convinced that she is Katie,” I said steadily. “And if I can get her out of here and off the drugs, she will realize it, too.”

  Kira shook her head again and put her hands on her hips. “And if you're right? Then what?”

  “We go to the police. We go to the Imperial Guards. Rehnor is taking us over aren't they?”

  “Yeah, but who knows how quickly.” Kira scrunched her mouth. “Is there money in this?”

  “Money? Are you kidding?” I gasped and then I thought how helpful Kira might be especially since she has access to the Big Doc's office and medical records. We could find out who's been paying him off. We might be able to get the keys to a speeder.