Then Lucas said to Dr. Westphalen and Captain Bridger.
"There was something I want to tell you about my past and I also want to show you what's in the sealed portions of my medical file. Is it ok if I use the computer in your office doc?"
She was puzzled by this, but told him to go ahead. She and Bridger helped him into her office, where Lucas immediately opened up his medical file and begin hacking into the sealed portions of it, Dr. Westphalen just stared at the information in front of her, and she looked over to the Captain and said.
"Nathan is you seeing what I am?"
The Captain nodded, he was just shocked as she was. The two of them looked at Lucas with a questioning gaze. Lucas then looked up at them and said.
"When I born, I was both blind and mentally challenged. When I was four years old my parents took me to a Doctor that my father had found, they told me that this doctor would help me to be normal. When we got to the doctor's office he talked about doing an operation on me. I later found out all the information you see in the file when I decided to hack into it well I was at Stanford. I found out that he had operated on my brain and placed a sort of computer processor in my brain. He had also replaced portions of my eyes with video cameras to give me somewhat normal sight."
He looked up at the two adults in the room; they just stared back at him shocked that someone would do this to a child.
"When I was six I had to go back to that doctor because I had developed a complication from the first operation. The Doctor had to operate on me again and put a shunt into the back of my head as I had developed something called hydrocephalus."
Captain Bridger immediately grabbed Lucas and held him in a tight embrace like he had done so many times before. He was now remembering the night when Lucas had first told him of his abuse. It was back during the first tour of duty. I had walked in to the teen's room to find out what he would be doing well they had two weeks of shore leave and I saw him crying well reading an e-mail from someone. I thought it a little unusual as Lucas was always in control of the emotions that he displayed in public.
A few months ago.
"What's wrong, why are you crying?"
Lucas looked up to see the captain standing there he brushed the tears from his eyes and said "I just got an e-mail from my dad's secretary telling me that my dad was unable to look after me for the two weeks and I have to make other arrangements."
The captain had been shocked by this. How could someone treat there son like this, it was disgraceful. How Lucas could even call this man his father was beyond comprehension.
" Have you made other arrangements yet?"
The teen just shock his head no and berried his head in his hands, as he drew himself up into the fettle position on his bed with his back to the auqatube.
"Would you like to come and spend sometime with me on my Island?"
Lucas looked up at him and wiped some tears away from his eyes with the sleeve of his turtleneck and said.
"Do you really mean that or are you just trying to get me off the ship?"
I was shocked by this.
"Lucas, I really want this. If I go back to my Island alone, I will be just that, alone. If I go with you maybe we can get a chance to know each other a little better."
Lucas smiled at me and asked.
" Do you have an internex connection on your Island?"
The Captain just looked at him and smiled and said.
"Yes but it's not as fast as the ones your used to on SeaQuest."
The next day we were on a boat heeding towards my Island, a solitary dolphin played in the wake from our bow. Both of us knew that it was Darwin, who had been released from the SeaQuest, he of course had decided to tag along with his favorite playmates Lucas and myself.
Once we got to the Island, I gave Lucas a quick tour of the house and showed him the guest bedroom which Lucas gusted my son Robert had might have had, I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't quite sure as I didn't talk to him or anyone for that mater about my family.
Lucas left his stuff in the room and changed into a bathing suit to go and play with Darwin for a little bit. He stopped by the kitchen were he saw me looking through the cupboard and the fridge to see if all the supplies I had ordered were there. Lucas told me that he was going out to play with Darwin for a bit, as he left I told him that I would call him for lunch. When he left through the front door I noticed a lot of scars on his back and wondered were he had gotten those from I decided to ask him about them later or maybe to wait for him to tell me about them himself.
Later that evening, after we both had gone to sleep, for some reason I woke up and decided to check on Lucas and I saw that he wasn't in his bed. I went down the stairs and saw that Lucas was on the couch watching TV with his computer on his lap talking to his friend Wolfman on the Internex. Lucas then singed off and yawned but he didn't go upstairs to bed as I had expected him to do, he just put his computer down on the coffee table and lay back and continued to watch TV. I came over to him and said
"Why are you up so late?"
"Can't sleep, I'm tired but I just can't fall asleep. I've always had that problem since I was a little kid. I can't get to sleep the first couple of nights I'm in a new place."
"Robert was like that too. Why don't you sit up for a second so I can sit on the couch next to you?"
Lucas sat up and I grabbed a pillow and asked Lucas to lay down on it. I then began stroking his hair and just looking into his eyes, in a way that I had never before, I saw love in the teen's eye. I also saw a lost little boy in them, a boy who wanted to tell someone something about himself, but was afraid to do so.
"Is there something that you want to tell me?"
Lucas looked at me with a look of panic in his eyes and said.
"Not really Captain, Why do you ask?" I then gently I said to him.
"I saw the scars on your back and was wondering about them."
Lucas suddenly tensed up and his breathing quickened, he also sat up and I saw a look of fear in his eyes. I said to Lucas in a calm voice.
"Just relax kido, I didn't mean anything by that, I'm just curious that's all."
Lucas then calmed down a little bit and begin to tell me about how his father had beaten him and that the scars on his back where from when his dad had used his belt on his back. He told me how his father had called him an 'arrogant piece of shit' and told him that he was acting like a smart ass all the time, that he was a show off. He told me how this had started when he was in Junior high school and continued through high school. He told me how he had started Junior High School at the age of five.
He also told me how he had started high school when he was eight years old. He then told me about how he had begun at Stanford University at the age of eleven. I took this all in and just stared at the teen and wondered why anyone would beat there son because he was smart. Smart was just putting it mildly I knew that he was a genius. I then did something that neither one of us had expected I grabbed Lucas and held him in a tight embrace, the two of us just sat there. Me with Lucas's head on my shoulder stroking his back, Lucas had started crying during this, I just comforted him. I knew from raising my son Robert that sometimes you just needed to be there for your children (which I wasn't enough), and from what Lucas had just told me he didn't think that his parents had ever been there for him.
Over the next two weeks Lucas and I got to know each other fairly well, Lucas told me about how he had been dumped on the SeaQuest. I wondered how true that story was as I had heard about someone developing a device capable of translating dolphin sounds into human speech and that the UEO was interested in it. I myself told him about the family I had once had. Then one night after Lucas had woken me with a nightmare he had been having, he had actually called out to me with his mind. It felt exactly like the time that Amanda had done it to me, I was puzzled was Lucas like her and her family, was he like me as well. I go to his room and just talked to him and help him calmed down. Lucas then told me that he had a dream about a week before he came on to the SeaQuest. He said that it was about a beautiful woman named Carol.
"That was my wife's name." Lucas nodded and said.
"Yeah I know. I later realized who she was when I saw a picture of her in your quarters. Anyway in the dream she told me that I was going to meet someone special that would help me find love, and that I would also help them to find themselves again."
I smiled and realized that I had a similar dream about a week before Bill Noyce had come to see me, I told Lucas this and the two of us just some how knew that we had shared something very special.
Back in the present Doctor Westphalen turned to Lucas and said.
"Young man, I really need to get that appendix out of you before your symptoms get worse." Lucas looked at her and gowned.
Dr. Westphalen just said to him "come on, you know it won't hurt."
Lucas smiled and said "yaeh I know, it's just that I don't really like operating rooms much."
"I can understand that perfectly, after all you've been through. Do you want me to sedate you before I take you in?"
Lucas just nodded, and then she showed him to a little room where she gave him a gown and a pair of paints to put on while she got the Captain to sign the necessary paper work, after all, he was Lucas's legal guardian, well Lucas was onboard the SeaQuest.
A couple of hours later, Lucas woke in the recovery room with Captain Bridger holding his left hand. His right hand was draped around his teddy bear. Which he realized that the Captain had gotten for him from his quarters. Dr. Westphalen looked at him and smiled she wondered why Lucas still had a teddy bear, she knew now, was not the time to ask but she figured she already knew the reason, even though he was 15 according to his birth records she knew that there was part of him that was still just a young kid who looked at the world like a child. His life had been bad, really bad and she realized that the teddy bear was probably his only comfort in his troubled life. He looked at Kristine, then at his teddy bear and said.
"My mum gave him to me when I was four, just before my first operation. He was the first things I ever saw when I woke up. I've always slept with him ever since. I know I'm fifteen and some people might consider it odd that I still sleep with him. Hell! Even in college my roommates made fun of me for it."
"I understand perfectly why you sleep with him, and you are not the only one onboard who has something that they sleep with for comfort."
Lucas then said he was tired and fell asleep again. Kristen looked at Nathan.
"Nathan, if you need to go to the bridge, you can leave him with me. He'll be just fine." Nathan Bridger just looked at her and said.
"It's alright, I've told the senior staff about the situation down here and I told them that I will be with him for the next little while. Besides they can always call me if anything happens."