Time for something to happen.
forgetmaine – I'm glad you found my story worthy of the paper you printed them on. Wasting paper, boooo. Hey, 'super' is an excellent word. It could stand getting more use!
I'm glad people liked Dr. Blackwell – I have him completely in my head but I had no idea if I was typing him out satisfactorily. So thanks for that feedback, those who reviewed about him!
Disclaimer: Ben and Riley weren't my idea.
On the way back to the clinic we stopped at the gas station, about the only building still open at that hour, and bought some sustenance. The little packaged sandwiches looked suspiciously fresh for being where they were. By the time we arrived back at the clinic it was dark out. There was a waning quarter moon hanging low in the sky, quickly becoming obscured by some ominous looking clouds that were forming into what looked suspiciously like an anvil. Maybe there would be a storm tonight.
Dr. Blackwell was waiting behind the desk when we entered, reading a 'Field & Stream' magazine. He stood up with a slight smile.
"Your quarters are just down the hall. Two old squeaky cots."
"Fantastic," Riley muttered, not sounding ungrateful in the least. We followed him down. We entered a room without windows or furniture, save for two cots. A tank of oxygen stood at one end of the cot on the left. Dr. Blackwell went to stand next to it.
"Ryan, I assume you know how to use these things. But just in case anything happens, I'm going to tell your friend here how to work it." He turned to me and it occurred to me that if I wanted to show any kind of gratefulness I'd at least give him a proper noun to use on me rather than a pronoun.
"Call me Dan." I still wasn't going to tell him my real name, just in case.
"Alright Dan, have you ever used an oxygen tank before?"
"No sir."
"Quick lowdown, then. I just replaced the humidifier so that shouldn't be a problem, but if you should need to put in more water, which you shouldn't, here's the distilled water, don't use tap. Just put it in here, up to two inches. Everything's all hooked up, pressure gauge is where it should be. When you turn it on, use this little doohickey here, remember righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, turn it 'till the pressure gauge moves a little, like this," he said, turning the knob. He switched it off again. "Set the flow meter to six and a half, don't go over." He turned to Riley.
"Remember, no more than 20 minutes. If 20 minutes of oxygen doesn't work, try to ride it out, I don't want to give you any more of that painkiller. Potent stuff."
"Gotcha, doc."
"I'm locking you in, don't answer for anybody. I'll be back around 6:30 tomorrow. Better leave you two to sleep now, imagine you're both tired. I've got a wife and some bean soup waiting for me at home. Anything emergency-like happens, call my number," he said, handing me his card.
"Thank you, Dr. Blackwell, thanks a lot. You have a nice night." He nodded, not dumb enough to wish us a nice night as well.
"Good luck," were his chosen words. Smart guy. He left.
"Well, Ben," sighed Riley "I believe it's sandwich time." I nodded in agreement. Upon wrestling the saran wrap off of our sandwiches it became quite apparent that they were not, in fact, fresh, but had been instead frozen almost solid, eliminating the soggy factor. Now they were melting and various juices were soaking the bread, making it look disgusting and rendering it very hard to consume. Worse yet were the half-frozen tomatoes. If you've never eaten half-frozen tomatoes consider yourself blessed and should you ever come across the opportunity to try a frozen tomato, take my advice and run away quickly. I love fresh tomatoes, but these frozen ones completely ruined my sandwich. Frozen tomatoes along with apparently green turkey cuts canceled Riley's appetite. I briefly envied the doctor's bean soup.
I looked at my watch to announce that it was late and we should get some sleep, but my watch said 7:30, which wasn't late at all. I sat on my cot and stared at Riley, who was glaring forlornly at his sandwich.
"So," I said. Perhaps now would be a good time for some answers from him. He looked at me.
"How long have you had cluster headaches?" He signed, resigned. I knew he didn't really want to talk about it but I knew he knew he couldn't escape talking about it. I kind of felt he owed me some answers, and he probably knew that.
"Since I was sixteen. They usually start around 20 years but I'm special," he said with a touch of sarcasm. "Exactly one year ago I was supposed to be having a period of headaches but they never came, and I assumed they were gone for good." He wasn't doing anything to hide his feelings this time and I could see how miserable he felt.
"Guess I was wrong." I knew if Abigail were here she'd be over sitting next to him giving him a big hug.
"Riley…" I started, wanting to tell him how bad I felt for him and how sorry I was for dragging him into this and how delicate the whole situation had to be. Sorry for what might occur in the future. Nothing came out of my mouth.
Thunder rolled in the distance. It rolled for quite a while.
"It averages one inch of rain in October around here," said Riley. Upon seeing the funny look I gave him, he continued, "I looked it up before we came out here. I'm not that much of a genius. Wonder if it'll all going to come down tonight." He lay back in the cot but didn't close his eyes. The floor seemed to vibrate gently with the next roll of thunder. I stood.
"Can I borrow your computer?" He half sat up.
"What? Why?"
"Just want to look some stuff up. Promise I have no idea how to hack into any of your personalized documents." He lay back down.
"Ok, whatever."
I went into the corner where he'd dumped his computer upon entering. Truth was I just didn't want to fall asleep tonight. My nerves were on edge and sleep was the last thing I wanted to do. And I did have some research I should do. I turned on the computer and turned off the lights. Riley should at least be getting some sleep.
"So, Ben." Apparently sleep was not to be.
"Yes, Riley."
"Seriously, do jackalopes exist?" I had to stare.
"Riley, have you never heard of jackalopes before? They dwell in the land of dragons and unicorns. I thought you knew a lot about this area." I smiled as Riley's homepage tabs showed up. His search engine was 'LookPink'. I clicked it and typed 'cluster headaches' into the blank.
"Well somehow my ears have never encountered the word before." I didn't reply for a moment as I brought up a page of information on the headaches.
"Where do you think the myth originated?" Riley asked. Clearly he wasn't ready for sleep yet. Maybe he was afraid to. I humored him for the time being.
"I believe… there's a disease that rabbits get that causes weird tumors to grow on their heads. It's suspected that that's where it originated."
"How do you know that?" I didn't really hear him. The page I was looking at was listing off different names for cluster headaches, and one of them was 'suicide headaches'. Good grief.
"Ben?"
"What?"
"I said how did you know that? That's like the most random thing ever."
"Oh. I took a biology class in college that was taught by a lagomorphologist. He was always talking about rabbits. He liked to ramble about jackalopes." Cluster headaches are not physically life-threatening. Pain strikes quickly and without warning. Usually attacks one side of the head. The pain is often described as having a red-hot poker pushed into the eye socket. I grimaced.
"What?"
"What?"
"What are you looking at?"
"Um, the weather. Looks like we're in for a heck of a night." I almost felt bad lying, but really it was no big deal. I hoped I was right. I opened another tab and found the weather page for Henrytown, Utah. As if on cue I heard the faintest of patterings on the roof. It had started raining. True to my prediction, the weather page warned of moderate to severe thunderstorms and one to two inches of rain. I relayed this information over to Riley, who whistled.
"Wow, what a dump. This happened to me once when I was over in Moab in the spring. I think we had a year's worth of precipitation in like two days, during a blizzard."
"A blizzard in the desert?"
"Yeah, it was really cool."
"I'll bet…" People with cluster headaches usually prefer to pace or rock back and forth instead of lying down during the attack. That didn't describe Riley very well, but that could be because for one of the attacks pacing hadn't been an option. Some victims prefer to be alone during an attack. Some may scream, bang their head against a wall, or hurt themselves in other ways to distract themselves from the pain. Well if they were going to hurt themselves further I didn't see the point in leaving them alone.
"Ow." I closed the computer and got off the cot, turned on the light. Riley was fumbling with the doohickey on the oxygen tank and already had the mask to his face. Suddenly his hand recoiled as if it had been slapped, flew to his head. I rushed over to the oxygen tank and luckily remembered how to work it - within seconds it was all set up and I was quite certain that the headache would be aborted right then and there. Unfortunately I was erroneous in that assumption. Within three minutes Riley was no longer using his hands to hold the mask on – they had assumed their positions on his forehead and his right temple. I sat next to him and tried to hold him still as I held the mask in place. This attack seemed more violent than the first two and he didn't seem content to lie down and take it. A few times he looked as if he tried to get up but I held him down, my non-occupied hand on his far shoulder. He settled for rocking back and forth in the end. It seemed to me that every muscle in his body was taught and I hoped this wouldn't result in debilitating soreness.
After ten torturous minutes, his state seemed to finally improve. He stopped rocking and his posture relaxed slowly and once again he ended up leaning his slumped body into mine. I could feel his heart beating through my arm on his back and the heart rate, which had gotten almost alarmingly high during the attack, slowed down.
"Done with the oxygen?" I asked him. I perceived a slight nod, and so removed the mask.
"Was that how that was supposed to work?" I couldn't believe that was how it should work. Riley, however, nodded again. So instead of an hour long attack, he'd just have to endure ten minutes of hell. Great. I sorely hoped the prescriptions were a bit more effective, and I didn't doubt Riley did too.
"Want to sleep now?" He nodded again but made no move. We sat in silence for a time and I listened to the rain now coming down in what sounded like torrents, the thunder becoming more violent. I wanted to feel safe in this windowless room. Locked in a clinic where no-one would be coming until morning, in the middle of a desert in nowhere, Utah. No-one would find us here. And yet, there was still that nagging dread. What if someone did? There would come a point in this procedure where we'd get far enough along and someone would be alerted as to what we were doing. What then?
Riley's breathing was deep and slow now. I suspected he was sleeping. I wondered how safe he felt. Probably not very safe from the headaches but at least he knew he had a few hours of peace. I betted he was feeling some of the safety and security I wished I was feeling, all warm and in the care of someone he thought he knew he could trust.
No, he could trust me. In any situation he'd be where he needed someone to trust, I'd be there. My reasoning behind this was that he'd understand if I had to make that terrible choice between him and the rest of the US. What would he do in my shoes? He would have to choose the rest of the US, anyone with a sense of what's right would do that. He would understand that the scales tipped him up. He would trust I knew what I was doing. Right?
I hated thinking about it. If we played our cards right, I'd never even have reason to think about it.
Riley jerked awake, startled by something in his own head. He looked a bit shocked at his position and gave me a fleeting apologetic look, and sat up.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"Don't be. You ok now?"
"Yeah, I'm good."
"You should get some sleep."
"I know." He finally crawled under the bed covers and I went back to turn off the light. That being done, I picked up his computer again. Riley sighed.
"I don't think we should talk about jackalopes any more, Ben."
"Why not?"
"I always get a headache when we do." I reflected for a moment, and realized that yes, he did indeed. I smiled. And then I frowned.
"Riley, why didn't I ever know you got cluster headaches?"
"Being a clusterhead isn't something to be proud of."
"It isn't anything to be ashamed of either."
"Yeah, but… I just… didn't want to…" Clearly he was having trouble voicing his feelings.
"You didn't want us to worry." I clicked back to the link I'd been reading on cluster headaches.
"Pretty much, yes."
"Well you did a fantastic job of hiding it. I thought I knew everything about you." I skimmed over some paragraphs about circadian rhythms, sleep deprivation, depression, and suicide.
"Haha. There are many things you don't know about the mysterious and elusive Riley Poole."
"Oh really? Care to share?" Attacks generally last from fifteen minutes to three hours. I supposed Riley was one of the relatively lucky victims. Three hours was a long time.
"If I told you, I'd no longer be mysterious and elusive."
"Anything that could potentially come up without warning and throw a monkey wrench in the works?" There was a pause and I thought for a moment I'd offended him. I hadn't meant it to sound accusational. When he replied I realized he had actually been thinking seriously about the question.
"Well… I have mild chronic fatigue syndrome." I paused in my reading.
"You're kidding."
"Totally serious. Had it since I was fifteen." Chronic fatigue syndrome. Who knew. Riley Poole had chronic fatigue syndrome.
"Riley, are you playing? You'd be the last person I'd accuse of having that."
"For real, Ben. Don't tell me you never wonder what those pills I'm always popping are. Good old atomoxitine." Well, I had wondered about that periodically, but I always concluded it was his own business. I had never worried about it.
"You're not always popping pills."
"But you've seen me do it." I couldn't deny that.
"Well ok then, any more mysteries to be unveiled?"
"Nah, I have to maintain my mysterious aura if I'm ever going to attract women."
"Riley, shut up and go to bed."
"Beeeeeeeeen, I don't wanna." I shook my head, annoyed and bemused.
"You should. Tomorrow you're on hacking duty. If you screw up we're all doomed."
A particularly loud bolt of thunder shuddered through the room. I no longer wanted to read about cluster headaches. I knew all that I wanted to know about them, and some that I didn't want to know. Curiously and a bit guiltily I clicked on the 'favorites' button. The web sits looked mostly like they were in hacker language or other such electronic lingo that I'd never be able to understand. One of them, however, said 'FreeRice', and I ended up whiling away about half an hour there, convincing myself that I'd never have succeeded pursuing an English major like I had originally intended. I may have been mistaken but it seemed as if Riley had finally fallen asleep, which is, of course, an excellent cue for something else terrible to happen.
The clinic exploded.
The noise was loud. About what you'd expect from an exploding building. The whole clinic seemed to come off its foundation for a moment, within which my heart must have skipped at least once. The numbness in my mind lasted for only seconds but it seemed to me that my reaction was painfully slow. I slammed shut the computer screen and pretty much dove for Riley's bed, shook him awake. He was out of bed and very disoriented as I dragged him to the door. The wall over my cot was crumbling, as if in slow motion, and some terrible cracking noises were coming from the ceiling. Riley in one hand, computer in the other, I tried to push through the door. Not surprisingly, it was jammed. The ceiling was probably putting a lot of pressure on it.
"Ben, what's happening?" asked Riley as I aimed a kick at the door. I didn't reply. To my relief the door did what it was supposed to do in all the movies and collapsed outwards. I grabbed Riley and the computer once again.
"The oxygen?" he asked.
"Look at the fire, Riley, it would incinerate us. We have to get out of here." Indeed, flames were consuming the wreckage that had been the waiting room. The ceiling had collapsed and I could see a few chairs poking up from the debris. No more 'Field & Stream'. The rain was still coming down but it didn't look like it was doing much to quell the flames. Smoke curled into the sky in thick plumes, infiltrating the air around us, making my eyes sting and water. I pondered trying to make it through the burning wreckage but decided against it. The back door was a better idea. Was there a back door? I had no idea.
"Come on," I said, pulling Riley down the hall. He didn't seem to understand the urgency of the situation quite yet, and I blamed it on having just woken up.
We'd made it halfway down the hall to where a promising looking 'exit' sign blinked and sputtered out while we watched when the ceiling let out an ear-splitting screech and chunks of plaster preemptively fell from above. I pulled Riley close and tried to shelter the computer as more businesslike clods of metal collapsed between us and the exit. Turn around. Flames licked from every decimated room we came to, no possibility of making it through and breaking a window. Only way out was through the waiting room, now a no-man's land.
"We have to go over this, come on," I said tersely, still towing Riley. I turned to face him as I felt resistance; hands to his head, pain and panic creased across his face.
"Dammit, Riley, not now!" I shouted. Why in hell's name did he have to have one right now, now when the building was collapsing around us, consumed by fire, smoke threatening to choke us?
Smoke.
I swore again, tried to keep a firm hold on the computer with one arm and a firm hold around Riley with the other. We weren't going to die here. We couldn't. I stepped into the pile of hot, sharp debris, and knew I wouldn't come out of this unscathed. Neither would Riley. Hopefully I wasn't going to drop the computer, because it was probably the only way we would ever solve this whole damn conspiracy.
I tried to pick my way as quickly as possible through that no-man's-land, but it seemed as if we were crawling. It didn't help that I had one arm to keep Riley from falling into the murderous stuff, all in all both arms occupied, leaving me with certain death should I loose my balance. Water kept getting in my eyes and made the footing slippery, but was probably the only reason I ended up getting out of that with all of my legs still attached. That whole episode was as close to hell I'd ever come to in my life, and as such my memory didn't keep much of what happened, but we made it across. I tripped onto the hot grass, dropping the computer and Riley, both of which clattered to the ground at my sides. I stood back up. We needed to get out of there.
I felt a vague pain in my lower legs as I once again occupied both arms. Get out before the police come. They couldn't find us. Getting Riley out of the smoke occurred second hand. He was choking and gasping and it looked as if he was sobbing but I couldn't really hear anything, as the rest of the building was actively collapsing behind us. I saw flashing red and blue lights lighting up the trees a few blocks away and I knew it was a matter of moments before we were being stopped and asked who we were, what were we doing there.
I sure wished I knew where Dr. Blackwell lived.
As I did not, I picked a friendly-looking little oasis of trees and shrubs to hide in, a block or two away, at the edge of town. Lucky the edge of town was so close to the heart of town. We stumbled towards it, splashing through accumulating puddles of dirty water, and I blamed the low population and the sheets of rain for the fact that we weren't seen as we smuggled ourselves into the shadows. I blew out a breath of air that I must have been holding. Maybe I thought someone would hear my breathing. I thanked whichever higher being would listen that it was a little drier under here. Computer in the muddy leaves. Riley in the dirt. Me… at least I was sitting against a tree.
"Riley?"
Riley coughed. I rolled him onto his back. If he'd been crying he'd stopped it. His eyes were half-closed and they weren't really focused on anything. Hands lay limp at his sides. Maybe the headache was over. Maybe he'd be alright. Maybe a piece of ceiling had hit him on the head and given him a concussion.
"Riley, are you there?" He sounded as if he tried to say something but nothing comprehensible came out.
"Riley? Riley! What kind of trees are these?" His eyes, to my amazement, seemed to focus up past my shoulder where the golden leaves fluttered in the suddenly ashy breeze. I thought for a moment he'd tell me their identity, I thought maybe he still had some strand of consciousness. He let out a deep breath and I realized they weren't focused on anything here on earth anymore. The gaze was too distant.
Helplessness. I had sure been in some tight fixes in my life before but always I'd been able to come up with an escape plan. A solution. I'd known something they didn't. Who knew I'd meet my match out here where nothing ever happened. Here we go, I thought. I didn't know if Riley was dying but he sure wasn't acting very lively. If I dragged us out to the police I knew they'd have at least a mobile unit on hand, an ambulance that would be able to help Riley. Try to help Riley. Riley Poole, as they would know, because I'd be forced to give them his name.
I looked back down at Riley and another kind of helplessness washed over me. My best friend. Wasn't this the way people looked before they died? No. It must be. Yes. No. I had to help him. You can't. The only mission I had was to save him. Think of the people. I didn't care about the people. Riley was dying. Didn't you say yourself you'd put the lives of the United States before the life of Riley? No. Yes. I didn't care anymore about the US and any conspiracy. I owed it to him, the way I'd shouted at him back in the collapsing building. You can't afford to save him. I'd shouted at him. As if it was his fault. Nobody's fault. It's the way things have to be. But things didn't need to be like this. He didn't have to die. If you save him, you have the rest of the country to answer to.
"Stop!" my own voice shocked me and shut the voices in my head up.
"It's not black and white," I told myself. Clinging to a splinter of hope. Maybe things would be ok. I could not let Riley lay there. I had to do something. Seeing only hopeful shades of grey, I stepped out of the shelter of the unknown trees. A voice behind me.
"Dan?"
Wooo… something happened…