Consequences of Understanding
This is a sequel to a short story that I posted a while back called Understanding. I suppose that you could follow this without reading it, but some of it might be confusing if you don't.
Taya pointed out that Dr. Dupree was Renee's doctor instead of Dr. Park. I apologize for this and any other mistakes I might have made throughout the story. I am pretending that this particular fact is not true because I don't remember Dr. Dupree at all (like I said on PhilosophySphere, my episode knowledge is spotty). Also the reason for the press release was made up, but that was rather obvious, don't ya think?
Thank you Taya, Winjan, Shadow, Aynot, Lily, Nessa, Vicki, and Setbet for your feedback, you guys are the reason that this is out relatively soon (as compared to how long it took me to even get to work on the last one). J
Disclaimers here – I don't own EFC!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dr. Julianne Belman knew how to observe people. After all, doctors often save lives when they are observant around their patients.
Right now all of her powers of observation were focused on her colleague Dr. Melissa Park.
Something was going on; she knew without a doubt that Melissa was planning something devious. All she had to do now was find out what that was.
'Might as well try the direct approach first,' she thought to herself as she headed to her friends office.
Of course now that she was thinking about it, Dr. Park wasn't the only one that had been acting strange lately, in fact, almost everyone seemed distracted for one reason or another. The most obvious ones were Dr. Curzon, Ms. Palmer, Sandoval, Auger, and even Liam.
'I may not be able to find out what is wrong with everyone, but I can talk to Melissa and Liam about what has been bothering them,' a determined Dr. Belman thought as she continued on her way to Dr. Park's office.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Meanwhile in her office Dr. Melissa Park was indeed up to something.
That something just happened to be giving her a migraine. 'What can I do, and how do I do it,' repeated almost endlessly in her troubled mind.
Her talk with Liam the previous week had only made her more determined to help him, even if he was to have no knowledge of said help.
When Liam had come over to her house at her own request, Melissa had known that there was more to his distress than Renee's disgust.
In any case, Liam didn't break down for just any old reason.
Hearing of Da'an's betrayal didn't surprise her very much; after all he was a taelon. But Auger's duplicity, on the other hand, that shocked her.
Of course, if she thought about it, Melissa couldn't really blame him that much, because if she had been in the same position, she couldn't say that she wouldn't do the exact same thing.
Similar to Auger's fear of losing his 'baby brother,' Melissa was very afraid of losing her 'son,' adopted as he may be.
To her immense relief Auger and Liam were slowly but surely working things out and Auger was beginning to regain Liam's trust.
In contrast, Renee Palmer had been avoiding Liam like the plague.
This in turn, only strengthened the doctors resolve to do 'something' to Renee Palmer, and brought her back to her original problem.
"What can I do, and how can I do it?"
Just as her mind was about to start the viscous cycle again, her musings were interrupted by the knocking on her door.
"Come in."
The door opened and in walked her friend and colleague Dr. Belman.
"Are you busy?" Julianne asked.
With a reply of "no, not at all," Julianne got right to the point.
"What's been going on for the past week? Everyone has been very distracted, including Dr. Curzon, and I want to know why!" she demanded.
"Not to mention you are plotting something and I bet that it has something to do with everyone else's lack of concentration lately. Now SPILL!"
Melissa ignored the demand for answers; instead she focused on the information that Curzon had been distracted for the past week as well.
She hadn't thought about how the recent events would affect Dr. Curzon. "Heh… Bet she was surprised when she found out that Sandoval had a son," she muttered to herself absentmindedly.
But Belman heard it anyway, skipped the question phase and went strait into panic mode.
"Oh God! Sandoval and his doctor know about Liam?! How did that happen? Why hasn't anyone told me? Where is Liam, is he ok?"
"STOP! Now calm down, you misunderstood me. Neither of them know about Liam," Melissa was quick to reassure.
"But you just said…"
"…That they know Sandoval has a son, not who that son is," Melissa interrupted again.
Calming down a lot Julianne asked again, "How did all of this happen?"
"Well, it all started last week, as you suspected, when Sandoval was in the hospital. You see, he had a rare blood disease; it was only curable with the blood of a first degree relative. Liam was the only possible match."
"Liam came to me to have his blood drawn, and he was very upset about something, so I made him tell me about it. It turns out that Renee was there when Auger told Liam about his father's sickness. She found out about his status as a hybrid and the fact that Sandoval was his father.
Renee was disgusted with him, or at least she made Liam feel that way, that is the reason I've been so distracted."
"I am going to return the favor," Melissa stated firmly.
"Palmer is really going to get it," Julianne growled, "she is going to wish she was never born – if I don't kill her first!"
"I thought you might feel that way," Melissa commented dryly. "Now, I could really use some help with something, you up to it?"
"What with?"
"That favor I was talking about…"
"Hell yes, I want in. What have you got so far?"
"Not much I'm afraid, that's why I need your help."
With that the plotting against Renee Palmer began in earnest.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Could her week get any worse? (AN: ya know, she really shouldn't have asked that…)
First she had found out that Kincaid wasn't Kincaid, in fact, he wasn't even human! But she didn't want to think about that right now.
Auger had been ignoring all of her calls since last week and she didn't have a clue why…
When she had gone down to the lair to confront him about it, he had just glared at her then turned around and walked away.
He still hadn't told her why he was so angry at her! But she got the feeling that it had something to do with Kinc… she didn't want to think about him right now.
A couple of days ago, during her annual medical checkup, Dr. Park had been abrupt and hostile towards her. If looks could kill then Renee Palmer would have been splattered across the universe, and Dr. Park would no longer have her medical license due to manslaughter charges. (That is, if she had be caught!)
It is not very reassuring when your doctor seems to wish you were dead or in eternal torment.
Plus all of her meetings on the latest Doors/Taelon tech projects had been less than helpful.
In avoiding Liam, all of her meetings had been with Sandoval. Sandoval, for some reason, was not very focused on the project at hand.
Instead he was probably thinking about being a father. 'Humph, he must have been thrown for a loop over that,' Renee thought scornfully.
Now to top everything off, her computer system was on the fritz, 'this can't be happening to me!'
She had everything stored on that computer, all of her work, notes, and memos.
Picking up her global, Renee dialed Auger's number again, only to get the unavailable message – again. She hated caller ID!
Just then her computer crashed.
Snarling Renee threw her global across the room and stalked off to take a long break.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In Auger's lair across town, a smiling Auger was telling Dr.'s Park and Belman, "I got it! Doors really shouldn't have let me design all of his computer systems."
Melissa and Julianne just looked at him; both were quite used to his high and mighty attitude and knew that he was full of it.
"Good," Melissa finally stated, "let's see what we have."
Auger had been surprised about an hour before with the sight of both doctors coming down the elevator together.
He had been impressed when they told him their plan and had gone strait to his computer to start hacking.
Hacking strait into Renee's home and office computers. After he had downloaded everything, he decided to help out a little with the doctors' revenge and he crashed her office computer with a complex virus.
Her work computer was toast; Auger had all of her data, and was now quite pleased with himself.
The doctors were too, but they would never admit it.
Following two hours of searching through all of Renee's files, after the way she had treated Liam they didn't feel very bad about going through her stuff, Auger finally hit pay dirt in the home computer's encrypted files. It would take some time, but it would be perfect for their purposes.
Auger rubbed his hands together in glee, "Hey, you guys take a look at this!"
Reading the indicated file over Auger's shoulder, both Melissa and Julianne smiled, it was just right.
~*~Two weeks later~*~
Renee Palmer was mortified, completely and utterly humiliated. She felt like crying and she never wanted to show her face in public again! Everything was falling apart around her. It had all started to unravel the day before…
~*~the day before~*~
"Ms. Palmer you're up next," one of the many present guards calmly stated.
Renee gathered up her notes and nodded at the guard as she began to climb the small flight of stairs up to the Doors International podium. She was here to give a press release on the newest co-ventures Doors was participating in with the Taelons.
This time the new technology being introduced for testing was a shield generator for the latest experimental human-made ID shuttles. Renee hoped that by the next year that Doors would be able to produce their own interdimensional shuttles and therefore lessen their dependence on the Taelons even more. She really didn't like to depend on them for anything.
Unfortunately there had been a lot of small setbacks in the past three weeks, and Renee had just about had it with Sandoval. Cover or no cover, if she had to work with Sandoval another day terrible things would happen, lots of terrible things…
She still didn't want to think of the reason that she was working with Sandoval instead of Kincaid, and Auger still wasn't returning her calls. In fact, when her computer crashed a couple of weeks ago she'd had to call in the Doors contracted computer repairman. This really irritated her to no ends. After all, why should she have to wait for the man to finish his other jobs before getting to her and then have to settle for a job done with less than 'Auger quality'? Did she mention having to wait for the repairs?
Anyway it was almost time for her speech to the masses, the taelon representative, whose name she couldn't ever seem to remember, was almost finished talking and like the guard said, she was next.
Just then her name was announced and she stepped forward to brief the public on the progress of the latest co-venture.
"Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. Today I am here to explain to you how close we are to producing our own shuttle tech…"
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Out in the crowd two doctors were waiting almost impatiently for something to happen…
They had been planning this for weeks and now they only had to wait for Auger to work his magic.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In an underground cavern Auger was watching the live feed coming in from the press release. Renee was just beginning her speech; he'd wait a few minutes before he put his plan into action. (AN: If the doctors had heard this little thought then he would have been in serious pain… Seeing as how they had been the ones to actually come up with the plan in the first place)
All he had to do was type in a single command and hit enter, then the revenge for Liam would be complete.
He rubbed his hands together and started to cackle, then immediately stopped and checked to see if anyone had seen him, before his evil sounding laughter continued.
'This was just what the doctor ordered! The perfect revenge! I really need to remember to never get on the docs' bad sides.'
EXECUTE *enter*
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Back at the press conference an unseen gas was suddenly released directly over the center of the podium and the lights swiftly dimmed.
The crowd gasped and it wasn't caused by the dimming of the lights…
The gas had reacted with a chemical found only in Renee Palmer's blood. She had abruptly begun to glow blue. Not even her golden blonde hair had escaped from its blue fate.
A few in the crowd had panicked and ran towards the nearest exit, but surprisingly few fled. In the following quiet of the shocked spectators, a couple of chuckles were heard before the entire audience broke into nervous laughter, which soon turned into a roar of amusement as they found that Palmer was the only one affected by the strange ailment.
A motionless Renee was stunned. 'This can't be happening to me,' she thought as she numbly stared are her glowing hand in mortification.
She slowly looked up at the laughing crowd, and took off running towards the nearest escape.
'I'm a freak now... Oh NO! It was on national television! All those people saw me like this!'
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The doctors made their way casually out of the amused crowd toward the staff restrooms having seen Renee run that way just a moment before.
The plan had gone off without a hitch. The additive in her home water system had built up in her system enough so that when the gas was released her body had immediately reacted with it. (the gas had not been detected because they had only scanned for harmful chemicals)
Now came the hard part… to make Renee see the consequences of her actions toward Liam. Of course they did have some incentive for her cooperation in the matter; they had no intention of giving her the antidote until she did.
The fact that the chemicals effects would have worn by the end of the day would never be mentioned. A secret they would take to their graves… and if Auger even thought of telling their secrets then they would put him in his grave.
~*~Present~*~
The talks with the doctors and Auger (after she had realized that they hadn't done it alone) had been an eye opening experience for her. She had never truly comprehended how her actions might have affected Liam.
She understood now, and she wasn't about to forget how it felt to be a freak. It was time to grow up now. Reaching over to the table she picked up her global and slowly punched in a code that she hadn't used in three weeks before she could lose her nerve.
The global beeped as the connection was made and a tired voice was heard on the small speakers.
"Renee? What are you calling for?"
With a deep breath Renee began her apologies and explanations for her actions of the past weeks, because she now knew the consequences of not understanding.
~*~* THE END *~*~
Well it is a bit shorter than I wanted it to be and I didn't spend as much time on some of the details that I wanted to expand on, but it is finished! I didn't really mean to make the doctors the main characters in either story, but it just seemed to happen I don't know if I will write another sequel to this or not, if I do it will be from Liam's and Sandoval's point of view, but as of right now I just don't know.
I want to thank all of you who reviewed this (and the first one) again. I might never have finished it without you guys. So thank you. Also I'd love to hear what you think of this part. One of the reasons it took me so long to actually get this done is because I had no idea of what the revenge on Renee should be. A lot of reviewers said that the punishment should fit the crime and Akin suggested that Renee would be afraid of becoming like the Taelons (I kind of took it literally). So I just want to know what you guys think of it, please let me know.
I hope you enjoyed it,
Candy-Dawn