Chapter 18: Jason

I came to. I was reclined in a hospital bed. I could tell because shiny chrome bars surrounded me, and there seemed to be a hundred tubes and wires connecting my body to various machines.

There was a picture window on the opposite wall. Curtains closed it off, but the curtains were on the other side of the window. High in a corner and angled toward the bed a television was hung on the wall. On the opposite side of the room, seated in a comfortable looking chair, was a woman in scrubs. I didn’t recognize her.

“Hi,” I said, although it came out sounding like an old man gargling his phlegm.

The woman looked up and came over. “Hi,” she said. “Let’s set you up some more. She touched a control I couldn’t see and I rose to more of a sitting position. “Here’s some cold water,” she said and lifted a container with a bendy straw to my lips. I sipped water until she pulled the straw away. “Not too much,” she said. How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by a truck,” I said trying to speak normally. My words came out in a whisper.

“Do you remember me?”

The room did seem kind of familiar, but not her. Joyce was printed on her nametag. I guessed that she was in her thirties. She had short blonde hair that went in all directions ... on purpose I assumed, and she wore glasses. I shook my head no in answer to her question.

“That’s okay,” she said, “you’ve been in and out of consciousness, but you’re looking pretty alert. I think your memory will stick this time. The doctor will want to see you. Let me get her.”

Joyce left and Beverly strode into the room a minute later. She looked very much the busy doctor in her lab coat. “How do you feel?” she asked as she scanned the various machines and their read outputs.

“Like I was hit by a train,” I said.

“Hmm...” she said in doctor speak. She proceeded to poke, prod and peer at most of my body.

“Am I going to live?” I asked, mostly in jest.

“Yes,” she said so seriously it was frightening. Her face fell and she sniffled. A tear rolled down her cheek. “When I put the charm in you, it almost killed you. It wasn’t necessary. I shouldn’t have done it. I was being very selfish. I ... I removed it as soon as we realized...”

“Hey,” I said. “Not your fault. I was all in and very pleased with the result ... at least for a while.”

She nodded and wiped the back of her hand across her cheek. The door opened and Joyce stuck her head in. “Miss Madeline is here,” she said. Beverly squeezed my arm and stepped back.

The door opened wide and Maddie strolled in. She was wearing stressed denim shorts and jacket with a gray top. She looked very fashionable except for a pair of clunky white sneakers on her feet. She was practically glowing with good health and vitality. The doctor half bowed to her as Maddie walked by and then the doc hurried out the door. Maddie came to me and about strangled me with a hug around my neck. We are not usually a hugging family. I must have been really sick.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like a zeppelin hit me,” I said.

“Zeppelin?” she said.

“People keep asking how I feel. Thought I’d mix it up,” I said.

“Ahh...” she said.

“So what happened?” I asked. “We were on the stairs is the last thing I remember.”

Maddie shrugged. “You passed out. I had to carry you to the top and toss you in the helicopter.”

“Damn, missed the helicopter ride,” I said. “Then what?”

She shrugged again. “Beverly cut the charm out of your leg.”

“So she said,” I said. And then it hit me why Maddie was looking so beautiful and glowing. “The charm’s in you, isn’t it? What the fuck? You saw it almost kill me.” I was practically yelling at the end. Okay, it was actually an angry murmur, but I was pissed that Maddie would risk something so dangerous for no reason.

Maddie raised an eyebrow. She’s beginning to be able to do it like our mom. It’s a little scary. She slid her hands across those magnificent tits of hers and said, “Let’s see ... oh yeah ... turns out I’m a girl. Charm like girl; charm no like nasty boy.”

“Oh sure, Miss Madeline, I’m sure you really needed a big boost in your charm powers.” If you listened real close, you could almost detect the scathing tone of my whisper.

“Look, booger-breath, you were almost gone. We had to do something drastic. As you know, one reason these women love me so much is that regular infusions of my semen keep them young, beautiful, and most importantly to you, healthy. So to make my semen as potent as possible, I put the charm in me. And up until a few hours ago a feeding tube was draining my stuff right into your tummy. It worked. You’re alive and getting better every day. Oh, by the way, you’re welcome.”

I was shocked. I was appalled. I was horrified. I was all of the above. “You’re shitting me,” I said, although I could tell she wasn’t lying.

“Nope,” she said with a satisfied smile. “I should have made a video of it because you, big brother, could have been known as the biggest cum-dumpster in porn history.”

“Wow,” I said. “The next time I eat solid food, I think I’ll throw up in honor of this conversation. Let’s change the subject. What did you tell Mom and Dad?”

She sighed and sat on the foot of my bed, leaving her feet to dangle in the air. “I suppose I could have convinced them of anything, but Beverly and I thought that we should try to be at least somewhat truthful. So when you were out of the critical phase we put you on a private jet and flew you to Green Beach.”

“Green Beach?” I said. Green Beach was a four hour drive from home, but compared to Vegas, it was almost next door. “I don’t remember any flight. How long have I been out of it?”

“You collapsed on the stairs three weeks ago yesterday.” Maddie said. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness since then, but today is the first day you’ve looked alert.”

“Really ... wow,” I said.

Maddie nodded and continued. “We’re in Heatherston hospital, by the way. Beverly and I huddled with the hospital administrator; a huge amount of money changed hands and now here you are in this faked up isolation room. We needed some way to explain why you’re ill, so here we are.”

“So you’ve called Mom and Dad?” I said.

“Right,” Maddie said. “The story went like this: I had taken a side trip with the Johnsons before heading home. By coincidence, I met you in Green Beach. The Graingers insisted that I spend a couple of days with them and then we’d all fly home.”

“Wait,” I said. “Graingers?”

“Graingers ... Erica Grainger and family. You know ... the people you were supposed to be on vacation with?” Maddie said.

“Oh, right,” I said. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten that face and that figure. Not to mention the stun gun she laid me out with.”

“Keep this in mind in case Mom or Dad asks. We all shared a meal of tainted seafood and became deathly ill. Everyone but you recovered in a day or so. You had to go to the hospital and be put in isolation for your protection. I called Mom and Dad and gave them the story. Of course they rushed down. They stood at that window,” she said, pointing at the curtained window, “for hours. Beverly threw a bunch of medical jargon at them and assured them that you were going to have a full recovery. Mom was ready to pitch camp outside that window, but then I stepped in and convinced them that I would be with you every second. They finally left and I’ve been calling them six or seven times a day ever since.”

The door opened and Joyce stepped in. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Madeline, but the Secretary is on the phone. She needs a moment.”

Maddie patted my leg and said, “I have to take this; give me a minute.”

As she stood and headed for the door I said, “What’s with this Miss Madeline crap?”

She laughed and turned. “I told all these women to call me Maddie. They insisted on Your Highness or Queen. We sort of met in the middle with Miss Madeline ... everyone except Sandy. I told her I’d kick her ass if she called me anything but Maddie.”

“As if you could. What’s the story?” I asked.

“Later,” she said and left.

I blinked my eyes and suddenly Beverly was there, putting a try of food on one of those tables they can roll over your bed. “I guess I took a nap,” I said.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “If you can call six hours of deep sleep a nap. It’s time you ate something.” She opened the various containers on the tray. There was purple gelatin, there was green gelatin, there was juice, there was tea, there was a clear broth and there was a large bowl filled with a creamy substance.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Beverly. “And you’re going to eat every drop or else I’ll put a feeding tube up your nose and down your throat ... while you’re awake.”

“No need to play rough,” I said. “Where’s Maddie?”

“On her way to Europe, I understand,” she said.

“Europe?” I said. “What the heck for?”

“Didn’t ask and don’t want to know,” she said. “I’m out of the spy game, or whatever you want to call what we just went through. I’m a simple country doctor at heart.”

“I know you’re a lot more than that, but fair enough,” I said, “and thanks for saving my life.”

“Let’s not go over that again,” she said. “Besides, after what Miss Madeline endured, my part was nothing.”

“After what she endured?” I said.

Beverly stopped fooling with my meal and peered at me. “She didn’t tell you what happened that night?”

“She said she had to carry me to the helicopter,” I said. I could tell by the look on her face there was a lot more to the story. “So tell me the rest.”

Beverly gathered her thoughts for a second and said, “About the time she picked you up, she heard the bad guys on the stairs, but they were pretty far down at that point. She went up a few flights and then, as luck would have it, stepped on a metal screw that had its point sticking straight up. It was over an inch long, and of course the threads kept it from falling out of her foot. Her bare foot, she had gotten rid of her heels.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said in a tone that suggested I ain’t heard nothin’ yet. “At first it looked as though she could climb as fast as the bad guys despite her injured foot and maintain a buffer between you two and them, but then one of them began to jog upwards. Miss Madeline heard him and when she tried to hurry, she tripped. Instead of dropping you, she took the full force of the fall on her knee and broke her patella ... her knee cap.”

I winced and said, “Oh shit. Pretty painful I guess.”

Beverly nodded and said, “Painful enough to leave most people writhing on the ground and calling for their mommy. But she simply moved on and made it to the roof with her knee swelling to the size of a volleyball.” Beverly sighed. “If you think stepping on that screw was bad, having to deal with the resort’s roof was a hundred times worse. I looked it up a few days after we returned. Government safety inspectors were fining the resort thousands of dollars a day because they say their roofs are unsafe to be on. The resort had gone to court to argue that they’re simply a façade and that no one should be up there. What Miss Madeline had to deal with was dragging her feet across metal grating that was not much better than rusty knife blades.”

“I didn’t know,” I said “I...”

“And then the shooting started,” Beverly said.

“Shooting?” I squeaked.

“Yes,” she said. “The bad guy who had been jogging up the stairs finally caught up. Sandy made him keep his head down by shooting a silenced gun at him. Still, the guy was able to throw his hand up from the cover of a stairwell and fire blindly. A couple of rounds hit the helicopter but didn’t do any damage” She made a wry face and said, “Sandy borrowed or commandeered or maybe even stole some sort of ultra-quiet helicopter and weapon. I don’t know who that girl knows and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. You know?”

“Uh ... yeah, I guess,” I said. “So don’t tell me Maddie got shot.”

“I’m afraid she was,” said Beverly. “Miss Madeline had just managed to get you on board when the man fired the last or one of his last shots. The bullet struck the grating behind her. The hit absorbed much of the bullet’s energy, but it fragmented and she was struck by a dozen or so pieces of shrapnel from the bullet and the shattered grating. None of her wounds were serious but they did cause a lot of bleeding.” She took a deep breath and said, “And that’s when she almost died.”

I didn’t say anything, but I’m sure the expression on my face was both horrified and urged her to go on.

“All she had to do was take a long step to get on the helicopter, but she’d given her all to get you on board. She fell off the side of the building. If Sandy hadn’t been there to grab her wrist...” she shuddered.

“Anyway,” she said with a tight smile, “once we inserted the charm in her vaginal canal and removed the metal from her back, she healed amazingly quickly. That was good because she refused a bed. She sat in that chair over there and watched over you hour upon hour.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Well, I’m sure Maddie would have gone over all that in detail if she had stuck around. She’s not exactly modest you know.” I was doing my best to sound like a smartass, but I’m sure the tears in my eyes gave me away.

A week later my parents and Bridget came to take me home. Beverly gave my mother a long list covering my care and feeding. Then she produced a big plastic bag containing about ten plastic bottles of a white liquid. The bottles were all neatly labeled as if from a pharmacy. Of course it was really Maddie’s nut-butter, her teen-cream, her penis-batter, her pearly-paste, her spunk-junk, the steamy white sap of her loins. Mom promised to stand on my head until I drank a bottle every day. And that wasn’t the complete prescription. More Maddie-juice was delivered to the house on a regular basis for weeks.

Something weird happened during the week I was still in the hospital. Maddie showed up at home with Mr. Grainger. I learned later that the part of the fictional Grainger was played by the pilot, Marc. I’d have thought that he looked too young to have a teenage daughter, but I guess it all worked out. Marc, as Grainger, told my parents that he had covered all the hospital bills for me and Maddie. He also said that he felt guilty over our illness and so he wanted to finance Maddie’s education at an exclusive all-girls school in Switzerland.

So what kind of parents turn their kid over to a stranger so she can live in a foreign country on a moment’s notice? Apparently, they’re my kind of parents. I’m sure Maddie used her Jedi mind judo on them because she was off to Switzerland as soon as she could pack her bags. Did she really go to Switzerland? I don’t know, but the school was real enough. I looked it up online. Called “Beaumont,” it’s a place where young ladies take their lessons in luxurious surroundings to the tune of about a zillion dollars a year.

I talked to Maddie on a regular basis in the weeks that followed, either on the phone or in a video chat. She acknowledged my near blubbering thanks for what she’d done, but she refused to go into any details. She insisted that she really was going to school over there. But if you ask me, that wasn’t the whole story.

Anyway, the weeks passed. I continued to recover. At first I slept a lot, rested a lot, got some mild exercise and ate a lot of light meals. As time went on I slept less, got more exercise, ate more solid meals and began to take some school courses online. Beverly stopped by one day, checked me over and announced that I could stop taking my cream-of-Maddie medicine. I acted as if I was overwhelmed with relief, but the truth was that I had come to terms with Maddie-spunk. It really was creamy and kind of sweet. In fact, I got to where I was looking forward to it as a sort of desert after breakfast. And I’m going to tell that to Maddie ... in a decade or three. No rush.

Time passed. I took up running and mild weight lifting as my exercise. I took more school lessons online and filled my free time with too many video games and too many hours of television. I finally got my driver’s license and even a car. Did poor little me get a new BMW because I’d been at death’s door recently? Not from my father. The deal went like this: Mom began to hint that she wanted a new car. Dad obliged by taking her to a bunch of dealerships, and one day she drove home in a new Lexus. Bridget got the Explorer and I got her Toyota Camry. I know, it’s nothing but dull and reliable transportation, but it became my dull and reliable transportation. On my first official day of ownership, I exhausted myself by detailing the car. Now if I could only get rid of the girl scent in there.