Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  Gray didn’t have an answer for David.

  “For the record, Mr. President, given how this seems to be playing out and how you are repaying my efforts, you should know that was the last time you’ll ever get anything out of me ever again, professionally or personally. Are we clear? Did you hear me? You should listen very carefully, Mr. President. Today was the last time you are likely to ever get anything out of me.” David deliberately used Gray’s title and not his name.

  “David, please.”

  “Mr. President, I would appreciate it if you used my title, since it might remind you that I’ve been through medical school. I earned that title and you should have had some respect for it, since you’ve watched me earn it. And besides, you’re not acting like my husband. My husband would never do something like this to me.”

  “David, it’s me. I told you I was overruled on this.”

  “I don’t know who you are anymore, Mr. President.”

  “David, I said I was sorry. There’s nothing more I can say. Why don’t we talk again in the morning?”

  “Mr. President, go fuck yourself,” David said as he slammed the phone down, hoping that Gray got the answer to his question.

  All of the Secret Service agents were pros at being present without intruding. That night there was only the one agent onboard with him and David knew he’d heard everything that had just been said. “I’m sorry, David.”

  “Thanks,” David said softly.

  The pilot had kept the engine on their chopper running in order to keep airflow going and to cool the air on the hot summer night. He’d also kept the door to the front of the aircraft closed. David wondered how much fuel one of these birds held and how long it could keep running as it was. He knew they were designed for short hops and not for long, multihour flights, and they’d already had a longer trip than the usual commute.

  Around the two-hour point, the phone buzzed. Since he was closer, David grabbed it. “Yes?” he asked, his fatigue obvious in his voice.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Gray spoke. “Any progress?”

  “No. We are still sitting on the helicopter.” Neither of them spoke for a moment. David had a sudden realization that he decided to share with Gray. “I did not realize that helicopters carried enough fuel to be able to run continuously for such an extended period of time. I’m truly impressed. Ours has been running for hours now between flight time and now hours spent here on the ground. I’m certainly glad it does have such a large fuel capacity since I’m assuming that when the fuel runs out, the engine stops, air conditioning stops, communications stop, and the lights go out. Everything stops.”

  “I’ve just spoken with the man in charge and he said they are working as fast as possible, but they’re still waiting for some important quarantine air-handling equipment to arrive. I’m so sorry that you have to wait so long. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way at all. I’m so sorry.”

  “Enough. Stop this insanity and let me come home. We are not infectious.” David hated the begging even he could hear in his own voice. He hated to show any weakness. “We have not been exposed to anything.”

  Gray ignored David’s statement. “I’ll call them back right now about the fuel.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Gray called back a couple of minutes later. Before Gray even spoke, David could tell from the way he started with a deep sigh that the news he had was not good. “The pilot reports that he has enough fuel to keep running for another eighteen minutes at the outside. I’ve ordered refueling, but there is nothing available at your location, so it has to be flown in. They’re working as fast as possible, David.” Gray’s voice had a sadness that nearly overwhelmed David. Had he not been so mad at Gray, he would have been concerned.

  “They really are,” Gray continued, “but it doesn’t sound like they’ll get it there before you run out. I can’t believe this is happening. It wasn’t supposed to work this way. The pilot—somebody—goddamn it! Somebody should have said something to me. We could have…. Fuck.” Gray was angry, and David appreciated that his husband was finally as upset about something as he was.

  “These are the people you are trusting,” David said very softly. “These are the people you’ve surrounded yourself with. These are the people you hire and fire. I’ve got to say, your experts have created one gigantic fucked-up mess. Thanks again for putting me into the middle of that mess. I’m glad this is the last time I’ll ever have to deal with something like this.”

  “You sound exhausted,” Gray commented.

  “Now why would I sound that way?”

  “Got another call, babe,” Gray told him as he quickly disconnected.

  The original estimate of two hours turned into a little over four hours, which didn’t surprise David. The chopper ran out of fuel right on schedule, shutting down and throwing them into the dark. With the engine out, there was no air conditioning and no power for anything else like telephone communications.

  It was just before dawn, but the air outside was already hot and laced with humidity, pushing inside their small metal box quickly. In short order both David and his agent were dripping with sweat. With no power, the communications onboard went offline as well.

  By the four-hour point, David was just about to go out of his mind with boredom. The cabin wasn’t set up for sleeping so there was no place to stretch out and try to get comfortable. He usually had his iPad with him to read, but that night he didn’t, so he had none of his reading or puzzles or games to play.

  Both David and his agent jumped with surprise when they heard a loud banging at the cabin door. His agent was out of his seat like a shot to put himself between David and the door.

  “Stay behind me,” the agent ordered.

  With his weapon drawn, the agent opened the door. With his agent in the lead, gun at the ready, David and his shadow stood in the open doorway, trying to take in the view before them. There were a lot of people arrayed in front of them, spaced out about one person every five feet. Each was fully outfitted in a hazmat suit.

  “My God,” David said at the sight of so very many people. “Are we expecting company? This can’t be just for us.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  David pulled out his cell phone and grabbed a number of pictures, immediately sending them to Gray. What had caught his attention was simple: in addition to a large number of people in hazmat suits, twenty feet or so behind all of the suited figures stood another line, all military men and women, wearing face masks and surgical gloves, and all holding rifles at the ready.

  “Gentlemen, please follow me,” one of the hazmat-suited people instructed.

  Pausing to try to take in the sight that greeted them, David said to his agent, “I’ve never felt so much like a criminal as I do right now.”

  David’s delay clearly wasn’t popular with the lead person.

  “Sir, I really must insist. You must move forward immediately.”

  David looked at the person, but didn’t move or say a word, returning instead to sending his photos as he’d been doing. A moment later when he spoke, in a loud and clear voice, he informed the person, “You kept us waiting more than four hours, so now you can wait a couple of minutes for me. I’ll go when I’m finished and I’m not finished yet. And with you interrupting me, it will only take me longer.”

  Several of the soldiers from the second tier of personnel left formation and started to advance on them, which only made David more stubborn. He snapped a picture of the soldiers closing in on his position with their rifles at the ready.

  David pressed the speed dial for the White House, silently praying that his phone would be able to find a signal wherever they were. Fortunately it worked and when he had Gray on the line he put him on speakerphone and said, “Gray, whoever you’ve got in charge out here is about to have us shot, so I thought I should call you to say good-bye in case I don’t survive this. I’ve just sent you a bunch of pictures. Take a look, keep listening. You know, if yo
u wanted to get rid of me, you didn’t have to have me flown to a remote location in the middle of the night and have me shot. You could have just talked to me. I may be about to die. I love you, although tonight I don’t really know why.”

  David heard some angry shouts through the speaker of the phone, but he couldn’t make out what was being said or who it was directed to. All David was aware of were the soldiers advancing on their position with their very large weapons and his agent shoving him backward out of the direct line of fire. Whatever was said back at the White House was apparently the right thing to the correct person. Orders reached David’s location quickly and a soldier obviously in charge shouted loudly, “Stand down! Stand down! Return to assigned positions and do not move.”

  Rifles that had been raised were suddenly lowered and the soldiers returned to their previous locations.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” David said. “You still trusting those same people?” David asked. When Gray didn’t respond, he said, “I’ve just sent you a bunch of photos so you can see the level of overkill at work out here. You’d almost think that two exhausted men were going to stage a coup or something. I’ve never felt like such a criminal as you’ve made me feel tonight.

  “For a man who works nonstop, you really don’t have much of a clue about what is being carried out in your name, do you? You really need to start listening to different people, or better yet, getting those people around you to listen to you. And, of course, there’s the issue of you listening to me, but we’ll talk about that later, if and when we are face-to-face.”

  “What do you mean?” Gray asked hesitantly.

  “I need to get going, Gray. I’ve got to go see what special experience you’ve got prepared for us next. Have a great day,” David said sarcastically. “One of us should, and I know it’s not going to be me. Now I need to go or I’m going to be tempted to tell you to go fuck yourself again,” he added just before he disconnected their call.

  One person after another again started gesturing toward the direction in which they should proceed. This time David and his agent moved where they were guided. As they walked, slowly, David’s agent leaned over to him and whispered, “You, my friend have some giant boulders between your legs. No offense.”

  “Why would I be offended by that?” David asked with a smile.

  Inside the first of what looked like a series of tents, they were greeted by a male-sounding voice—it was impossible to tell through the hazmat suits. “Gentlemen, please disrobe, placing everything you have on, everything that’s been in contact with you, into these plastic hazardous-waste bags.”

  They were each given such a bag, into which they placed their clothing, but David was reluctant to part with his cell phone and the agent refused to part with his weapon. They had a total impasse because the agent refused to proceed without his weapon and the medical personnel insisted it had to be turned over. In the end they compromised by giving the agent a new weapon. Once that was in his hands, he relinquished his prior weapon.

  David was surprised to see another man was joining them. That is, another man not enclosed in a hazmat suit. Looking beyond unhappy, the man was sputtering and swearing at them, at the world, at anything he could think of. David looked at his agent, who whispered, “The pilot who flew us up here.”

  The man did not look happy as he stripped off his clothes. Perhaps it was the way he removed each article and threw it across the tent. Before he dropped his briefs to his feet he scowled at David. The man was definitely not happy, and David’s guess was that there were multiple levels to his unhappiness, one of them being that he was about to be locked into close quarters with a gay man.

  “What are you doing here?” David asked.

  “I’ve been quarantined with you.”

  “Why? There’s no need for that any more than there’s need for us to be here.”

  “I’ve been breathing the same air you were since we lost power. You could have passed something to me, so now I’m not safe.”

  “That’s total bullshit,” David said. He didn’t try further conversation since the pilot was clearly pissed and David talking seemed to make him the focus of the guy’s bad attitude. The three of them went through the same type of process David and his agent had gone through before leaving to fly home. They were sprayed, they were scrubbed, they were sprayed again, they were scrubbed again. They were dried in a massive blow-dryer and then asked to walk through a long tent lined with a series of blue lights.

  They finally reached the end of the line, turned to the right, and entered a new tent. Inside were three beds, an old wooden picnic table, and a couple of chairs and not much else.

  “These will be your quarters for the duration of your quarantine,” they heard a male voice address them over a speaker. “You’ll find clean hospital scrubs on each bed. Please put them on and make yourselves comfortable. You’re probably all exhausted and would like to sleep. We’ll be dimming the lights to allow you to get some sleep.”

  “This is what the President called first-class treatment?” David muttered snarkily. “I guess this is a day full of disappointments.” Had his cell phone not been taken away, he would have taken some more photos for Gray.

  Since he’d been up and going for nearly twenty-four hours straight, David crawled onto one of the beds and was asleep in no time at all.

  Chapter 14—Twenty-One Days in July

  THE FIRST morning of their quarantine, a bubble person, as David called them, came in and gave each man a tablet computer with wireless Internet access and software for videoconferencing with family and friends, sending e-mails, or texting. The other two men in quarantine with him both started to use their tablets to connect with family and friends. He didn’t listen to their conversations, but he heard them talking with whoever was important in their lives.

  David was still angry at the way things had turned out, so when the tablet computer started to beep to alert him to an incoming call, he ignored it. Only one person would know how to reach him via computer, and he was not in the mood to talk to that particular person yet. His anger toward Gray had not lessened overnight. If anything, his anger had intensified. He found his muscles clenching anytime he so much as thought of Gray or heard him mentioned by one of his tent-mates. David muted the alert for incoming calls but noticed nonetheless when the screen on the device lit up repeatedly that day.

  When David hadn’t answered his calls, Gray sent a message to him via the medical staff.

  “Sir, the President has been trying to reach you.”

  “Good for him,” David said nonchalantly.

  “Sir, he asked that I check to see if you needed a replacement iPad. If yours is not working properly, he wants us to get you a new device immediately.”

  “No,” he told the bubble person who came bearing that message. “It seems to be working just fine.”

  “Okay,” the bubble person said hesitantly. “Have you been getting alerts that he’s trying to reach you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But is the device not connecting?” she tried again, seeming to be grasping at possible answers.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried it. I see no reason to try right now. I have no interest in talking with the man.”

  “What should I tell him when he calls back?”

  “I don’t care,” David said. “You can tell him he doesn’t want to talk with me right now. But I’m sure he won’t trust my assessment. You can tell him to go fuck himself. How about that?”

  “I’m not saying that, sir. He calls here frequently.”

  “Really?” David said without revealing any emotion. “I’m surprised.”

  “No. He wants constant updates on the status of all three of you. He’s very worried for you.”

  “Hasn’t he ever heard of doctor-patient confidentiality?” David asked snarkily. “Thanks for letting me know he called,” David told her noncommittally. “And I hope that no one is releasing any confidential information to him or
anyone else without my authorization. Any such releases are clear violation of HIPAA standards. Please remind all of your colleagues of that, since they seem to have forgotten. Also remind them that I have not signed any release forms that permit them to share confidential health-care information with anyone, and if I find that anyone has violated that standard, I will file ethics charges against them with the appropriate medical board.”

  “But what should I tell the President?” she asked again, sounding a bit more anxious.

  “Tell him I’m busy and I’ll talk when….” What words to use? “I’m less busy.”

  “He’s not going to like that, sir.”

  “I could care less what he thinks anymore, and you can tell him that” was all David had to say on that subject.

  The bubble person gave up and walked away slowly, looking back at him repeatedly, as if unable to believe what he had told her.

  SINCE HE had been avoiding Gray’s calls up to that point, David wasn’t surprised when several times throughout that first morning, one of the bubble people brought him messages to call home. David waited a couple of hours before initiating a video link to Gray.

  “David!” Gray said when he saw his husband’s face appear on the screen.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” David said neutrally. He used his shirt to wipe the perspiration from his face.

  “Have you been working out?” Gray asked.

  “Now just where the fuck would I do that?” David snapped. “And in this heat? Hardly. I nearly passed out from heat exhaustion the one time I tried that.”

  “What do you mean?” Gray asked.

  “What do I mean? Oh, let me see. How to put this? Let’s see. How about, your ‘first-class accommodations’ suck dead squirrel tit? How’s that?”

  “What’s wrong?” Gray asked, looking worried and confused.

  “Do you remember telling me that we’d be given first-class accommodations? Do you remember describing my imprisonment in those terms?”