The Virus (34 page)

Unfortunately, the doctor
was simply not getting the picture. Right now, all Dr. Crangler was
concerned with was Delilah and her unborn baby. Geoffrey’s
frustrations were mounting. He saw the doctor was about to leave,
presumably to get more material for more tests, but Geoffrey needed
Lieutenant Dan out of earshot and
now
. Who knows what kind of vitally
important information could be gained from these dreams, and
furthermore, who knows if Geoffrey would remember what he’d seen
and experienced enough to explain it the very next hour? It was,
after all, a completely foreign planet with completely foreign
beings. He didn’t understand it himself, how could he draw any
parallels that Dr. Crangler would understand. The doctor was
heading for the door now, even against Geoffrey’s painfully subdued
protests. Then a thought came into Geoffrey’s mind of how to
possibly rid the room of the ever-present Lieutenant Dan. Then, at
least, maybe he could convince the doctor that they needed to talk
somewhere beyond camera’s view.

Perhaps, he could employ
his telepathy this one time, just to give the lieutenant general a
brief uncomfortable sensation in his brain. Surely, he would need
to leave for a moment to see what was going on with him, and that
would give Geoffrey all the time he needed with Dr. Crangler. Dr.
Crangler was now at the door, gesturing for it to be opened.
Geoffrey had to do something, and quick. He opened the ability that
he had stifled for the last nine months, but, in his rush, he
opened it too quickly, and it was too powerful. Instead of a
slight, uncomfortable sensation, Lieutenant Dan could hear
Geoffrey’s voice in his brain, filling his skull beyond its
capacity, with a power and reverberation that would’ve instantly
driven a lesser man to insanity. As is stood, Lieutenant Dan
furiously pounded his head. He didn’t know what the hell was going
on except that somehow Geoffrey was in his head, and it
hurt.
Badly
. It
felt like his brain was being blown up like a balloon with fire
instead of air.

Geoffrey’s telepathy was so
resonant in the lieutenant general’s brain that it literally
affected his sight. It was like having a jet engine blast past so
close that a person could not only hear but
see
the sound, except that this jet
engine was mental and greater in intensity for that fact. His head
felt like it was about to literally burst, and a thin line trickle
of blood began to roll down the side of his neck from his ear. He
was on his feet now, slamming his head with his hands and yelling
to high heaven for relief. Lieutenant Dan had been on the
battlefield many times, right in the very thick of things, with
bullets flying past his head and explosions all around, but he had
never experienced anything even remotely and horrifying as this.
Seeing his reaction, Geoffrey immediately stopped his experiment,
but it was too late. His powers had become so profound in the
absence of use that just the echo—if it could even be called
that—of his telepathic voice was enough to inspire madness, if not
death. It was only because Lieutenant Dan was a war-seasoned
veteran that he had not lost his mind altogether and hurt someone
seriously. When his sight began to shake and fade with the sheer
force of the power that was ripping his brain apart, the thread of
his sanity finally broke.

Now, suddenly, he was back
in a violent theater of war but the enemy was not on the
battlefield, but
in his
head
. Geoffrey was now standing near the
doctor, both of them by the door, about twelve to twenty feet from
where Lieutenant Dan was raving and beating his cranium. Something
broke in the lieutenant general’s head and in an instant, he had
spanned the entire distance separating him and Geoffrey and was
literally on top of him. Geoffrey didn’t even know he was sprawled
full length on the floor until he looked up and saw one of
Lieutenant Dan’s huge fists coming down toward his face. Everything
went white, whiter than the room already was, and when color
returned, it was the color of his own blood on that fist, coming
down for another hit. And another. And another. And another… Of
course, Geoffrey didn’t realize it. He didn’t realize anything
anymore. Everything, the screams, the haze of pain, the fist
pounding his face to pulp; all of it was a single indecipherable
blur like the dream in the beginning. The doctor had tried to pull
the lieutenant general off the patient and was knocked completely
off his feet and into the air. He landed some feet away,
unconscious. Meanwhile, Delilah screamed and thrashed, but heavy as
she was with child, she could do no more than panic
fruitlessly.

Geoffrey soon lost all
consciousness, but though his awareness of the world around him
ceased, the brutal merciless beating didn’t. The lieutenant
general’s enormous fist continued pounding into his horribly
disfigured and broken face like a mallet ramming into a pulverized
sand bag. The lieutenant general kept pounding until he locked
those killer hands around Geoffrey’s limp throat and squeezed until
bones cracked beneath the awesome pressure. Five assistants burst
through the door as soon as it could be electronically unlatched,
each of them armed with a tiny weapon like the one Lieutenant Dan
and his men had wielded. The weapons were set to the minimum
limits, which, thankfully for the terrified staff members, was more
than enough to paralyze the massive and angry lieutenant general.
Though, one of the assistants had to fire his weapon twice before
the raging lieutenant general was as unconscious as the doctor and
the telepathic patient he had just mauled beyond recognition, his
gargantuan hands still had to be pried from Geoffrey’s flattened
neck. Dr. Crangler began to stir painfully back to life. As soon as
he had returned to the world around him, he instinctively looked
over at Delilah, and not a moment too soon, because she needed him
desperately. All the excitement around her, as well as her own
ensuing panic, had induced premature labor.

She was no longer
thrashing, but she was still screaming, as her body prepared of its
own accord to expel the very special baby within her. Dr.
Crangler’s chest was smarting terribly from the hit he had taken.
He shook it off as best he could and leapt into action. Even after
the completely unanticipated happenings of the last few minutes,
the proper birth of this child was still the most important thing
by a vast margin. The umbilical cord blood necessary to synthesize
a cure to the The Virus had to be extracted while mother and child
were still alive and healthy for it to be viable. Then, that blood
had to be maintained under very strict conditions and properly
cultured and used within a very limited amount of time for this to
work successfully. Dr. Crangler had but a single shot to make all
this happen, and that shot was right now. Dr. Crangler instructed
his staff member to move both Geoffrey’s and Lieutenant Dan’s body
out in the hall until other staff members could get to
them.

More staff members were
quickly summoned, while the doctor and the present staff members
tended to Delilah. It took four stout men to haul the lieutenant
general into the hallway, and Geoffrey went out next, leaving
behind a near continuous line of blood in his wake. The doctor
yelled at a group of the newly-arrived assistants to clean up the
blood, as it would pose a slip hazard for other assistants that the
doctor needed. Afterward, Lieutenant Dan and Geoffrey were carted
away on gurneys and off for medical attention of their own. The
lieutenant general would likely suffer no more damage than a sore
body and a throbbing headache when he awoke, but Geoffrey…well,
that was another story. His poor brutalized body had lain
helplessly and without the urgent attention it needed for over
forty minutes. From the beating, he was sure to have suffered brain
swelling and a crushed airway at the very least. He was breathing
shallowly—very shallowly—as they took him off, but there no was
telling how long that miracle would continue.

Chapter 31

“Get that
IV over here,
now
!” Dr. Crangler demanded “Where’s
that clamp? I need it,
now
!” The doctor’s elevated voice
seemed to fill the entire room to beyond capacity and spill out in
thick waves into the hallway every time the door was opened to let
a rushing assistant or two out to retrieve something being yelled
for
now
! Once a
steady flow of panicked and rushing assistants surrounded Delilah’s
bed with most of what Dr. Crangler demanded, his voice lowered to
something like a soft cooing, slightly above a whisper. “Okay,
Delilah, I need you to calm down and breathe.” The doctor
said.

“Fuck
you! You calm down and breathe!” was the spirited reply,
“This
hurts
!”

Unfazed, Dr. Crangler
continued, “It’s going to be all right, I’m here.” Certainly,
Delilah was not soothed by his presence, but it was the most
natural thing to say, “Just breathe.” Delilah wanted to yell again,
but the baby was coming based on the pain that was surging through
her. Nearly hyperventilating, she was forced to take the doctor’s
advice and struggle to take long, deep breaths. Dr. Crangler was
seated between her legs now, ready to receive the child. At his
command, two assistants—one holding one of Delilah’s sweating hands
and forearms, and the other gently stroking her sweating
forehead—were stationed at the head of Delilah’s bed. Five or six
other assistants were positioned some feet away, also per the
doctor’s command, near the door in case he needed anything further.
Though his head never turned from the woman before him, the doctor
yelled toward the assistants near the door, “Oliver, get over here
and get that anesthesia started like I showed you! Get some
painkillers in this young woman!” Even in the midst of her great
painful distraction and labored breathing Delilah had never wanted
to thank the doctor so much after hearing this.

One of the assistants
leapt forward toward the IV machine and obeyed the doctor’s orders.
Even before the medicine was in Delilah’s blood stream, her
breathing seemed to calm. Just the knowledge that some powerful
high-grade pharmaceutical help was on the way was apparently enough
to help smooth things some. And things continued to smooth out from
that point. Delilah’s breathing was still harsh, but much less so,
as the doctor continued to talk to her in that cooing voice that
would’ve never been used for anything less important than this. He
reassured her the entire time that everything was all right, always
reminding her to breath and occasionally to push, and in the
process deliberately keeping her distracted as the elongated head,
then narrow shoulders, then torso, then purplish discolored legs
and feet, of the savior of the world were pushed from her. The
desperately needed umbilical cord followed, as did the placenta,
and with the baby’s first breath and first resonant cry, the birth
was said to be a resounding success. Birthing children was not
Doctor Crangler’s primary profession, but, looking down at this
screaming baby boy, and realizing, as if for the very first time,
that because this life had taken place, all other newborn lives
would be able to take place, stirred something deep within him. In
an instant, he saw in this newborn’s existence every new life to
come: Black babies, white babies, Asian babies, Taiwanese babies,
Mexican babies, Middle Eastern babies, and every other baby in
between. Every single one of them symbolizing the hope and future
of their people, every single one of them gasping would live
because this child gasped its first breath. Every one of them would
see the light, hear the sounds, and feel the warmth of the world
that had been prepared for them, all because of this
child.

It nearly brought the
great doctor to tears, and likely would have, except this was not
the time. Shaking himself back into the reality at hand, the doctor
promptly clamped and cut the precious umbilical cord, handed the
baby to its mother, instructed his assistants to tend to her and
the newborn right away, and disappeared from the room. He raced
down the labyrinth of hallways, umbilical cord in a special dish,
to the room set up for the purpose, where the blood could be
properly cultured and stored, and a cure to the mercilessly
destructive Virus synthesized. Meanwhile, back in Delilah’s room,
she was allowed to hold her son while the machines were quickly
taken away and replaced with things more suitable for attending
baby and mother such as soft towels, warm water and swaddling
clothes. As this was going on, Delilah gazed into her child’s eyes
for the first time. Until now, the life that had been growing
inside her was as foreign as the alien intelligence that made the
child necessary. It was not her child, it was a thing she had been
forced to have because other people’s lives, people she had never
cared about other than as paid servants, depended on it.

Now, looking into the small
face that resembled her own, she realized that this child would
need her, would cherish her, would love her, not because of what
she had but because of who she was. She was his mother and he would
love and need her for that fact and that fact alone. Tears that she
didn’t know were there began to stream down her face as she gazed
deep into her little boy’s eyes—eyes that were gazing back at her
with more than equal interest—as it continued to dawn on her that
this was not an ‘it’ but an authentic human life. She couldn’t put
into words what she felt. It couldn’t be described, it could only
be experienced. And she was experiencing it now, true love for the
very first time in her life, breaking her haughty spirit and
rebuilding in its place a more humble and receptive one. It was
also only now that it really dawned on her what this child of hers
was affording to the world. This child’s life would grant that this
indescribable experience of love could be enjoyed by countless
other mothers and fathers too, throughout the annals of history to
come, until time and relationship, the only immutable besides God
Himself, were no more. She beamed at the child because the truth
filled her mind that even if this child never accomplished a single
other thing of worth in its entire existence, it had already, here
and now, accomplished more than any other child, save
the
Savior Himself. She
pressed the child, her child, to herself, as her warm tears covered
both their faces.