“I swear.” Jenny held up her hands and crossed her legs Indian style.
“Elliott . . . Elliott is dying.”
Jenny closed her eyes.
“He doesn’t want anyone to know. He had Leukosarcoma, which means his blood is cancerous. He’s not symptomatic and is doing really great, but there’s gonna come a time when he will give way.” Ellen paused to catch her composure. “So you see . . .”
“He’s lived so long alone that he deserves to have that gift right now. Support. Friendship. Companionship.”
“Love,” Ellen added. “Everything that’s lost in this world that’s meant to be had in life, I want him to have.”
“You like him.”
“Very much so,” Ellen said. “He’s so nice and kind. Genuine.”
“If I can’t find a woman who can make the time . . .” Jenny played with her sandwich. “I’ll do it.”
Ellen smiled. “Thank you.”
“You don’t want to?”
“Me? I would. I would offer Elliott the understanding in a heartbeat and not because he’s dying. I was thinking about it before I found out. With this shit with Dean, I was just gonna find two new men in my life. I wanted Elliott to be one of them. Then the illness rose and I knew I was supposed to do that.”
“But you aren’t.”
Ellen shook her head. “He doesn’t look at me that way.”
“Maybe because you’re branded,” Jenny said.
“What?” Ellen chuckled. “Branded?”
“Absolutely.” Jenny nodded. “Dean and Frank’s. Always. Even if you, without a doubt, have moved on, people will always perceive you as theirs. Maybe he just doesn’t want to get close to you for fear he thinks, no matter what you say, it will end back up that way. You, Dean, Frank. Even though I highly doubt, after this Bev thing, Dean is an option.”
“He isn’t. And . . . I don’t think that’s what it is,” Ellen spoke down. “It’s me. I’m certain of it.”
“Well, I’ve seen some activity happening between you and Jess.”
Ellen’s head went back as she laughed. “Jess is my friend. He’ll . . . he’ll move on. Trust me. You can say I’m just filling in for companionship until he finds . . . until he finds the right one. Jess doesn’t see me that way. Besides look at him and look at me.” Ellen exhaled with a hint of sadness. “I believe it’s me. I’m getting older and set in my ways. I’m not very nice at times, and attractive? Jenny, I have so many scars spewed across this face I give Frank a run for his money in the looking apocalyptically worn department.”
Ellen’s words made Jenny feel really bad, but she didn’t want to show it. Jenny tried to stay upbeat. She reached over and patted Ellen on the knee. “Is someone suffering a little in the low self esteem department? I think you need an ego boost. You’re going out with Frank on Saturday. He loves you. If anything, he always makes you feel good.”
“True.” Ellen tilted her head and picked at her sandwich.
“And it’s not you, not at all. Women are very envious of you.” Jenny saw the disbelieving look Ellen gave her. “They are. You’re smart, thin, and those scars add character. You’re so pretty, Ellen. I always wanted to be you since I was a little girl. It’s your choice of men.” Jenny stated matter-of-factly. “I’m telling you, try someone else.” She snapped her finger. “They’d take you a heartbeat. Henry? Robbie? Danny Hoi? Jess, he may be hot but I heard rumors that he’s gay . . .”
“Jenny, that’s not true. He’s . . .”
“No, I heard. And perhaps Elliott does like you but is just afraid he doesn’t measure up because he has no sex organs.”
Ellen choked on her bread when Jenny said that. “What?”
“That’s another thing I heard.”
Wiping her mouth, Ellen put down her sandwich. “Elliott does too have sex organs. I’m his doctor so I should know. I’ve seen his penis.”
Jenny went quiet then a sneaky smile hit her. “And?”
At first Ellen opened her mouth in debate then she closed it briefly, smiled, and leaned into Jenny. “I’ll tell you, Elliott . . .” She stopped talking when she heard the buzz of the cryo-lab door. “Shit. Dean.”
“How do you know?”
“Listen.” Ellen motioned her head. “The scuffing feet. Add that hint of tennis shoe squeak and you have . . .”
“Dean.” Jenny pointed to the door. Dean stood there. “Looking typically irate.” Jenny giggled and so did Ellen.
Dean huffed. “I wish you two would stop having your linoleum picnics in my lab.”
“Our lab,” Ellen corrected.
A grumble came from Dean. “This is not the twelve o’clock lunch room, all right?” Dean backed up, stopped, turned around, waltzed back into the room, and snatched up a jam sandwich before storming back out.
^^^^
“No.” Danny held up his hand in defense as he sat down in a chair next to John Matoose’s bed. “No pulling out tubes. I’m just here to talk to you.”
In the small room with the curtain partially closed around John’s bed, John shifted his eyes with a hint of panic.
“See, you should consider yourself fortunate,” Danny stated.
“Why?” John asked deep sounding and with a gurgling effect.
“Well, some people consider me their bright spot. So . . . how’ve you been?”
“Same.”
“Anything moving yet? Toes? Fingers? Hands? Anything?”
“Danny.”
“Sorry. Just asking. And, I have other things to ask you.”
“I told . . . you . . . I . . . would . . .”
“John?” Danny stopped him. “You don’t have to talk. Not yet. It make me nervous. So right now, I just want you to listen to me. O.K.?”
“Yes. But . . . I told .. . you . . . I . . . don’t . . . know . . .”
“John.” Danny shook his head. “The talking thing. No. O.K.? Now I want you to listen to a little bit of the Danny theory on things. Just listen. Then I want you to think about what you’re gonna say on the stand.” Danny saw John’s eyes widen. “Oh, yeah we’re putting you on the stand, tubes and all. And don’t think I won’t badger your crippled ass. My client’s life is at stake. But, that’s neither here nor there, because I believe with great thought you, my Christopher Reeve wanna-be friend, are gonna talk. Now . . .” Danny leaned close to the bed. “You don’t need to be verbal. You don’t need to do anything but able to nod ‘yes’ to the person’s picture who is actually working for George. I don’t believe that’s Andrea. And . . . I do not believe for one second you don’t know who the other person is.” Danny began speaking in a nonchalant manner. “You love your wife. You want to protect your wife and you want to do what’s right for Beginnings, but you can’t say who the other person is. You can’t because there’s more than one person working for George here. You fear for Jenny’s life and you fear something else happening to the people of this community you claim to love. So you, John, sit back and think., man, what can I do?” Danny leaned back in the chair. “And you come up with it. You aren’t trusted. You want that trust back, so you compile a list.” Reaching down to the floor, Danny opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder. “Remember this? I believe on this list of suspects you gave Joe as possible people working for George, you named the persons. It was your way of giving him the truth without . . . giving him the truth. Here’s why I believe you know, and why this keeps escaping everyone’s mind is beyond me. This is a little preview of your interrogation on the stand when I hit you with my best Perry Mason.”
John just listened.
“There was an incident here in Beginnings before I came here.” Danny reached down and grabbed another folder. “Basically, in here is the compacted evidence of that night. There are boxes of it courtesy of Robbie Slagel. Boy, did that man go all out. Here’s what we know. We know for a fact that Dean and Ellen were in that mobile lab. We know for a fact that Dean was shot. And while Ellen was trying to make it back into the mobi
le lab to secure herself in, she was accosted from behind. We know for a fact it wasn’t Reverend Thomas. He was bleeding. There was no blood on Ellen’s clothes. That person was you. You grabbed Ellen.”
John shook his head.
“John. John. Yeah. Yeah.” Danny was insistent. “Dean repeatedly remembers dreaming of seeing you holding up Ellen. Under hypnoses, he can claim the same thing. Now I know none of this is admissible in a court of law, but it’s no longer the same world and . . . Henry . . .” Danny snickered. “Is the prosecution. Do you think he’s gonna object.” Danny shook his head. “Now knowing . . . don’t argue. Knowing that you were at the door, holding Ellen by the waist from behind. You, like Ellen, could see into the lab. Now Dean, this is really funny, you’ll get a kick out of this.” Danny rubbed his eyes. “Dean remembers seeing Ellen getting knocked out. O.K., then Dean remembers being strangled and kicked in the head. If he remembers seeing you holding Ellen at the door, and Ellen remembers seeing Dean on the floor, wouldn’t it just go without saying that you also saw Dean on the floor? Only you, John, saw who strangled him.” Danny smiled. “Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Think about it.”
As Danny stayed for another moment to deliver intimidation stares, he didn’t realize he was seen and everything he said was heard . . . and not just by John Matoose.
^^^^
“White blood cell count?” Dean asked, standing across the lab counter from Ellen in the cryo-lab.
“Still high. Eight hundred thousand,” Ellen answered.
“Shit.” Dean shook his head. “Presence in the axillary node biops?.”
“Negative.”
“Excellent. Hematopoietic stem cell proliferation.”
“Steady.”
“No.” Dean looked up. “That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“Ellen, you had to mess up,” Dean insisted.
“Dean, I didn’t. There is no decrease. Your new creation, Radadine, didn’t work.”
“It had to and you had to have made a mistake.” Dean reached out and snatched up the results from Ellen’s hand. “I had a twenty percent decrease in the rabbits.”
Ellen took the results back. “Elliott is not a rabbit, Dean. Your therapy didn’t work. O.K.? It’s new. You’re also trying to use only two testings in what it would take therapy to deliver in two weeks.”
“It still should have . . .”
“It didn’t work.”
Dean huffed and slammed down his hand. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why is it so hard to believe?” Ellen argued. “That you didn’t create something magical? Dean, this is our first true case. It’s not gonna be easy. Now if you strongly believe in this Radadine . . .”
“I do.”
“Good. Then we can go one of two ways. We can change the dosage, see how it affects the rabbits, and then try Elliott’s sample. Or, we can go back, start from scratch, review the Radadine and see . . .”
“Don’t!” Dean’s voice shot through the air as strongly as his hand lifted. “Don’t talk down to me like I’m the lowly understudy. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Oh fuck you, Dean.” Ellen slammed down the papers she reviewed. “Get out of the mood. Find me when you do.” She walked around the counter.
“Wait!” Dean moved to the end of the counter and blocked her from going anywhere. “We have work.”
“I’ll work with you when you’re more tolerable, if I ever work side by side with you at all again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ellen gave a ridiculing laugh. “You don’t want to be treated like a lowly understudy? Wise up. You’re the one giving me attitude.”
“You don’t think you deserve it?”
“Stop. Stop right there.” Ellen’s hands flew in the air. “I did nothing.”
“Bullshit! You gave up on me!”
“And you didn’t give me reason to?”
“Ellen!” Dean lifted his arms out. “How blind do you have to be? Each time something happens it is more and more . . .” Dean squinted his eyes firmly when a sharp pain hit him. “More and more obvious that I’m being set up.”
“You keep saying that and maybe you’ll convince yourself of it.” Ellen tried to get by him and Dean grabbed her arm to stop her. “Get your hands off of me.”
“Oh. That’s right.” Dean released her. “I don’t want to jeopardize my kids by being violent. because I knew you’ll throw that in my face.”
“For your information . . . asshole, I was gonna drop that hearing shit. But you know what. I won’t. Screw you. Lose your kids.”
“How can you be so callous?”
“Callous?” Ellen shook her head. “I think I have been better than I should be. I gave you every chance to redeem yourself. All you had to do was . . .”
“What? Confess to an affair I never had? Don’t you think if I did sleep with Bev, don’t you think I want you back bad enough to own up to it? I would. But I didn’t sleep with her and there’s no way in hell you’ll ever get me to say it.” Dean stepped to her. “And while we’re on the subject of owning up,why don’t you own up to the fact that you’re pushing so hard to have me say it, just so you can avoid admitting you were wrong and get me back.”
Ellen laughed. “Get you back?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you back.”
“Right. If that’s the case why are you trying so hard not to move on?”
“I am moving on,” Ellen argued.
“That’s what you’re trying to make it look like. However, you certainly are taking an abstract route.”
Though her words, Ellen snickered. “What? How is my route to ‘moving on’ abstract?”
“Well just put it this way, you’re proving the fact that you can’t replace me in your life.”
“Oh this ought to be really good. Go on.”
“First. Grace.” Dean nodded. “You two certainly have been chummy and she’s the biggest lesbian I know.”
“Are you implying that I’m turning into a lesbian because there’s no man that can replace you in my life?”
“I didn’t say that. You just did.”
Ellen gasped.
“Oh come on, Ellen. First off you throw yourself at Jess, a gay man. There’s a real big chance there. And Elliott.”
“Don’t talk about . . .”
“Sorry.” Dean held up his hand. “Sgt. Ryder. There’s a big manhood threat. The man probably didn’t lose his sex organs in battle. He probably lost them through one of his numerous venereal diseases.”
“You!” Ellen pointed. “Are cracked. There is something really, really wrong with you. You have lost all ability to think rationally and I don’t think you should be in any position where someone’s life depends on you.”
“Are you now questioning my ability as a doctor?”
“Absolutely.” Ellen tried to get by him. Dean blocked her again. “Dean, move.”
“No.”
“I’m warning you.”
“Right.”
“Bub.”
“Huh?”
Whap. A slow moving swing out by Bub, the lobotomized Savage, knocked Dean over and onto the floor.
“Good Bub.” Ellen walked to him. “Wanna snack. Yeah.” She reached onto her lab coat pocket and pulled out a cookie. Bub opened his mouth and she shoved it inside, patting his head after.
A buzz of the cryo-lab door brought in Frank. “Hey, El.” He stopped and saw Dean on the floor. “Did you kill him?”
“No. Bub hit him.” Ellen nudged Dean with her foot. “Knocked him out. Odd. He didn’t hit him that hard.”
“You sure he’s alive?”
Ellen squatted down. “He looks like he’s breathing. I wonder if he’s all right. Frank, he’s really been weird.”
“Tell me about it.” Frank joined her on the floor. He reached to check for a pulse. The moment his hand touched Dean’s neck, a small blue bolt of static lightening shot fro
m his finger and popped Dean.
Dean shrieked and jumped up.
Ellen laughed. “You shocked him!”
“I’m shocking everyone. Watch.” Frank reached out and touched Ellen, causing her to squeal. “See. Dean electrocuted me.”
“You electrocuted Frank?” Ellen looked down to Dean who rolled to a sitting position. “Yeah. Why am I on the floor?”
“Bub hit you,” Ellen told him.
“Bub hit me? Why?” Dean tried to get up.
Frank reached down to help him and shocked him in the process.
Another shriek came from Dean. “Frank. I can manage.” He picked himself up off the floor. “Why did Bub hit me?”
“We were fighting.” Ellen said. “You were being mean.”
“Fighting?” Dean twitched his head like a dog. “How can we be fighting? I just walked in here and . . . where’d Jenny go? She’ll tell you.”
Ellen looked at Frank. “Oh my God, Frank, you shocked him into amnesia.”
“Whoa.” Frank stared at his palm. “I’m cool”
“And deadly,” Ellen stated. “You’d better go run around naked in the grass to drain some of that static build up you have.”
“O.K.” Frank shrugged, turned around, and walked to the door.
Dean quickly looked at Ellen then back to a leaving Frank. “Frank? Why did you come down here?”
“Oh!” Frank snapped his fingers and squeaked when he shocked himself. “What am I supposed to do with those killer babies? They’re penned up at the hanger.”
“Shit. I forgot.” Dean rubbed his head in thought. “Why don’t you touch them until you knock them back out and then bring them down here.”
“O.K.” Nodding, Frank walked to the cryo door. “I’ll be . . .” Snap. “Ow. Back.” He grabbed the door and opened it. “Hey, El, will running around naked in the grass really work?”
“Yes,” Ellen answered.
“Good,” Frank said. “But I’d better make sure it’s not wet. I don’t want to electrocute myself again.” Just as Frank started to leave, he stopped. “Yeah.” He reached to adjust his headset. Snap. “Ow. What?”
The Next Ten: Beginnings Series Books 11 - 20 Page 109