Jeremy Pierson awoke to the soft rays of sun seeping through the canopy overhead. It was a pleasant morning; spring was noticeable in the air. The sounds of birds chirping from somewhere nearby entered his ears.
He spent what must have five minutes simply enjoying the moment, hardly even aware he was alive, before it struck him.
“Where the hell am I?” he whispered into the air.
He gradually came to understand that he was in fact lying on his back.
In truth, he was actually more sprawled upon the ground than simply lying on it, for his arms and legs were aimed in all sorts of odd angles about him. He made the effort to pick up his arms and stretch them out in front of him, but he soon encountered resistance—he succeeded in getting his arms only slightly extended before they collapsed down onto his chest. He noticed a strange tingling sensation in both arms, though it was especially apparent in his left. He assumed at first that his limbs were merely asleep, though he had never experienced it quite so severely. It required several minutes of shaking and poking to gain anything close to normal sensation. During this time, he realized that he had also lost feeling in his legs and, to his shock, even his trunk, buttocks, and face. It seemed as if he were being pricked with a million tiny needles over the surface of his entire body. His movements were awkward and uncoordinated for quite some time, like his mind had forgotten how to control his muscles.
By this time, Jeremy had grown exceedingly confused. He now realized he was lying in a forest. As each moment passed, he became more conscious of the stimuli entering his senses. He soon found himself listening to the birds, rather than merely hearing them. He felt the cool, wet morning on his skin; he breathed in deep and found that he could feel the fresh air of the wilderness filling his lungs.
Jeremy spent nearly a half hour regaining a sense of himself before he summoned the strength to sit up. As he looked around, a single thought overwhelmed his mind: Thirst.
He suddenly realized that he had never been so thirsty in his entire life. His mouth was dry, he felt slow and tired; even thinking was a chore in the midst of his need for water.
He finally made it to his feet after two failed attempts that landed him first on his face and then his knees. He held his breath to listen, and he could hear the faint rustle of moving water.
He lumbered clumsily toward the water, struggling to catch his six-foot frame on each step that he took. He resembled a drunk ambling out of a bar. No one watching the spectacle would have guessed that he had been the starting leftfielder for two of his four years at Myron College. A decent slap-hitter, though not much for power.
The sight of the stream sparked a wave of relief. The water seemed to be moving quickly enough, and it was more clear than not. His thirst prohibited him from caring about the threat of disease. He fell onto his stomach and thrust his face into the cool water, gulping in huge quantities of water.
The sensation of the water surging into his throat calmed him down. Once he had had his fill, he sat up and shook the water from his hair. It was now time to consider his situation. When he put his hands to his face to rub his eyes, he made a puzzling discovery. He felt a fair amount of coarse fur on his chin.
He was not upset about the fact that he had facial hair. He actually sort of liked the idea—it felt full enough—but it was indeed extremely strange. Jeremy was not the type of man who sprouted a carpet overnight. From the feel of his face, he hadn’t shaved in…
How long had it been since he’d shaved?
He thought about the question, and it immediately prompted a frantic series of inquiries in his mind.
How long had he been in this forest?
How had he gotten there?
Why was he there at all?
While mind raced through questions, it was markedly devoid of answers. He could not think of any explanation for his current circumstances.
He stood up. By this time, his brain had become considerably more adept at controlling his muscles; his movements were nearly natural.
He breathed in deeply and examined his surroundings. He had to slow down, approach things logically. He could figure this out; he just needed to organize his thoughts.
He began by making a conscious effort to capture in his mind the most recent event in his memory. He remembered working. He had been at his job at the ECPI, and he was almost positive it had been a Thursday. Yes, it must have been a Thursday, for he had spent the afternoon in one of the weekly mind-numbing “’Progress Conferences.” He recalled walking back to the offices with Lindsey and Roger. Lindsey had been unleashing her wrath on the new zonal expansion proposal as usual, and he had decided to take off early. Had there been a reason? He wasn’t sure. He remembered packing up his briefcase, ducking out the back door, and then…
Nothing.
Okay, he thought to himself, reassured. That’s a start.
He looked at the trees surrounding him. He could not differentiate between the elms, maples, and dogwoods, but he did recognize that they were all deciduous. In addition, the forest was not particularly dense.
Alright, he thought. Maybe I’m not too far from Dyson.
Jeremy spent a decent amount of his free time outdoors, so he easily recognized the Virginia woods that surrounded his hometown.
He looked down at his attire and saw that he was wearing his work clothes, though he was missing his tie. They were stained and wrinkled, and he thought that he might even have noticed mildew on the side of his dress shirt. He grimaced as the stench of stale urine filled his nostrils. He hoped for a brief moment that the odor originated elsewhere but quickly resigned himself to the fact that his clothes were the source.
He felt his back pocket and noticed that he still had his wallet, luckily. The absence of his cell phone from its usual spot in his shirt pocket, however, was particularly conspicuous.
“Oh Shit!” he shouted suddenly, and he dropped into a panic. He began sprinting in no direction in particular, hoping to run into a road. For whatever reason, the fact that the day after a Thursday is another work day had escaped him until now. He did not have any inkling of what time it could be, but he knew that he must be very late by now.
He ran for a few hundred yards before slowing to a stop. He was not winded; rather, he merely stopped as a means of forcing himself to get a grip on the situation once again. Panic would not help him out here. He could not see the sun directly but knew from the brightness that it must be at least late morning. He would need to shower and change clothes before going to work—he would never make it by any reasonable hour.
In all likelihood, he figured, they would just assume he was taking a day off. They might reprimand him for not mentioning it ahead of time, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, given his stellar track record at the ECPI so far. That was why he had been so careful to build his reputation: in case he needed it. In the event of an emergency, he wanted to be ready. Jeremy Pierson was not the kind of man who often found himself ill-prepared.
He began walking at a calm yet brisk pace in hopes of happening upon a road, a building, or anything that resembled civilization. He was headed northward; he knew this after checking the trees for the side on which moss was growing. North did not help much, considering Dyson was almost uniformly surrounded by forest, but he felt he had more control if he was travelling in a known direction.
After several miles with no real change in his environment, he was growing increasingly incredulous that he had not happened upon anything familiar. However, even after covering all of that distance, he still felt no fatigue. Jeremy was certainly not out-of-shape, exercising almost daily, but this level of fitness still puzzled him. While he should have required a respite after miles of backcountry hiking in his business-casual attire, his body actually seemed to be growing stronger as he walked. His large frame seemed unusually light and dynamic. It was peculiar—the more work performed by his body, the more invigorated he felt, like a car battery being charged by the running of the engine.
As he walked, he analyzed the positives of his situation. For better or worse, he had a three-day weekend, which was certainly far from upsetting. He was rather glad to escape the ECPI—the East Coast Preservation Initiative—for a little while. He found the work to be annoying, irrelevant, and highly bureaucratic. Especially now, after the recent announcement of the new zonal expansion, his true services involving the technical aspects would not be needed for quite awhile. Rather, all the employees, regardless of their actual specialties, would be divided into “Eco-Feasibility Committees” for weeks of brainstorming, strategizing, and risk-stratification. At least a month with zero productivity—same as last year. When he had signed on with the ECPI as a software engineer fresh out of Myron, the job appeared slightly more glamorous. He was not ashamed to admit that he had looked for a job with its decent salary and excellent benefits, and those provided by this one seemed almost exorbitant. He also thought he could satiate his idealistic side by saving some wetlands. That was one perk, he had come to discover, which would never come to pass. He frequently wondered how the ECPI expected to achieve anything at all.
Soon, after what felt like five miles, he caught a glimpse of a break in the trees. As he approached the clearing he could see the dull gray strip of a road in the sun; its size indicated that it might in fact be a small highway. His pace quickened, and he soon found himself standing upon a yellow dash in the middle of the road. He hadn’t the slightest idea which highway he was on, for this stretch of it seemed to be identical to dozens he had seen before in the area.
He took yet another deep breath, pleased with his accomplishment of finding civilization, and waited for someone to drive past. The entire morning had been surreal in every way, even in some that he could not precisely isolate. His situation, even if it was a result of last night’s drunken stupor, was absolutely bizarre. The beard, the tingling, the distance from any road—numerous pieces to a puzzle for which he had no picture.
Now, however, he was a mere hitchhike away from regaining normalcy.
To his relief, it was not long before he was watching a little red Toyota Prius negotiate a curve a half-mile up the road. Jeremy straightened his posture, adjusted his raggedy shirt as best he could, and immediately summoned the most genial expression possible. Despite his clothes and unshaven face, he wanted the driver to know that he wasn’t typically a roadside mooch.
The Prius slowed to a roll a few yards in front of Jeremy and proceeded cautiously. The passenger-side window rolled down, revealing a young face partially hidden by shaggy hair.
“If you got car trouble, you’re heading the wrong way,” the kid said with a peaceful grin through the window. “Nothing back this way for ten miles.”
“No, not exactly,” said Jeremy. “I had a few too many last night, found myself here. No car—I’m just stranded. Any chance you’re looking to do your good deed for the day?”
The kid chuckled. “Well, I don’t have much choice. You don’t exactly look like you’re ready for the backcountry. Where you trying to go?”
“Dyson, ideally. But I am up for anything that gets me out of the woods,” he said.
“I can get you to Dyson. We’re pretty close.”
Jeremy opened the door with a sigh of relief and stepped into the car. As he sat down, he leaned forward just enough as to allow the back of his shirt to become visible.
“My God, man—what the hell happened to you?” the kid said frantically, his eyes wide. “Why didn’t you say you needed to get to the hospital? I think the one in Dyson is closest, but it’s a big town and I might have taken—”
“What do you mean? No hospital—what’re you talking about?” Jeremy asked in disbelief.
“Have you seen that? Is that—did you get stabbed?” said the kid, point to Jeremy’s back.
Jeremy pulled his shirt forward at the shoulder so he could manage a peak at his back. As he strained his neck, he saw red. There, covering as much as he could see of the back of his white shirt was a deep red stain, presumably blood. Jeremy went slightly pale. He had never had a particularly stern stomach when it came to needles and blood.
He quickly pulled off his shirt to look at it. The blood stain reached up to the collar and more than half the way down the back. It was a bit more widespread on the left side than the right. The stain was slightly faded, and mixed with the brown from the dirt he had been laying on. But there was no mistaking the blood, or the other evidence.
Staring up at him from the shirt were two small, circular breaks in the red, about four inches apart. Both appeared to be just below the level of his shoulder blades, to the left of his spine.
His swift, engineering brain quickly swam through the possible causes of the holes. There were precious few options, and only one choice stood out from the rest as likely. But the emotional seat of his brain instantly refused to accept it. He literally could not force himself to admit the truth he knew about what had happened to him.
The shaggy-haired kid stared at his back with a look that simultaneously expressed both confusion and awe. Jeremy arched his back, but he felt nothing. No pain. The bullet holes in his back that he could not remember caused him no pain.
***
At half-past six on an early April day, a striking young man entered a typical coffee house on the outskirts of Washington D.C. It was Thursday, and the man carried a briefcase slung on his shoulder.
He walked in a very straight trajectory directly to the end of the line, which already contained three persons.
It is difficult to determine how these things get started, but everyone can recognize when public establishments carry certain universal moods on certain days that unconsciously infect everyone in the room. Sometimes a store can feel short-tempered or a restaurant jubilant. On this Thursday, for whatever reason, this coffee shop held a group of people, employees and customers alike, who felt generally calm and good-natured, and the young man with the briefcase was not exempt from this attitude.
The young man, though not considerably tall, stood with an impressive posture—shoulders locked in flexion and face pointed straight ahead, not down. He rubbed his clean-shaven chin between his thumb and forefinger as he studied the menu. A woman who had stood beside him since he entered suddenly pulled a billfold from her hand bag triumphantly and became aware of her surroundings. Noticing that she was standing out of the clearly formed line, she moved to the end, behind the young man.
But the young man would have none of it. He promptly took a break from his chin-massaging to bow his head slightly, step back away from the line, and form a subtle motion with his hand that distinctly conveyed the message, “After you!”
The recipient of the tiny kindness, an eternally frazzled though enthusiastic older woman, smiled graciously, expressing her thanks. At once, every member of that small coffee house community simultaneously took an appreciative view of this mildly chivalrous young man by the name of Carter Slade.
The barista, especially, seemed to glance towards Slade far more often than necessary during his brief five minutes in line. Her attention to him was no doubt partially motivated by his behavior, but the chances are that he would have secured it with his appearance alone. The young man was sharply dressed, wearing a black turtleneck sweater that served to enhance his dark and handsome persona. His dark brown hair was cut short and styled into a crisp, perfect side-part; the thin black frames of his glasses formed small rectangles on either side of his small, upturned nose.
He had a prominent, square jaw that seemed to be constantly clenched, as well as small, dark, perpetually squinting eyes. The overall effect was one of understanding, though not necessarily concentration.
Though they would never admit to it, people who knew Slade occasionally had to suppress the sneaking suspicion that he possessed some sort of bizarre precognitive ability. There seemed to be no period of time at all between the moment when his senses perceived a new situation and the moment when it had been processed by his mind. They knew this to be preposterous, but they could not ignore the fact that they had no idea what Slade would look like if he were surprised or startled. No one could recall such a moment.
As he approached the register, the barista smiled at him expectantly; she was an innocent and pretty girl, hardly above twenty years old. The piercing through her eyebrow merely enhanced the image of traditional suburban naïveté, also evidenced by unnaturally tanned skin and the stripes of blonde in her brown hair. Her appearance was certainly not unique, but there was a sweetness in the way she earnestly dove into the accepted idea of style.
“So, you got it figured out?” she asked.
“I suppose I do,” Slade responded in a smooth, clear voice. “So many versions of roasted beans, and I am going to be so very plain. I cannot think of anything better than a simple cup of coffee, obsidian black, from some foreign place. And I guess I will take that as a large, or whatever word you use for large here.”
He looked from the menu toward the little barista as he finished speaking, and allowed the semblance of a grin to creep onto his face, though his eyes remained as narrow as ever.
“I’m a little surprised,” the girl flirted, cocking her head slightly to the side, “I expected something a bit more exciting.”
“I am certainly open to these possibilities. What are my spicy options?”
“There’s not a whole lot to do for regular coffee. I could always serve it extra hot?”
“Perfect—I didn’t even realize that was an option. I will take all the heat I can get.”
Within moments, Slade was retrieving a steaming cup from the girl, carefully brushing the back of her fingertips with his hand as he took it. With a last glance across at her and the slightest raising of a single eyebrow, he walked straight back to the door
Slade slid into a silver Lexus and began a meandering drive through the nearby area, carefully surveying the landscape. On his short trip, he passed by two well-kept city parks, including one with a nice, scenic pond. He passed a dozen benches that would have provided an excellent view of the soon-setting sun. He rolled by all of these with hardly a second look and then stopped in an unquestionably rough neighborhood. He parked his car on a side street.
Walking down Hinderlaag Lane, Slade took notice of a brick building, formerly apartments, covered in graffiti, its windows boarded. He nodded favorably. Signs in a small shop to his right offered bail bonds through barred windows. Across the street sat an old, gray, abandoned factory. Surrounded by a razor wire fence, it looked as though it was long dead, even considering the traditionally lifeless appearance of a functioning factory. The smoke that once billowed from the thick pipes on the roof seemed to have solidified on the walls pavement inside the fence, the razor-wire keeping it in as much as locking the looters out.
Slade sat down on a hard metal bench in front of the fence, carefully placing his briefcase and steaming coffee on either side of him. He pulled a shiny laptop from the case and set it on top, in plain sight to anyone who might happen past.
The bench was about twenty yards off the street, enough to create a sense of privacy. He took in a deep breath of the stale city air. The smile forming on his face clearly marked his satisfaction with the seemingly undesirable scene. A tinge of night was just beginning to seep into the sky above him. After idly looking back and forth for a couple of minutes, he removed a copy of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller from his briefcase and began to read.
One could imagine that he took some sort of ironic pleasure from the decrepit cityscape. Perhaps he prided himself on an ability to find the hidden beauty in any situation, as so many young dreamers do. In his defense, the moment was indeed poetic: the forlorn and forgotten cemetery of hope, the sheer need of the place, be it pure or otherwise.
Regardless of the reason, Slade flowed through numerous pages, marking them occasionally with his non-mechanical #2, which was sharpened to a needle. He sat peacefully until a phone call wrecked his silence.
The short conversation ended with Slade saying, “Certainly. I am prepared to give a thorough explanation of the recent events during our meeting tomorrow. As far as the immediate crisis, you can assume it will be resolved by no tomorrow… No, I don’t mind the interruption; it seems the fish are not biting today.”
Slade packed his briefcase and stood up with a sigh. Full night had almost fallen anyway, so the words on the pages were blurred at best. On his way back to the car, he dropped the coffee into the garbage without so much as a taste.
***
Darren Lejeune floated effortlessly along the surface, taking long, rhythmic breaths through his snorkel. He allowed his body to relax, except for the slow movement of the flippers that kept him afloat. His eyes scanned the vibrant displays of color on the ocean floor. His memory was filled with scenes similar to the one he currently enjoyed; he had, in fact, snorkeled this exact reef numerous times before.
Even so, he felt as if he was witnessing something entirely new. Darren had learned to treat every snorkeling session as a moment of discovery, because each one was exactly that. The brightly colored organisms that attracted his attention were more than just the paint of a picture, they were highly trained competitors. Their daily battles for survival resulted in territories won and lost, creating a distinct landscape each new day. Most of the subtle differences merely required a discerning eye, which Darren had acquired long ago. He noticed when starfish gathered in new areas, he could tell when a species of fish was beginning to take control of an environment, and he instinctively kept track of which coral colonies happened to be winning the wars that they were always waging with one another.
The dynamic ecosystem that currently surrounded him was more than his hobby; it was the passion around which he had constructed his career. The ocean’s waters hid untold layers of complexity and intricacy; after all these years it still bewildered him. He enjoyed few things as much as a thorough bewilderment, so he could often be found on the surface waters of the Gulf in Southern Florida. His snorkeling was a perfect escape from his busy world, and it gave him some of the exercise he knew he needed. He allowed himself another hundred yards before heading back to shore.
He knew Janet would soon be waiting on the quesadillas—his specialty—that he had promised to make for dinner, and he wanted to watch the Marlins game with Devin. It was the first night in a week that he had been able to escape his office at the university before 7:30, so he felt he owed a greater debt to his family than the ocean.
Back on shore, he threw a towel on the seat of his forest green Ford Explorer and headed home. He negotiated the side streets that separated his house from the ocean. Each mile that he traveled reminded him of the academic life he chose, filled with the intangible benefits of spreading knowledge to youth rather than the more lucrative, and tangible, benefits of the futures chosen by many of his college classmates. Some had chosen medicine and others decided on research fellowships at private industry institutions while he went with the nobility of teaching ecology and microbiology at Coconut Grove University. Of course, he knew long in advance that his professorship at a small university would prohibit any thought of ocean-front property, and it was merely a minor annoyance for him. He was certainly content with the decisions that had brought him to his current place in life.
He found Janet sitting in their dining room staring intently at a neatly folded newspaper. She held a pen in her right hand.
“Ok, six letters, second letter is a ‘V,’” she said without looking up. “Clue is ‘Required by law, naturally?’”
Darren chuckled. “Lovely to see you, too,” he said. Walking over to where she sat, he gave her a quick kiss.
She finally looked up, smiling. “It is indeed—and before six no less! I thought I might have to put my Mexican craving on hold. Weren’t you planning to do some snorkeling after work?”
“Was, and did,” said Darren. He walked into the kitchen and removed the skillet from the cupboard. “I cut it short. In and out in under an hour.”
“I have to admit, I am flabbergasted,” she said, adding a dash of playful sarcasm. “Why would you leave the ocean in favor of your home?”
“Fewer sharks,” he said. He reached into the refrigerator for the chicken. “Where are the rest of us?”
“Erin went over to Tanya’s house after school,” Janet said. She finally looked down at her crossword puzzle once again. “She’ll be home after dinner. And Devin is watching TV downstairs. He wanted me to remind you that the game starts at 6:30. Oh, and you should check the machine—I think Beth called. Something about work?”
“It’s probably another consult. Some kid probably rolled around in some fire coral again; now his parents think he’ll swell up and die,” said Darren. Beth was an old friend from college, a physician. She was one of the classmates that came to mind as he passed through the neighborhoods of mansions on the way home from the ocean.
“And they want ‘evolve,’ but that’s pretty gutsy to call it a law. You should write a letter,” he said as he walked to the phone in the den. He heard a cry of discovery from the dining room.
He pushed the blinking button on the answering machine. As usual, bluntness and immediacy saturated Beth’s voice.
“Darren, it’s Beth. It’s Tuesday afternoon, about 3:30. I have some questions. We encountered a particularly frustrating issue, and we would really appreciate your input. Call me when you get a chance. Hope things are well.”
Sighing, he picked up the phone and dialed. Beth’s demeanor stressed him; he often felt pressured to produce answers that lay uncomfortably beyond the barriers of his expertise.
“Great to hear from you, Darren. How are things?”
“Likewise, Beth. And excellent, no complaints,” he said.
“Terrific. We really should get the families together again soon. The kids have a great time. And how’s Janet?”
***
Jeremy stood in front of the door to his apartment, trying to think of a less robust way of gaining entrance. He failed, so he pulled his knee up towards his chest and then sent his boot into the door just beside the knob. A tinge of pleasure washed over him as he watched pieces of the frame fly into the room.
While he expected to get it open, he was a little surprised to find that he not only splintered the frame but also pulled the top hinge nearly out of the door.
“Shoddy construction,” he muttered, but he was glad that he found out before any potential burglars.
He was slightly nervous that one of his neighbors would investigate the loud crash. He decided, however, that the odds of people actually becoming curious to the point of involving themselves in others’ affairs was very low. For once, he was thankful that the term “neighbor” had been reduced to indicate mere proximity, leaving out any of its previous notion of social interaction.
Jeremy stood leaning against the sink in his kitchen. After rubbing his eyes thoroughly, he looked down at the pot which he had left to soak whenever he had been here last. A yellowish film rested on the surface of the water, thickest near the walls of the pot. It smelled awful.
Not wanting to give away too much, Jeremy had been very careful with his words when he spoke with the driver of the Prius. He had assured the boy that the wounds were much older and less painful than they appeared, but in truth, Jeremy had no clue as to their age. The kid had revealed that today was Thursday, but he hadn’t mentioned the date. Trying not to reveal his confusion, Jeremy hadn’t asked.
Unfortunately, he was now becoming ever more certain that his last day at work had also been a Thursday. He suspected heavily that his loss of memory covered an entire week—and the yellow slime certainly corroborated the theory.
He wanted to reign in his circumstances and establish control. He went to his bathroom and, with some effort, yanked off the tiny tee shirt the kid had given him. The mirror showed him his wounds in all of their unspectacular normalcy. They were not bleeding or infected. There were no bits of jagged flesh hanging near the holes, just smooth skin surrounding small punctures. They looked absurdly healthy.
A thoroughly practical man, Jeremy had long ago decided to forgo a landline since he depended almost entirely on his cell. This was the first time he ever reconsidered the decision. Grabbing a new shirt from his closet, he left the apartment. He carefully positioned the door against the busted hinges in a feeble attempt to give the appearance of security. It was time to go to the hospital. He could call his friends from there, as well all of the other tedious activities that needed to be done. He could take care of everything in due time. Now, however, he needed to figure out what was happening to his body. He wasn’t even sure he could classify himself as “injured” at the moment, but he was fairly certain that he had been shot. That seemed to be worthy of a trip to the emergency room.
***
The electronic doors at the entrance to Oswald H. Adams Community Hospital slid open submissively at the approach of Carter Slade. An embarrassed, childlike grin emerged on his face as he nodded his way past the receptionist. The smile was useful—it prevented any possible memory of him as a suspicious character from forming in the gray-haired greeter’s mind—but its origins were genuine, at least in part, for his fingers coiled around a most hypocritical vial in his pocket. Swirling and sloshing inside the tiny round bottle were trillions of bacteria that would unknowingly yet predictably act out his devious will.
Bacteria, the very beginning of life itself, would now call death upon a man. The progenitors set to extinguish, the start causes the finish. Yes brings no.
It was this hypocrisy that amused him so visibly. Like a fish drowning in water, or something like that. Slade couldn’t say for sure; he only knew that he liked it.
Immediately upon passing the receptionist, his purposeful feet set about finding his target, though he was armed only with the simple fact that it lay in bed 315-B. The hallway was marked well enough—he just had to be sure that no one else realized he was reading the signs for the first time. Walking with purpose, of course, could get a man access to anywhere. A saying echoed in his mind, though he was not sure exactly where he heard it first: “Almost no one will stop a guy with a hard hat and a clipboard.” And it held true now as well. Even without the headgear and clipboard, his confidence carried him past all of the doctors, nurses, and security personnel. His fingers continued to roll the ironic vial.
Paying careful attention to the periphery of his vision—always a surprisingly difficult task, he thought—Slade cruised into 315-B with the knowledge that no one had seen him enter. It was late evening, that sleepy period of twilight when the members of the hospital staff were either winding down their busy day or just beginning to summon the energy for their long night. Drawing the curtain behind him, Slade now had some privacy with the man he had come to see.
In the bed before him, Albert Roth breathed slowly and shallowly through aided by the plastic pipe sticking out of his throat, known as a endotracheal tube in medical jargon. They were alone—not everyone received a private room at Oswald, but Roth was no average patient. He defied, even denied, death by sepsis. He perplexed infectious disease specialists and earned a spot in the memory of overworked internists. He was special.
Roth remained in the semi-coma that had first engulfed his consciousness over a week prior. The pallorous skin of his face and arms seemed almost green. His hair looked sparse, and his skin seemed somehow too tight and too loose simultaneously. Yet despite the pitiable condition, he was alive. The unknown bug that had permeated his system had not yet given him death.
Slade allowed himself only a few seconds to appreciate Roth’s pathetic impersonation of being alive before beginning his work. After a final quick glance to the hall, he pulled the curtain. He retrieved a capped 5-cc syringe from his right pocket. His bottom three fingers held the syringe to his palm while the thumb and forefinger nimbly removed the purple plastic cap. He jammed the diabolical vial upside down onto the exposed needle of the syringe with his left hand. The syringe drank up the bacterial stew as he pulled the plunger down. Once it was filled, he removed the needle from the syringe and grasped the IV tubing that ran from a bag of fluid to a catheter in Roth’s right shoulder. The catheter, Slade knew, coursed through the skin into the subclavian vein and then on into the vena cava, the body’s largest vein. Slade found the place on the IV tubing used for injecting medicines and screwed the syringe into the system. He neither smiled nor frowned as he discharged the contents of the syringe into the IV.
In under a minute, Slade was stepping into the elevator, the hypnotic beeps and blinks of the hospital equipment far behind him. A rotund nurse in her early fifties regarded him as he entered. Her jolliness was evident.
“Headed to one?” she asked, pointing at the buttons.
“Guilty!” answered Slade, and he shot her an awkwardly charming smile.