Send feedback to Polgana54@cs.com or vjles@bytehead.com

Disclaimer: The major characters of this story do not belong to me, only a few of the minor ones.  They belong, mostly, to Sony/Tristar, MGM/Showtime, and several others that I am borrowing from in order to piece together to make what I hope is an entertaining story.

Summary: This treats the episode ‘Time’ as the very last episode, as it was originally meant to be.  Tragic events befall our hero.  Can Gary overcome a devastating disability in order to carry on his duties to the paper . . . and himself?  Crossover with, Touched By An Angel, Stargate, Diagnosis Murder, and ER.  Spoilers for just about every episode I could squeeze in.

Author’s note:  In a few places I use the word ‘cripple,’ which some people may find offensive.  Please understand that this does not reflect my opinions about the disabled.  It is used to reflect the mindset of certain characters at specific points in the story.  Also, just because I work in the medical field, don’t mistake all the medical details I put in my stories as gospel.  “I am neither all knowing, nor all wise.  Some think I am not entirely ‘All There’” is my signature for a reason <G>.

I would like to acknowledge Vicky Jo's invaluable contribution to my improved writing style.  She has provided me with a number of great ideas and helped me to eliminate a lot of errors before they made it to print.

Warning:  There is some offensive language, although I have been careful to avoid vulgarities.  Also, there are a couple of scenes that come very close to expressing sexual content.  Parents may want to read it first to see if it will be permissible for anyone under seventeen.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Timed Out
Installment 1
by Polgana and Kyla
 

“. . . In this you have found your gift and I know you serve it with honor. I can tell you we are the messengers between Time and its Keeper. You, of all people, know how fragile life is. So, somewhere between the pages of our newspaper, Gary Hobson, find time to live it.”

With a sigh Gary stuffed the hand written note back into its envelope and into his pocket. He had lost count of how many times he had taken it out as he had slowly made his way back from Judge Romick’s funeral. Poor Lindsey. She had loved her grandfather so much. It had been all he could do not to pull her into his arms and let her release her pent up tears like a flood. He knew they were there. Not just the few that had trickled down her cheeks as she tried to present a brave face to the other mourners. Inside her was a wellspring of grief that could never truly be capped, only covered with love and fond memories until it no longer consumed her every waking moment.

Knowing what was in store for her, he had hesitated giving her the knife. She was so young and had been through so much! How could he put this on her? But, he hadn’t. She had been chosen, probably long before he had pulled her back over that railing, by whatever powers governed the Paper. So, he had offered what little comfort he could, along with a tiny hint of a warning, and discharged his duty. His successor had a name. His own message to the ‘heir apparent’ was dutifully recorded and locked away. Lucius Snow’s legacy once again tucked away for the future.

“. . .find time to live . . .”

All around him had been people getting on with the business of living. A happy couple, laughing at some private joke as they pushed the stroller that held their own gift to the future. Across the street he saw a group of seniors practicing Tai Chi. They all seemed to be enjoying the bright sun and invigorating breeze. It really was a beautiful day.

*******

Gary entered the kitchen area through the back door.  He had managed to take care of two more ‘crises’ on the way home, the last involving a boy, his dog, and an unscheduled dip into one of the canals.  Soaked from head to toe, he decided a quick shower and change of clothes were definitely in order!

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital and get checked out, Mr. Hobson?” the uniformed officer asked for about the third time in the last half-hour.

“P-positive,” Gary stammered as he handed back the emergency blanket. “I j-just need a r-really hot sh-shower, and I’ll be f-fine.  Th-thanks for the r-ride home.”

“The least we could do,” the officer replied with a grin, “after the way you dived in after that kid. He would’ve been crushed between those two boats if not for your quick thinking.”

“J-just happened to be in the r-right p-place at the right t-time,” Gary shrugged, trying to suppress the shivers that still wracked his body.  Damn!  That water had been cold!  “If you d-don’t mind, I hear m-my sh-shower calling me.”

An hour later, dressed in his most comfortable jeans, t-shirt, and a red plaid flannel shirt, Gary felt much more human, and able to face the world.  On the way out the door, he grabbed his favorite jacket, the black leather bomber.  He would leave it down in the office.  Just in case.  The paper had surprised him too many times to get complacent now.

“Gary! I’m so glad you’re here!” Marissa Clark sighed with relief as he pushed his way into the packed room. “Graham and Richard both called in sick, Robin hurt her ankle and had to be taken to the hospital, and we . . . are . . .swamped!”

Mud-puddle green eyes took one look at the crowded bar and had to agree. There was not so much as an empty barstool. Vadim was rushing back and forth, trying to fill all the orders as they were shouted at him, but he was already seriously behind. His English was improving dramatically, but it was just not up to the confusion of having six things shouted to him at once. Gary wasn’t too sure his own was, either.

Without hesitation, Gary pitched in behind the bar; quickly getting the drink orders caught up. Then he strapped on a white apron, loaded up a tray and started waiting tables. Kelly was his only waitress tonight. He greeted each of his ‘regulars’ with a quick grin and a few quiet words in his soft southern drawl, laughed at their jokes, and listened attentively to their woes. He was the one to answer the phone when Robin called to let them know it was just a sprain. She would be off the ankle for only a few days.  Relieved, Robin had been with McGinty’s longer than Gary had owned it, he told her to take as long as she needed. “Your job will still be here,” Gary joked. “No one else in their right mind would touch it!”

The rest of the night passed in a blur. For the most part, the patrons had been well behaved and in a pretty jovial mood. A group of ladies at a table in the corner had made a few crude comments about the ‘stud muffin’ serving their drinks, but had generally behaved themselves.  A few regulars made jokes about what an ‘honor’ it was to be served by the owner.  He just shot them a shy smile and took their orders. There had been just the one fight over who was to drive between two guys who obviously shouldn’t. Either of them. Gary had confiscated the car keys after they had broken a table, and possibly his jaw, and paid for the cab to take them both home. They could settle up the damages when they came back for the car.

Finally, the last customer paid his tab and wished them a goodnight. Gary slumped against the inner door with an explosive sigh. Hallelujah! He couldn’t remember the last time they had been this busy! Every bone in his body ached! Especially his jaw. Something cold was pressed into his hand. He looked down at the full ice bag, then up at Marissa’s smiling face. “Thanks,” he mumbled, placing the ice against his swollen jaw.

“Thank you,” Marissa returned. “I know you were already tired from this morning. You must be exhausted by now.”

“I’m okay.” The weariness in Gary’s voice belied his words. “I’ll just finish closing up, take another shower and hit the sack.”

“You go on,” his partner suggested. “I can close up.”

“I still have to replace that broken table,” he replied with a cautious shake of his head. “And Kelly needs to get home, too. Neither one of you should be out this late alone.” Marissa opened her mouth to argue. “Go on. I just have to dig one out from the basement. It won’t take long. Vadim can help me carry it up in the morning.”

“You won’t try to carry it up alone?”

“Not if it’s too heavy,” Gary hedged.

“Ga-ary?”

“What if I have to run out first thing? I should make Vadim carry it up alone?”

“The difference being . . .?”

“I’ll . . .leave it by the stairs and we’ll worry about getting it up tomorrow?”

Marissa patted him on the chest and gave him one of her dazzling smiles. “Good boy. We’ll teach you how to delegate yet.”  Assured that her friend was not going to do anything careless, she let Kelly know that she was almost ready to go.

********

“Aachoo!”

Gary stifled another sneeze as the dust began to settle. It had taken him longer than he had thought it would to find a suitable table. They really needed to get rid of some of the junk down here, he decided. There were a number of old tables, but most had been in almost as bad of a shape as the one he was replacing! He had finally found a nice one buried behind an old jukebox that had obviously seen better days, and three cases of sixty year old Scotch that he had not even known was down there. And it was Glenlivet! A real find! He would have to save that for a really special occasion!

He finally wrestled the small table to the foot of the stairs. Suddenly, looking up at the steep rise of the stairs, Marissa’s suggestion made really good sense. He was simply too tired to manhandle the solid oak table up that incline. In fact, he was sorely tempted to just pile up a bunch of dust covers he had seen, and sack out on the floor. The cat could wake him in the morning. Finally, however, the lure of the shower was too strong.  With a sigh he dragged his weary body up the stairs.  As he paused at the basement door, his sweat soaked shirt suddenly felt ice cold.  He made a quick detour to grab his jacket and slip it on.  His feet dragging in weariness, he made his way through the office, intent on nothing more strenuous than going up the stairs leading to his loft, his shower and, ultimately, to his bed. He reached out and flicked the light switch. He was startled by a flash/pop, then it was dark again. Damn! Always something! Wearily, Gary grasped the railing and gingerly felt his way up the steps, counting each one. A little trick he learned from having been being blinded for a couple of days. ‘Amazing the things that you learn without realizing that you have,’ he mused.

Once in the loft, he flicked on the lights, then rummaged around until he had found the spare bulbs. This would only take a moment, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about falling down unlit steps in the morning. For about the fiftieth time, he wished the contractors he had hired to replace the ancient wiring could have finished as quickly as the plumbers had. They had finished replacing the burst pipes weeks ago. While the main part of the building had been refitted well enough to reopen, some problem with the codes had kept the electricians from getting to the second floor. Or to the stairway. That had left him effectively with only the one ‘temporary’ work light over head. The one that had been there for several weeks.  Now he didn’t even have that to work with. ‘Now, where was that step stool? Aha!’

Gary set the stool almost directly under the fixture. One leg seemed a little unsteady, but it wasn’t too bad. This would only take a second, anyway. He quickly unscrewed the burnt out bulb and tossed it into a wastebasket in the corner. As he was getting the new bulb in position, the stool wobbled. Whoa! Maybe he should let this . . . The leg of the stool facing the stairs buckled. Acting instinctively, Gary grabbed at the light fixture to stop himself from following the stool to the bottom of the stairs! He hung there for a moment, about four or five feet off the floor. An easy drop, he thought. No prob . . .the fixture lurched in his hands. Bare wires brushed against his hands, and it was as if a giant fist slammed into him. His whole body jerked as the electrical current caused every muscle to contract at once, swinging him in a violent arc as he was practically thrown down the stairwell by the force of his own muscle spasms! He landed sprawled face up on top of the stool that had, literally, been his downfall.

Stunned, he tried to remain calm, assess the damage. He couldn’t move. None of his muscles wanted to work. It even hurt to breathe. His left leg was buckled under him, and he felt wetness . . . Suddenly he was glad he couldn’t see it. His back hurt where it lay across the top of the stool, but there was surprisingly little pain in his leg. Was that good or bad?  And what about the lights dancing before his eyes? Pretty lights . . . Gary felt everything slipping away.  Had he hit his head?  Was that why everything seemed so . . .distant?  Was he dying?  Was this his fate?  To die alone    . . . in darkness? Had he escaped death in the old carpet store, only to have it find him here, in his own home?

How long would it be before he might be found?  If at all?  What time did Marissa usually come in? Seven, maybe? What time was it now? He tried to raise his arm to look at his watch, but his arms wouldn’t move.

He felt . . .light . . .strange. He couldn’t see, but he could feel the room spinning. Like a giant vortex, a black hole sucking his soul to oblivion . . .

********

Somewhere a bird was singing accompanied by a familiar scent. Roses? Who brought him roses? Did anyone else even know he liked roses? Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked around. He was . . . he wasn’t in the hospital. Unless they had some new open-air therapy that he was previously unaware of. He was lying on bare ground. Really . . . soft . . .ground. He rolled off the mound of dirt and took a really good look.

A grave! He had been lying on top of a fresh grave! How . . .? Who . . .? And how was he able to move now? Curious, he looked for the first time at the headstone. What he read there stunned him. He took several unsteady steps back before his wobbly legs gave out and he sat down with a ‘thud’.

                                                          ‘Gary Hobson
                                                          Born: 9/17/1965
                                                          Died: 5/15/1976
                                               Our precious, most beloved son,
                                             You will live on in our hearts forever.’

His grave! He had been lying on top of his own grave! But, it hadn’t happened! Lucius Snow had saved him! And, if he was . . .dead . . .how could he be here, looking down at his . . .?

It was too much! Gary scrambled to his feet, unsure just what he was going to do, where he was going to go. He just knew he couldn’t stay here! Pain shot up his left leg as he tried to put weight on it too fast, causing him to tumble to the ground once more. And his head hurt so much . . making it so hard to think . . .The bright sunlight faded as he once again lost consciousness.

********

“Hey, pal. Mind telling me who you are?  And what are you doing to my son’s grave?”

Dazed, Gary opened his eyes, looking up toward the all too familiar voice. Who . . .? He looked up into a pair of blue eyes he found disturbingly familiar. He felt like he should know the grim faced man kneeling over him; but he was so . . . young!  Hair that should be streaked with gray, was almost as thick and dark as his own. This man could be no older than his early forties.  Why did Gary feel that was wrong?  He didn’t know what to say. What to do.

“I’m . . .I’m sorry,” he finally managed. “I didn’t mean to . . . I-I don’t know how I got here. Or where ‘here’ is, Mr. . . .”

“Hobson. Bernie to my friends.” Bernie leaned closer to the distraught younger man. “Lemme take a look.” He touched the back of Gary’s head lightly, eliciting a painful gasp. “Thought so. You took a hell of a jolt, pal. Can you stand?”

“W-with help,” Gary admitted hesitantly. “M-my leg . . . it won’t . . .I tried . . .” He waved a hand to indicate his current position.

“Fall down go boom, huh?” Bernie nodded knowingly. “Well, you don’t smell like a liquor store, or look like a junkie. Can you remember your name?”

“G-Gary . . . Clark?” he offered looking around in confusion. What was he about to say? “I-I think I was  . . .there was this . . . this accident.”

“Car accident?” Bernie suggested anxiously. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“N-no, I was . . . alone,” Gary assured him. “But . . .I can’t . . .I don’t know how I got here! This is . . . where?”

“Hickory, Indiana according to the sign coming into town,” the elder Hobson nodded. He pushed himself to his feet, reaching down to help Gary. “C’mon, pal. Let’s get you to a doctor. Hospital’s just down the road.”

Gary visibly paled at the suggestion, flinching away from Bernie’s proffered hand. “I can’t. I can’t go to a . . . I can’t pay. My . . .my wallet . . . I don’t have . . .” Why couldn’t he think? “My wallet, and my . . . my insurance cards. I-in the car . . . I think.”

“Not a problem,” Bernie assured him. “The hospital is happy to work with ya on that.  Let me take you to the emergency room and get you looked at.”

“N-no. Please, isn’t there just s-someplace I can . . . lie down?” Gary pleaded. “I’m just . . . just a little tired.”

Bernie squatted back down next to the younger man. Even to his untrained eye the kid looked more than just tired. He looked confused, scared and on the brink of exhaustion. Gary. It chilled him that this stranger bore the same name as the son he had so recently buried. What chilled him even more, this odd, frightened man had his son’s eyes. That same haunted look he had when he had just woken up from a nightmare, or was hurting so deep inside that no one could reach in to help him. Even the shape of his eyes . . . He shook his head with a sad sigh. Give it up, Bernard, he admonished himself. Your Gary is gone. There’s no bringing him back. This Gary needs your help now.

“My place isn’t far from here,” he finally decided. “With my . . . son . . . gone, and my . . . my wife in the hospital, I’m rattling around in that big ol’ house like a marble in a tin can. Let me take you home with me and, if you aren’t feeling better by tomorrow, we’ll talk about the hospital then. Deal?”

To his relief, the younger man just nodded; his eyes closed as if too tired to argue further. He finally accepted Bernie’s hand. As they touched, Gary felt . . . something. Like an electric shock, only different. Looking into Bernie’s eyes, he could see that the older man felt it too. What was going on? It was Bernie that shattered the moment by hauling Gary to his feet. It was awkward trying to keep most of his weight on his right leg, but with Bernie to lean on, he made it to the car and slid into the passenger seat with a sigh.  God, he hurt! Every bone and muscle in his body was screaming at him.

As Bernie started the car, Gary fought to stay awake. His eyes felt so heavy; and his head kept spinning like a top. He knew he needed to stay awake, but couldn’t think why.

“Um, what . . .what was he like?” he asked. Keep talking, he thought. Keep someone talking. Stay with it. “Your son, I mean. Was he a . . . a good kid?”

“He was a great kid,” Bernie sighed. “Big hearted, hard working, always looking out for the smaller kids. At school, I mean. He was the only . . .He, um, he died in Chicago a few weeks ago. There was this essay contest that he was a finalist in. Lois, that’s my . . .my wife, she took him to Chicago for the finals. They were at the ‘Sun-Times’, getting ready to read their essays on TV. There was this little girl that G-Gary had gotten to know.”  He smiled wistfully at the thought. “The kid took after his old man there. He could charm the honey from the bees. Anyway, her essay was stolen. Gary had an idea who did it. This kid from Barrington had stolen it. Gary chased him to get it back. The little brat admitted all this later . . . after it was too late. Anyway, he confronted the kid; there was a fight; at which point the officials and Lois caught up with them. The other kid immediately accuses Gary of being the thief. Now, poor Gary, he always got tongue-tied when he was excited. And there were all these adults standing over him, and his mom. Poor kid never got a chance to defend himself. He was so embarrassed, he ran off to hide in the men’s room. His mom couldn’t follow him in there, so she went to look for someone to go in and bring him out. The next thing she knew, there was this . . . W-witnesses said he ran out of the men’s room like the devil was chasing him. He r-ran out the door towards the street . . . and tripped on the curb . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Gary mumbled sadly. “You must’ve been . . .I mean I would’ve been  . . .”

“Yeah,” Bernie replied tersely. “Well, we all took it pretty hard. I mean, he wasn’t even eleven yet! Although the papers said he was. And Lois . . . Man, she really took it hard! Her fault for not having more faith in him, she said. She collapsed at the funeral. J-just fell apart at the seams. Doctors are calling it ‘nervous collapse’. I ask you, what’s the difference between ‘collapse’ and ‘breakdown’? Can you tell me that?” He glanced over at his way too quiet passenger. “Gar? You still with me, pal?”

“Hmm? Yeah, yeah, I’m still . . .So, where is she? What hospital, I mean.”

The kid was about dead on his feet, Bernie decided. “The same one I was gonna take you to,” he shrugged. “I still think you should see a doctor yourself.”

Gary made an effort to sit up straighter, seem more alert. He couldn’t let . . . Bernie see how bad he really felt. He didn’t understand it himself; but he felt that he could not risk being confined right now.

“I’m okay,” he lied. “Just a little banged up. Um, do you  . . . do you have any other . . . I mean he  . . .”

“No,” Bernie sighed wistfully. “That’s what makes it so hard, I guess. Gary was the only one we were meant to have.  Not that we didn’t try, though,” he added with a sad smile. “The trying was kinda fun.”

His pallor only made the blush that crept up Gary’s face all the more evident. He couldn’t believe Bernie had said something like that to a total stranger! Then again, he couldn’t understand a lot of things right now. Like why Bernie’s sad tale sounded so familiar.

“Here we are,” Bernie said cheerfully as they turned down a familiar drive.

Gary looked up at the house. It seemed . . . wrong somehow.  Images of what he saw now kept getting overlaid with images of . . .something. A place that was almost, but not quite the same.  Subtle changes that seemed important in some way that he couldn’t quite find the words to define. Where was the trellis he and Dad . . . ? No, that wasn’t here. Was it? The old trellis still stood against the house; slats broken or missing, sadly in need of paint. Why did he remember tearing that same trellis down and helping . . . someone . . . Bernie? replace it. He could even remember the feel of the wood, the weight of the hammer, even the way the ladder shook . . .He winced as a knife blade of pain sliced through the back of his head and straight to the spot directly between his eyes.  There were other things, too.  None so memorable as that trellis, nor as obvious; but jarringly significant all the same.

“C’mon, Gar,” the elder Hobson urged as he opened the car door for his ‘guest’, “Let’s get you inside and wrap you around a plate of my special gnocchi. Guaranteed to be the best you ever tasted.”

Gary’s stomach gave a lurch at just the thought of food.  His skull felt as if it was about to burst open from the pain!  He slowly shook his head.

“Please, just . . . could I just have something to drink?” he pleaded in a pained voice. His thoughts kept scattering like leaves in a windstorm. One moment he knew who he was, who Bernie was. Knew what the connection was between them. The next . . . What was going on?  If only he could think!

As Bernie helped him from the car, Gary thought he saw something . . . someone . . . out of the corner of his eye.  Just a flash of orange and a glimpse of . . . what?  He winced as he turned his head a little too quickly, trying to get a better look at . . . nothing. He could have sworn . . .

“You got a cat?” he asked in a strained voice. Why did he dread the answer?

“A cat? No. Why?”

“Thought I just saw . . . Must belong to the kid,” Gary murmured vaguely.

“What kid?” Bernie asked, looking around hurriedly. “If it’s that Whittaker kid lookin’ to mess up my green house again . . .”

Gary just gave him a strained smile and shook his head.  “J-just some kid,” he sighed. He needed to sit down . . .now.  “Must’ve ducked . . . ducked around the corner there.” He waved his right hand in the general area of the porch.

Casting a worried glance towards his greenhouse, Bernie slipped an arm around Gary’s waist. It was all the kid could do to hobble up the steps. ‘Maybe I should consider putting in a ramp?’ he thought.  ‘Now, where did that come from?  Why would I need a ramp?’ Finally, he was able to lower his charge into an overstuffed armchair. The younger man sank into the cushions with a sigh of relief. He’d made it! And without falling flat on his face.

“What’ll ya have?” Bernie asked as he ducked into the kitchen. “We got ice tea, Pepsi and water. Oh! and grape juice.  Take your pick.”

“Tea?”

“Comin’ up.

As Bernie set about putting ice in glasses, Gary let his tired, heavy lidded eyes drift around the room. It was obvious that it had been decorated with a mother’s touch. The furniture was all sturdy and comfortable; usually decorated with a throw of some type. Small rugs covered high traffic areas. And pictures lined the mantle along with the prerequisite candlesticks and clock.   From where he sat, he could barely make out any details, but they all seemed to show either Bernie or some blonde woman with a small, dark-haired boy. One showed all three of them standing in front of a large, silver vehicle. A camper, maybe? Gary just couldn’t tell.

Something moved just in the corner of his eye. Turning his head quickly, Gary winced as the sudden movement shot pain into the area behind his eyes, causing the room to sway. He pressed the heels of his hands tightly against his temples, closing his eyes in a futile effort to shut out the pain. What was it he had seen? A cat? He was pretty sure that was what he had seen, but . . . hadn’t Bernie said that they didn’t have a cat?

Gary raised his head slightly as the pain eased to bearable levels. Why was he here? Why was he so sure there was a ’why’? Also, how had he gotten here? There had been no car accident. For some reason he was sure of that!  He was equally sure that he had not walked to the cemetery.

There it was again! That flash of orange close to the floor. He lurched to his feet, almost toppling over in his haste. That kid! He was in the house! Gary just caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared into the next room; but he was sure it was the same child he had seen while getting out of the car. A boy of about eleven years, with dark hair and sad eyes. He took another clumsy step towards the door the boy and cat had vanished through. Agony seared his left leg as he tried to put weight on it. Gary saved himself from a nasty fall by grabbing the nearest support; the mantle. Grasping fingers brushed against the picture of the Hobson family, knocking it off the shelf. He snatched it as it fell in a move so quick, he surprised even himself. Balancing on his good leg, Gary set the photo back in its rightful place. As he did so, he got a closer look at the three smiling figures.

“Here we go,” Bernie exclaimed cheerfully as he carried in a small tray loaded with two glasses of ice and a large pitcher of tea. “Sorry it took so long. Had to find the tray. Lois‘ll kill me if she comes back to find water stains . . .” He noticed Gary standing frozen by the fireplace, a strange look on his pale features. “What’s wrong?”

“The . . . the boy,” Gary whispered. “In the p-pictures. Who is he?”

“ ‘Scuse me?”

“Who’s the b-boy?” Gary repeated in a stronger voice. “The-the one in all the pictures.”

Bernie stepped up next to him and gently took down the very picture he had knocked over. Smiling sadly back at that moment of joy which, now, could never be recaptured, he replied. “That’s my Gary. My son.”

The walls wavered at the edge of his vision as Gary’s gaze locked on the photo. He suddenly found himself struggling to breathe. “That can’t be!” he whispered. “It can’t . . .Th-that’s him!”

“Him who?” Bernie asked, perplexed. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“The kid . . . outside,” the younger man tried to explain.  His breath was starting to come in ragged little gasps.  “I saw . . .saw him again . . . in here!  W-with the . . .the cat!”

“What cat? Kiddo, you’re not making any sense!”  He quickly set the picture back down and grabbed Gary’s arm. “Look, you just have a seat back over here.  I’m callin’ the hospital.  You must’ve hit your head harder than you thought.”

Gary jerked his arm out of Bernie’s grasp, his eyes filled with an angry, desperate look.  “I’m not crazy!  I know . . .I know what I saw!”

Confused, Bernie tried to placate his agitated guest.  ‘Christ!  What have I gotten into?’ he thought to himself.  ‘The guy is losin’ it!’

“It’s okay, Gar,” he said in his most soothing voice.  “It’s okay.  You’ve been through all kinds of . . .what . . . I don’t know.  And you’ve had a pretty hard knock to the old coconut to boot.  It’s only natural that things won’t make sense for a while.”  As he spoke he was keeping pace with Gary as the younger man stumbled one painful step at a time backward toward the corner by the fireplace.  The anger in his eyes was being replaced by a silent plea.  ‘The kid’s so scared he can’t think straight.’

The moment Gary’s back hit the wall, his legs gave out.  With a quiet sob, he slowly slid to the floor, burying his face in his hands.  Rocking slowly back and forth, he kept repeating the same phrase in a low, heart-wrenching moan.  “I’m not crazy.  I’m not.”  Dimly, he was aware that Bernie had left the room.  He could hear him speaking to someone else.  Was he calling the hospital?  Gary didn’t care anymore.  None of this made any sense!  Sobbing quietly to himself, he curled into a ball, laying his head on his arms.  “Please, God! Just let me wake up!” he prayed as reality left him behind once more.
 

****************

There were no birds this time; no wind stirring the branches of nearby trees.  Just the muffled sound of voices beyond a closed door.  Instead of cold bare ground, he was laying on clean sheets with a light blanket drawn almost to his chin.  He tried to turn over only to find that padded leather straps secured his arms.  Gary felt a moment of panic at this discovery.  ‘They‘ve locked me up!’ he thought in despair, fighting back the tears he felt welling in his eyes.  “They think I’m . . .I’m crazy!” he murmured.

“Not at all, Kiddo.”

Gary slowly turned his head until he could see who had spoken.  Bernie was just laying aside the newspaper he had been reading while waiting for his strange charge to wake up.  The younger man tugged ineffectively at the restraints.

“Then why this?” he asked, his voice not much more than a strained whisper.

“You kept pulling out your tubes,” Bernie told him.  “Don’t you remember?  By the time the ambulance got there, you were pretty much out of it.  Delirious.  You were hot as a pistol, too.  The docs’ think that’s what caused you to hallucinate.  You know; fever dreams.  They’ve been pumping you full of fluids and medicine to bring down your temperature, and the nurses have all taken turns giving you alcohol rubs.”  He couldn’t suppress a wicked grin at the flush that crept up Gary’s cheeks at this disclosure.  “You’re real popular with the nurses, Gar.  They keep drawing lots to see who gets to take care of you.”

Flustered, Gary turned his scarlet face towards the window.  “H-how long . . .how long have I, um, have I been here?”

“Just a little over two days.  Your fever finally broke early this morning.”  The older man shifted uncomfortably in the hard, vinyl covered chair.  “You . . . um, you said some pretty strange things while you were . . .Ahm, who’s Marissa?”

Startled, Gary looked back at the older man.  “M-Marissa?”

“Yeah.  You kept asking for her and some guy named Chuck.  There was something in some paper you needed help with,” he reported with a puzzled frown.  “You also called for your parents.”

“I-I did?”

“Ye-ah,” Bernie replied, hunching forward, his voice suddenly very low.  “I asked you who they were, and where to find them.”  He peered closely into Gary’s mud-puddle green eyes.  His son’s eyes.  “Do you know who you are now?”

Puzzled, Gary began to wonder which of them was crazy.  What did he mean by that?

“You knew things, Gar,” Bernie reminded him.  “Things that only my Gary could’ve known.  About the trellis.  We were gonna fix that up as a surprise for his mom.  Right after they got back from the contest.  And the teacher he had a crush on in the third grade.  He was too embarrassed to tell anyone but me about that!”

Gary fought down a feeling of panic and confusion as Bernie’s words tugged at his fragmented memory.  It was impossible!  Gary Hobson was just a child!  A dead child!  He was an adult, in his thirty’s!  How could this man possibly think . . .?

“Miss Pritchet,” he murmured.  “Her name was Miss Angela Pritchet.”  Dazed he tilted his head to meet Bernie’s expectant gaze.  “How . . . how could I know that?  What’s wrong with me?”

“Physically, you’ve got the docs stumped on that,” the older man sighed.  “Your leg has swollen to almost twice its size, but there’s no injury they can find.  Certainly nothing to cause a blood clot or anything like that.  That goose egg at the back of your head could explain the amnesia and confusion.  But, they don’t know what caused your sudden fever and delirium.”  He leaned in a little closer.  “What I don’t . . . can’t understand is, how can you be my son?  He’s . . . gone. Forever.  We’ll never get the chance to know the man he might’ve become.  Unless that man is you!”

The look Gary gave Bernie was a bewildered mix of panic and pain.  The strained smile was a poor effort to cover the fear that was so evident in the younger man’s eyes.

“I’m not sure who’s crazier,” he mumbled.  “You or me.”  He gave the straps another weak tug.  “Could you . . . please?”

“Not ‘til you promise not to yank anymore tubes,” Bernie grimaced.  “You had blood everywhere!”

“Just the one . . .” he gestured helplessly to the area below his waist, his face a study in scarlet.

“I . . . um, I think I better get the nurse,” the older man gulped, not bothering to conceal his discomfort.  “That’s the one you yanked before.”

Gary’s eyes grew wide as Bernie’s departing words sank in.  “Ho, boy.”

**********

Gary had to submit to a few more indignities before the doctors would allow that particular tube to be removed.  A process that proved highly embarrassing on its own.  Not to mention painful.  Finally, he was allowed up in a wheelchair.  He squirmed uncomfortably as he tried to find a better position, trying not to think about what was throbbing, or why.

“I’ve been telling Lois about you, “ Bernie was saying as he pushed Gary down the hall.  “Not what I think I know.  Just what you’ve been able to tell me, the kind of guy you seem to be.  That kinda stuff.”

“What did she-she say?” Gary asked nervously.  “Wh . . . when you told her.”

“Nothin’,” Bernie sighed.  “She hasn’t said a word since they brought her here.  I keep tryin’ to get ‘em to let me take her home.  But . . . the docs think she might try to hurt herself.  I think they’re full of it.  Normally, Lois is one of the steadiest, most reliable people in the world.  Given time to adjust, there isn’t anything she can’t handle.  This just . . . knocked the wind out of her.  She’ll get better.  She has to,” he added almost under his breath.

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Of course!” the older man smiled.  “I always take my new friends to meet the little woman!”

*********

Gary’s first glimpse of Lois Hobson was of a woman in the last stages of despair.  She was sitting in an armchair, staring blankly out the window of her room.  He had to wonder if she knew how pretty a day it was.  Or if she could hear the birds singing, if her hollow-eyed stare could see how cheerfully they played in the tree just beyond the glass.  Parking the wheelchair just far enough inside the door so as not to block traffic, Bernie walked casually around the bed to his wife’s side.

“Hi, Honey,” he said as he tenderly kissed her cheek.  “I’ve brought someone to meet you.  Remember that fella I was tellin’ you about?  The one I found . . . found at . . . beside Gary?  Guess what?  His name is Gary too?  Wonder if his folks were like us, huh?  Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?  C’mon, Lois.  Don’t be rude.  Talk to me,” he pleaded, tears welling up in his eyes.

“M-maybe if we just . . . talk,” Gary suggested.  “We could just . . . you know . . . toss a few subjects around.  See if we hit on something she finds interesting enough to join in?  How . . . how did you meet?”

“We grew up together,” Bernie smiled, taking his silent wife’s hand, gently stroking it as he talked.  Lois gave no sign that she even noticed.  “She was the nosey little tagalong next door. Until high school. Then . . . she blossomed into this . . . All of a sudden, I noticed how beautiful she was.  Not fashion model beautiful or goddess on a pedestal  . . . Real beauty.  Right down to the bone gorgeous!  The kind you want to hold onto forever.  I knew then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.   I wanted to settle down, raise a family. You know the ‘Dream’.  But, I never dared to hope that she’d settle for a mug like me.”

“So, how . . . how did you end up married?” Gary asked, rubbing his head distractedly.  He was beginning to feel a little . . . strange.

Bernie gave a little chuckle as he straightened Lois’ lap robe, laying her hand back into her lap.  “As usual, she was way ahead of me,” he replied.  “One night, we were at the drive in.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what movie we’d gone to see.  But, I’ll never forget the kiss she laid on me.  Or what it led to.  A few months later, we had to get married.  All because of that one moment of passion . . .”

“ . . .in the back of a Camarro,” Gary whispered, his face pale.  He couldn’t breathe.  His pulse raced as memories came flooding back.  A woman standing in front of him.  Telling him how badly she wanted grandchildren.  Letting it slip that he had not been planned, but was a joyful ‘accident’.  “All because of one moment’s passion in the back of a Camarro,” he repeated breathlessly.  Neither he nor Bernie saw the peculiar look that appeared on Lois Hobson’s face.

“Camarro? It wasn’t a Camarro! That’s the same mistake Lois . . .”

“ G-Gary?” Her voice was little more than a whisper as she turned in her seat.

Awkwardly, Gary tried to maneuver the wheelchair around the end of the bed.  All the while saying, “I’m here, Mom.  I’m right here!”  In his haste, he got the front wheel caught under the corner.  Frustrated, he pushed himself out of the chair, forgetting about his injured leg.  The chair shot backwards as he tumbled to the floor  . . . only to be caught by two pairs of hands.  The charge that went through all three of them was like a circuit being closed.  Gary pulled his parents close to him as they all sank into a tearful heap.  He remembered everything, who he was, what he was, and most importantly, where he was.  He was Gary Hobson, son of Bernie and Lois Hobson, and he had come home!

*****************

“It’s like one of those science fiction movies,” Lois was saying as they drove home.  “You must have been caught in a . . .a time warp or something!”

“A time warp? On my stairway?” Gary asked, giving her a strange look.  “That just so happened to bring me to my own . . . my own grave?  That’s a little bizarre, Mom, even for me.”  He pulled her in closer; still unable to believe it was really her.  That any of this was actually happening.  The doctors had been stunned at her ‘miraculous’ recovery.  And dismayed at him for trying to walk on a leg that looked like he had tried to stuff a watermelon down his pants legs.  Except that he wasn’t wearing pants at the time.  They had wanted to keep them both for further testing, but they had all been adamant about going home.  That had been a problem for Gary, at first.  Because of the mysterious nature of his illness, the doctors had been reluctant to release him without supervision.  Bernie and Lois had assured them that he would be well ‘looked after’.

“Then can you explain it?” she challenged him.  “You’re the one that’s going to be getting tomorrow’s newspaper, in twenty years.  And trying to keep it a secret from your own mother, I might add!  You’re the one this is happening to.  So tell us what you think!”

“I’m not sure what to think,” Gary admitted.  “Seeing mys . . .my ghost, and the cat . . .I can’t help but think that the paper is involved somehow.  Stuff like this has happened before, but never . . . I mean, I was always in pretty good shape physically, even if I was confused as hell.  Sorry, Mom.  Confused as heck. And I never lost so much of my memory before.  There’s just so much to this I still don’t understand.”

Lois snuggled her head into her grown son’s chest with a happy sigh. “Well, one thing I know. My son would have grown into a wonderful, compassionate, and handsome man.  A hero in every sense of the word.  I always knew you were special,” she added with a little catch in her voice.  “I just never knew how right I was to feel that way.”

“Hey! I’m gettin’ jealous up here,” Bernie called from the front seat.  “Save a little of that cuddling for your chauffeur,” he teased.

“Anything you say . . . Dad,” Gary replied with an easy grin.  He could almost forget the pain in his leg; he had gotten so used to it by now.  And the pain in his head hadn’t bothered him for over an hour.  It would be so easy to get caught up in the moment.  To forget that he was here for a reason, even if he hadn’t the slightest clue what it was.

**********

Bernie pulled the car up as close to the front door as he could. Gary was still a little clumsy on the crutches he was supposed to be using to get around on until his leg healed.  If it ever did.  It took him a moment to get his balance on the unwieldy props.  While his mom hovered beside him, he managed a few awkward steps.

“This is the pits,” he complained. “And I don’t understand why this is so hard.”

“You’re just not used to them, Gary,” Lois said encouragingly. “It’ll take you a little time to get the hang of it.”

“I’ve been on crutches before, Mom,” Gary grunted. “It wasn’t this hard.  This right leg just doesn’t want, unh! to get with the . . . program.” They were finally at the first step.  By the time he had maneuvered his way onto the porch, Gary was bathed in a fine sheen of sweat. ‘Lord, help me!’ he prayed. ‘I’ll never make it at this . . .’

“Mrowwr!”

Gary froze at the familiar sound, his eyes widening in shock.  His mother, just one step behind, almost knocked him over.  Concerned, she peeked around her son to see what was blocking his way.

“Is that . . .?”

“In the flesh,” he murmured woodenly. “Mom, meet the cat. Cat, this is my mother. Now, could you please let us by?”

Lois Hobson stepped around her son, giving him an exasperated look.  “Don’t be silly, Gary. He can’t understand what . . .”

The cat daintily stepped to one side, as if to let them pass.  Stunned, Lois gave the small feline a closer look.  The look she got in return conveyed an intelligence that seemed too vast for such a tiny body.  Then she saw what the cat had been sitting on.  Slowly, she reached down and picked up a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times.  She folded the paper and stuck it in her pocket, much as Gary would do twenty years later.

“Let’s get you inside,” she said, taking him by the arm.  By the time she had him settled in the same armchair as before, Bernie had parked the car and burst through the back door with his usual energy and high spirits.

“You two just stay seated,” he commanded happily.  “I’ll whip up a dinner that’ll make you forget all about that stuff they tried to pass off as food at the . . .What’s wrong?”

Gary was leaning back in the chair, his eyes closed.  Lois was standing by the mantle, a newspaper clutched in her white-knuckled hands.  “This isn’t right,” she said in a pain filled whisper.  “We just found each other.  We should have more time!”

“Time’s what it’s all about, Mom,” Gary sighed.  “I have to stop whatever needs to be stopped.  Why is it coming to me now, though?  It should still be going to Lucius Snow!”

“Who?” Bernie and Lois cried together.  Both of them were staring at Gary like he had sprouted a third eye.

“Lucius Snow,” he repeated, puzzled by their intense reaction. “A typesetter at the Sun-Times. He’s been getting the paper for about twenty years or so himself by now.  Why?  What’s the matter?”

Lois snatched open the paper as everything fell into place in her mind.  It all made sense.  In a sick, horrifying way, it made sense.  Wordlessly, she handed the paper to Bernie.  He read the date, then the headline.  ‘Oh my God!’ he thought. ‘Oh my dear God!’

Puzzled, Gary reached up and plucked the paper from his father’s numb fingers.  He expected the date to be some time in June of ‘76.  He had lost track of the days.  And, from his parents’ reaction, the headline must be some catastrophic event.  Gary was totally unprepared for what he read.

The date was November 23rd, 1963.  The headline was about the assassination of President Kennedy.  The story went on to describe the events of that fateful day in lurid detail, culminating in the recovery of the body of the assassin in the book depository.  The body?  But Oswald was arrested!  He had been found alive, only to be shot and killed later by Jack Ruby! Puzzled, he read on.  Secret Service agent J. T. Marley had accosted the assassin at the scene, shooting him once through the heart.  A plane ticket identified the assassin as . . . Lucius Snow!

“That’s . . . that’s wrong,” Gary told them in a strained whisper.  “That’s all wrong! Lucius Snow went to Dallas to stop Lee Harvey Oswald!  I know that!  He almost succeeded, too!  Only he didn’t know that . . . Marley!  Marley framed Snow when Oswald ran!  He had to have a patsy to take the blame, so he killed Snow when he showed up to . . . That’s why . . . Snow wasn’t there to save me, and I died.  Because I died, there won’t be anyone to stop Marley in ‘96.  He’ll . . . he’ll do it again.  The son of a b . . .” He shot his mother an apologetic look.

“I have to go back further,” he told her.  “I have to go back to the day of the Kennedy assassination and keep Snow from getting killed.  If I don’t . . .”

“If you don’t  . . . what?” Bernie asked.  “You stay here with us?  Would that be so bad?”

“No,” Gary sighed.  “Not if it was that simple.  But, it’s not.  It never is.  If I don’t stop Lucius Snow from going into that room at the book depository . . . if he . . . if he dies, I die.  For good.”

************

Later that night, Gary lay stretched out on the sofa, his leg propped on a couple of extra pillows. Lois and Bernie had wanted him to take their Gary’s room, but one look at the stairs had convinced him that it was not a good idea.  He had tried to convince them to take him back to the cemetery tonight, but they wouldn’t hear of it.  Tomorrow would be soon enough, they had pleaded.  What could one more day hurt?

Gary had not had the heart to tell them everything he had remembered.  He didn’t think it would do them any good to know how serious his predicament really was.  However he had come to be here, he was also lying on the stairs leading up to his loft.  And he was dying.  Somehow, he knew his time to act was growing short.  Just walking, even with the aid of the crutches, was becoming more and more difficult.  He was slowly losing sensation in his legs.  How long before he couldn’t function at all?

He stared at the ceiling as he considered what he knew he must do.  It wouldn’t be fair to leave without some kind of good-bye. Nor did he think they could ever bring themselves to do what he was asking.  It would be like watching him die a second time.  Yet, if he succeeded, he wouldn‘t have died the first time!  Trying to figure it out was giving him another headache.

Finally, his decision made, Gary painfully levered himself to a sitting position.  It took him a few minutes to struggle into his clothes and, ultimately, to his feet.  Laboriously, he made his way to Bernie’s study and eased himself into the chair at the desk and flicked on the lamp.  ‘Now where did Mom keep . . .’  He finally found some stationery and a pen.  After several minutes he sat back to read over what he had written.

‘Dear Mom and Dad;

          I’m sorry I have to leave so soon, but I really have no choice.  If I don’t get started on the next phase of this journey tonight, I won’t have the strength left to complete it.  It I don’t complete it, I will die.  I know that isn’t what you want.  Leaving like this is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  On the plus side though, if I succeed, you will have no memory of any of this, because your Gary will not have died.  And we would never have met.  Don’t bother trying to figure it out.  This is the third time I’ve done something like this and I still don’t have a clue as to how it works.  For the last twenty-four years, I have been living on ‘borrowed’ time.  It may very well be that my ‘note’ has come due.

          I know, now, that my birth was not in your plans.  That you could have taken the ‘easy’ way out, but chose, instead, to have me and to love me.  For that, I thank you.  Just know that your son loves you, has always loved you, and will continue to love you even if Death wins this round.

    Your loving son,
       Now and forever,
          Gary’

He folded the note carefully and stuffed it into an envelope.  Pulling himself up on his crutches with considerable effort, he struggled into the living room where he placed the message in front of the picture of the three of them.  Seeing it there, with just the words ‘Mom and Dad’ scrawled on the front, reminded him of another time he had done something very similar.  He had been sure he was going to die then, too.  It turned out to be a test.  Whether of his resolve to continue, or simply his will to live, he didn’t know.  Later, he didn’t even care.  He passed.  That was all that had mattered then.  And he had found the strength and the will to continue in his mission to save the world.  One life at a time.

The car keys hung on a hook by the back door, as they always had for as long as he could remember.  Getting out the back door and into the garage without making a racket was a miracle all in itself, but make it he did.  Opening the garage door wasn’t too hard.  Actually getting into the car, now that. . . Gary finally managed to get his swollen leg to bend enough to fit under the dashboard.  After that, things were a lot easier.  All he had to do was start the car and back it out onto the street. Riiigghht!

There was no other traffic to worry about.  In a small, rural town like Hickory, most people were in bed, or at least off the street well before midnight.  Gary pretty much had the roads to himself. His only real problem was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to move either leg.  Gary drove carefully, just a little under the speed limit.  Still, he watched the road nervously.  His reaction time was dangerously slow.  He ran a couple of stop signs before he learned to slow down well in advance.

Because he was concentrating so hard on the road and his driving, Gary failed to notice the police cruiser parked just off the road.

“Hey! Isn’t that Bernie Hobson’s car?” the officer behind the wheel asked his partner.

The older officer tried to get a better look at the slow moving car.  “I think you’re right, Cliff.  But, that’s not Bernie driving.  He’s being way too careful for that to be Bernie Hobson!  Let’s just follow him ’til I check it out.”  He reached for his mike and keyed the transmitter.  “Chloe, this is Dave.  Could you call Bernie Hobson and have him check his garage?  We think someone may have taken his pride and joy for a little midnight ride.”

“Roger that, Dave.”  A few minutes later the dispatcher came back.  “His car is missing all right, Dave,” Chloe told him.  “But he says he knows the man who’s driving.  Wants to know if you can just bring him home.  And to please be gentle.  The guy just got out of the hospital today and has trouble walking.”

“Thanks, Chloe,” Dave responded.  “We’ll play nice.”  He turned to his partner.  “You heard the lady, Cliff.  Let’s make our presence known.”

With a lopsided grin, Cliff edged the cruiser up until the two vehicles were almost touching, then he gave a quick burst on the siren and flashed his lights.

Startled, Gary flicked a glance at the rear view mirror.  ‘No!’ he thought grimly.  ‘Not now! I don’t have time for this!’  Casting caution out the window, he slammed down on the accelerator.  With a squeal of tires, the car leaped forward, catching the officers by surprise.  He managed to get almost half a mile ahead before they recovered and sped after him.

The next few minutes were a blur in more than one sense of the word.  Streetlights flashed by as the speedometer needle climbed.  He took corners faster than he ever dreamed he could, simply because he was not able to move his foot fast enough to slow down until it was almost too late. Then he had to put everything he had into maintaining control.  Finally, he saw the archway that marked the entrance to the cemetery.  As quickly as he saw it, he was already past.  Taking the narrow lanes way too fast, Gary finally spotted his destination.  ‘His’ grave was under that huge oak tree.  Fortunately, there were no obstacles between the curb and the gravesite.  He would have been reluctant to drive over someone else’s resting-place.

The officer’s parked their cruiser at the curb as Gary finally halted the car.  They watched patiently as he struggled out of the vehicle and adjusted the crutches under his arms, falling twice in the process.  Evidently, they thought to let him wear himself out, then take him without a struggle.  ‘Think again!’

“What is he up to?” Cliff wondered aloud. “Man, he must be on some powerful kinda drugs to do something this crazy.”

“Either that,” Dave agreed, “or he’s just plain crazy. Let’s round him up and get him home.”

Gary was ready to weep with frustration. It was all he could do to drag himself one agonizing step at a time to the beckoning mound. His legs were almost useless. Had he waited too long? What if he couldn’t move at all when he got . . . wherever he had to go. Fortunately, the two officers didn’t seem to think he was going anywhere. As he hunched along the few feet to the grave, they took their time getting out of the cruiser, strolling almost casually to catch up with him. Just another two feet and he could fall the rest of the way! ‘C’mon!’ he told himself angrily. ‘You can do this! One more . . .!’ The right crutch snagged on a root, sending Gary sprawling . . .

 . . . right on top of the grave! As Dave and Cliff watched in amazement, the man they had thought to be such an easy collar just seconds before, seemed to slowly dissolve into the small mound that covered the body of little Gary Hobson. At least . . . in this reality.

*****************

Stunned, the two officers watched as their quarry seemed to . . . vanish into the grave of the Hobson child.  Cautiously they approached the last place they had seen the fleeing man.  Except for a slight indentation that looked vaguely man-shaped, there was no sign that he had ever existed.

“So . . .ahm, h-how do you want to report this, Dave?” Cliff stammered nervously.

The older officer turned to give Cliff a look that seriously questioned his sanity.  “It never happened,” he replied.  “Got that? None of this,” he added, waving a hand at the car and the grave, “ever . . .happened.  The guy . . . gave us the slip. We found the car here at the cemetery, but no sign of the driver. Got it?”

“B-but Dave . . .!”

“You want a psych evaluation on your record?  ‘Cause they’ll have us talkin’ to the couch jockeys for months if we even try to tell them  . . . whatever it was we saw.   No, we just take the car in and keep our mouths shut.  Trust me, it’s safer that way.”

******************

It was different this time. There was the now familiar feeling of vertigo and of endlessly falling into nothingness. But, he remained aware through the whole ordeal.  Aware of the tumbling, gut churning ride, the flashes of light and darkness, like day and night rolling backwards at incredible speed.  Clinging desperately to the crutches, he feared that he would fall forever.

The wild ride ended with a bone jarring thump.  Dazed, Gary fought to draw air into his tortured body, at the same time trying to get a sense of his surroundings. He could hear voices in the distance. Lots of excited, laughing, chattering, expectant voices.  He was bathed in warmth as he lay on something soft.  Running his hand over the surface upon which he lay, he felt close-cropped grass.  Finally daring to open his eyes, Gary squinted up into a sun almost at its zenith.  Not quite noon, he judged groggily.  Slowly raising his head to look around, he found himself near the top of a grassy swathe sloping down to a paved road.  There were several small groups of people between him and the road and a row of low growing bushes just above him.

As Gary struggled to sit up, he also tried to marshal his scattered wits.  ‘This has to be Dallas,’ he thought. ’Please God, let me have made it in time!’

Trying to get his legs under him on the sloping ground was made twice as difficult by his continued dependence on the crutches he had managed to bring with him to this time. Just exactly how he had managed that, he refused to even consider thinking about.  He was way past caring about the ‘how’ or the ‘why’.  It was all he could do to deal with the ‘what’.  Right now, that meant stopping Lucius Snow from being framed and murdered.

Pain shot up his spine as he tried to lever himself erect.  Oh, God! Screaming, breath stealing pain! He looked around for something, anything, to use as a support to drag himself upright.  A few yards away was a sturdy looking tree.  Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he dragged himself over.  Standing both crutches upright, and bracing himself against the thick trunk, he slowly pulled himself to his feet.  An eternity later, actually mere minutes, he leaned upright against the rough bark, trying to catch his breath.  ‘God!  Help me!’ he silently pleaded.  Finally, he felt as if he could go on.  Staring down the slope to the street below, he prayed that he would make it.

Somehow, Gary finally made it to the sidewalk which ran parallel to the empty street without falling.  Uniformed officers paced back and forth, eyeing the expectant crowd with, to Gary’s mind, at least, not nearly enough suspicion.

Glancing down, he noticed that his shadow had all but disappeared. It must be almost noon, he judged.  ‘Certainly no later than eleven thirty,’ he prayed.  He eyed the distance to the infamous brick building with a sinking heart. Less than a hundred yards, he judged. Normally, he could have run that distance in just a little over a minute even through a crowd.  Today, when his need for speed was the greatest, he would be lucky to make it before the fatal shot was fired!  Gritting his teeth, Gary put all he had into moving his stubborn legs.

Many times during that painfully slow progression, Gary thought of asking for help. But, whom could he trust?  What if Marley had people watching for trouble?  That man with the umbrella, for instance?  Why was he carrying an umbrella on such a clear, sunny day?  And that man standing across and down the street, who kept glancing at the upper floors of the very building Gary was struggling so desperately to reach?  Another lookout?  Gary knew that he was probably just being paranoid; that only Marley and Oswald were truly involved.  But, could he take that chance?  In his own time, Marley had indicated that he was just a hired gun.  If that was true, whom had he worked for?  Who had he worked with?

Several people in the crowded street eyed his frantic, painful progress with open curiosity, but no one moved to stop, or assist him.  Grunting with each agonizing step, Gary never took his eyes off his goal.  The Texas Schoolbook Depository.  The place where Lee Harvey Oswald was preparing to fire the fatal shot that would shock the nation.  Had Marley drawn him into his web the same way he had tried to lure Gary?  “Like a moth to the flame.”  Is that how it had been for the ex-marine?  Had he been a hapless pawn, as Marley had intended for Gary to be?  Or had he joined the plot willingly?  Was he just another soul the rogue agent had ‘borrowed’ so that he could ‘throw it away’?  Or was he damned by his own desire?

Gary cursed his useless legs as, panting with fear and exertion, he finally reached his goal.  Pausing a minute to catch his breath, Gary eyed the steps of the entryway with dismay.  There weren’t many, but it was still a considerable hurdle to overcome.  Having to depend almost entirely on the crutches, now, just to stay upright, he would have to drag himself up one painful step at a time.  Time.  Something he had precious little of right now.  Jaw clenched, he determinedly set to his Herculean task.

By the time he reached the top step, Gary was trembling with exhaustion.  ‘God! How’m I ever gonna . . .?  An elevator! Thank you thank you thank you!’  Pushing through the door leading into the main part of the building, Gary spotted the answer to his prayers just a few feet away.  As soon as he was within reach, he steadied himself on his wooden props enough to push the call button. After that the minutes seemed to drag as the conveyance stopped at every floor above before it finally reached his. Several people stepped off the elevator carrying paper sacks or metal lunch boxes, talking and laughing excitedly about getting to see the President up close.  Again, Gary was tempted to give a warning, but something held him back.  Finally the car was empty.  He lurched his way inside and started to punch the button.  For which floor?  What had the paper said?  Sixth! The sixth floor!  At last, he was on his way.

“I can do this,” he kept telling himself as the elevator made its slow assent. “I know I can do this!”

Finally, the doors slid open.  Cautiously, Gary peered around the cavernous room before he made his clumsy exit from the elevator. The doors slid closed once more and, to Gary’s horror, the boxy contraption began to descend.  He was stuck on the sixth floor with at least one, possibly two murderers! Desperately, he looked around for a place to hide. Stacks of boxes blocked his view of most of the storeroom, and the floor was littered with debris from where workmen have been re-laying the floor.  Still, he could hear a familiar voice talking excitedly just a few feet away.  Snow!  He was telling someone about the coming assassination!  He even mentioned the paper!  A smooth, soft voice replied that he had everything under control. A voice that, even now, sent chills up Gary’s spine. Marley!  He was here, too?  Of course, he was here! Where else would he be but at the scene of the crowning moment of his murderous career?

“Why don’t you wait for me by the elevator?” the turncoat agent was saying.  “It’ll only take me a moment to subdue Mr. Oswald and we can all go down together.”

“I’d just as soon no one knew I was even here, Agent Marley,” Snow replied, relief evident in his tone.  “Why don’t we let you take all the credit?”

“Well, if you insist,” Marley agreed, a little too quickly in Gary’s opinion. “Still, I’d like for you to wait.  I may have to ask you a few more questions.”

Hesitantly, Snow agreed.  A moment later, Gary heard slow footsteps approaching.  Gary pressed his back against a stack of boxes until the figure came into view.  He instantly recognized the lean, hawk-like features of the man who had led him to the abandoned carpet store.  The man who had told him to ‘Count the living.’

“Hsst! Snow!” he called in an urgent whisper. “Lucius Snow!”

Startled, Snow turned, spotting a younger, dark-haired man in a black leather jacket, who looked like he was literally on his last legs.  His back was propped against a stack of boxes.  A pair of wooden crutches were held loosely, one in each hand.  The boy was sweat-stained and trembling as he strove to regain his breath. “Do I know you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Not yet,” Gary replied cryptically.  “B-but you will.”  For a moment, he was tempted to tell Snow who he was, ply him with questions about the paper.  But that wasn’t why he was here, and they had no time to waste. “You’ve got to leave.  Now!  Don’t . . . don’t wait for . . . for Marley.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s setting you up!” Gary hissed. “He’s not here to protect the President!  He-he’s here to kill him!  Oswald is just a . . . a pawn he’s brainwashed to . . .to do the job for him.  Marley is here t-to make sure he does it right!  And if they can set . . . set you up to take the blame, he can use Oswald again . . . later . . . wh-when he tries to kill an-another world leader!”  Something rustled on the other side of the stack.  Was Marley able to hear him as easily as he had heard Marley?  “Please! T-trust me on this!  If you don’t leave now, you’ll go down in his-history as the man . . .” he paused to get more air into his starving lungs, “ the man who shot Kennedy!”  Snow still didn’t look convinced.  “Look at the paper!” Gary pleaded desperately. “Just look at the damned paper!”

Snow looked at Gary like he had suddenly grown a new head.  “How . . .”

“I get it, too,” Gary finally told him. “Only . . . not for a few more years.  Please, trust me!”

“It’s a little late for that.”

Startled Snow looked back the way he had come to see Marley aiming the business end of his silenced automatic at him.  “So, he’s tellin’ the truth.  You are the real killer.”

“That has such a spiteful ring to it,” Marley almost purred.  “I prefer ‘expeditor’.  I simply hurry people on their merry way to the hereafter.  Now, whom were you talking to, Mr. Snow?  Please ask him to step out so we can discuss this like civilized men.”

Gary had not been idle during Marley’s speech.  He silently leaned one crutch against the stacks, taking the other in both hands as he would his favorite hockey stick.  Putting everything he had into an overhand swing, he brought the impromptu club down on the renegade agent’s arm.  There was a loud  ‘phutt!’ as the gun went off, the bullet plowing into a pile of debris by the stairwell.  At the same moment, Gary screamed. “Run!”  Snow didn’t have to be told again.  He had no idea, yet, who this courageous young man was, but, if the paper had sent him, then he had better listen!

As Snow bolted down the stairs he could still hear the diminishing sounds of the struggle.  It galled him to leave the young man to fight what he felt was his battle, but, the boy would not have been sent on this task if it had not been vital that he, Lucius Snow, live to fight another day.  Still, he vowed to learn more about his successor as soon as it was possible.  He owed the young man a huge vote of thanks.  As Snow ran out the front door of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, he heard what sounded like a firecracker.  Seconds later, there was another, then, in quick succession, a third.  And then . . . he saw a president die.

************

Gary slammed into Marley’s legs as the impetus of his swing overcame his precarious balance.  The two became a tangle of arms and legs as they struggled for possession of the gun.  All the while, Gary kept one ear listening for Snow’s disappearing footsteps.  He had to make it!  Snow had to live or it was all for nothing!

As the first shot rang out on the other side of the stacks, Gary’s attention was diverted enough for Marley to land a stunning blow to the side of his head. Gary slumped to the floor, struggling to remain conscious.  When he was again able to open his eyes, two blurred figures were arguing in hushed tones a short distance away, their backs to him.

“He’s a cripple, man! No one is gonna buy him standing on crutches and making one shot like that, let alone three!” one man was saying.

“They won’t know he was a cripple if we get rid of the crutches,” Marley hissed.  “One shot to the head or the heart, and he certainly won’t be volunteering the information!”

As the two men argued about his fate, Gary dragged himself painstakingly towards the door to the stairwell.  He reached up with a trembling hand to grasp the knob and haul himself to his feet.  Propping himself against the wall by the door, he was able to get it open and force a few excruciating steps out of his almost totally useless appendages before they finally gave out entirely, sending him tumbling headlong down the steps.  For a moment, he lay there, flat of his back on the next landing, left leg once again bent under him.  This time, he was aware of nothing as his body did a slow dissolve into oblivion.

When Marley and Oswald heard the noise, they looked around and noticed that the stranger was gone.  They rushed to the stairwell, but saw nothing.  Not even a bloodstain.  Puzzled and alarmed, both men were forced to flee the building before they were discovered.  Marley paused only long enough to retrieve his lost gun and sift through the pile of debris to recover his spent slug.  As a Secret Service Agent, his own presence would be easy enough to explain, if he was discovered.  He was, after all, trying to find the President’s assassin.

The crutches were nowhere to be found.

******************

“Gary!”

Bernie Hobson tumbled from the bed at his wife’s panicked cry. Dazed, still half-asleep, he hauled himself onto the edge of the bed.  He saw Lois sitting bolt upright, bathed in the glow of a distant streetlight.  Her eyes were wide open, as if in shock, and her hands were clutched to her breast.  Her breath was coming in short little gasps.

“Honey? What’s wrong?” Bernie asked with concern.  “Did you have a bad dream?”

“The worst!” she confirmed.  “The cat was in it, and Gary . . . He’s hurt, Bernie!  I think he’s dying!  We have to go to him!  Now!”

“Now?”  He looked at the alarm clock.  “Lois, it’s two in the morning!”

“Good!” she snapped, throwing aside the covers.  “We’ll pretty much have the road to ourselves.  I’m going, Bernie.  With or without you.  And the speed limits be damned!”

**********************

Marissa arrived home feeling bone tired.  She couldn’t remember the last time McGinty’s had been that busy!  And it wasn’t even a ‘game’ night!  Even though she’d not had to wait tables or serve drinks, she was kept busy enough to leave her feeling totally drained.  She wondered if Gary, who had worked like a horse all night, felt the same way?  Probably worse.  He had seemed so determined to bring that table up from the basement.  She sincerely hoped she had managed to talk him out of it!  She was so afraid that he might fall down the basement stairs while trying to maneuver that heavy table up to the first floor on his own, and injure himself.

In the end, he had agreed to enlist Vadim, one of their bartenders, to help him with it in the morning. Still, it bothered her that he might try to do it alone, anyway.  ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’ll just have to trust Gary to use his head and keep his word.’

She was way too tired to think about it anymore, or to do any of the little ‘chores’ she usually did around the apartment.  All she could think of was a hot bath and a soft bed.  Preferably in that order.  With that in mind, Marissa unhitched Reilly's harness and put thought into action.

‘Finally,’ she sighed as she climbed into bed. ‘I can get some sleep.  God, what a day!’  As she sank deeply into her warm mattress and fluffy soft pillows, she pulled the covers up with a contented little smile. ‘Oh, this feels sooo good,’ she almost purred to herself as she drifted off to sleep.

Minutes later, she was sitting straight up in bed, her heart pounding fit to burst!  Dear God!  What a horrible nightmare!  She sat there, gasping for breath as she tried to still the pounding in her chest and ears.  Gary!  That terrible dream had been about her dearest friend!  He had been falling.  Endlessly falling into a swirling vortex, like a black hole.  His mouth was moving, as if he was calling to her, begging for her to save him!   But, she couldn’t hear him!   She could still feel the sense of vertigo that had pervaded the horrible vision.

“I must be really tired,” she sighed.  “That or my mother hen complex is working overtime.”  Deciding that she was just worked up over nothing, she lay back and snuggled deeper under the covers.  Surely Gary was not so careless as to risk his health over a table!  Still, she hoped that particular dream would not revisit her tonight.

Tossing and turning restlessly, she tried to put the dream out of her mind.  But, the image of Gary falling helplessly into nothingness was hard to dispel.  Finally, it gave way to exhaustion, and she drifted off to sleep once more.   For a while, it seemed she would not be disturbed any more that night.

‘Help! Marissa, help me!’

Gary was again being pulled down into a swirling vortex.  But, it was different, this time.  Before, it had been merely a sense of black on black, spinning endlessly into eternity.  Now,  Gary was bathed in red.  A deep, bright red.  Marissa had lost her sight as a small child, and many things, like colors, were just a vague memory.  But, this shade of red she remembered clearly from her many visits to the hospital as she was losing her sight.  It was blood.  Gary was totally awash in the color of blood!

She bolted upright once more, her heart pounding so hard, she was afraid it would burst!  Gary was hurt!  No.  Gary was dying!  She knew it!  Could feel the life draining from him!  No!  It was just a dream!  A horribly vivid dream, but a dream all the same.   Gradually, her heart slowed to a less frantic rhythm.   Gary was most likely safe in bed, snoring loudly enough to rattle the windows.  So, why was she still so frightened?

“Mrowwr?”

‘What the . . . ?’

She felt, more than heard, something land on the foot of her bed.  There was a soft rustling as tiny feet scampered across the top of her comforter.

“Mroowwrr!”

“Cat?  Is that you?” she asked nervously, her skin beginning a slow crawl.  A soft, furry head butted up against her hand, demanding attention.  Cautiously, Marissa ran a trembling hand along the sleek back.  It felt like Gary’s cat.  She slid a hand under the small body, pulling it close to her face.  It even smelled like Gary’s . . .  “Oh, my God!” she gasped.  “Something’s wrong . . .Gary’s hurt, isn’t he?  Why else . . .!”

Frantic now, Marissa threw the covers aside and scrambled from the bed.   Momentarily disoriented in her haste, she at last found the phone.  First, she tried the number to Gary‘s loft, praying that she was wrong.  After a few rings, his answering machine picked up.

“Hello.  You’ve reached Gary Hobson’s phone.  Unfortunately, Mr. Hobson is unable to answer it.  Leave a message and he’ll get right back to you.”  The message was followed by a series of beeps.

“Gary? Gary, pick up the phone!” she pleaded into the recorder.  No answer.  “If you can hear me, pick up the damned phone!  Please!” she sobbed.  Still no answer.  Almost breathless with an overwhelming sense of dread, Marissa hung up.  ‘Oh, dear God, let him be all right!’ she prayed.  What could she do?  Who could she . . . Crumb!  She still had his home and pager numbers!  He would help!  As she dialed the first number, she had to smile.  Crumb always complained about how Gary seemed to be a ‘trouble magnet.’  Yet, he had, at times, expressed a grudging admiration for the young man who was so willing to put his life at risk for complete strangers. The phone rang for what seemed like forever. ‘If that‘s what it takes,’ Marissa decided grimly.

“This better be important,” a sleepy voice growled without preamble.

“Zeke!  Thank God you’re home!”

“Marissa?”  The retired cop was instantly alert.  He knew Marissa to be a levelheaded young woman, and not likely to be disturbing his sleep over nothing. “It’s . . .three in the morning!  Where else would I be?  What’s wrong?”

“I need you to meet me at McGinty’s,” she told him quickly.  “Something is wrong.  I . . . I had this nightmare . . . about Gary.”  Crumb made an exasperated noise on the other end of the line. “Please listen!  I tried to call him, but he doesn’t answer!  He was too exhausted to have gone off somewhere after closing, and he had been talking about bringing a table upstairs from the basement by himself.  He promised to let it wait ‘til morning, but . . . I just have this . . .this terrible feeling that something has happened.  Please!  I know Gary is in trouble and needs our help!”

*******************

On the other end of the line, Crumb ran a hand over his sleep-swollen face with a sigh. Now Hobson was messing up his life by proxy.  Still, this was Marissa asking for help.  And, he still owed the kid for all the times he had pulled the Crumb fat out of various fires.

“Awright, awright,” he sighed.  “Get dressed and I’ll pick you up in . . .twenty minutes.  It’ll be quicker than callin’ a cab this time of night.  And, don’t worry so much about Hobson.  We’ll probably wake him out of a sound sleep, too.”

**********************

“Oh, Lord! I hope so, Zeke,” Marissa prayed as she lay the phone back in it’s cradle. “I truly hope so!”

Twenty minutes later, she heard a knock on her door.  Zeke Crumb was as good as his word.

“Reilly, forward,” she commanded her dog.  Seconds later, they were all loaded up in Crumb’s car and on their way to McGinty’s.

As they drove the few blocks to their destination, Crumb tried once more to allay her fears.  But, Marissa could not shake the pervasive feeling of dread that threatened to overwhelm her.  She prayed that it was a premonition, not something that had already happened.  The moment they arrived at the popular restaurant/bar, Marissa pulled out her keys.  Their loud jingling betrayed her nervousness.  What would they find on the other side of that door?  Were they too late?

Crumb plucked the keys out of her trembling hand, quickly unlocking the doors.  Then he gently guided her inside. He tried the light switch. Nothing.

“I’m afraid he may have tried to carry that table up by himself,” Marissa was saying as she released Reilly.  She knew the inside of the bar as well as she did her own home. “You  try the basement first, and I‘ll find my way to the loft”

“Good idea.  You’ll probably hear ‘im snoring before we’re halfway up the stairs,” the ex-cop replied with a gruff laugh, as he turned towards the stairwell.

The young blind woman gave her friend’s arm an affectionate squeeze before releasing it.  For all his talk of how miserable Gary had made his life, Marissa knew that Zeke had a real ‘soft spot’ for the younger man.

“You’re probably right,” she agreed. “But, I’ll feel a lot better when I hear his voice.”

“Just be careful,” Crumb admonished.

She shot him a nervous smile.  “I’m always careful, Zeke.  It’s Gary we have to worry about.”

Crumb mumbled something that sounded like, “You got that right.” He opened the door leading to the stairwell, reaching in to flick the light switch.  Nothing happened.  “Hunh! Fuse musta blown.  That flashlight still under the main bar?”

“Y-yes it should be,” Marissa told him, her sense of foreboding kicking in big time.  What was that smell?  A kind of sweet, metallic odor.  “Hurry!”

“I’m hurrying already!” Crumb grumbled.  “Sheesh!  Don’t wanna end up fallin’ down these steps myself.   That’ll do ‘im a fat lotta good!”

Marissa made her hesitant way into the office.  That smell.  It was stronger here.  A lot stronger.  Where had she smelled it before?  Why did it remind her of . . . hospitals?

“Nothin’ downstairs,” Crumb’s voice assured her from the other room.  “He left the table at the foot of the stairs, like he promised you.”

Choosing not to reply, she took a few hesitant steps forward, sweeping her cane before her.  She stopped as she encountered an obstacle at the foot of the stairs.  Fearfully, she reached out a trembling hand, dreading what she would find.  Her questing fingers felt rough, denim-like cloth, and a sneaker clad foot.  Stunned, she put her hand on the step to brace herself, only to find it covered with a sticky wetness.  Heart pounding, she brought her shaking hand up, took a tentative sniff. ‘Oh, God!’  “Crumb!”

“Hold your horses, little la . . .” He shone the flashlight on the still form sprawled half across the first floor landing just a few steps from where they stood.  Hobson lay on his back with his head in a pool of blood. His back was arched upward where it lay across the top of a short stepstool.  His left leg was bent under him at an unnatural angle, an even larger crimson puddle still gathering beneath the twisted appendage.  Crumb spun Marissa around and quickly pushed her out the door. “Call 911,” was all he told her.

Marissa wasted no time arguing.  The feel of Gary’s blood on her hand was all the urging she needed.

************************

Bernie stopped the truck with a squeal of brakes. Lois had her door open and hit the pavement running. Bernie was no more than a step behind her.  She grabbed the front door knob without thinking, startled to find that it turned easily in her hand.

“I told you something was wrong!” Lois cried.  “Gary is never open this late!”  Pushing through the open alcove door, she tried the light switch.  Nothing.  But there was a dim glow from the other side of the office door.  “Go back and get the lantern, Bernie,” she told her husband.  “And hurry.  I have a really bad feeling about this.”

 As Bernie doubled back for the lantern, Lois rushed through the darkened bar and into the office just in time to spy Marissa coming out of the stairwell.  The panicked look on the blind woman’s face told Lois all she needed to know.  Something had happened to her son!

She found Crumb kneeling over Gary’s motionless body, trying to find a pulse.  His explosive sigh of relief said that he had found one.   The look on his face, however, was less than reassuring.   Lois tried to push her way past the big detective.  Crumb moved to bar her way, only to back down when she gave him a look that spoke louder than words.  ‘Do not get between me and my son!’  Tearfully, Lois Hobson knelt by her son’s head, unmindful of the pool of blood now soaking into her slacks.  She shakily brushed the hair from his clammy forehead, as she murmured words of comfort, begging him to “please wake up!”  That was the scene that greeted Bernie as he shone his big lantern on the grisly tableau.

“Don’t try to move him,” Crumb warned.  “If he wakes up, try to keep him still.”  As he spoke, he was pulling off his belt and strapping it just a few inches above the gaping wound in Gary’s thigh.  He then used the smaller flashlight he held to twist his makeshift tourniquet as tight as he dared.  Gary‘s right hand gave a small upward twitch, then became ominously still.

“He’s not breathing!” Lois cried.  Her hand shot down to his throat, just below the jaw.  Frightened, she looked at the two men and shook her head wordlessly, tears welling in her eyes.

“We need room to work,” Crumb snapped, all business.  “Bernie, set that light on the desk.  We’ll need it to see.  Lois, you support his shoulders, and keep his head straight. Bernie, grab his shirt here and the pocket of his jeans like this.” He quickly demonstrated what he meant.  “We have to keep his back straight. All together, now.  On three. One.  Two.  Three!”  Careful not to put any pressure on his spine where it lay across the stool, they lifted Gary’s inert form to carry him to into the larger area of the office floor.  They had one bad moment when it was discovered that Gary’s left foot was caught on one of the rungs, but it slipped right out as they lifted him a little higher.  The instant they had him safely on the floor, Lois began to breathe for her son.  Crumb began compressions as soon as she was clear.  And that was how Marissa found them when she returned to say the ambulance was on its way.

“Please, Gary,” she quietly begged.  “Please don’t die!”

Lois fought back tears of dread as she tried to breathe life into the empty shell that she feared might be all that was left of her only child.  Tired of standing by helplessly, Bernie was about to relieve Crumb, when he saw Gary’s right hand twitch again.

“He moved! Check his pulse again!”

Lois already had her fingers to her son’s throat once more. The tears that she had been fighting back won the battle and spilled down her cheeks in a torrent of relief.  He was still alive!

“M’m?”

“I’m here, sweetie,” she replied in a choked voice.  “Momma’s right here.”

“S’kay,” he told her in a breathy whisper. “S-stopped ‘im.  Stopped M-Marley.  Snow . . . Snow’s ‘kay.”

Puzzled, Lois looked at her husband, as she absently stroked Gary’s forehead.  Bernie just shrugged, equally at a loss, and turned to the other two.

Marissa and Crumb looked like they had seen a ghost.  Shaken, Marissa was only distantly aware of the approaching sirens.  Marley!  What could the renegade Secret Service agent have to do with this?  He had been dead for more than three years!

**************************

Gary was only dimly aware of the frenzied activity going on around him.  Muffled voices, blurs of light and darkness.  Pain.  Distant echoes of pain.  In his head, his hands . . . his back.  It was like it was happening to someone else.

************************

The EMTs worked quickly to immobilize Gary’s leg and spine, and stem the sluggish flow of blood from his wounds.  As one man checked Gary’s vital signs and placed monitor patches on his now exposed chest, another spoke with his rescuers.  After getting as much information as Marissa and Crumb were able to provide, ascertaining whether or not Gary was currently on any medications, and what he might be allergic to, they relayed everything to Cook County in terse, efficient sentences.

“We have a thirty-five year old white male,” the EMT reported.  “Fell approximately twenty feet down a flight of stairs.  Burns on both hands, and debris in the stairwell suggest electrocution.  Compound fracture of left thigh and laceration occipital region only other obvious injuries.  Evidence of major blood loss.  Witnesses state that patient has arrested once, but regained consciousness briefly after they performed CPR.  Request permission to start IV Ringer’s Lactate.”  The young paramedic nodded once at the response, then set to work once more.

****************

What was going on?  Who were all these people?  Gary couldn’t concentrate long enough to catch what was being said around him.  Ringer’s what?  Ouch!  That hurt!   But only a low moan escaped his dry lips.  He was so tired.  Couldn’t they just let him sleep?  Then, he was being lifted on some hard surface.  A board of some kind.  Where were they taking him?  He just wanted to sleep!

******************

“Flat line!  Full arrest!  County, we have a full arrest!  Administering one unit of Epi.  Roger, defibrillating now.”

“Clear!”

Whumph!

“Again! Clear!”

Whumph!

“We have normal sinus rhythm.”

*********************

‘Please let me sleep,’ Gary silently begged.  ‘I’m just so tired!  Please let me sleep.  Just a little while?’

*****************

The EMTs hit the ER doors just short of a dead run.

“What have we got?”

“White male in his mid-thirties,” the lead man reported in a clipped, verbal shorthand.  “Fell down a flight of stairs, two, possibly three hours ago. No witnesses.  Possible electrocution. Compound fracture left femur.  Deep laceration in the occipital region.  Second degree burns of both hands.  Arrested at the scene, and twice enroute.  Major blood loss.  We began bolusing fluids at the scene”

“Room three,” the young resident snapped.  Without turning his head or breaking his stride, he began issuing orders to the nurse. “Tell lab we need a type and cross for six units whole blood, and cardiac enzymes.  And I need it yesterday.  Get x-rays for skull, cervical, lumbar, and femur.  And we’ll probably need a CT and MRI once he’s stabilized. Alert neurology and orthopedics.  Do we have a name?”

“Hobson. Gary Hobson,” the EMT reported.  “Family’s right behind us.”

“I’ll need his records.”

******************

Lois and Bernie watched helplessly as their only child was whisked behind closed doors.  Crumb had taken Marissa to the waiting room, but Lois flatly refused to be led away.  No matter what happened, she would be the first to know.

“Fight, Gary,” she whispered tearfully.  “I know you can make it if you’ll just fight!”

***********************

The inert form was quickly moved onto the stretcher and his clothes cut away, revealing his slim, yet muscular torso.  Monitor leads were swiftly attached to his chest, a pulse oximeter clamped onto the middle finger of his right hand, and a blood pressure cuff slapped around his right upper arm.  The heart monitor gave a steady, and reassuring beep . . .beep . . .beep.  Blood pressure and oxygen levels, however, were dangerously low.

********************

‘Tired. So tired. Please let me sleep.’  It was like a whole crowd of people shouting at him through a muffling wall.  They kept calling his name, poking things into his body, and his flesh.  ‘Please,’ he wanted to tell them, ‘just let me sleep.’

********************

“I want that blood work STAT!” Dr. Carter snapped as the lab tech made her escape.  To the x-ray tech, he added, “We’ll need a chest on this guy, too.  I think he may have some rib fractures.”

“Gotcha,” the tech, whose ID badge carried the odd name of Polly Gannon, replied.  She quickly slid a film into the tray beneath the table and positioned her machine. “Everybody covered?  I’m ready to shoot!  Last warning!”  Buzzzz, BEEP!  “Too late now if you weren’t.”  A few minutes later, she quickly gathered the exposed films and rushed out.

******************

‘Leave me alone,’ Gary begged.  ‘I just want to sleep.  Why can’t you let me sleep?’

******************

The heart monitor gave a single mournful tone as the image went to a flat line.

“We’re losing ‘im!  Get me a unit of epi and sodium bicarb!  . . . No good.  Defibrillate, two fifty.  Ready . . . clear!”

Whumph!

“Again . . . Clear!”

Whumph!

“Take it to three hundred!  Again . . . Clear!”

Whumph!

******************

Gary looked down on the frantic scene with a feeling of infinite sadness.  It was over.  He was finally free. Free of the paper, the cat, all of it.  That was what he had wanted, wasn’t it?  To be free?  So, why did he feel so . . . lost?  With a sigh, he turned his back on the frenzied scene.  And there she was, in the hallway. His mom.  Dad was saying something to her, his arms around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.  But, she would not allow herself to be comforted so long as her child was in danger.  She clung desperately to her husband’s sleeve as she stared at the door, tears of grief steaming down her cheeks.

“It’s all right, Mom,” he said, as though she could hear.  “I’m not hurting anymore. Everything’s okay, now.”

Or was it?  Without moving, he could see Marissa and Crumb in the waiting room.  Marissa was crying on the big detective’s shoulder.  Great, heart wrenching sobs.  Gary hated that he was the source of so much pain and grief, but, what could he do?

“You have to go back,” a very young, soft, familiar voice told him.

Gary spun around to see two luminous figures standing between him and the room where they still worked over his lifeless body.  The taller of the two he recognized right away.  He could never mistake, now, the hawk-like features of his predecessor, Lucius Snow.  The other was a slender, blonde haired, teenaged girl.  She looked so fam . . .

“Rachel?

The slender girl shook her head sadly. “Rachel still lives,” she told him. “I have only borrowed her semblance as I did once before.  It is not yet your time, Gary Hobson.  You still have much work left to do.  All that has gone before is just a prelude to even greater tasks, and challenges, yet to come.”

“What if I don’t want to go back?” Gary asked stubbornly.  “What if I’m tired of all these ‘tasks and challenges’?  What if I really want to die, this time?”

“Do you?” Snow asked calmly.  “Are you truly ready to say good-bye to all your loved ones?  And all those who will perish because you weren’t there to make a difference?  As I almost wasn’t there for you?”

Turning, Gary watched his mother bury her tear-streaked face against his father’s chest, whose own face was also twisted in grief.  In the waiting room, Marissa still wept uncontrollably.  Even Crumb seemed overwhelmed with sorrow.  Unbidden, the faces of Toni Brigatti and Paul Armstrong came to mind.  Miguel Diaz, Meredith Carson, Mollie Greene.  All grief-stricken.  For him.  Faces floated across the surface of his mind that he knew he had never seen.  Some wore expressions of terror and pain.  Others wept openly in despair, or sorrow.  And the cavalcade of images seemed to stretch into infinity.  What tore at him the hardest were . . . the children.  ‘So many!’ he thought incredulously.  ‘Am I really responsible for so much pain?’

“Why me?” he asked plaintively.  “Why was I chosen for all these . . .tasks?  What’s so special about me?”

“I’ve asked those same questions myself,” Snow replied with a sad smile.  “The answers were not given to me until my own tasks were done.  I can only say this, Gary, of all who have gone before, and all who will come after, in all the world, your light shines the brightest.  It’s by your own strength, will, and compassion that you are able to cross the boundaries of time itself.  I am honored to have been the one to guide your first steps into the great Unknown.”

Gary turned to ‘Rachel’.  “My ‘light’ . . .?  What does that mean?”

“I cannot tell you at this time, Gary Hobson,” the image of Rachel replied with a sad little smile.  “Suffice it to say that you are a rarity among mortals. You possess a purity of heart, soul, and spirit that is in short supply in your fellow man.  You have offered up your life and happiness many times for those in distress, many of whom you have never even met.  It is said that there is no greater sacrifice than to offer up ones life for a friend. You have successfully met this challenge many times over.  So, I will give you a hint as to what it is that awaits you once your final challenge has been met and your tasks completed.  Look to the hymn ‘Blest Are They.’  I can say no more . . .”

“And, if I don’t meet these . . . ‘challenges’?”

“That’s also not for us to say,” Lucius told him. “But, can you truly condemn others to the whims of fate, when you have the power to save them?”

Again, that sea of faces surged through his mind. Then he heard them. Two familiar voices calling for him.  “Fight, Gary!” they pleaded as one. “You have to fight your way back to us! Please!”

“No,” he sighed wearily. “I guess I’m not . . . finished, yet.  So.  What do I do?”

*****************

The young resident wearily stripped off his latex gloves as he looked at the clock.

“Call it,” he sighed.  “Time of death, four forty-two AM.”  He leaned back against the counter, emotionally drained. Damn, what a waste!  Hobson was no older than he was.  Way too young to just die like this!  “Let’s clear out and give his family a few minutes before . . .”

“Sure,” the nurse replied in a hushed tone, pausing in the act of removing the monitor leads.  “His parents are right outside.  I’ll-I’ll get them.”

“No,” Dr. Carter almost moaned as he rubbed tired eyes.   “No, I’ll tell them.  Just . . . clean him up a little.  They shouldn’t have to see him like this.”  As he headed for the door, he added to himself, “No parent should.”

*******************
The look on the young doctor’s face told Lois Hobson all she needed to know.  They had been too late.  She barely heard his voice saying how sorry he was.  That they had done all they could.  Gary had simply lost too much blood.  His voice sounded as if it were coming from a thousand miles away.  He was wrong.  He had to be wrong!  Gary couldn’t . . .!  Not her baby!

Where did they come from?  Marissa was suddenly at her side, tearfully saying over and over again, “I’m so sorry!  I should have awakened sooner!  Should ‘ve listened to that damned dream!  I’m . . .”

The two women sank to the floor in a heap of raging emotion.  The two men looked on helplessly, Crumb with one arm around the shoulders of a clearly distraught Bernie Hobson.  ‘What can you do in a situation like this?’ he wondered.  ‘What do you say to someone who’s just had their whole world yanked out from under them?’

****************

Tearfully, Lois looked down at the pale, motionless form of her son.  She felt . . . weak, tired.  The only things keeping her on her feet were the strong arms of her husband.  It hurt.  Oh, God, it hurt!  To see him like this!  So still, when he was so full of life just hours before!   How, when he had given so much for so many, could his life be cut short like this?  He was too young!  His successor was not even close to being old enough to handle the responsibility that came with the Paper!   Gary should have had years before the torch had to be passed!

“It’s not fair!” she wailed, turning into Bernie’s broad chest.  “It’s just not fair!  After everything he’s done . . . all that he’s given up . . . to help others, why couldn’t someone be there when he needed help?”

“No one ever promised life would be fair,” Bernie Hobson replied, his own voice husky with unshed tears.  “From what you told me the other day, we should be thankful to’ve had as much time as we did.  If not for Snow and the paper, this would’ve happened a long time ago.  Thanks to him, we at least got to see our boy become one hell of a man.”

Tearfully, the bereft couple turned to the gurney that held all that remained of their only child.  Lois reached out with a trembling hand to brush the hair from his forehead, as she had so many times in the past.  When he was still her little boy.  She stroked his pale cheek, amazed that it still felt so warm when it should be cold as death.  Wordlessly, she took his left hand in hers, pressing his lax fingers against her cheek in a gentle caress.  For just a moment, she thought she felt those fingers move.  Imagined them curling around hers in a last embrace.  With a choked sob, she lay the hand back by his side.  As she bent down to place a tender kiss on his cheek, a tear fell from her eyes and ran down the corner of his mouth.  Did she imagine it, or did his lips tremble?

Bernie moved around to the other side of the gurney, his eyes wandering over the still form of his son.  Sadly, he recalled playing catch with Gary as a kid, of teaching him how to play football, and  basketball.  He recalled all the fun they’d had fishing and camping.  Those were joyous times that would live now only in his memories.

At first, Bernie thought it was a trick of the light.  Was his broken heart playing games with his mind?  Then, it happened again.  Gary’s right thumb twitched.  “Lois,” he said in a breathy whisper, “get the doc.”  His eyes were glued to that one, pale hand.  Slowly . . . so painfully slow . . . the first two fingers curled inwards.

Still fighting shock, her hand once more stroking her son’s soft locks, Lois looked up into her husband’s incredulous face in puzzlement.

“He just moved,’ Bernie told her, hope and awe mixed in his voice.  “I swear it, honey.  His right hand moved, just now!  He’s still . . .”

Gary chose, at that moment, to cough, causing his entire body to jerk with the effort of trying to expel air through his dry throat.  The sound was like a shot that galvanized Lois to action.  She sprang to the door and screamed for the doctor to “get your butt back in here! He’s moving! He’s alive!”

As the ER staff practically stampeded past her, Lois pulled Bernie out the door.  “Let them work,” she told him, tears of joy and dread flowing freely.  “They can’t let him slip away again. They can’t!”

“They won’t,” Bernie assured her.  “Gary won’t give up that easy.  And, now, neither will they.”

An eternity later, actually less than fifteen minutes, the doctor approached them as the stretcher bearing Gary’s now restlessly stirring form was whisked down the hall.

“Gary is stable for the moment.” Dr. Carter told them.  “We’re sending him up to radiology for more x-rays to determine the extent of his injuries.  The most obvious one, of course, is that leg.  His neck seems to be okay, and I believe his skull is intact.  However, that doesn’t rule out intra-cranial inj. . . I’m sorry.  We want to rule out any serious brain damage.  Also, and I’m going to be blunt here, there’s the possibility of some spinal cord damage.  We won’t know until he comes to.”

“Spinal damage,” Bernie repeated, his blood turning to ice water.  “As in . . .paralysis?  You mean he’ll . . . he’ll spend the rest of his life . . .”

“That’s only a possibility, Mr. Hobson,” Carter reminded him.  “It’s also possible that he’ll beat the odds.  Again.”

********************

Polly looked at the young man on her table as she set to work.  Where the hell were guys like him when she was that young?  With a flick of her hand she pulled the sheet back up so that it again covered his slender hips.  Blushing, she couldn’t decide if that gesture was for his modesty or her own. He obviously kept himself fit!  A small sigh escaped her lips as she silently prayed to find nothing more serious than a broken leg.

*********************

Exhausted, Lois Hobson slid into the chair by Gary’s bedside. They said she could only have a few minutes, but she defied anyone to move her from this spot. The sight before her tore at her heart like nothing ever had since the moment she first held him in her arms.  But, that had been a pain born of infinite joy.  To at last hold the life she had nurtured in her body for nine long months, cradled in her arms.  To see his face for the first time.  That had been the happiest moment of her life.  Now, to see him lying here, one machine standing by to help him breathe, if necessary, others monitoring his heart, his pulse rate, and blood pressure, tubes running into each arm providing life sustaining blood, fluids and medication.  More tubes to drain urine, and to remove drainage from where they had repaired his broken leg. Bandages covered the burns on his hands and his injured leg, as well as the stitches on the back of his head. At least they had not had to shave his head much, just a modest area around the surprisingly small laceration.

Reaching through the railing, Lois tenderly took his bandaged hand in both of hers.  It hurt to see her normally energetic son so still and . . . lifeless.  The warmth she felt under the bandages reassured her somewhat.  Still, if he would just open his eyes!

“Lois. Honey?” Bernie lay a calloused hand gently on her shoulder.  “You need to get some rest,” he told her quietly.  “They’ll let us know it there’s any change.”

“I can’t.” she sniffled.  “What if he wakes up and  . . . and there’s no one here?  He . . . he’ll be all alone.  In a strange place.  So lost and confused!”  The tears that had been threatening to fall since she first saw him hooked up to so many . . . machines, finally broke through. She pressed his bandaged hand gently against her cheek and wept. “It’s . . . it’s only been a few hours since they said he was d-dead!  Wh-what if . . .?”

“What if nothing,” Bernie murmured, bending down to take her in his arms.  “Gary’s a fighter.  Like you.  He might get discouraged from time to time, but he never quits until the job’s done.  Have you ever known him to back down from a fight? All those black eyes and bloody noses he came home with as a kid?  Even in college?”

“But, that was him fighting for someone else,” Lois reminded him.  “He almost never stood up for himself!  What if . . . if he’s just too tired to go on?  Or what if . . . oh, God, he’s been living on borrowed time since that awful essay contest!  What if-if it’s time for him to . . . to pay up?”

“It’s not,” her husband assured her.  “That Snow character lived another twenty years before he passed the baton to Gary.  Now, Gary has to stick around at least that long until this other kid is old enough to take over!  Now, how’s about you dry your eyes and I take you to this nice room they got set aside for us. You can shower and change, maybe have a little nap, and be all bright-eyed and smiling when he wakes up.  And he will wake up!” he added with more assurance than he felt.

For the first time Lois looked down at her blood stained slacks. Dear Lord, so much blood!

“Oh! Oh, you’re right!” she exclaimed, standing so fast she almost knocked the chair over.  Bernie barely got clear in time to avoid a collision!  “I can’t let Gary see me like this!  He-he’ll panic! He’ll think I’m the one that belongs in a hospital!”

Bernie smiled at the sudden change in her demeanor.  As long as Lois could stay focused, she would be alright.

“Besides,” he added, “Gary won’t be alone.  There’s a whole slew of people waiting to see him.”  At Lois’ puzzled look, he explained.  “Remember when we threw that surprise party for him?  We complained that he hardly had any friends?  We were wrong.  There’s about twenty people out in the waiting room.  All drawing straws to see who gets to come in next.  I don’t know how the word got out, but each and every one has a story to tell about our boy.  I promised Marissa that she and Crumb could take the next shift, though.  I figure . . . everyone getting . . .oh , ten, fifteen minutes each, our boy’ll be covered for the next six hours at least.  So, could you lie down for, say, three?”

“An hour and a half,” Lois countered.  “And that includes the shower.  Oh!  Oh, my!  What’ll I change into? We left in such a hurry, we didn’t bring any clothes!”

“Two hours and I’ll show you where I put the things I had one of the candy-stripers get for you,” Bernie haggled, taking her back into his arms.  “I’m not gonna tell you to stop worrying, Lois.  I just want you to close your eyes for a little while so’s not to scare Gary back into cardiac arrest for worrying about you!”

“You are a cruel, evil man, Bernard Hobson,” Lois growled, leaning into his embrace.  “Deal.  Two hours and I’m right back here.  No matter what.”

“No matter what,” Bernie agreed.

**************************

Email the author: Polgana54@cs.com
 

Back Home to McGinty's

Stories by Title

Stories by Author