The Tower (2 page)

Even though the names were just so-so, there was one guy whose name was “Mr. Payback,” a cross between a detective, scientist, and crime fighter/butt-kicker all rolled into one and his name sounded cool. At least it was better than “PowerMan.” He could break heads when he wanted, lived up in the sky in some kind of fortress held up by magnetic power, invented fast cars, faster weapons and that was way cool. That I could relate to, along with the payback/revenge angle.

The way Quinn drew the characters and their suits was also pretty creative: the men looked like Olympian gods and the women looked curvy, but they were nothing like the other comic book characters I'd seen.

Funny, Quinn called them The Cosmic Guards but when I read through the first in the series, they called themselves “The Association.” Just the name, almost as if the group itself was taking on a life of its own. Pretty strange; it was no wonder the idea didn't sell. I read them anyway and more time passed.

“Good news,” Dr. Harrison told me one day. “You're in remission.” I had been feeling better and while that was good news, being healthy wasn't a sure thing yet. Dad, who had visited me maybe three or four times, picked me up and drove me home. No apologies for his absence; not a word out of him. He sat in front of the TV and opened up a bottle of Scotch; things were back to the usual. I just went to my room, unpacked, and then went to sleep. Yeah, things were back to normal.

* * *

Not for long, though. My immune system was still too fragile so school was out. I stayed home, taught myself how to clean the house and cook as no one else was going to do it for me. Teaching myself how to cook was sort of fun, although pasta and eggs were the only things I could make without blowing up the kitchen. I stayed inside most of the time reading books and yeah, I read The Cosmic Guards too, watched TV and since I had no friends or visitors, wondered about the things I had in life. I made a list.

It turned out to be a very short list. First, the “Dids.” There was nothing.

Then there were the “Didn't's,” and that was everything. I really didn't think it could get any worse, but…it did.

After about two months of home-time, yes, it happened again, right at the start of summer. The weather had turned nice and all the kids were outside playing ball and riding bikes; the trees were in full bloom and I wasn't feeling well. Hot flashes and night sweats, shortness of breath, couldn't sleep. No energy. My father took me to the hospital and had me checked out. There was nothing wrong, the experts said, “it's just the weather.” I knew different. Had a bad feeling about it and asked my father to stay with me. “Just this once, please?”

“Bill, I have to go on this business trip; it means more money for us, and your hospital bills are draining me.”
Thanks a lot. I'm sick and you're worried about the cash angle
? However, he had a point: Treatment was expensive and the national health insurance scheme didn't cover it all. If living was expensive, dying cost even more.

“There's Mrs. Jones, the next-door neighbor,” he said. “You feel sick, you got her number. She's a retired nurse and knows the drill. Don't worry; you'll be fine,” he said, “it's just two days in LA.”
What was wrong with this picture
?

Yeah, like Mrs. Jones was gonna do anything. The lady was about eighty, deaf and couldn't see anything without her glasses. And she was also a bit senile. Retired nurse or no she was hardly the perfect guardian.

I cried the day Dad left and wondered if he'd ever come back. Being ill really does a number on your mind and I often looked at the clock and counted the hours. Took my meds and tried to rest up. Got to feeling terribly weak, had even worse joint pains, shortness of breath; all the classic symptoms of my body once again rebelling against me. My feelings had been correct and when I passed out getting the mail from the post-box outside—I later heard old Mrs. Jones
did
see me and called the ambulance—and woke up in the hospital, I knew it couldn't be good news.

And it wasn't. Have you ever seen a movie where something bad is about to happen to the hero? You know—the music gets all dramatic and then the camera zooms up close to his face to catch his expression? Well, imagine me in that role. That's just how I felt and then the it-always-happens-to-someone-else-but-never-me concept came in and hit me like a punch to the gut and it
kept
hitting me.

And you know something? After all the crap I'd been through, after all the abuse I'd taken from the rejects in school, after all the sickness and pain, I
still
had hopes of getting better, hoping against all hope that someone, somewhere, would come up with a miracle drug to at least stop what was killing me, even if it was only temporary. I would've settled for that, but then the lab results told me, “Sorry, ain't happening, buddy.” You-know-what just got real.

My leukemia had resurfaced and this time it'd turned acute. Time limit with chemo: Six months, probably less. My father came back from his trip just long enough to sign the admittance papers, check me in, and then bring me my books and first round of schoolwork. That was it; I never saw him again.

How did I know this? Dr. Harrison had called him to get him to sign some kind of form. Dad said that the hospital could handle it and that he'd passed the responsibility on to his sister, my Aunt Lynn and she never came either. She lived in San Diego and had two children of her own. I'd met her once in my life.

“I'm sorry, Bill.” Those were Dr. Harrison's first words to me. “We'll take care of you for as long as we can.” Like that really mattered anymore?
The hell with it; deal with this
.

“Tough break, Bill,” one of the other kids said to me, after his parents had finished up their daily visit. His name was Pat and he was my age; he was in remission and would be going home soon. Yeah, good for him, bad for me—once the chemo started again, I was too sick to think about anything else. I was vomiting every day at least six times, I had high fevers, the works and my hair fell out yet again; Cueball lives.

Since I wasn't to be alone in my “Final Journey,” the staff had moved me into the Acute Ward and there were a few other kids to talk to. We were all the same: Bald, sick, and dying. What little time we had between treatments, we spent reading and sharing DVDs. They got to talk to friends and relatives during visiting hours; nothing for me save schoolwork.

And then, after the initial six weeks of chemo, I'd had enough. My body had gone into a slight remission again for the final time so I was able to walk around a bit. However, knowing what lay ahead, being sick, half-dead, cooped up, and totally ignored was no life for me. So I did what anyone else in my situation would do—I escaped. I wanted one last look at the world outside, to feel the warmth of the air on my face.

Suicide, you say? Well, maybe; I didn't think of it as suicide. It was more like an “out” from everything. Looking at the positives, there were none. On the negative side, I had no friends, no family, and no future.

If I was going to die, it was better to happen being outside and on my feet for a while 'til I keeled over rather than spending my last days in a hospital bed. Was I scared? Yeah, but what else was there to do? My life sucked, there was no one there for me when I needed them, I'd spent most of my life being trapped and pounded on, ignored by the world, being a called a loser; worse, I'd believed every word of it. Now, since time was short, what difference would it make?

That night, June 17th, after everyone had slipped into their uneasy sleeps, I put on a pair of slacks and a T-shirt. Both hung limply on my bony frame; I was down to eighty pounds. “Goodbye,” I said softly to the room's inhabitants, wiping the tears that suddenly sprang from my eyes and left the room for the last time.

Went to the washroom first and inside the toilet stall I pulled the intravenous tubes out of my pencil-like arms. I left the plastic crap there; damn straws filling me full of chemicals and what did it get me? Six months? Not worth it, not where I was standing. Didn't take my shoes, I didn't want anyone to get suspicious.

Outside, it was warm and cottony soft. The sky was clear, the stars were bright and I walked along the street slowly; no one around. Suddenly had the urge to barf, the hospital's Mystery Meals always had that effect on me and I turned into a dirty alleyway. It was narrow, full of unused old boxes, cans, and other refuse so a little more dirt wouldn't hurt. After upchucking the hospital's poor excuse for something edible, I leaned my frailness against the wall for support…and my arm went right through it. Shocked, I pulled my arm out.
Out of the wall
for God's sake, and its color changed suddenly from dirty brownish-red to green.

It took on the shape of a door. Roughly six feet high by three wide. I put my arm inside it again and then hastily pulled it out again. The door was
there
, shimmering, a bright emerald green in the darkness. It wasn't transparent, there seemed to be something on the other side…or was there? And the light; it was pulsating now, almost beckoning me in.

Curiosity got the better of me. Something I heard on a TV show once, “There's a choice to be made and a price to be paid.” While I didn't remember exactly what the situation was in the show, I made my decision. I never looked back, just walked in and straight to the other side and surprise, it was the same as on my side, only cleaner.

It was night time wherever I was, and it looked just like Portland, although there were a few stores and other places I didn't recognize. But, hey, wait a minute, over there, yeah, there was the Portland Gazette and that was the park I used to walk a little in across from the hospital when I didn't feel so bad.

This wasn't happening, it couldn't be happening…but it was. I looked around, trying to get my bearings, and then I heard, “Hey, kid, what're you doing out here?” Glancing up, I saw that a big, fat, and really drunk man was standing over me, wavering on his feet. “You sick or something?” he asked. I just nodded. “Well, you're in the right place,” he chortled. “Hospital's over there. Check in or check out.” He pointed down the street with a fat, greasy finger and then staggered off.

This was way beyond strange. I remembered seeing an old TV show where some little girl got stuck in a nightmare world and her parents couldn't get her out. Never saw the ending but it couldn't have been a happy one. It was time to go back.

Walking as fast as my shaky legs could carry me, I saw the doorway ahead but when I tried to go through, its color suddenly changed to red and an electric shock hit me like a hammer. Thrown backwards, my head hit the wall. Everything got hazy and I thought to myself,
Is this it? Is this all there is
?

Then I saw a black guy in a black-on-black shirt reaching out for me; that was the last thing I remembered before passing out. As sick as I was, I thought it couldn't get any worse or that things couldn't get any weirder.

Wrong again.

Two: Welcome to the Tower

“Uhhh!”

The pain jolted me awake. Gasping for breath, I woke up feverish, sweating, and writhing about in agony. It felt as if a hundred knives were sticking into all my joints at once. Getting my breathing under control, I looked around and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkened room. This wasn't Portland Hospital, was it?

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness I could see that there were eleven other beds with monitors above them, trays of medicine, needles and bottles in cabinets. Okay, yeah, it was a hospital room, alright.

How did I get here
?
Who brought me
? Though the pain made it hard for me to think, the last thing I remembered was walking around outside in that scummy alley and then there was this funny light, and…what happened after that?

“Hello?” I called out weakly. Moving hurt my head. I put my hand up to it and a bit of dried blood came off on my fingers…had I bumped my head? I didn't remember and why wouldn't anyone come? “Isn't there anyone here?” I called. “Please?” My voice echoed off the walls and died away.

The tears came trickling out then. Maybe they found me outside and stuck me in this room because they were tired of waiting for me to die and didn't feel like giving me treatment anymore. Maybe they just couldn't wait. What was the use; no one was listening.

Suddenly, the door whooshed open and a man wearing a lab coat walked in. He went to the wall, waved his hand over a monitor and the lights came up a bit. Around fifty or so, he was short, skinny and bald, but moved with the quickness of a much younger man. He saw that I'd woken up and gave a small smile, nodding his head slightly.

“I see you're awake,” he said in a high, reedy voice. “Good.”

“Where am I?” I asked, finding my voice and trying to calm down; I was shaking like a leaf.

“You're at Tower Hospital. Now, let's have a look at you. I'm Dr. Fustus.”

He pushed me back on the bed when I tried to sit up and told me to relax.

Taking out a stethoscope, he examined me and then took a small needle and pricked my finger. Ouch! He put the blood sample into a small machine by the side of the bed—never saw that kind of thingy before—it made a clicking sound, and then beeped. He looked up at me.

“Let me guess: Acute myeloid leukemia?”

I nodded; it still hurt to move and the Dr. noticed, took out a syringe, gave me a shot. “It's for the pain,” he said. “Where were you treated before?”

“Portland Hospital,” I told him and it was a surprise to feel the throbbing go down a bit. That was fast. “Why?”

He shook his head. “Most doctors are idiots. I see this all the time and the answer is right in front of their stupid faces.” He paused for a second then looked at me. “Well, we can undo the damage and fix it,” he said brightly.

Fix it? He had to be kidding
.

The doctor then went to the wall, pressed an intercom button, spoke softly into it. A few seconds later, a tall, raven-haired woman walked in wearing a nurse's uniform. She was pushing a cart and on it was one bag filled with a reddish-green fluid. “My name's Dee,” she said in a kind, sweet voice. Just the kind of voice I wanted to hear. “Let's have a look at your arm.”

“My name's Bill,” I replied, voice not so quivery. That was funny looking medicine on the cart. Every time I'd been hooked up to an IV it'd been clear or a slightly yellowish color; first time to see something like this.

“Good to meet you,” she answered, then took my bony arm and examined it professionally, looking for a place to stick the IV in. It wasn't easy; my arms were like sticks and almost black from all the times they'd been poked and jabbed by needles. Finally, she found a place and got the IV in. Hooking up the bag to an overhead hook she informed me: “Get ready.”

Get ready for what
?

Ten seconds later, an icy cold feeling filled my veins, and then it turned blazing hot which made me gasp. My whole body started shaking and sweat poured off me like I'd just run the 100-yard dash with a 50-pound backpack on. The feelings of ice-cold and nuke-hot came back again, and then the shaking suddenly stopped.
What
…?

The nurse smiled at me, revealing perfect white teeth. She was pretty, too. “That should do the job.” She then whispered something to the doctor who nodded and left. That was weird; since when did the nurse become the doctor? Turning back to me, she spoke. “Now, I have to tell you something. This medicine will make you feel better, but you have to expect a lot of pain at first.”

My eyes started swimming in and out of focus; whatever that stuff was it was strong! She continued: “You'll get sleepy. When you wake up, the pain will be very bad for a few minutes, but every day you'll get stronger and you'll hurt a little less. Do you understand?”

I nodded again, this time the room was spinning and I could barely make out her face. “Yes,” I managed to mumble; I was ready to pass out.

“Sleep now,” she said as I nodded off.

Oblivion.

* * *

Sometime later I woke up gasping for air. The sweats and shaking came, and so did the pain. It was like a vise around my chest, shutting off all feeling and making it hard for me to inhale, but after a few minutes, the twisting and searing feeling started to go down a bit. I also noticed that I wasn't hooked up to an IV bag. What kind of medicine was this? What was going on? Just as I started thinking that things were really getting squirrely, Nurse Dee walked in again and seemed pleased to see me awake.

“Feeling a bit better?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. Can you walk?”

“I'll try.” Tried slowly sitting up, and with her help, I swung my skinny peg-legs out of bed and down to the floor, surprised that they didn't buckle under when I stood up. Dee put her arm around my waist and supported me. Her grip, though gentle, felt like iron, and I wondered just how strong she really was. We went out into the darkened hallway, and walked along the corridor. Seemed like a very big place and it was gray all around; hospitals weren't gray, were they? We stopped at an elevator and got in.

“Where are we going?

“Top floor, you're going to meet our Department Head,” she answered.

“Don't you mean he's the head doctor?”

Dee smiled. “Well, he's something like that. You'll see soon enough.”

After about a minute, the elevator stopped and we walked across the hallway to another room. It was dark in there but I could make out some shadows in the far corner. Dee waved her hand over a light switch and everything got brighter and my jaw dropped about a foot.

Holy crap! This had to be some kind of joke
.

Across the room, there stood three people, all in costume. The man in front was wearing an all-black body-suit with bandoliers slung cross-wise around his chest.
WTH
…?

“Welcome to the Tower,” he said, voice deep and harsh.

No way; this guy, these people, they couldn't be who I thought they were; it was Mr.
Payback
?! I turned to look at the nurse.

“Where am I?” I demanded.

“On the Tower,” he repeated. “We brought you here after you entered the portal.”

Oh snap! My memory came flooding back to me. The green door I'd walked through; that brought me here? Where was “here”? I turned my head back to look at the guy in the suit.

He nodded. “Yes. To make a long story short, once you came through, you were spotted by Black Guardsman during his nightly patrol. He brought you here. Your condition was grave, but with treatment you should recover in time.”

“Recover?” How to process all this? Cliff's Notes: I was dying in my own universe, and had somehow been transported here, had been rescued and helped by some comic book heroes and the thought of all of it happening hit me like a left hook to my psyche and WHAM!

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor. Nurse Dee was holding my hand. “You fainted,” she said, and easily lifted me into the chair. Yeah, guess I did. This…was impossible. It wasn't possible and yet, yet, just where was I?

* * *

“As I said before,” the guy dressed up as Mr. Payback told me, “you're on the Tower. We're in space, in orbit around the Earth. This is perhaps the best hospital around for treatment for someone in your condition, and you were lucky the Guardsman found you. Count your blessings.”

Count my blessings
? Oh, yeah, I started counting and stopped at one. This was way too much for me to comprehend, like I'd stepped into a Halloween party, only every day here
was
Halloween. In the movies it was called “suspension of disbelief,” a concept that stated you were supposed to believe that, yes, a man could fly, or there were rocket ships faster than the speed of light. Was I really in space on a satellite?

“You're…you
are
real,” I managed to get out. It took a supreme effort to talk and not just pass out again from the total lunacy of it all. “You're Mr. Payback, aren't you?”

The guy dressed in the black costume looked at me. “I go by the name of ‘Avenger,' he said. “Not the other name you just mentioned. And I'm as real as you are, as are we all.” He indicated the others in the room with a wave of his hand. “That's PowerGuy over there, Black Guardsman, and you've already met Miracle Mistress,” he finished off, indicating Dee. “Her real name is Deanna Dumas.” He paused, motioned at the windows. “Take a look.”

Walking over to the window very slowly, digesting the new names I'd just heard, I looked back at Dee-now-Deanna. She'd removed her uniform and stood there in a golden, form-fitting bodysuit. A gold sword hung at her side. The other guys in the costumes just nodded. Avenger pressed a button on a console and the shutters went up. Instinctively, I stepped back from the window, and out there was…space. Space; bright stars, the Earth below me, the moon on the other side, the sun far off in the distance and two objects that looked like mini-satellites….

No, no way! It must've been the fever from the leukemia, yeah, that's what it was. Or maybe I was already dead; this was the afterlife people talked about? Supposedly the story was that whatever your dreams were about in the here-and-now would be granted in the hereafter…but this? Staring was all I was capable of doing.

The guy dressed as Avenger seemed amused at my reaction. “I've monitored your progress with our medicine. Dr. Fustus says that you're responding very well.”

“I…uh…” tried to get the words out…feel a lot better.” This was way too radical for me to process at the moment.

“That's all I needed to hear,” he said. “But,” he continued, picking up some kind of chart from the table and looking at it, “you still need more treatment of a different sort. What we gave you was only the preliminary stage of the cure. The next step is something that quite frankly is not that pleasant and will involve a lot of pain. It'll also take a bit more time, but we are willing to try our best to help you out.”

Pain; that's all I'd been living with the past few years of my life. If this guy could get me all cured and stuff, what was a little more hurt in the long run? Or
was
it a cure? I started to doubt the whole thing right then and there, and the more I thought about it, the more afraid I became. What if this wasn't the place they said it was and what if I wasn't cured or even halfway cured?

The guy in the super-suit stopped speaking; he'd seen the look on my face and that look spelled “terror.”

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“You said “time” and that's all everyone ever told me,” I began to cry. “Always “give it more time, it'll work this time, you got more time,” and stuff like that, they all lied to me! Why is it gonna be different now?!” My emotions were ruling me now, couldn't help it. Fear was fear was fear.

Avenger-the-guy-I'd-thought-was-Mr.-Payback came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. His voice was sympathetic. “It will be different because we promised you.” The other maybe-super-dudes in the back nodded silently.

“I don't wanna die!!” I just lost it at that moment. The tears flowed out like a dam that'd just broken and they wouldn't stop. “I don't wanna die!” I repeated.

“You won't.”

“Why is this happening?” I sobbed. “It's bad enough I'm sick but you have to pull this kind of joke on me?!”

“What joke?” Deanna-the woman-dressed-like-Miracle Mistress wanted to know.

What joke
? “This!” I yelled. “This whole BS space thing with superheroes and Earth orbits and you're gonna make me better…it's always just another lie!” I broke down and sobbed, ignoring the reality that I was here.

“That's not what you want, is it now?” Deanna asked. I had no strength left to say anything and even if they had left me alone, where could I have gone? She knew that I needed a helping hand to guide me along. “No,” she said sympathetically, “that's not what you want at all. C'mon.”

With that, Nurse Deanna-whoever put on her nurse's robe again and took me back to the hospital room. She hooked up the medicine, and once the IV was in, the feeling of ice and fire came again along with the shaking and then…a moment of peace. “Don't go, please,” I begged her. “I'm sorry about what I said before.”

She nodded her head and her voice was soft and caring. “It's okay; I understand. You're young and sick and frightened. It's only natural and you've been through so much already. It isn't fair, but sometimes people get sick and that's all there is to it. We're here to help and you must believe that.” Sounded like something straight out of the comics; very corny but also sincere and oh-so-believable. I was so far gone it didn't really matter, yet for some reason, right then and there, I trusted her.