Chapter 14

Lilly and I started spending a lot of our free time together that week, just talking or walking around the hospital in companionable silence. I was getting stronger and the pain in my side decreased enough that I stopped taking the painkillers.

I wasn't allowed to join them on their trip to the Smithsonian that weekend, so I was pretty much alone on the ward on Saturday. I had them dig my duffel bag out of storage and got my hands on my wallet. I talked one of the medtechs into taking me over to the Base Exchange so I could buy some regular clothes. Most of mine were in temp storage in Maryland, along with my car. Actually they were in my car. One of these weekends I was going to take a pass and bring it out here.

After we returned from the BX I stashed my new stuff in a small carry-all I'd gotten and threw on the sweats I'd purchased, smeared on some sun blocker and went downstairs. I spent the next hour jogging around the hospital and its grounds, not thinking about much of anything... except for Izzy.

The next week I spent taking psych tests and going to the Naval Hospital at Annapolis for MRIs, catscans and some odd test where I lay under a strobe light and they waited for me to into convulsions. Testing for epilepsy I think. Then it was back to Walter Reed for more medical work, dental checkups, x-rays, blood tests, eyes, hearing and the like. If it could be poked, prodded, probed, pinched or fondled... they did it. I was starting to really dislike the medical profession.

The psych tests were at least interesting. Hundreds of questions to be answered. Questions phrased in odd ways designed to reveal the innermost workings of my mind. I went out of my way to pick the least likely answers. One test didn't ask questions. This one wanted pictures. #7 Draw a picture of a house. #21 Draw a picture of a tree. Well, I have no artistic talent whatsoever. I'm one of those people who can't draw a straight line with a ruler. So I faked it. My house looked like it was drawn by a four year old. The tree was fun. I drew a stump that had been hit by lightning and was still smoking. One asked me to draw a picture of a man and a woman, so I made the man look kind of like Mickey Mouse and the woman was the traditional stick figure with a skirt and tits.

I don't think the people who reviewed my tests got the joke.

Monday of the third week I had another meeting with Colonel DeBerg.

"Before we go over the results of your tests I'd like to ask you a couple of questions."

I eased into the chair and tried to get comfortable. "Ask away."

"What kind of relationship do you have with your father?"

I thought for a bit. "No much of one. I have no idea why we've never gotten along, we just don't. I don't like him. I don't think I love him. Uneasy truce might be a good description."

"I see. How about your brother?"

"I dislike my brother. He's five years older than I am, and when we were kids he bullied me constantly. When I got too big to bully he ignored me. We haven't spoken in years."

"Your sister?"

Ahhhh...

"My relationship with my sister is complicated. Until I was thirteen she and my brother were a tag team, taking turns making my life miserable. In large part because she'd been mistreated by a boy, she lashed out at all boys. I happened to be readily at hand, so I got the brunt of her anger. We made up and were quite close until she went off to college. We've only spoken once since then."

"So your only real family bond was with your mother?"

"No. I had a good relationship with my grandfather. And I was married. Granted only for a short time, but the family bond was real enough. Doesn't the file mention that?"

He flipped thru the pages. "No, that piece of information isn't mentioned."

"My second year of college. A brilliant, loving, beautiful woman. She and our unborn child were killed in a car crash. I dropped out of school after that and joined the Army."

"Did you have many friends as a child?" he asked.

"It was years before I could safely go outside in daylight. I didn't look like the other children, I couldn't act like the other children. I was a freak, of sorts. There were a couple in high school I thought of as friends and a couple more in college but that's about it."

"Girlfriends?"

I laughed. "One in high school. I was on the soccer team and that was close enough to being a jock for her. It turned out she was using me to hide hergirlfriend from the rest of the school."

Colonel DeBerg was quiet for a time.

"Ike, you have led a very dysfunctional life."

I nodded my agreement. "No doubt about that."

"I'm surprised that you're as well adjusted as you are."

"Colonel, if I were that well adjusted, would I be here right now? Let's be honest. I'm socially maladjusted and inept, at best. I don't like people very much, I don't work well in team situatitions and I resent the hell out of authority figures."

He smiled. "All true. And the tests you've taken confirm that diagnosis. However, I've been comparing notes with the nurses, the techs and the doctors on the ward and we all agree that you have tremendous compassion, an innate understanding of human nature and a sense of empathy that's almost scary."

I flinched at empathy. "My talent. Sometimes I can help; most of the time I can't."

"Ike, based on your test results and your interviews with me, the committee is going to recommend that you be medically retired from the service. It's going to take a while to process, and there are appeal boards that have to review our findings, but I'm positive that by the end of spring you'll be a civilian again."

I heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe now I'd have that chance to set things right and get back to what I'd wanted from the start.

I still kept Lilly company when our schedules didn't conflict, and we always saw each other at the morning meeting. Lilly was the oddest combination of inner strength and emotional fragility I'd ever met. She could be supportive of other people, understanding of their flaws and weaknesses, willing to prop them up and help them move off again on their own. She would have made a wonderful mother. But she couldn't do, or be, those same things for herself. Where she saw potential in others, she saw nothing but hopelessness and failure in herself.

I was walking back to the bay one morning after my run, just passing by the room Lilly shared with another female patient, when I heard a heart rending cry thru the door. The doors to the semi-private rooms had a little holder just under the room number, where doctors would attach a little plaque that said IN SESSION, if they were having a meeting with a patient. The sign was boldly displayed. I heard more gut wrenching wailing and moaning come thru the door.

I stood there in the center of the hall, motionless, listening to her inner demons rip her apart. I wanted to help her, ease her pain, and take away the agony her memories created. I was pretty sure I could do that, if she'd let me. But would I be justified in doing it? Did I have the right to take away her pain? What would I have felt if someone had tried to take away my memories of Carlie, even if they were hopelessly entwined with misery? I'd have fought them tooth and nail for those god-awful memories, because they were mine and no one had the right to take a part of my life from me!

No, I didn't have the right. Not without her permission, which I was pretty sure I'd never get. But I could do something. I could dull the edges for her. For all of them.

I sat down against the wall opposite Lilly's door and closed my eyes. I conjured up the most loving things I'd ever had in my life; memories of Carlie and my mother; the way they'd made me feel safe and secure and strong.

Then I started broadcasting. I kept sending those feelings of love and understanding out in gentle waves. I stopped listening to the sounds around me, stopped thinking of anything other than those two emotions. Sending those feelings as far and as strongly for as long as I could, that was all that mattered.

I don't know how long I sat there. Could have been hours, could have been a few minutes.

I felt a hand on the side of my face, gently stroking my cheek and whiskers. I'd decided that since the Army was going to get rid of me I no longer had to shave and get weekly hair cuts.

I opened my eyes, still sending for all I was worth. Lilly was kneeling down beside me on the floor, tears in her eyes and a tiny smile on her lips. Behind her, and to the sides, stood all the residents and staff. All of them looking down at me with concern.

I blinked a couple of times and focused back on Lilly. "Feeling a little better?" I asked her.

"A little. Everyone feels a little better, a little happier."

"Good."

She leaned close and whispered in my ear, "What did you do?"

"Not much. Just trying to share a little of my hard won understanding."

I eased back on the emotions I was sending, letting them taper off slowly so no one would feel a sudden absence. I got to my feet and gave Lilly a hug, then went back into the bay to get my clothes and take a shower.

That weekend I took a pass and caught a cab into Maryland and retrieved my car. I drove it back and parked it in the employee parking area behind the hospital.

One of the other women on the floor, Irene McCaullie caught me in the lobby and asked me if I'd go with her to the hospital chapel on Saturday for confession and Sunday so that she could take communion.

I freely admit that I have no faith in organized religions. Their biased viewpoints and credos, exclusionist policies and narrow minded outlooks leave me cold and uninterested. On the other hand, I understand that there are people who get a great deal of comfort from their structure and traditions, as well as from the belief that an almighty father figure is keeping watch over them.

I have no idea why Irene wanted me to go with her. We hadn't talked together much beyond pleasantries. She asked and I wasn't busy with anything else so I said I'd go with her.

Irene was not a young woman, the lines in her face proudly announced to the world that she'd 'seen the elephant'. She dyed her hair a horrible shade of red and wore clothes that would have looked better on a girl closer to my age.

Irene was dying of AIDS, and she was scared something awful. She'd been brought up in Boston to be a good Catholic girl, and it was expected that she'd marry a nice Irish-Catholic boy and raise nice Irish-Catholic children.

She explained all this to me as we sat in the pews of the hospital's tiny chapel. How she'd fallen in love with a boy in high school who wasn't Catholic and wasn't Irish. How they'd run away, eloped and both escaped into the military. How they'd raised their children and sent them out into the world, hopefully more broadminded and understanding than their cousins back in Boston. How her husband of twenty five years had died of a heart attack only weeks after she'd contracted HIV via a blood transfusion during surgery to remove a damaged kidney. How terrified she was that God was taking revenge on her for straying from the faith of her childhood.

I sat with her and listened, and inside I shook with anger at what had happened to this poor woman. Yes, life is unfair. But to feel that you'd been abandoned by the one thing you always thought you could count on... could anything in a person's life be worse?

I held her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Irene, I don't know much about God, or the Catholic Church. I know about people and how they feel. From what you've told me... I can't think of any reason God would ever send you anywhere but to heaven. You've lived a good life. You've loved and been loved, you raised your children to be good loving people... you have nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. Remember, the whole point behind everything Jesus taught is love, right?" She nodded.

I stood up with her and we walked together towards a chaplain kneeling in prayer.

"You do or say what you feel you have to. I'll wait right here for you." I quickly linked to the woman, and felt the river of her fear and guilt. This was not right. This I could do something about.

I began draining off her two most powerful emotions. I maintained the link while she and the chaplain knelt together and whispered to each other. A small amount at first, then as the flood gates opened it came pouring into me in a rush. I pulled it deeper and deeper inside me, welcoming the emotions, acknowledging them for what they were but never letting them become part of me.

When Irene was done, she thanked the priest and we left together, arm in arm. The next day I went with her to Mass and held her hand. On Monday Irene came down with pneumonia and Wednesday evening she died. I stayed with her as much as I could, making sure she wasn't afraid. Her children were by her side and I linked them all together so she'd know how much she was loved.

Thursday I ran around the hospital from dawn till dusk, stopping twice for water and once to take a piss.

Friday I spent in the hallway, broadcasting Irene's love to anyone who came in range. No one bothered me on either day, just letting me do what I felt I had to.

Saturday it snowed. Hard. Lilly, Tim, Auggie, Walt and I were in the dayroom playing Monopoly when the weekend ward nurse, Lt. Everson came in.

"Excuse me folks, I hate to interrupt. Ike, you have a couple of visitors."

I wasn't expecting visitors. "Sorry guys. Go ahead and cash me out and divide up my properties. I'll see you later."

I followed Lt. Everson down the hall. We passed the nurses station, but I didn't see anyone except for the patients who hadn't gone out on pass.

"They're waiting for you in Colonel DeBerg's office." She said answering my unasked question.

I knocked on the door to DeBerg's office, heard a voice say something, so I opened the door and stepped in.

Aside from Colonel DeBerg there were two other men in the room. This was becoming uncomfortably familiar. I started to listen for that other damn shoe.

One of them was tall and thin, dark hair shot thru and thru with gray, wire rimmed glasses, a nose like an eagle, and an Adam's apple that stuck out from his thin neck like the dorsal fin on a shark. I would have guessed his age at somewhere between fifty and eighty.

The second man was younger, but not all that young. Probably in his late thirties or early forties, he had light brown hair cut very short and close to his head, a friendly face that boasted a pair of the coldest eyes I've ever seen on a human, a neck so thick with muscle it looked almost as if his head was attached directly to his shoulders. He had the build of either a linebacker or a bodybuilder... I couldn't make up my mind on that one.

Both men wore suits. The tall man's was a European style double breasted charcoal gray with blue and red pin stripes, a white shirt with French cuffs and gold cufflinks in the shape of eyes. His tie was a vivid blue and instead of a tie pin he had a small thin chain holding it against his shirt.

The bodybuilder's suit was dark blue, single breasted and obviously tailored to his body. It very nearly hid the bulge of his shoulder holster. His shirt was white with vertical blue lines, regular button cuffs, and his tie matched the color of the shirt's stripes.

Both suits cost big bucks. These guys were not military and they weren't FBI.

The bodybuilder gave me the once over a couple of times. The taller, older man just smiled slightly and nodded in my direction.

Colonel DeBerg waved in the direction of the remaining open seat, against the far wall, the bodybuilder between me and the taller man.

"Have a seat Ike."

I nodded in the direction of the two men. "Visitors?"

The Colonel frowned. It being the weekend and all I knew he wasn't happy getting called in for something non-medical.

"Ike, this is Dr. Wills and his assistant Mr. Jones."

"Assistant? Is that what it's being called now?" I said with a grin.

The 'assistant' just kept watching me. Dr. Wills, the taller man, chuckled.

"I was told you were sharp, Sergeant Blacktower." His voice was a light tenor, rather surprising in a man his size.

"Yeah, that's me... nothing but edges. And my name is Ike. Sergeant Blacktower is in the process of being retired."

"What about the Ghost?" the 'assistant' asked. His voice was a coarse, harsh sounding thing, more like gargling with rocks than speaking. I bet he was fun on karaoke night.

"Ghosts, by their very nature, are always with us." I turned towards the taller man, Dr. Wills. "So, what does the CIA want with me?"

Jones flinched slightly. DeBerg's eyes narrowed and Wills started laughing.

I sat back, watched and waited.

"Very sharp," Wills said once he'd gotten his laughter under control "yes, Ike, Mr. Jones and I work for the CIA. I've come here to ask you for your help. I've seen your military files and I'm most impressed with your skills as an interviewer. I have two individuals in custody; both present me with unusual difficulties in closing out their cases. I think your talents might allow me to close those cases by the end of the day."

I was quiet for a moment or two. "Dr. Wills, the last time my talents as an interviewer were requested I ended up in a war with holes in my body. As you might imagine, I'm not eager for a repeat performance."

"I can appreciate that. I am willing to guarantee, in writing, that we will not be leaving the D.C. area and will have you back here tonight no later than 2100."

"I was under the impression that the CIA had agents, analysts and interviewers out the wahzoo. Why me?" I asked.

"Colonel DeBerg, I'm sorry, but could you leave us for a few moments?" Wills asked politely, but it was no request, it was a thinly veiled command.

DeBerg got up and left, closing the door behind him.

"Ike," Wills began, "I have gone over every single bit of your military, medical and civilian files. All of it. I know things about you that you probably don't even remember. What impresses me most about you is your skill at reading people. Your talent extends beyond language and culture and that ability is why I've come here today. I have two individuals being held on suspicion of treason. Both have retreated behind a wall of language and culture, and despite our best efforts with drugs and language specialists, we can't find out what we need to know. I can't order you to help us. I am asking though. Just come and sit in on a brief session with each one and then give us your impressions. That's it."

I sat there looking at Dr. Wills and playing with my lengthening beard.

"Alright."

Wills seemed to relax a little and breathed a sigh. Interesting. 'Assistant' Jones was still wound up tight. He looked relaxed and at ease, but it was an act. He was wound up tight as the bottom string on a banjo.

"I'll go get my coat and sign out. Give me five minutes." I said, getting up.

Dr. Wills stood up with me. He was taller than me, by a couple of inches, but didn't look it because of his stooped posture. He held out a hand to me. We shook and his whole body shook with it.

Interesting.

I went back to the bay and grabbed my coat, a Navy pea-coat, and my black night watch stocking cap, went to the nurse's station and signed out. Colonel DeBerg was there to countersign the authorization.

"I'll be back tonight, and probably see you on Monday Colonel. Try and enjoy the rest of your weekend."

"Watch out for yourself, Ike."

I nodded, getting into my coat, and headed towards the elevators.

We left the hospital and drove into the Georgetown area. Jones drove while Dr. Wills and I rode in the back. Forty minutes later we arrived in front of a large old house. Inside I was introduced to two other people. One was a young woman, Jill, in her late twenties who I was told was the interpreter and a man in his thirties, Edward, who looked like the idealized stereotype of any techno-dweeb you've ever seen, including the pocket protector and the birth-control glasses.

"Are we ready?" Dr. Wills was apparently eager to begin.

"Yes, sir." Jill replied and headed towards a door near the center of the house.