"IN PULLUS VERITAS"
(IN CHICKEN, TRUTH)
Author: Gillian Slater
E-mail: LeoricGS@aol.com
Rating: PG -13
Disclaimer: As always, these characters do not belong to me, they are the property of the show's creators, and I'm borrowing them for my own sinister purposes...
PART FOUR
Around the immaculately polished mahogany dining table, Lisa, Heather and Michael sighed collectively in satisfaction, each thoroughly stuffed with Lisa's delectable roast chicken and Heather's heavenly sherry trifle.
Lisa turned to her daughter, a cheeky glint in her eye. "Sooo, what about these dishes?" Heather's face immediately adopted her most pleading expression.
"Mom, my surprise!"
"Oh, well then you'd better get started, huh?" Heather beamed an virtually leaped from her chair to race into the living room.
"I got it, don't worry." Mr. Newman stood, dishes already in hand. Lisa watched as he went into the kitchen, a small grin of anticipation creeping across her face before she followed.
The sink was already half-full of bubbly water as she joined him. They started to wash up in silence, a sudden appreciation for the simple domesticity of the moment welling up between them. Somehow, washing up together felt so... right.
However, not to be distracted, Lisa began to formulate her plan of interrogation.
"So you think the chicken was a success?"
"Oh, yeah. Indescribable, really."
"Not the kind of fare a downtrodden tax-man gets regularly, then?" Mr. Newman shook his head, smiling that stunning smile.
"Worth risking your life for? Or was that guard really carrying a water-pistol?"
Her eyes peered shrewdly sideways at him, evaluating his expression, ready to read in his face what he didn't say openly. Knowing her talent for exacting the truth from even the most unwilling subject, Michael tried to keep the conversation at a light, casual level.
"Oh, him.... well, I feel kinda guilty about that actually. Shouldn't have hit him... He was just, ah, checking on me to see if I needed anything..."
"Oh, no. No, there was a lock on your door. I saw it, well, before you put your fist through it, but it's got me wondering why on earth you don't think about suing the IRS for abuse of manpower or something. It's a federal holiday - which means even the government stops work today, and if the President himself ordered me to work Christmas day, I'd tell him to go stick it. I just hope you were getting paid a king's ransom for it that's all."
"Huh, not nearly enough."
"And all the while your Doctor Morris is living it up someplace." The thought made Michael laugh out loud all of a sudden. At Lisa's quizzical look, he said,
"Well, the thought of the Doc' 'living it up' it's just so... no, he'll be having a quiet day in, and anyway I don't believe he'll forget about work for a second." Lisa left a significant pause in the interrogation, for suspense and dramatic effect, deciding she was done with preliminaries. Down to the real questions.
"I don't s'pose you'd care to let me know what you actually do?" Michael's puzzled look was convincing.
"Uh, IRS?" He ventured. Lisa shook her head slowly, and Michael looked at her warily, suddenly fearful.
"No way," she continued, "Does Internal Revenue lock it's guys up with armed guard. You're not some kind of an international spy are you?" She didn't wait for an answer, plunging ahead, "And come to think of it I've seen you manhandled around by gun-toting soldiers more than once. Like that time on the subway, they dragged you into a van and took you there..." she stopped, realising she'd given away the fact that she followed him that night. Michael, however, was too flustered to pick up on this, floundering for an excuse.
"They can be a bit heavy-handed sometimes, it's true, but really you gotta expect government people to be that way..."
"Like you? Leaping from car-roofs and dodging traffic to catch psycho-killer-eggmen? Or was he behind on his taxes too?" Her tone had a hard edge to it, a sarcasm which veiled the accusation as she pushed closer and closer to the dangerous truth.
"Lisa don't," He cautioned, "Don't go there..."
"Why not? What's there to hide?" She asked it openly now, "Clearly something, or you wouldn't tell a blatant lie to someone you seem to enjoy kissing at every available opportunity--" she stopped short, blushing slightly, realising that one again she'd inadvertently brought up the point of their frequent moments of intimacy. Sighing, she turned back to the matter in hand, her voice a little softer. "I just want to know you better, I mean I don't even know your first name for heaven's sake!"
"Michael." His voice was a whisper, and Lisa felt his gentle acquiescence as he breathed his name, even as she was momentarily thrown by his soft admission.
"Wha...?"
"My first name. It's Michael."
"But that's..." she lowered her face, and her tone matched it automatically. "That was my husband's name."
"I'm sorry. He, uh, had an accident, right?"
"Yes." Her eyelids closed tightly for a moment as she quelled the threatening tears, then shook her head. When she raised her eyes to his they once again held suspicions, accusations. "Yeah, but you don't really want to know about that. You're changing the subject. You always change the subject, and I know I'm no government hot-shot, hell I'm just a lonely widow, but that tells me that there something fishy going on here. I mean, you know things... and sometimes you'll say something that just sounds... What aren't you telling me?"
"I don't know what to tell you Lisie, it's..."
"Wait! What... you just called me..." Michael nearly bit his tongue. How could he have been so careless?!
"'Lisie?' That's what Michael, my husband always called me. How do you know...?"
"Look, I'd better go. I don't mean to stir up anything... unpleasant for you. If I've offended you somehow I'm deeply sorry..."
"No, no, you just confused me. But then, that's all you ever do. You confuse the hell out of me, and then you kiss me and then I'm ever more baffled about you than I was before..." Her shoulders slumped as if in defeat, although she'd already won more of the battle than Michael wished. "I guess that must be your job, huh? The United States Government for some reason wants to turn me completely on my head so's I feel like I'm going crazy, and you're a professional misinformation operative, am I right?"
"Something like that." He tried to turn away as she studied his face intently, but somehow her questioning eyes held his in deadlock. Without knowing why, she searched for even the smallest resemblance between this dynamic young agent and her placid, solidly dependable husband. They were so alike in some ways, just the most abstract, insignificant seeming details, but in essentials there was nothing to connect them. But wasn't it the little things which defined the individual?
"Hey, you two come look!" Heather's insistent voice drifted into the kitchen, scattering Lisa's disturbing contemplations.
"What's that, sweetie?" Lisa shook her perplexity off and walked through to the lounge with Michael close behind. The room was completely dark.
"Okay, I'm about to turn on my lights, you ready?"
"Hit it."
Heather flicked a switch by the socket and the Christmas tree was immediately speckled with coloured lights, interspersed with artistically placed decorative baubles and tinsel. Suddenly, the fairy lights began to flicker, and Heather's proudly beaming face became a touch concerned.
"Oh, no! There's gotta be a wire loose or something." She jiggled the wire and the lights flickered still faster. There was a dull thud as Michael hit the floor behind Lisa, and she turned to find him no longer standing there. In the strobe-lit lounge she peered about and said his name questioningly, only to stumble over him when she tried to move back towards the kitchen.
"Oh my god! Mr. Newman!? Heather - get the lights!" She exclaimed quickly, kneeling beside him.
"What's wrong, mom?" Heather fumbled for the main light switch, shielding her eyes momentarily as the room was bathed in harsh brightness. She looked quickly from her mother to Michael's inert form.
Lisa's shocked face hovered over him, repeating his name intently and pleading for him to 'snap out of it'. His eyes stared vacantly into hers and beyond, unfocused. Lisa, usually so cool-headed in a crisis, quickly felt panic begin to rise within her. He looked for all the world like he was dead, but she reassured herself that that couldn't be, bringing her cheek close to his mouth and feeling the faint, warm breath touch her skin. She felt his pulse. Fairly slow and constant, but then she was no doctor.
"Doctor!" She cried, knowing immediately the best course of action, and at once being altogether unsure of a beginning.
"Is it a heart attack? Should I call an ambulance?" Heather asked worriedly over Lisa's shoulder.
"No, honey, just, ahh... let me think. Help me put him on the couch." Together they easily lifted Michael's light frame and laid their unblinking patient out on the sofa.
"What can I do?" The teenager wrung her hands helplessly, a note of panic ringing in her own voice also.
"I think we've gotta get hold of his boss - uh, Theodore Morris wasn't it? - yeah, he's a doctor, and he knows Mr. Newman. He might even be his doctor, I don't know, but he's the guy we've got to talk to."
Wracking her brains for a solution, she swept her gaze over him and his surroundings, only to find the answer staring her in the face, in the form of the sleek black cellphone lying on the coffee table at the end of the sofa.
"The phone!" She cried, excitedly, seizing it, "It belonged to that soldier he knocked out, and if this Doctor Morris ordered that guy to guard Mr. Newman it makes sense the number would be in here." She hastily navigated the cell's complex menu system, scrolling through the numbers until she found a 'Doctor T. Morris' listed.
"Please, pick up..." she murmured fervently as she pressed the phone to her ear and heard the insistent ringing on the other end.
"Morris." The doctor's tone was gruff and filled with annoyance, and Lisa wondered momentarily if the man was ever in a good mood, even at Christmas. Her speculation was cut off abruptly then, as she looked once more at Mr. Newman, waving a hand deliberately in front of his staring eyes.
"Hello. It's, uh, Lisa Wiseman here, a friend of..."
"Mrs. Wiseman?!" The doctor was clearly startled, but recovered quickly, an interrogative tone edging into his stern voice. "How did you get this number?"
"It's kind of a long story, and one we really don't have time to get into. Doctor, Mr. Newman's ill - he's collapsed."
"Collapsed? Where?"
"At my house." She felt a brief pang of guilt at blowing Mr. Newman's cover, since he was supposed to be locked away in his little townhouse doing whatever mysterious work he did, the truth of which she hadn't yet been able to ascertain.
"At your house?! Mrs. Wiseman, tell me exactly what happened." The words were spoken slowly and emphatically, and a touch of the panic Lisa fought down in herself was distinctly audible in the doctor's purposefully clear enunciation.
"Well, it's like I said, he collapsed. One minute he was standing right behind me and the next - bang! On the floor. His eyes are open but he's just staring, like he's in a trance or something..." A memory stirred suddenly as she said the words, of something her husband had once explained to her. She continued to describe his condition to Dr. Morris with this in mind, coming to a hesitant but startling conclusion. "...In fact, if I didn't know better I'd swear he had photosensitivity syndrome."
Morris, listening with growing concern to Mrs. Wiseman's sit-rep, was at once puzzled and mildly impressed with her attempted diagnosis. "Photosensitivity syndrome? Hmmm... what makes you say that?"
"It's a condition my husband had. He told me that sometimes certain kinds of lights could make him blank out just like this."
Alarm raced through the scientist's mind, closely followed by dozens of unanswerable questions. If indeed her suspicions were correct, why wasn't this mentioned anywhere in Mr. Wiseman's past medical records? Why, if he knew he had such a rare neurological condition, hadn't he said anything about it before? And most importantly, why did this damned thing choose to manifest itself right at this moment, when it could potentially blow the lid off the whole project?! If Mrs. Wiseman made the relatively simple connection between her husband and the man she now had unconscious in her house...
"I'll be there as soon as possible. I'll be one hour at most. Just... make him comfortable..."
"Well, shouldn't I take him to a hospital? You could meet us there..."
"No!" The doctor cried hastily, then immediately forced his tone to soften so as not to raise her suspicions. "Uh, no, he shouldn't be moved. Not at all. Don't call anyone else out for him, Mrs. Wiseman. I'm his doctor and I'm on my way."
"Okay, if you say so. Right then, see you --" But the line was already dead. She stared at the phone indignantly for a second and huffed her annoyance before slamming it shut. Kneeling down beside her inanimate patient, she checked his breathing and pulse again. No change. She sent Heather for another pillow and blanket.
"Mr. Newman..." she urged gently, "Come on, wake up, please..." Then, trembling slightly at the idea, she leant close to his face and whispered, "Michael..." She thought she felt his breath quicken a little. It must really be his name, she thought, the way he reacts when I say it... Just like I reacted when he called me 'Lisie'... She gazed intently into his vacant eyes, wishing fervently that she could know more about him, about how he knew all those things, how he made her feel... She brushed a fingertip lightly across his lips, hoping for some sort of spark, some sign of life, but he was unresponsive.
"Mom, what's photivity syndrome anyway?" Heather's question preceded her stumbling entrance into the room with about eight pillows stacked up in her arms, blocking her view. Lisa quickly drew back from her close-quarters position with Mr. Newman, blushing a little as her daughter peered around her tower of pillows.
"Ah, it's 'photosensitivity' syndrome," Lisa repeated the word with emphasis, "And it's a thing your father had - something to do with the way the brain reacts to light. He found out about a year before the accident. He was in a car one time and he just spaced-out, like that," She clicked her fingers expressively and waved a hand to indicate Michael, "Collapsed at the wheel. The doctor said there was nothing to worry about as long as he took pills..." She jumped up suddenly. "Wait a minute - the pills! I think there's still some..." She raced up the stairs into the bathroom and began rifling through the medicine cabinet, eventually seizing an opaque brown bottle and hearing a satisfying rattle as she shook it.
"Heather, can you get a glass of water?" Lisa called to her daughter as she came down the stairs. Heather quickly obliged, and hovered anxiously over Michael as Lisa took out two pink capsules.
"Should you be doing that? You always said it's dangerous to take medicine that's not yours."
"I know, I know, but I can't think what else to do. If he does have the same condition, this could bring him out of it." She rolled the capsules around in her palm, indecision filling her features briefly, then opened Michael's mouth and placed the pills on his tongue. "Hold his head up," She ordered Heather, and gave him the water, watching as he swallowed the liquid and medicine automatically.
"Let's hope that does the trick."
* * * * *
