Not a continuation of Gary’s Return From Oz but more of a companion story.  An attempt to look at what happened from Chuck & Marissa’s point of view even though it’s not written in the first person.

Disclaimers:  None of them belong to me.  CBS, Sony Tristar, Fox Family Channel owns them.

Spoilers:  Hot Time In the Old Town

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Oz2
by Janet

Chuck Fishman and Marissa Clark were worried about their friend Gary Hobson.  Earlier that day he had gone out to a construction site at the junction of Dearborn Ave and Randolph Streets in order to prevent a major catastrophe from occurring.  His mysterious newspaper had reported that a building would collapse at that corner.  In fact the headline had proclaimed “Dearborn Ave Collapses.  500 Dead.  Thousands Missing”.  Gary and his friends had been very shaken by that report.  Gary had gotten good at preventing disasters during the almost 2 years he had been receiving the paper but this was beyond the normal work of handling what the paper threw at him.

Gary hadn’t known what he was going to do or say to try and stop this disaster.  He’d have to think of something along the way.  How does one convince a construction foreman that he has the wrong geological survey and his work will cause a building to fall and kill 500 or more people?  Marissa and Chuck were unable to help him figure this one out.  He’d been on his own.

When they didn’t hear from Gary for more than an hour they had gotten concerned.  Chuck had had the bright idea of going to the owner of the company.  A few phone calls to city hall and he had the name.  Then he had left Marissa in charge of the restaurant while he went to the company’s offices to look the man up.  Though the name Jesse Mayfield IV meant nothing to Chuck it would soon be obvious that it meant something to Gary.

Upon arriving at the construction site in Mr. Mayfield’s car they found a dazed and shaky Gary making another verbal attempt at stopping the work.  Pulling onto the site Mr. Mayfield honked the horn thereby getting the attention of his Construction Supervisor, a man named Trotter.  An angry Jesse Mayfield had gotten out of his car and told Trotter to stop the work and report to him in his office at 9AM the next morning.  Turning to Chuck and Gary he thanked them for their help.  Gary had told him that they were just concerned but in Chuck’s opinion he had a strange look on his face when he saw Jesse Mayfield’s pocket watch and it didn’t improve when he heard Jesse Mayfield’s name.  He just stood there and stared at Chuck.

“What are you looking at me like that for,” Chuck asked Gary, “Have I got something stuck in my teeth?”

“I think I need to sit down,” Gary said to his friend.

The two friends walked back to McGinty’s slowly, Chuck keeping a watchful eye on his friend the whole time.  Gary seemed awfully shaken up about something.

Back at McGinty’s Gary sat at his desk in the office and looked up at Chuck still dazed.  Then he just seemed to stare at the floor.  Chuck was concerned.  Gary had a cut on his forehead and his eyes seemed kind of glassy.  Was he hurt and not admitting it?  What had happened?

“Don’t take this wrong or anything,” Chuck said to his friend, “But for someone who was only knocked out for two minutes you look kind of chawed up.”

Startled, Gary looked up.  “What did you say?”

“You look kind of messed up.”

Before Gary thought of what to say to that Marissa came into the office.  He looked at her with a somewhat dazed expression and asked her if she was okay.

This confused Marissa.  Gary was the one who had gotten knocked in the head.  Why was he asking her if she was okay?

“Do you want some tea?” she asked him.

Gary stumbled over his reply but accepted her offer asking her once again if she was okay.  As Marissa left the office to get the tea she thought that Gary sounded awfully shaken up over something.  Why in the world was a guy who’d hit his head asking her if she was okay?  Chuck had told her what little he knew about what had been happening including the fact that Gary had had an accident at the construction site.

In the office Gary tried to get Chuck to understand what had happened to him.  But when he asked Chuck if he remembered Physics 201, space-time continuum etc. Chuck had just stared at him.  No matter what Gary said, Time was nothing more than a magazine.  That knock on the head must have really rattled his buddy’s brain.

After telling Chuck that it was good to see him. Gary wandered off into the main dining area.  It was quiet; the lunch crowd was gone.  He sat in an empty table and waited for Marissa to bring the promised tea.  After a minute Chuck came out of the office and expressed concern over Gary’s mental and physical health.  Marissa, on her way back with the tea, was mildly surprised.  Chuck was not the nurturing type, but then, Gary was his best friend and not being handicapped by blindness must see something that she could not.

She heard Chuck tell Gary that he had a cut on his forehead that needed tending to.  Then she heard him go behind the bar for the first aid kit.  That really surprised her.  Chuck always told them that he had a fear of fluids.  Body fluids that was.  Blood and such.  He couldn’t even dissect a frog when he was in school.  His concern for his friend must have overridden it or he would have made someone else take care of Gary.  Marissa was capable of a lot of things but she wouldn’t want to tackle something like that.  Her blindness didn’t stop her from doing many things but first aid on a cut was something she wouldn’t want to attempt.  If it needed stitches and she didn’t know it he could have bigger problems.

Gary sat meekly in the chair.  His voice sounded raw, husky and shaky.  Hot his normal voice at all.  Whatever had happened must have really shaken him up.  She and Chuck were not prepared for what came next.

“You…you said your name was Morris Best and you lived in Mrs. O’Leary’s boarding house.  And Marissa, well she wasn’t…she wasn’t blind.  And…and she sang in a saloon.  And…and she had a younger brother.  She said her name was Eleanor Mayfield.  And that guy Trotter from the construction site - he was Daniel Sullivan and he owned the saloon where she sang.  And…and we were there when the fire started.”  Gary’s stutter was as much a cause for concern as his story.

Both of his friends looked at him with concern.  They tried to convince him that he’d dreamed it all.  He must have hit his head harder than he thought to believe all that.  Morris Best?  Driving a peddler’s wagon?  Marissa going by the name Eleanor Mayfield?  Not blind?  Singing in a saloon?

“Drink your tea Gary and then check the paper to see if there’s anything else you need to take care of this afternoon,” Marissa as always the voice of reason suggested.  “I think it would be a good idea if you took a nap.  You must have a terrible headache from what Chuck told me.”

“Okay,” Gary gave in.  Obviously he was not going to convince them of anything.  He knew it had happened but they weren’t going to believe him.  He picked up his tea and checked the paper.  Without truly admitting that he would appreciate the nap he took the aspirin Chuck offered him and washed it down with the last of the tea.  Then he wandered back through the offices to the stairs to his loft apartment.  He took his shoes off and lay down, falling asleep in seconds.

Ten minutes later Chuck went up to check on him and found his friend snoring softly.  Going back downstairs he told Marissa that Gary had fallen asleep already.  Both were relieved but if the subject of his trip back in time came up again they weren’t sure what they would do.  They knew Gary wouldn’t make something like that up but it was such a ridiculous concept.  No one, not even Gary Hobson to whom many strange things had happened since he started getting that mysterious newspaper could travel back in time.  But how were they going to convince him of that?  That was the question.
 
 

Email the author: Janet.E.Brayden@nae02.usace.army.mil
 

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