Chapter 36 – Enhanced

Annette watched in apprehension as the nurse prepared the injections. It would hopefully be the final ADAM treatment Robert would need. It was the eighth major injection over the course of several months and had been supplemented by daily smaller doses. This treatment had been expensive, so expensive that she had to sell several of her rental properties in Little Eden.

But the expense hadn't been the most challenging part – the real trick had been finding enough ADAM. At first, Annette had presumed that Robert could have the same miracle surgery that Richard had gotten, although she was a bit hazy on the details. And since Dorothy had dropped out of the smart set she couldn't ask her about it, not that Dorothy would be willing to help anyway.

Yet after weeks of inquiry Annette could not locate a single doctor or surgeon who was willing to perform the same miracle surgery. Each and every one of them, from the most prestigious surgeons in the Medical Pavilion to a man in Apollo Square who was in no way a professional, denied up and down that there was any 'miracle surgery' to be had. They all said the exact same thing, and nearly verbatim: "I don't know what you are talking about, but it sounds like the person you are talking about just got lucky with their ADAM treatment."

After the first few times she heard this she began to think that perhaps she had misunderstood Dorothy or that Dorothy had been exaggerating, but after hearing the same thing so many times she began to see there was a larger force at play than her own possibly faulty memory. They had been told to say this, she realized and probably paid off handsomely. By whom, she had no clue and she wasn't particularly interested in finding out, she only wanted Robert to be better.

After greasing a few receptionist's palms, Annette discovered that Doctor Ashland had been Richard's doctor. Doctor Ashland agreed to take on Robert as a client and explained to Annette that he had been giving Richard multiple doses of ADAM and no, no, there had been absolutely no 'miracle surgery', at least anything other than the ADAM injections, and any wild stories she may have heard were tall tale told to pull her leg.

Annette didn't believe his lying tongue, but she did understand that whatever Richard got was no longer on the table. Doctor Ashland was extremely optimistic about his chances though, and after naming a figure that made Annette's mouth drop open, she reluctantly agreed to his terms.

It had been six long months. Six months of sleeping alone. Not much sleeping though, so many restless nights. Nearly making herself sick with worry. And missing him. So much.

Doctor Ashland had told her that it was 'dangerous' to receive a massive amount of ADAM at once. She didn't believe him, her gut told her that he was dragging this out to increase his payday, but she didn't have enough evidence to call him out on it. However, as long as he fixed Robert, she was willing to overlook some shenanigans. If not? Annette would ruin him.

Doctor Ashland stood behind the nurse and was monitoring the odd machine Robert was hooked up to. "His EEG's have been improving over the last few weeks, today should be the little extra nudge we need to wake him up."

"Ready when you are, Doctor," the nurse said.

"Give him the prep injection and take his vitals again, I would like to monitor the output here for several minutes and make sure he's stable. We wouldn't want a repeat of… the other day." Doctor Ashland's eyes went to the monitor while the nurse injected Robert's neck with the first injection.

Annette watched with bated breath. Robert didn't open his eyes or make a sound, but Doctor Ashland made a satisfied grunt at the wibbling needle on the paper. "Alright, go on ahead and give him the ADAM."

The nurse poked him in the same spot on his neck. Annette didn't have to wait long – within seconds Robert's eyes fluttered open and he weakly groaned. "Ann…" he wheezed out as he caught sight of her.

"I'm here, my love, I'm here, right here," she assured him as she rushed to his side. Tears of happiness leaked from her eyes. "It's alright."

"Easy now, don't excite him," Doctor Ashland reminded her. He had previously explained to her that it was likely that Robert would have memory problems and that people who suffered through traumatic events often did not remember the event themselves.

"Where's… where's that bastard Stone? I'm going to clean his clock," Robert tried to get out of his hospital bed, but he was too disoriented to sit upright properly.

"Shh," Annette hushed, not wanting Doctor Ashland or the nurse to overhear the real reason why that bastard Stone had put Robert in a coma to begin with. "Don't worry about that now, my love."

"What's going on here?" Robert asked as he began to take in his surroundings. "Why am I in the hospital! Get me back to the casino, I got to close…" he began to trail off as he noticed the now empty needles next to him. "What's going on?" Robert asked again. "How long was I out?"

"Mr. Anderson," Doctor Ashland slowly began. "Can you please relate to me the last thing you remember up until this moment?"

Annette held her breath, hoping that either Robert's brain was intact enough to not spill the beans or that there was some kind of doctor/patient confidentiality agreement in place.

Robert glanced at Annette and exchanged a knowing look with her. She nodded and gave him an encouraging smile. Fortunately, Robert's mind had been completely restored by the treatment and he kept their risqué activities under wraps. "I remember that smug little blond prick chasing me through my own damned casino over some rude words over his maid."

Annette exhaled, relieved. His answer was vague enough to line up with the story she had provided. She held his hand and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

Doctor Ashland then gave him a battery of questions while the nurse took notes. What city was he in, what line of work he was in, what his mother's maiden name was, where he got married, things of that nature. Robert answered them all correctly with Annette confirming his correct answers.

"Amazing," Doctor Ashland commented once they were done. "No loss of memory. I'll have to run some more tests, but your cognitive function seems to be normal as well."

"Why the devil wouldn't they be?" Robert demanded. "That little prick didn't hit me all that hard, did he?"

No one answered his question, although that silence filled him in enough.

"So he did, did he? Hmm." Robert sighed and leaned back on his pillow. "How bad is it?"

"Was," Annette quickly and joyfully corrected. "It's all better now."

"You've been in a coma for just over six months," Doctor Ashland authoritatively informed him. "Luckily for you, there's a new therapy designed just for this situation."

"Six months?" Robert repeated, bewildered, but he soon recovered. "How's the business doing?"

"Just fine, my love, just fine," Annette soothed him, glossing over the fact that she both had to sell properties to cover the surgery and bribe whats-her-face with the shop space. "I've got the businesses running just like a song."

"Since you seem to be stable I'll leave you two to catch up for a few moments while I see another patient, but I'll be back in a bit to run some more tests," Doctor Ashland said while making a few notes on Robert's chart. The nurse picked up the spent needles and followed him out of the room.

Annette got up and shut the door firmly before speaking to Robert. "Oh, Robert," she managed to eke out before starting to cry. "I've missed you so much, I was so frightened you weren't going to wake up!"

"Are our little secrets still safe? What happened with Richard, did he talk about the tunnel and the fun I had with his girl?"

Annette shook her head. "No, her and I hashed out a deal and they kept their traps shut. It's all been swept under the rug." She paused before continuing. "Let this thing with Stone go. I paid the maid off and they're both happy with it. It was a big deal in the papers, and if something happens to either one of them, we are going to be the prime suspects. Plus, he did knock you out with one punch. Perhaps it would be best if we didn't aggravate him anymore." As much as Annette loathed Stone, the wisdom in avoiding another confrontation with a man who was now more than human was undeniable.

Robert shook his head. "I'll get him. We always get them, don't we my love?"

Annette smiled at her husband. "Yes, yes we do. But…maybe this time we cut our losses. No sense throwing good money after bad, right?"

Robert frowned. "We will deal with it later. What's this treatment they gave me and how much did it cost?"

"As for the cost, it's nothing we couldn't afford, and it's worth every penny. And the treatment? It's called ADAM, it's sort of like the thing that fixed Stone's leg, but not exactly the same thing. You're going to have to take injections of it regularly for a while at least, but it'll keep you in tip-top shape." The injections, of course, were also quite spendy. Whoever was controlling ADAM supply in Rapture was going to make a fortune. Annette wished she could get in on that action.

"Injections? I don't know if I like the sound of that." Robert shifted in his bed. "I suppose I will deal with it later. God Almighty, my mouth is drier than the Sahara. I'm dying for a glass of water. Can you get me one?"

Annette looked around. She spotted a pitcher and glass on a table on the other side of the bed. Robert spied it as well and pointed it out to her. Annette stood up to retrieve it, but she only took a few steps before the pitcher of water slid right off the table and crashed onto the floor, exploding into a mess of glass shards and tepid water. She stumbled backward, stunned that she had just seen a pitcher of water seemingly throw itself off a table.

"Well now, that's weird," Robert drawled while Annette stared at the broken glass. "I was looking right at that pitcher and thinking about how much I wanted it, and it just… came at me, didn't it?"

"Very strange indeed," Annette agreed. A sudden brainwave hit her. That ADAM is supposed to be miracle stuff. She pointed at the empty glass still on the table. "Think about this glass, think that you want it in the same way you wanted the pitcher."

"What are you getting at?"

"Indulge me, my love, I just want to see what happens."

Robert turned his attention to the glass and half a second later it jerkily slid off the table and fell to the floor, although it traveled further in the air than the pitcher did and landed very close to the hospital bed.

Annette turned around, her eyes wide with disbelief as to what she had just seen. "You did that! With your mind!"

Robert was more shocked than she was. "Nonsense," he said in a wavering voice. "It's a coincidence, or a trick or something!"

Annette pointed at her coat on a peg on the wall. "Think about my coat," she said. "Think hard, see if you can get it in your hands!"

Robert's gaze turned to the dark green wool coat, which jumped off the peg and limply wobbled in the air to Robert but dropped halfway to the bed. "Wait, I'll pick it up," he said aloud, then concentrated on the coat on the floor. The coat lifted and more steadily made its own way to the bed.

"Amazing, truly amazing!" Annette could hardly believe her eyes. It's like something out of a pulp science fiction magazine! Completely restored… and then some! "Think about what you can do with it! You could stop the roulette wheel wherever you want! Or dice!"

"Oh, this goes beyond the casino, I could pull up any broad's skirt I want, any time, any place, and they'll be none the wiser. And pull their drawers down to boot!" Robert was obviously intrigued by the options. "Oh honey, we are gonna have a good time with this!"

Annette nodded, excited as well. Perhaps now he'd be a match for Stone as well.

Would You Kindly Imagine a Page Break here?

"Call Mr. Stone and tell him his wife is here to speak to him," Dorothy directed the receptionist at the front desk of Stone and Sons.

The receptionist gave her an impertinently judgmental gaze. "We have three Mr. Stones, ma'am, you'll have to specify which one."

She knew. They all knew. All knew damn well who she was and what she was talking about. Doubtless the receptionist and the rest of her plebeian lot had been salivating over her husband's and the whore's time in the limelight. Fortunately, that time was over. There had been several other salacious stories in the past six months – a dancer had poisoned her lover just last week – but Richard and the whore still had some notorious celebrity clinging to them. And Dorothy was the pitiful backstory to their notoriety.

"Richard," Dorothy hissed at the receptionist. "Tell him his wife is here to see him."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the typists a several desks over glanced up at Dorothy's raised voice and giggled slightly. Dorothy's cheeks reddened. He'll pay for this humiliation. He'll pay ten times over with his tears for his whore.

"Please wait," the receptionist said - too casually in Dorothy's opinion. The receptionist picked up her handset and dialed a few numbers.

Dorothy's back was to the giggling typist but she could feel her eyes boring into her. The last six months had been the roughest period of her life. Five months ago the rent on the apartment in Adranos Place ran out. The cash she had gotten from selling the furniture and her jewelry had secured her rent in a backroom of a grocery store in Arcadia. Between that and food there was virtually nothing left over for anything else. Her hair hadn't been attended to properly at a salon in months and the very last smear of rouge was currently applied to her checks. Her stockings had a noticeable run in the back, but her light blue dress was still clean and even 'pressed' against the radiator that morning.

It was vital that she win Richard back. Not only for the pressing financial reasons but because she found herself unable to stop thinking about him. A restored, healthy Richard was irresistible. How cruel of fate to make her husband appealing after he had decided to be disloyal! But it wasn't as if she wanted to have relations with him or anything commonly vulgar like that, but she certainly would like to be around him and be seen being with him. That would show her former friends a thing or two as well.

But that damnable whore had to get out of the way first. And she would not die! Dorothy had seen her last week as she left her whore shop in Little Eden. (Much to her eternal embarrassment, Dorothy had been in Little Eden to inquire about employment at a boutique – but the pay had been ridiculously low Dorothy had laughed and left). The whore was looking well. She was thriving. Her hair wasn't falling out, nor was she looking thin. In fact, she was looking a bit plumper now that she was eating whatever it was she wanted. Perhaps the doctor had been wrong, or perhaps she needed more time.

She hadn't spoken to Richard since he left. He had returned to gather his things and had pointedly ignored the mess she had made of the whore's possessions. She had told her that day if she needed to contact him she could speak to his lawyer.

The receptionist announced her visit to Richard, waited for his reply, and hung up. "He says no," she simply relayed, but Dorothy could see the judgment in her eyes.

Dorothy did not debase herself in coming here to be turned away at this point. She shook her head. "No, that's not what I need. You call him back and tell him that if I don't get to see him I will break the windows out of the shop of his whore. Call him back and say that."

The receptionist picked the handset back up and from the corner of her eye she saw that the typist was now staring at her. As the receptionist relayed her threat verbatim the typist got up and whispered something into the ear of one of her colleagues. "He says he'll see you," the receptionist informed her and hung up.

"Finally," Dorothy sniffed. "Where is his office?" She had never bothered to visit his den of boring drawings and filthy screws and greasy bolts.

The receptionist gave her directions and Dorothy hurried off, eager to be out of the purview of the typists. She walked past rooms full of smoke and tables, a loud machine shop, and breakroom with a loud argument filtering out of it. Foolish Richard, why has he got his office down here and not up in the nice area? So much of what he did or thought was a mystery to her. She never cared to find out, and she had no desire to do so now.

She didn't knock and instead let herself in. Richard was sitting behind his desk, reading a detective fiction magazine and smoking a cigarette. He was so frustratingly handsome. His tie was loosened and his hair was slightly too messy for someone who owned nearly a quarter of the company. "I should have let you carry your threat out," he greeted her without looking up. "You'd get arrested and I'd be rid of you for a while at least."

"You'd let your wife go to jail?" Dorothy shut the door behind her.

"Absolutely." He looked up. "What in the ninth layer of hell do you want from me?"

She paused and took a deep breath. "Money."

"Oh, well, that's easy enough. Give me my divorce and you'll get a monthly income." He gave her a look over. "You haven't been sleeping well, have you? You look tired."

He had the right to it. Concerns over where her next meal was coming from kept her awake on the corn-cob mattress in the tiny and dimly lit room. "I've been out at a lot of parties, late nights."

"Yeah? Your awful friends didn't drop you like a hot potato the moment you got kicked out of Adranos Place?"

Damn Richard! Why did he have to be so smart? And handsome? "You're right, they did," she conceded, figuring that may get her into his good graces. "But I've made new friends." That was a lie. She was so disgusted by the unwashed masses of Rapture she found herself rubbing shoulders with that she couldn't bear to interact with them more than absolutely necessary.

"See if one of them can help you get a job," he shortly suggested and snubbed his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray.

"Take me out for lunch and we can discuss… divorce," she offered. She had zero intention of agreeing to one, but talking to him was step one in reclaiming what was rightfully his. Plus she really wanted some food. She hadn't eaten out in months and for the past three weeks her meals had consisted of only the cheapest fish and half-rotted produce the grocery sold her on the cheap.

He squinted at her while thinking about it. "I don't know, I'd rather my lawyer handle all this."

"You don't look busy at all," Dorothy smiled at him. It looked like he hadn't done any work in weeks – his desk was a pile of magazines and paperback books. That's quite unlike him. One thing she knew about Richard was that he did like his dull profession. "What's going on, why aren't you working."

"It's really none of your business what my business is. And don't give me that 'wife' horse hockey either, you have nothing to do with my life now other than being a source of stress."

"All the more reason to discuss the divorce," she argued. "What, are you worried your whore will see us and get jealous?"

He didn't rise to her bait at labeling the whore for what she really was. Instead he shook his head. "No, she's very busy at her shop. It's doing quite well and she's there every single day. She eats lunch behind the counter between customers."

Ah, good, Dorothy cunningly thought. He'll grow tired of being second fiddle to her business and come back to his proper wife and station in life. She smiled at him and he glowered at her suspiciously.

"This is all business, you understand?" Richard outlined as he reluctantly got up from his desk. "We come to a financial agreement. That's all. I'm not giving you anything until we are officially not married."

She nodded. You'll be back with me in Adranos Place before you know it. "Where shall we eat?"