Can you give her something for the pain?
All published excerpts from Apostate: Life after Death in Exile:
From Part 1, Episodes 4 & 5: Can you give her something for the pain?
We spent almost two hours answering questions. “No, we do not know who the driver is. No, we have never seen him before. No, he did not say anything to us.” I kept his request, “Kill me,” to myself. I still wasn’t sure if he had said, “Kill me,” or “Help me.”
“No, we did not see the accident. Yes, the Deputy Powell had warned the man to stop several times.” We had learned that the young deputy who shot the driver was named Mark Powell. “No, Dr. Wellers did not have a weapon.” We also learned that the driver who bit Janice and Deputy Powell was named Henry Wellers. He was a doctor from Atlanta. “Yes, I think Dr. Wellers was trying to injure Deputy Powell, and us too. No, I don’t know why he would want to harm any of us.”
We probably answered each question three or four times from different deputies and investigators. The county coroner had just arrived when the ambulance left with Deputy Powell. He also asked us a few questions; then he said we could go to the hospital. The sheriff made sure to ask us to stick around the county in case he had more questions later.
There was barely enough room for us to back down the driveway without driving through the blood and gore. Just as I pulled forward, Janice yelled, “Stop!”
I slammed on the breaks, drawing the attention of all the officers still on the scene. “What’s wrong?” I asked turning toward Janice expecting another emergency.
“Did you bring the cookies?” she asked.
“What?” I said, sure that I had misunderstood her too.
“Did you bring the cookies for the Schmidts?”
“Ummm. No. I thought we were going to the hospital.”
“We are,” she answered, “but we have to drive right by the Schmidt’s house. I made them cookies, so we might as well drop them off. Now, run up and get them. I left the basket on the porch when I first came out.”
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After dropping the cookies off at the home of our new neighbors, we settled back into our car to head to the hospital.
When I sat down in the driver’s seat, Janice said, “My arm is bleeding again.” I looked over to see a fresh stream of blood running down her arm. Her eyes closed slowly as she leaned her head back against the headrest.
I broke several traffic laws racing to the hospital, and I prayed the whole way there. I had prayed before, but never with such focus. I made several promises, promises that I knew that I could not keep and that God knew that I could not keep. Since that day, prayer has become a constant companion.
I whipped the car into the emergency room entrance and braked hard at the double doors. Janice was still unconscious next to me, so I rushed inside and yelled, a little louder than I intended, “My wife needs help!”
A security guard at the door unfolded a wheelchair and followed me back out to the car. Janice was standing beside the passenger side of the car, her hands on her hips.
“Did you forget someone?” she asked, smiling as she strolled past us into the emergency room. “Why don’t you park the car while I check in.” The security guard gave me a perplexed look as I hurriedly joined Janice.
“You should sit down. You just passed out in the car,” I encouraged her and pointed back toward the wheelchair.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, “I only took a quick nap. I feel great.” She turned toward the emergency room receptionist. “Hi, I was involved in an accident at my house, and the paramedics said that I should let you check my arm.”
As Janice continued to explain everything to the receptionist, I shrugged toward the car and hurried back to the emergency room driveway where I had left the car. I moved it into the parking lot and returned to find that they had already taken Janice back to an exam room. I was surprised at the speed of their response, especially since there were already a few people in the waiting room. However, my surprise was soon answered when the sheriff met me on the way to the exam room.
“We made sure they took care of your wife. Do you want to wait in the waiting room or in the exam room?” the sheriff asked. I had thought he was courteous and polite at our house, and he was showing that my assessment was correct.
“I think I’ll wait with her,” I replied and walked into the exam room, closing the door behind me.
“Does this gown make my butt look big,” Janice grinned and flashed me.
“Yes, this is my Janice,” I thought to myself as I walked over and gave her a long hug. “I was worried about you. I thought you had fainted or something.” I kissed her on the forehead as she sat down on the exam table. There were a couple of chairs in the exam room. I pulled one of them close to the bed and sat down. Janice reached down and held my hand while we waited for the doctor.
“No. I was fine… just tired.” She continued chatting until the doctor came in.
He looked over the bite wound and said something about anesthetic, cleaning, and stitches, then walked out. Before the door could close, Deputy Powell stuck his head through the opening.
“Can I come in?” he asked, and walked in when Janice nodded enthusiastically. She jumped off the bed and gave him a hug, being careful not to put too much pressure on his injury.
“How is your shoulder?” she asked while leading him over by the bed. I stood up so that he would have room and walked back toward the door. I loved watching my wife care for people. She had already forgotten about her own injury and was concerned only with this young deputy. Even while we were sitting in the driveway of our house with a corpse a few feet away she treated this deputy like her younger brother in spite of the fact that she had not even met him formally. That’s just the way she was. She loved everyone, and she showed them that she loved them anytime she could.
Powell had left the door to the exam room slightly ajar. Through the opening, I could see the sheriff speaking with one of the doctors. If I turned my attention away from Janice and Deputy Powell, I could just make out what they were saying.
“I have never seen two adult biting victims in the same month, much less the same day,” the doctor said to the sheriff. “And these are not just bites. It almost looks like he was gnawing on them, especially the deputy’s wound.”
“Yeah, Wellers was jacked out of his mind,” the sheriff replied. “It took five shots to bring him down. He didn’t stop until Powell literally blew his brains out.”
“I saw the body,” the doctor remarked, shaking his head. “I am surprised that those chest wounds did not stop him.”
Just then, another deputy walked up and the doctor stepped away.
“Weller’s body is downstairs in the morgue,” the deputy said to the sheriff.
“Did you get in touch with the next of kin?” the sheriff asked.
“No, no one answered at the address on the driver’s license. But…” the deputy trailed off.
“But what?”
“Well, we called the number on his business card, the number to his office. The receptionist said that Dr. Wellers had left the office yesterday afternoon to admit himself to the hospital. She said something about a virus and the CDC,” the deputy was reading from his notebook.
“The CDC?” the sheriff replied, surprised.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I said. The receptionist told me to call the CDC, and she gave me their number.”
“Did you call them?” the sheriff asked.
“Yes,” the deputy answered hesitantly.
“And, what did they say? What does the CDC have to do with Wellers?”
The deputy looked around, and I shifted back into the room so that he could not see me. He lowered his voice and answered, but I could still just make out what he said. “He said that they were concerned that Dr. Wellers had contracted some kind of virus from some of his patients. He asked me if Wellers had been acting strangely. I said, ‘Yeah,’ but didn’t go into any details. He said they were pretty busy but would try to send someone here as soon as possible.”
The sheriff took the deputy’s notebook and read it for himself. “Why have we not heard about this before now?” the sheriff asked while reading through the notes.
“Have you heard of that new strain of Bangkok flu?” the deputy answered.
“Yeah. I heard about that on the news a few days ago. Apparently it’s like the normal Bangkok flu that affected so many people last winter, but it’s a little more dangerous.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” the deputy said. “But, that’s the story that’s being released to the media. There’s more to it, but the CDC wouldn’t tell me over the phone.”
“Hmmm,” was the sheriff’s only reply.
“Isn’t that right, hon?” I heard Janice’s voice calling to me.
“What?” I said, turning my attention back to my wife and Powell, who was now sitting on the foot of her bed.
Janice smiled at Powell. “He never hears the first time,” she said, then told me again, “It’s okay if Mark and his girlfriend, Sherry, come over for dinner tonight, right?” She flashed me a big smile, the kind that she knew I could never resist.
“Of course,” I said. “I need to take a break from coding anyway.”
They had just finished making arrangements when a nurse came in. She cleaned Janice’s wound, and set a few instruments on a tray. A few moments later, the doctor returned and stitched up the bite mark. It only took three stitches to close the wound. Every time the needle went in, Janice would grimace and squeeze my hand, reminding me how much I hate to see my wife in pain.
The doctor prescribed a mild pain medication and antibiotic ointment, but said there should be no problem from the wound itself. It should heal up in a few days.
As we walked out of the exam room, I noticed Janice’s bloody bandage in the trash can. The blood stain was almost the exact shape of the stain on Weller’s arm when I first saw him unconscious in the car after the accident.
All published excerpts from Apostate: Life after Death in Exile:
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