The Good Doctor's Tales Folio One Read online

  Each day I faced more tests. The nurse took blood three times every day. They collected urine and stool samples. The Center’s orderlies became my shadows, always with me. I couldn’t even make friends with Mr. Cook, the epitome of professionalism, no matter how much I talked to him. Mr. Kelsey, on the night shift, was more than wary. I never got more from him than a hostile glare.

  I had trouble sleeping. I would wake up after a few hours and not be able to get back to sleep. When I did sleep, I had bad dreams. They didn’t make any sense to me, but my dreams interested the psychologist, so I told him what I remembered of them. Pinballs. Races. Religious statues. Bright lights. Crowds. Stalked by terror.

  Mostly I spent my nights staring at the ceiling and brooding. I brought it up to Dr. Zielinski. He told me Arms needed less sleep, as little as two hours a night. He didn’t say anything about the bad dreams, but I sensed they bothered him.

  The Withdrawal Film (long version)

  (Carol Hancock POV)

  Agent Bates escorted me to the first floor conference room.

  You absolutely sure you want this?” Agent Bates asked. “This isn’t information you need to have, and I strongly suspect the film will do you more harm than good.”

  “I need to know, Mr. Bates. If I’m supposed to kill these people, I think I need to know.”

  He accepted my answer and led me into the conference room. He had me sit down and as he turned off the lights, Dr. Zielinski joined us. “Back in ’58, just before end of the Transform Quarantine, a plant maintenance engineer in the FBI building came down with Transform Sickness. No Focuses had room for him. For religious reasons, suicide wasn’t an option, nor euthanasia, or even any medications. He volunteered to allow his end to be filmed in the name of science.” Bates paused. “I was there. This film covers the last four days of his life. If he and his family hadn’t agreed to withhold food and water from him, he would have taken two weeks to die.”

  Cranky and tired from the exercise, I wanted to gnash my teeth. I still hoped this was all a mistake: there weren’t any Transforms, I wasn’t a Transform, I wasn’t an Arm.

  Dr. Zielinski motioned for Agent Bates to deal with the projector, and sat down beside me.

  I shivered and hugged my torso, but couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The film started with a straightjacketed man on the floor of a padded cell, curled up in a fetal position. The man had corded muscles and he bared his teeth in a snarl. His agony moved me. I wanted to take his pain away.

  “He’s in pain, but he’s not in withdrawal yet,” Dr. Zielinski said. “He’s in the worst of the low juice states, what we call periwithdrawal.”

  Occasionally, the man would jerk spasmodically. In between, he made little desperate mewling noises. He was the most miserable creature I had seen since my three-year-old Billy came down with the flu on top of Chicken Pox. All this from low juice?

  As I watched, I remembered reading how Focuses didn’t have to worry about their dangerous Transforms because they could ‘strip them down to low juice’ if they needed. Looking at this man, I realized how nasty a weapon the Focuses possessed. No, Focuses weren’t helpless at all.

  Five minutes into the film the man began to howl, his muscles corded tighter than before. My empathy for the man vanished, replaced by disgust. I turned away for a moment at the slap-in-the-face reality of the man’s plight. This juice deprivation might happen to me, and I didn’t want it to.

  “He’s in withdrawal now,” Dr. Zielinski said, as cold and clinical as ever, as if he sat in my living room with a cup of tea in his hand, discussing the weather. “Because of media inaccuracies, most people think a man goes into withdrawal when he runs out of juice. In reality, a male Transform goes into withdrawal when he doesn’t have enough juice to function.”

  I nodded. “He has juice left?” I asked, as calm and rational as I could fake. “Is this juice I can use?”

  “He does have juice left, but some of his remaining juice has turned into a poison, not only for him, but for any Arm foolish enough to try and take juice from him. Eventually, once he’s consumed about a third of his remaining juice, so much of his juice will be poison that he will have poisoned his brain, and he’ll die. It takes about two weeks if he has adequate food and water. Much of this man’s agony is from thirst and hunger.”

  As Dr. Zielinski spoke the man stiffened. He held this pose, every muscle in his body clenched, for about a minute. Then he thrashed uncontrollably, screamed and blood began to ooze from his man’s skin like sweat. A few seconds later he exploded off the floor and threw himself at the door. His body slammed up against it with unbelievable force. I flinched and covered my mouth in sudden terror. I’d never seen anyone move so fast or hit something that hard. No man who had any care for himself at all could throw himself at an immovable object in such a fashion.

  The blow against the door knocked him to the floor, but he never stopped screaming. He thrashed on the floor for a moment, got to his feet, and threw himself at the door as hard as he had done the first time, this time spraying teeth left and right. He continued to scream. Bloody spittle flew from his mouth and smeared his face, mixing with his bloody sweat. Within just a few minutes he screamed his throat raw, his voice a ragged remnant of its original. Bruises covered his face and head, and he bled from his ears. Heaven knew what the rest of his body looked like.

  He never stopped. After several more minutes blood sprayed out with his screams. His face grew so covered with cuts and bruises and blood that after a while I couldn’t discern its real shape. His left shoulder was out of position, as if he dislocated it, or broke it, and the hospital pants became wet after he lost bladder control. The horribly mangled screaming never stopped, just went on and on. He never stopped thrashing, throwing himself at the door or at the walls.

  The people who made the film thoughtfully spliced together sections from all four days, but they thankfully removed most of the man’s suffering. By the end, even his body didn’t look human. Many of his bones were broken, and blood poured from all his orifices. He still screamed and threw himself at the door. On broken legs, with the bones sticking out through his pants, he still struggled to make those legs force him at the door.

  When he died, he died thrashing, making hoarse gargling noises as close to a scream as he could force his body to make. His body was puffy and warped, as if it changed around him as he died.

  Agent Bates had his handkerchief out, drying his eyes at the end. Dr. Zielinski stood and turned on the lights. He appeared to be unaffected by the film. I guessed he must have seen worse.

  I hadn’t. I tasted vomit in my throat as tears streaked down my face. Even the most horrific Hollywood horror movies I had seen in a theater or drive in hadn’t moved me this much.

  I let Dr. Zielinski take me by the elbow and lead me, shaking, to his office two rooms down the hall.

  Arms Die

  (Carol Hancock POV)

  “So how did she die? Mary Chesterson. If it wasn’t from remorse for killing her friends.”

  Dr. Zielinski nodded and accepted the change of subject. He looked at me silently from behind his desk for a moment, twisting a pen in his hands.

  “Mary transformed, becoming the first Arm in the United States. No one knew what happened during her transformation; to the Doctors she appeared to be a failed Focus, similar to many others in that era. They understood she was different because her Focus attendants died during her transformation. She got put in quarantine with a group of Focuses and their households, and killed two household Transforms by draining their juice, surprising everyone. Mary’s actions convinced the doctors she consumed juice, which they found almost unbelievable. The authorities confined her, then when she used up her juice she went into withdrawal, surprising them again – they had no idea a Major Transform could even go into withdrawal. To save her life, they brought in one of the quarantined Focuses, Lucy Peoples, to try and move juice to Mary. Their attempt failed when Mary attacked Peoples while in wi
thdrawal and took her juice, killing her. Focus Peoples possessed the usual Focus complement of juice, enough to drive an Arm into Monsterhood, but Mary remained human. However, after she took Focus Peoples’ juice, Mary fell into a coma, and she awoke a week later with a shattered mind. She killed herself a day later.”

  “Oh. No wonder Dr. Peterson reacted so strongly, when I asked if I might get juice from a Focus.”

  Dr. Zielinski didn’t say anything. He just watched me, perhaps wondering whether I now wanted to kill a Focus. I twisted the shackle around my right wrist, fidgeting restlessly.

  “The second? How did she die?” I asked, making myself let go of the chain. I wondered how many of these Arms he had cared for. It had to be a high number for the authorities to consider him an Arm expert.

  Dr. Zielinski saw where I was going. He leaned forward at his desk, still holding the pen. “Carol, don’t take this too hard,” he said. “We’ve been learning a lot with every Arm transformation. There’s no reason you have to suffer the same fate as the others.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked, again.

  Dr. Zielinski sighed. “Her name was June Bethune. The head of the team caring for her, Dr. White, believed the juice Chesterson took from the household Transforms poisoned her, causing her to go into withdrawal later. He thought if Bethune didn’t get any juice from any Transforms, she would stabilize, as she was a Major Transform. June went into withdrawal and died instantly, unlike Chesterson, who lingered in withdrawal for hours without dying. I disagreed with Dr. White theories and got shut out of the decision making.”

  “The third?”

  “Rose Desmond?” he asked. I nodded, having heard her name before. “I was in charge of her care, and she lived for six months after her transformation.”

  My eyes opened wide. “Then it’s possible I can live through this?”

  “Possible, but not probable,” Dr. Zielinski said. “Rose cooperated with us extensively. By the end she had taught herself enough science to be able to read and understand many of the scientific papers written about Transforms, despite having been just a High School graduate, albeit her rural school’s valedictorian. Nearly everything positive I understand about Arm development comes from my time with her.” I saw it in his eyes. He loved Rose Desmond; she had become a daughter to him.

  I decided I had better get more cooperative if I wanted to live.

  “Her muscles developed far slower than yours, as did her hungers. However, she was more aggressive than you at an earlier stage of her development, and developed an interesting quirk: an extreme attachment to all her possessions, even casual ones, such as the toilet paper in her lavatory.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a quirk. I have the attachment thing as well, though in me it’s not as strong.” I gave it some thought. “People messing with my stuff just makes me cranky.”

  “Interesting,” Dr. Zielinski said, jotting down a note. See? Cooperative me! “Like you, she had moral qualms about the volunteer Transforms, and came up with a bright idea: ‘let me try taking juice from a woman Transform, interrupting the process before I send her into withdrawal.’ This sounded plausible, and Rose worked on slowing down her juice draw rate, to where it took five minutes. We figured out the draw rate and the timing needed to take the woman Transform from her before the woman would die.”

  It didn’t work. “Why didn’t that work, Dr. Zielinski?” I asked.

  “We still have no idea. All I can tell you is that when we took the woman Transform from Rose, Rose went berserk. For safety reasons she agreed to restraints, but she broke the restraints in her berserk fury. The woman Transform we pulled from Rose? She was dying, going into withdrawal and going Monster at the same time. Rose didn’t want her back after we took her and couldn’t be talked down. Rose didn’t swoon in a normal post-draw coma, either. She moved faster than lightning, something nobody had ever seen an Arm do before, or has seen since, grabbed two guns from the guards, and started shooting. She killed seven people and wounded fifteen, including myself, before the building guards shot her dead.”

  I shared Dr. Zielinski’s pain, awakening buried emotions in myself. He had lost his daughter to the juice, same as me.

  “The fourth Arm was Stacy Keaton. The FBI held her, supposedly cooperative – I have my doubts on this – and she became an exercise fanatic, as her muscle problems were worse than Rose’s or Mary’s. Her caretakers messed up, though, and got her a volunteer Transform a few hours late, once, driving her into withdrawal. She recovered, surprising everyone, but after the FBI’s mistake she turned uncooperative. She escaped custody not much later.”

  “They all sound so different from each other,” I said. “Are you sure we’re all the same kind of Transform?”

  “Positive.” He smiled. “It doesn’t make the papers, but Focuses are also quite different from each other, along a broad spectrum of changes and talents. My current hypothesis is all Major Transforms share this feature.”

  Would this knowledge help me? I couldn’t see how.

  “The others?”

  “The fifth Arm was Francine Sarles. She proved to be, well, different.” We shared a smile. “She was a Calculus teacher at a Community College when she Transformed, and was into, um, alternate lifestyles.”

  “Huh?”

  “She lived in a nudist colony.” He sighed. “She was a socialist, an atheist, a free-thinker, a vegetarian, had an open marriage, and had experimented with every illicit drug she got her hands on. I think she had been addicted to marijuana, of all things. Anyway, she had severe moral issues with the volunteer Transforms. After the first one, she said that if we presented another one to her she would kill herself. I wasn’t in charge of her care, just the main outside expert, and she and I concocted a test involving a male Transform already in withdrawal. Dr. Dana Reddicks held the reins, unfortunately, as he didn’t possess the qualifications or knowledge necessary to care for an Arm. As usual he played the fool, refusing to restrain her during the test or afterwards. Initially, we thought we succeeded, although Francine said she could tell the juice she took was ‘bad’. She started to erupt in boils within an hour, and within a day she experienced phantom pains, hallucinations, and light sensitivity. She believed she was turning into a Monster. I thought another juice draw would fix her, but as I said she had no restraints, allowing her to steal a service revolver and kill herself.”

  “Jesus! Two of the Arms killed themselves,” Carol said. “What’s up with the suicides?”

  Dr. Zielinski studied his desk, and spent a moment rearranging papers. “Transform Sickness is a scary thing,” he said. “Nobody wants to go out by turning Monster or going through withdrawal. Carol, the suicide rate among unwanted Transforms who realize they are Transforms is about 50%. Two of the first ten United States Focuses committed suicide as well.”

  Disquieting, but that path wasn’t for me.

  “What about the next Arm? The one who had the muscle problems?”

  “Elsie Conger never woke up from her transformation coma,” Dr. Zielinski said. “She was morbidly obese when she transformed and her body couldn’t cope. Nothing I did, or anyone else did, could save her.”

  Damn. So many dead Arms.

  I promised myself I would do my damnedest not to be one of them.

  Going with Keaton?

  (Carol Hancock POV)

  I couldn’t escape the realization I was now on the other side, a killer, even if the authorities called them ‘volunteer Transforms’. The only question I couldn’t resolve was how far on the other side I had wandered. If I gave myself to Keaton, as I had arranged, I would be giving myself to someone so far on the other side of good as to have joined the pantheon of names like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Eichmann, Stalin and the rest of those termed Antichrists in the books I read and the sermons I heard.

  Surely, Keaton would not require me…

  I had to think.

  If I went with Keaton, I would p
lace myself in the hands of a murderess, a sadist who told me she planned to hurt me. Who looked forward to hurting me.

  If I didn’t, I would die.

  Tap, tap. My heels marked the time as I paced the bounds of my room.

  I didn’t have any other options. The FBI would kill me, directly or indirectly.

  However, if they just left, leaving me incarcerated here indefinitely, that wouldn’t be much of an improvement. There should be a whole tank of volunteer Transforms waiting to use me as their way out of a horrific death. Over ten thousand cases of the Transform Sickness happened each year and only around thirty new Focuses transformed each year. Of those ten thousand, only around six hundred – only six percent – would survive to get a Focus. There ought to be about twenty-five Transforms a day seeking out my services. Why did they have such problems supplying me with Transforms?

  I hurt. My shoulder screamed agony at me, and my ribs hurt worse. It hurt every time I breathed. I’d picked up a new pain in my hips, turning walking into torture. I tried sitting, but sitting ended up hurting worse. I paced. I had to. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Even if the FBI miraculously vanished, and the idiots here found a way to keep me in juice, I had this other issue – my muscle problems. I needed more help with that than I would ever get here.

  No. Staying here wasn’t an option, either.

  What if I ran? What if I ignored my deal with Keaton and escaped, taking off on my own?

  Bah. How long before my muscles hypertrophied and broke my legs, dooming me to death by juice withdrawal? I didn’t understand how to fix them. Not a pretty picture.

  I faced another problem: I wasn’t a criminal, revolutionary or secret agent, just a woman, a rather normal woman. The police, or the FBI, or someone would catch me easily. They wouldn’t bring me back here. Instead, I would vanish, likely ending up in the hands of someone like Agent McIntyre. He would put in a cage, like an animal, where I would die in juice withdrawal, shackled in steel, wired for science, like some experimental subject in a Nazi death camp.