Too Smart for His Own Good

This Quantum Leap™ story utilizes characters that are copyright © by Bellasarius Productions and Universal Studios. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan fiction story is written solely for the entertainment of the readers and is not for profit. All fiction, plots, and original characters are the sole creations of the author.

Too Smart for His Own Good

Chapter Two - Let the Games Begin

An odd array of people assembled in the waiting room at St. Joseph's Hospital. Donna and the young Calaviccis sat in their dress clothes worrying about Al. Sam and Beth were in the trauma station with the Admiral. Every kind of monitor attached to his body, but none of the readings explained the comatose state Al descended into. Tears clouded Beth's reasoning. "Sam, I can't figure this at all."

"I don't know, Beth. He seems stable, but why isn't he conscious?" Beth's tears finally poured out in a voice of despair and Sam held her close, trying to comfort her and gaining as much comfort from her as he gave. "I think we should get Al checked in."

The staff doctor started to usher them out of the cubicle. "That sounds like a good idea. Why don't you go talk to your families and I'll be out in a minute. We called admitting and transport is coming in a few minutes to take him to the VIP room." Beth didn't want to leave. "Mrs. Calavicci, he's stable. Right now, you need to let us take care of your husband."

Sam knew Beth wasn't going to leave unless someone other than an ER doctor asked her to. He didn't want to leave either, but he thought it might be best for Beth to get into more comfortable clothes and all of a sudden his tux felt remarkably inappropriate. "Beth, he's right. Donna and the girls are waiting. Come on."

A sudden rage came forth. "He didn't desert you for ten years, Sam. How can you leave him now?" As she heard the words, she regretted them.

The woman's anger was misplaced and Sam completely understood why. "I'm just going to change clothes and come back."

Her eyes apologized as she told him, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it, Sam. What a stupid thing to say." She gently took her husband's hand. "Oh, Al." Putting her face near his, she passionately kissed his mouth hoping for a reaction, but none came. "Let's go, Sam. I want to get back as soon as possible."

While there was probably some legitimate news in the Admiral's illness, the media vultures descended on the hospital and the distressed family. Tight-lipped, Beth walked past the cameras without telegraphing her most intense fear. This bottomless horror in her heart presented itself before, but when? It nagged at her, until it finally smacked her in the face; that agonizing day in 1967 when a Navy officer came to Balboa to tell her Al was missing in action. Now, the same hated question plagued her: Is my husband alive or dead?

The girls and their escorts left the hospital and chose to wait for news in the Calavicci's suite at the hotel. They were four quite lovely Calavicci clones, looking every bit their father's daughters. They had his curly hair, dark eyes, full lips and long eyelashes. Though their faces made them obviously Calavicci, their personalities were diverse and a testament to their parents' recognition of their individuality.

Giovanna and Antonia were twins with identical faces. Both were high achievers at school, had serious pursuits and Al's leadership ability, but their careers went in far different directions. They let their imaginations soar, but Gia's soared on the written page as a health and medicine writer the Washington Post. Her nursing degree and interest in words were put to good use at the paper. Toni was an Annapolis graduate and,like her father, joined NASA to follow him into space and create a space exploration legacy, the first offspring of an astronaut to do so.

In keeping with their uniqueness, they married very different men. Gia's husband Paolo Benedetti taught Romance languages at Georgetown University. Their two sons, Dino and Marco were brought up bi-lingual and Al loved teaching them the Italian that most little boys shouldn't learn. Kevin Nicholas, Toni's husband, a Navy Captain, met his bride when he too won an appointment to NASA. They named their only child after the Admiral. Little Albert was called Alby and was the spitting image of Gramps from his curly hair to his wild temperament.

The only real musical talent in the family turned up in abundance through Peri. Her trio Disarray enjoyed great success on the cabaret scene. Peri had her father's sense of showmanship, style, and his absolute flare for the absurd. Mitchell Bering was a real fan of Disarray and an even bigger fan of the stunningly beautiful, smoky-voiced, Perigrina Calavicci.

Born seven years after Peri, Allie was still a puzzle in everyone's eyes, especially her own. She indeed had Al's reckless streak and his sense of daring. Her skill under the hood of a car made her a legend in high school and Al secretly thought this little girl might end up behind the wheel of a sleek formula one racer. When she was very young, you could usually find her hanging onto her dad's pant leg trying to find out why things work. Unlike her sisters who let their curly hair grow long and flowing, she kept hers almost as short as her Dad's. She said it was easier to take care of, but Beth knew it was something else. She wanted to be just like her dad. At only five feet one inch tall, Allie was the tiny one; the runt just like her father had been when he was her age. Allie was in the unhappy position of living up to three sisters who managed to be very accomplished at very young ages.

Now these four young women and the three men in their lives sat together wondering and worrying about the Admiral. Gia looked at her sisters. "This sucks."

The others smiled. Peri shook her head. "Always the right words, Gia."

Toni stood up and walked toward her father's adjoining room. "I can't believe this. I mean, he brought a crippled spacecraft home without so much as a scratch."

Inheriting her father's short fuse, Allie snapped, "What does that have to do with anything? That was nearly 30 years ago. He's sick now and there's no reason."

Peri was a shrewd observer and absolutely the least academically oriented of the four. "No reason? Except for traveling through time, he's had just a normal life these past ten years. Damn it, why are you surprised something like this happened? He's been mucking around in that Imaging Chamber since 1995. The damn thing has a ring of radium surrounding it. It's a wonder he doesn't glow in the God damn dark."

Toni barked, "Shut up, Peri."

"Right, little Miss Annapolis." Mitchell took Peri's hand to help calm her down.

Gia took control. "Stop it. This is just what we need to be doing."

With an apologetic tone Peri added, "I'm sorry. I'm just scared."

There was an uneasy silence. Mitchell looked at them all and whispered, "Time travel, space ships, this is like a scene from Passions," and with that came quiet, low-key laughter and knowledge that a small bit of tension just flew away.

Cold fluorescent lighting and the sounds of monitors filled the hospital room. Beth sat next to her husband, holding his icy, motionless hand. Sam and Donna poured over the chart that graphed Al's progress, but there had been no progress, just a steady, slow downward spiral into nothingness. His lungs breathed, his heart beat, but his brain was absent of thought. It only maintained his autonomic nervous system. Any glimmer of Al Calavicci was completely gone for no apparent reason. The man on the bed in front of them was nothing more than a living corpse. There weren't even any plugs to pull to end the family's agony. Al's body was surviving. Sam could only close his eyes to the chart in front of him. Handing the document to Donna, he went to his friend's side and gently touched his fingers to Al's hand.

From Michelangelo's sublime fresco of God reaching out to man, to the innocence of E.T. touching Elliot for the first time, the image of fingers meeting is intensely strong for a reason; it is a natural reaction to testing reality. It was the first thing Sam did when he returned home from leaping. He had put out his hand and touched Al's shoulder. When it didn't pass through the body, he understood that he was really home. He hadn't realized loneliness could physically hurt so badly. A second later, tears poured down Sam's face as he held onto Al for dear life. Al simply held him as any father would hold a frantic child.

Each of them had held a hand, brushed errant curls from his forehead, moved his head into a better position. They touched him often, hoping that touch would help bring Al back. Looking into the sad eyes of the desperate nurse, Sam said, "I don't know, Beth. Let me try something." Beth moved away and Sam leaned over the bed, carefully making sure the IVs and monitor cables weren't disturbed. Tenderly, he lifted Al's limp body from the bed and held him close. "Please don't do this to me. I need you."

Bang! A piercing shriek blasted their ears. It hurt like holy hell, but it was meant to. Al's heart stopped and everyone within earshot had to respond. Sam dropped Al back to the bed and began to pound the Admiral's chest. Beth moved to provide artificial respiration. Within minutes, life support machinery took over for the human team and the misery of waiting and doing nothing began.

There was no way to tell them and that was the most frustrating thing. He saw it all. He was watching from someplace, someplace gray and close, but he wasn't watching it. He was there. No, that wasn't it. This was all a dream. He hadn't felt well. He was overly tired. That's it, a dream, but he heard Beth's fearful cries and Sam's shouts of anguish. Those sounds cut his soul mercilessly and threw his dream theory out the window. "God, I must be dead." He closed his eyes against the sight of his loved ones' grief. "Not now, not yet."

"Darling, you know what they say, 'Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.'"

The plans for Phase III were on hold, the meetings canceled and participants returned home with sadness. Despite the long hours that had too quickly turned into days, Beth, Sam and Donna still sat at Al's side. His heart started again and his life saved, but for what? There was still no sign of spirit in the body of their dearest friend. Machine noises told them the body was a living being, but somehow they knew Al wasn't there anymore and the pain of this dichotomy was only just beginning to become a reality.

Beth was the first to speak in over an hour of their vigil. Her voice was flat and unemotional. "There have been too many years."

Sam tried to figure it out before asking, "What do you mean?"

"Vietnam was two years flying missions, then eight years missing. That's 10 years. Then NASA and traveling in space. Another ten and then 10 years with you lost. That's 30 years of wondering from day to day if he'll come home to me safe. Thirty years, Sam. How long will this last now?"

There was no answer for Beth so Sam offered none. Instead he sat across the room from her, watching his friend's chest raise and lower in rhythm with the apparatus keeping him alive. "The machines can keep him alive for years, Beth. You know that."

"This isn't life. Al hates this kind of stuff. If he could see this, he'd have us court-martialed."

It sounded to Sam that Beth was thinking about turning off the machines and letting Al die. He didn't want that to happen and had to tell her. "Listen, Beth, until we know what's wrong with him, we can't even begin to think about pulling the plugs."

With icy eyes, she glared at him. "I'm not pulling any plugs. How could you think that?"

Her reaction embarrassed Sam. It hadn't crossed Beth's mind and yet it had crossed his. He wanted to see life when he looked down at Al's body, but nothing there indicated that Admiral Calavicci still survived. "I feel like I should be doing something and I haven't the faintest notion what it is. I'm a doctor. I should be able to figure this out."

She didn't mean to hurt his feelings, but her own were frazzled enough to make her say cruel things to people she loved. With a smile and a touch of her hand she tried to soothe Al's best friend. "Sam, when will you learn you can't figure Al out. No one can."

It was supposed to make him feel better, but it didn't. He only felt increasingly hopeless and silently, in his mind, he started planning funeral services for the national hero lying before him.

Al paced the room's edges, never taking his eyes off the tall, dark, lovely woman who spoke to him. In another time, she would have set his Italian blood steaming, but right now, her stone coldness took all pleasure out of her beauty. Something was familiar, but he was certain he'd never seen her before. "Who the hell are you?"

"Oh my and they told me you were charming. I'm disappointed."

His computer-like brain was mapping his surroundings, but each glance seemed to morph into another space. He decided to maintain his conversation. "You're disappointed? Yeah, well, it's breaking my heart, too. What is this place?"

"You're also supposed to be unpredictable. This is so boring." Miss Creepy 2005 mocked, "'Who are you? Where am I?' Really Admiral, I expected more."

It all fell into place in a fraction of a second. "Damn," and he started to laugh. "Ain't this a kick in the butt?"

The little rodent caught on far too quickly for her. A few anxious thoughts later, she lost the startle from her eyes, turned away and said, "How colloquial. What on earth does that mean?"

He suddenly had the upper hand, "Aw, now I'm disappointed," he paused for a moment. Moving closer and closer to her, he made sure his eyes were boring into hers when he said, "After all, Lothos is supposed to know everything. Right, Zoë?"

A sly smile curled her ruby lips, "Bravo, Admiral, bravo. You've redeemed yourself." Purring, she added, "Somewhat."

His enthusiasm was non-existent. "Yippee." Like the boxer he'd been, Al kept his eyes on the prize as he danced the edges of the ring. "So, who leaped into me?"

"What we've done, darling, is sheer genius."

Standing just enough out of reach, he tried to dismiss her words even though he knew he should be scared to death. "Trust me, sweetheart, I've been done to by the best."

The laugh was ugly, not in sound, but in purpose. "Not yet, Admiral."

The thought filled his veins with ice, but he covered his reaction. "That's what you think."

She had visions in her head of the complete torture planned for him, "That's what I know."

Al paced the room, the balls of his feet bouncing lightly off the chilled flooring. "Cut to the chase. What do you want?"

With an evil Al hadn't witnessed in decades, she whispered in a slow steady voice, "You, my love. I want you."

"Why? We've finished the Project." The idea seemed completely absurd. "Sam isn't leaping around anymore."

She batted off the statement like it was an irksome little mosquito, "Lothos can't be bothered with Sam Beckett. He's a non-entity. What is it you call the effect? Swiss cheese, I think. How quaint." Her lip sneered when she told him, "No, no, the good doctor isn't worth our time."

Al laughed at the absurdity. "And I am? Come on, that's nuts."

It was Zoë's turn to walk around Al's pristine cage. "Unfortunately, you have a unique gift. That odd little brain of yours remembers everything."

"I don't have a photographic memory." He still laughed; his amusement genuine.

"True, but you know too much about us."

"Everything is documented. Anyone with the proper clearance can read all about you, Alia, Lothos and Thames." He said the name, but he had no idea where he got it. "Thames? Who the hell is Thames?"

With a dramatic sigh Zoë shook her head, "See what I mean? You don't even know what you know. This cannot be tolerated at all, Admiral."

Al had been the recipient of more hell than a human being ought to get, but something told him the hell he was entering was going to test every survival instinct in his repertoire. "Okay, what do you want?"

She shook her aristocratic head and mumbled to herself, "How rude of me." Looking into Al's brown eyes she continued, "We just want a bit of your time so you can learn your lesson. You must never muck around in our business again." Her eyes diverted to the ceiling. She blithely summoned, "Lothos, he's yours," and half a second later, Al dropped to the floor, his body encased in towers of fire. The intense, inhuman pain was almost enough to make him give in to whatever Zoë and Lothos wanted of him, however they weren't willing to share their wants just yet. The blazing torture pulled charred skin from his body. He couldn't stop ugly screams from sounding out, even when blistering flames raged down his throat and into his lungs.