Chapter 10
"Daphne's CAT Scan"
My request to have a CAT scan done on me was a reasonable one. I couldn't bear the idea of having one of those brain eating monsters inside of me and allowing myself to fall prey to Reverend Kane. I knew also that my father in heaven wouldn't allow Reverend Kane to take me.
Being wheeled from my room, I was taken to the room where the CAT scans were done and I was then placed on a conveyor belt that led directly to the machine.
"Are you ready, Daphne?" the doctor asked and I gave him a thumbs up confirming that I was indeed ready to begin the scan. With Fred by his side, the doctor pressed the button and I was sent into the machine.
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"It should take a few minutes, Mr. Jones," the doctor said. "Then we can be sure that Ms. Blake does or does not have brain eating amoeba inside of her."
I gotta tell you that Fred seeing me being CAT scanned was in a sense, inner torture to him. He was probably thinking that I did indeed have something inside my brain, but he was flattening out denying it, which was very typical of Fred. However, if Reverend Kane was to get his ghostly hands on my soul, I needed to make sure that was never going to happen.
"Lord, give me strength," I whispered to myself as I went under the machine, scanning me. The glaring lights were too much for my eyes and I closed them, trying to picture myself in a less than stressful situation. For 5 minutes, I laid under that machine and then, 5 minutes later, I was out of the machine and placed back on the stretcher which took me back to my room.
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Now, the moment of truth was upon me and sure enough, the doctor came in with a nurse, holding the results of the scan in a manila envelope.
"Well, I've got good news, Ms. Blake," the doctor said, reading the results of the CAT scan to me and Fred. "You have no traces of a brain eating amoeba inside of you."
Both Fred and I could only smile in gratitude for the outcome. Still, there were others with this brain eating matter inside of them.
"Although I wish I could say the same about the others," the doctor sighed. "We lost one of them and there may be more on the way."
"This brain eating amoeba," Fred asked. "What is it called?"
"It's called Nagerlia Fowleri," the doctor answered. "It's a brain eating amoeba that eats at your brain. What's more is that the damage that they cause is irreversible. Once they get at your brain, there is no cure."
"Then Reverend Kane must have found a way to his hands on your soul," Fred whispered to me. "Maybe what he is doing to the other FBI agents is only a practice round."
A confused look befell the doctor and the nurse upon Fred's confession.
"Just an obsessive compulsive ghost," Fred chuckled nervously. "Nothing to worry about."
But the doctor had his reasons.
"This ghost…" he said, much to our shock. "One of the agents we are treating has been having hallucinations about a ghost that used to be a minister."
"A mad minister," I remarked. "He's after me, doctor. He wants my soul in order to return to the living world and he will stop at nothing until he gets it."
Sighing, the doctor removed his glasses and turned his back to us for a minute. Immediately, the prospect of dealing with brain eating amoeba was bringing back memories.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I've dealt with something like this before," he said, turning his attention back to us. "20 years ago, I had a young boy come in here with a massive headache and he was vomiting. The family said that they were at River Country and it was discovered than an amoeba got to his brain. I went to Disney and recommended that the park be shut down."
Neither one of us could believe that this was adding more weight to our case in part because the confession of another River Country related issue was strikingly similar to what we were investigation right now.
"You went to Disney themselves?" Fred asked.
"I did, because over time, the water in the part was becoming contaminated and brain eating amoeba was beginning to emerge. I even went to Mickey Mouse himself and he was upset at first, but he understood in time why I had him do it."
"Seems to me like he was reluctant to change and adapt," I remarked.
"He was in denial about it," the doctor replied, sitting down in a chair. "But, I had to show him that if he kept River Country open, then he would have had more deaths on his hands."
But Fred had drawn up his own conclusion.
"It doesn't make sense," he guessed. "When we first met Mickey, he was trying to evolve the park because Walt Disney believed in the evolution of the parks. Unless, maybe Mickey was being pressured by someone within his circle to keep River Country open."
Could it be that Mickey was being pressured? Or maybe he was being taken advantage of? Neither of us knew, but one thing was for sure: some Disney executive didn't want to let go of the past and would do anything to keep it the way it was.
"But what if it wasn't an executive?" I asked, as I felt another sharp pain from one of the broken ribs. "There was this park ranger, Freddie. You saw him, he threw me down one the slides."
Fred began to realize that we needed to take a closer look at the Team Disney Ranks. But, he still had one more question for the doctor.
"Now, if there is one thing that you can for us..." he asked the doctor and about an hour later, dressed in a long sleeved mauve top with a rolled collar, matching mauve pants and legwarmers, accessorized with a purple puffer vest and matching high-heeled shoes, I left the hospital and rejoined the investigation.
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