<><><><>
Very sneaky-like, Ellen stood to the side of the double doors, peeking in her head and jumping back. She smiled when she saw the door open and Dean poke his head through. “You got it Dean?” she whispered.
Dean looked up and down the hall then stepped out. “Got it. Here.” He handed it to her. “Now hurry.”
Ellen held it tightly, running down the hall to the examining room, nearly sliding as she made it to the table. “Shut the door.”
Dean stood by the door’s window, keeping watch. “Just hurry up before they miss him.”
“I am. I am.” Ellen uncovered the blanket exposing a tiny newborn boy. “Aw, who cut the damn cord this badly. Now this kid will have an outie.”
“Ellen, screw the cord.” Dean peeked through the shades. “Just do it.”
“OK.” She grabbed the baby’s foot. “I hate doing newborns. They squirm.”
“Ellen.”
“OK!” She pricked the needle into the heel of the baby’s foot. “Look, Dean, he didn’t cry.” She then placed the tiny tube under the bead of blood and caught it. “Come on ... bleed. He’s not bleeding enough.”
“Squeeze the foot more,” Dean told her.
“OK.” Ellen squeezed the heel tightly. “It’s working. I’ve got it.” Securing the newborn with her elbow, she capped the tiny tube of blood and tossed it in her pocket. “All done.” She wrapped the baby back up and lifted him. “Here, Dean.”
Dean took the baby, and brought his lab coat around to hide him. “Check for an all clear.”
Ellen sneaked by him and checked the hall up and down. “Go.” She moved out of his way so Dean could dart by her.
“El, start those.”
“I will.”
Keeping his pace quick, but not too quickly, Dean ran back down to the birthing room, opened the door slightly, then walked in with his back to everyone.
“Dr. Hayes!” Andrea approached him.
“Um yeah, Andrea.”
“Give him here.” She snapped her fingers. “Now.”
Dean turned around, opened his coat, and handed Andrea the baby.
“What made you think you could get away with this unnoticed?”
“You guys were busy.”
“What did Trish tell you? No blood tests. I cannot believe you did this.”
Dean lifted his shoulders. “Sorry.”
Holding the baby, Andrea walked to Trish, stopped, and went back to Dean, whispering, “Let me know the results.” She winked and headed back to Trish. “Here you go, sweetheart, your baby boy.”
Trish sniffled as she took the baby in her arms for the first time. “I can’t believe he took my baby, Andrea.”
“I know, sweetheart.” Andrea tapped her leg. “He’s a bad man.”
<><><><>
“I hear there’s a lot,” Dean whispered to Ellen as they left the lab.
“How many can there be?”
“Ellen, there are three hundred and fifty-six work hours bet here. That’s a lot of people.”
“Yeah, Dean, but Robbie bet forty himself.”
“I can’t believe you and Henry agreed to match every hour.” Dean moved to the waiting room and stopped. “Holy shit.”
“Is this the whole town?” Ellen asked.
“Just about.” Dean smiled and walked in. “We’ve got the results.” Dean held them up into the crowded waiting room. “Now breaking clinic rules, mother’s wishes, and ...”
“Dean!” Frank yelled out, “just tell us the fuckin results. Who’s the father?”
“Easy, easy.” Dean held up his hand. “Now since I didn’t bet, I get to announce. Not even Ellen knows. So, all those for it being Jeff’s baby stand to my right. All those for it being Hap’s baby stand to my left.” Dean watched everybody move around, amusing himself by the way that every listened as if it were one giant game of Simon Says. To the right of him, thirty people stood, to the left, Ellen and Henry. “Now the way I am going to ...”
“Dean!” Frank yelled out. “Today.”
“All right.” Dean opened the folder. “The way I understood this is you people who think the baby is Jeff’s bet work hours. Ellen and Henry matched them. Meaning, if it’s Jeff’s, they have to work those hours, if it’s Haps, you work that amount for them.” Dean heard the grumbling. “OK, OK.” He snickered. “After carefully running the results, not once but twice, you people.” He pointed to the Jeff side. “You people get ...” Dean laughed, “to make Ellen and Henry’s life a little easier. The baby is Hap’s. You owe them three hundred and fifty-six work hours. Thank you.” Before the rush of anger and the painful stampeding of Henry and Ellen began, Dean took off.
Ellen moved closer to Henry when she saw the angry stares. “Something tells me this isn’t good.”
“I have to agree, El. People can be such sore losers.”
“Wanna make a run for it?”
“OK.”
Grabbing Henry’s hand, Ellen ran with him from the waiting room, down the hall, and to the lab. She shut the door, locking it behind her. “Where’s Dean?” She looked around.
Henry peeked out the blind. “At least they didn’t mob us.”
“Good thing.” Ellen let out a breath. “Wow, three hundred and fifty-six hours. That’s a lot of work people have to do for us.”
“We’ll be lazy, El.” There was a sudden, long moment of silence, awkward and needing to be filled.
Ellen moved to the door. “It’s probably safe to leave. I have work.”
“So do I.” Henry paused before going out. “Thanks, El.”
“Henry?” Ellen stopped him. “You seem a little down today. Is everything all right?”
Henry really wanted to open his mouth and tell her, ‘No, El, I need you’ but he didn’t. He smiled sadly and held on to the door before he left. “Yes. Thank you though for asking.” He had it. He had the opportunity right there as he stared at her and Henry let it go, because flashing through his mind he saw himself letting go, and in their closeness, telling Ellen all that happened. And Ellen calling it, ‘Karma’. How could Henry expect any pity from Ellen, after the circumstances of Nick’s conception had come to light. So he quietly walked away, hoping Ellen would show him the niceties and concern again but do it when he wasn’t so vulnerable.
<><><><>
“I’ve gathered you all together here,” George walked around the conference table in the huge office he had, “to tell you that I heard from Santa Monica. They have commenced per the go ahead of our biological team. Attack number one has now begun. However ...” George held up his finger with a sneaky smile, “it ends up being attack number two, tricky but smart.”
Steward raised his hand. “Why aren’t we going about this straight forward? We have the manpower.”
“Stew, we need our manpower for bigger things and you know it. Though we can afford the loss of lives now, in the long run, in the big picture, we cannot. Beginnings is a step to the big picture. We need that land, but we have to do it right. If we obtain that land through massive losses, then we’ve defeated the entire purpose of needing that place.”
“So why not build what they have, another Communications Division? We have the technology.”
“We could.” George nodded. “But what they have someone else could very easily get their hands on and that we cannot chance. It’s in the interest of our country to seize our assets and we will. But Beginnings is smart. They also have a budding Air Division which we do not have. We have to hit them differently and differently we will. Everyone knows how to count to three. You know two comes after one, and three comes after two, but what happens if you’re expecting, one, two, three and you get, three, one, two? Confusion. When Beginnings gets confused, we get a victory.” George smiled and he knew he had lost his specialty team that sat at the conference table. They hadn’t a clue, no matter how well informed they were, to what he meant about number sequences, but George did. Soon so would Beginnings and that was all that mattered.<
br />
<><><><>
“Rolling Stones,” Frank stated with assurance as he sat next to Henry on Henry’s porch.
“Very good, Frank.” He showed Frank a bag of sunflower seeds. “Want one.”
“Nah. I’m telling you, Henry, I’m the seventies guy. There’s not much I don’t know about the seventies.”
“Frank?” Henry looked up to the darkened sky. “I heard you’re pulling an extra training session tomorrow.”
“Yeah, a couple of the guys want it. Why?”
“Could I ... Could I come?”
It was an odd request, and the oddity of it showed on Frank’s face. “Yeah, sure.”
“In fact. I’d like to ask you to teach me more, more hand to hand, more ...”
“Henry, does this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?”
“Of course it does.” Henry folded his hands.
“You’re a good fighter, Henry.”
“Not good enough.”
Frank took a second, trying to come up with words to say. He saw the hurt and the pain on his friend’s face. “You think if you were a better fighter, you could have done things differently?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Frank told him. “No. There were ten men.”
“You took them on.”
“Henry, I dropped my bike and snuck up on them when they were ... when they ... I snuck up on them.”
“But what if you were in my position? Answer me honestly. Would you have ...” Henry paused to catch his emotional breath. “Would you have been brought down? Would they have gotten to that point with you that they got with me?”
“You mean at the point when I arrived?”
“What did you see at that point, Frank?”
“I saw my friend in trouble.”
“Oh God.” Henry covered his face.
“Henry.” Frank grabbed his hands and lowered them. “Come on.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Would you have been in my position or would you have gotten out of it?”
Despite what Frank believed, despite what he himself was confident of, he was being asked—in a roundabout way—to make his friend feel better. “Honestly?”
“Please.”
“I would have been in the same position as you with ten men taking me by surprise. I’m good, Henry. I’m not that good.”
“Really, Frank?”
“Fuck yeah. There’s only one thing that may have stopped them from taking it too far.”
“What’s that, your anger?”
“No way.” Frank shook his head. “One look at my big hairy ass and I would have been dropped.” Frank started laughing when he heard Henry laugh.
“You’re a good friend, Frank.”
“Yeah I know.” He snickered then drew Henry’s attention to his left. “Look.”
Henry shifted his eyes, saw Ellen, then looked straight ahead again.
“Hi, Henry.” Ellen approached them. “Frank, what the hell are you doing?”
“What?”
“You left the house over an hour ago to check on something. I got the kids in bed. I can’t believe you left me there doing the mother-thing. Go home.”
“Who’s with them now?” Frank asked.
“Josh, but he’s going out with Denny.”
“To do what?”
“Hang out,” Ellen snapped. “Go home.” She waved her hand but Frank didn’t budge. Ellen shifted her eyes toward Henry. “Frank, do I need to be direct about this?”
“Yeah.”
“Asshole.” She shook her head. “Could you let me speak to Henry?”
“Sure.”
“Alone.”
“Oh.” Frank stood up immediately. “Sure. I’ll call you in a little bit. Wanna come back over.”
Ellen shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Don’t play hard to get, El ... I may have to take you seriously and never hit on you again.”
“Oh that’s a threat.” She rolled her eyes and twitched her head.
“I’m going.” Frank gave a pat to Henry as he walked by.
Ellen watched Frank disappear down the street, waited that extra second to make sure he wasn’t hiding around the building eavesdropping, then she looked down to a very silent Henry. “Dean’s not home. He’s working late on the virus. Geez, Henry, he’s so engrossed in this seeing thing since you gave him back his sight.” She took a breath. “Anyhow, wanna go to the house and we can divide up our work hour winnings?”
“No, you can have them.”
“Henry, can I be honest? You’re not yourself and I was wondering if you needed to talk.”
“No, El. Right now, I just need some time alone.”
“Are you sure?”
Henry nodded and stood. “Thank you though. I just ... I just need to distance myself from everyone for a little ...”
“I understand. Thought I’d offer.” Ellen nodded, gave a sad smile and turned.
Henry watched her go into her house and he heard the shutting of her door. He knew there was no way he could truly face Ellen until he faced his problems fully himself. When he did that, he promised himself he would try again to get in her good graces. Until then, Henry would be as he was for a very long time ... alone.
<><><><>
No sooner had Frank walked into his house when his cellular phone began to ring. First listening for it then searching out the ring, he found the phone on the dining room table. “Yeah.” He answered it in his suave Frank-way.
“What are you doing?”
“El?” Frank walked into the living room, holding the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear. “I thought you’d be talking to Henry.”
“He didn’t want to talk, he just wanted to be alone.”
“OK.” Frank undid his shoulder harness and draped it over the chair. “Is he alright?” He sat down.
“Apparently not, Frank. What are you doing right now?”
“Talking to you.”
“I was wondering if ...”
“Yes.”
Ellen’s giggled carried over the phone. “I didn’t say it.”
“You want to come over. Please.” Frank leaned forward. “Come over. Josh ran out as soon as I walked in.” He smiled. “I’d like very much if you hung out.”
“I’ll be over as soon as I take my shower.”
“Thanks, El.” Hearing her hang up, Frank bit his bottom lip and tapped the phone to his chin. Realizing he didn’t shut the phone off, he reached down for the button. It was then Frank’s finger shook so badly he could barely press it.
He stared in debate at his hands, at that phone, and then he looked at his watch. Wringing his hands together as he sat in the chair, Frank decided one drink would not hurt. Setting down the phone on the coffee table, he stood up and went into the kitchen.
He opened the cabinet above the stove, staring at his bottle, reaching for it, pulling back, and then finally bringing it down. Grabbing a glass, he poured a small amount into the glass and opened the fridge for some ice. He swished the ice around, cooling the moonshine.
As he brought the glass to his lips, ready to take that first drink, he paused when he heard the tiny voice in the living room.
“Da-da. Da-da.”
Frank smiled in amazement at how Brian was climbing from his crib already. “OK. Bri.” Pulling the glass from his mouth to set it down, his hand gripped it so hard it shattered in his hand when he heard Brian again.
“Da-da. Gun.”
Bang! ... Silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
With her head bent down toward her knees as she brushed out her towel dried hair, Ellen screamed when suddenly a set of feet appeared right in her vision. She jumped back, flinging her hair back and grabbed her chest. “Henry.”
“El ...”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you.” He stepped to her. “We couldn’t reach you on the phone. Come with me. We have to get to the c
linic, El.”
“What happened?”
“Brian crawled from bed. He ... he got a hold of Frank’s gun. It went off.” Henry swallowed. “Brian’s been shot.”
Ellen’s hand sprang to her mouth in an out of breath gasp and raced toward the door, slipping on her shoes as she did. “How is he?”
“I don’t know anything yet.” Henry followed her.
“Did someone call Dean?”
“He’s on his way.”
With her entire insides shaking, Ellen felt like she had just slipped into a nightmare and she ran as fast as she could to the clinic.
She barreled through the front doors of the clinic at full speed with Henry right behind her. As soon as Ellen made it into the hall, she saw Joe. “Joe!” She raced up to him. “How is he?”
“He’s in the operating room now.”
“Oh my God.”
“Ellen.” Joe pulled her into him. “He’s alive. That’s what counts right now. He’s alive.”
“Dean!” Ellen stepped back when Dean came charging into the clinic. “Dean.” She ran up to him.
“Where is he?” Dean asked, laying his hands on Ellen’s shoulders.
“He’s in the back. I’m scared, Dean. You have to find out what’s going on. Please,” she said through her anguish.
“I will. I will.” He started to move. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” Placing both hands on her face, Dean kissed her. “He’ll be all right.” Before running down the hall he gave her a quick embrace then took off.
Ellen folded her arms tightly to her body, holding back the tears that were coming anyway, and she turned back to Joe. When she did, she saw Frank in the waiting room. He sat on the sofa, leaned forward, face buried in his hands, Robbie on one side, and Johnny standing on the other. Slowly she walked into the waiting room and up to him. “Frank,” she called his name out softly.
Through his rocking back and forth he lifted his head. “I’m so sorry, El.”
“What happened?”
“He got a hold of my gun.”
“How? Ellen sat on the coffee table across from him.
The Big Ten: The First Ten Books of the Beginnings Series Page 329