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Crazy Cow Needs Aid Again

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Dec 26, 2009
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Hello, senior modelers. I have finally gotten around to creating my first worker model, but it still has one glaring issue. The wood and gold look fine in Magos Model Editor, but when I test them in the World Editor the gold and lumber do not show. The rest of the model and it's animations, however, work fine. I read a few other posts asking the same question, and the solution is normally a corrupted animation. However, none of the animations are corrupted as far as I know, and so I would appreciate any help you can give me.

EDIT:
The model was completely, utterly destroyed when I moved it to this computer. Sorry, guys. I'll try again.
 
Last edited:
Now this is screwed up...

WHY ON EARTH do you have
His puppets.
Amaya’s knees started to quake uncontrollably. She tugged Becky’s jumper.
“We’ve got to run. They’re coming!”
Becky brushed Amaya’s hand as if she was swatting a fly. She stared at the sky in a trance-like state.
Amaya desperately looked for another way out of the garden. The wall contained the entire area without a break.
The two men blocked the path back to the mezzanine. They crept toward the women; a hundred feet away, seventy five, fifty.
“The ship will come f’rus, you’ll see!” Becky said, her hands outstretched to the sky like a fundamentalist. “They’re gonna spirit us up in a tractor beam any second now.”
Amaya whirled around. Her voice exploded out of her as if somehow, Becky would break from her trance and help her escape.
“There must be another way out of here.”
“There ain’t no way out ‘cept up.”
The two men stopped abruptly twenty feet in front of them; Amaya’s gaze darted between them.
The gimlet-eyed man placed a bony, stick-like finger over his lips while breathing shhhh.
The gesture struck a chord of deeper panic inside Amaya. That’s what he used to say to me. Shhh, Mary-Beth.
John clutched a walkie talkie in his hand, alternating between chatting into it and holding his hands outstretched in a calming motion, as if trying to catch a frenzied family dog.
Amaya didn’t believe Becky and her alien experiment story. But one thing she had seen with her own eyes turned her stomach sour.
She had seen John talking with The Operator. And she had seen the gimlet-eyed man talking with The Operator.
She knew one thing.
John is not my friend.
“Come on, girl. It’s me,” John said. “It’s the drugs, you’re not thinking straight.”
Amaya looked at his eyes for a second. Gone was the gentle gaze of a friend. In its place: empty black portals.
Amaya looked back and forth between the two men. She backed up. I can’t stay here and let this happen. She had never felt so sure that someone wanted to do something bad to her as she did that moment. She had to run.
There has to be a way out of here, there has to.
Nichessa Gooding’s eyes narrowed speculatively at the carefully assembled files laid out on the desk in front of her.
This doesn’t make any sense at all, she thought, as she tapped her pen and looked up from her files. She glanced at the wall clock, squinting to see the time through the gloom of the office. She had found the overhead lights too bright several hours ago and had turned them off; settling down to work in near-darkness. A law library lamp provided a circle of light on the desk.
The clock ticked toward ten fifty.
She decided to finish her tea, call it a night, and go back to the motel for a few hours sleep. Stifling a yawn, she grabbed her china cup and took a sip, taking care to avoid swirling the tea so as not to disturb the leaves. She savored the smell of honeysuckle and violet. It tasted sweet, though not quite as rejuvenating as she had hoped. She’d had some trouble making her tea in the borrowed office; long ago she had found that a coffee maker made tea just as well—even if it seemed somewhat primitive.
She took another sip of tea and placed the cup down gently; she hated chipped cups about as much as she hated tea cups without saucers.
Spreading her hands out on the desk, she handled the files as if they would suddenly open up and spill out their secrets. A deeply troubled seed of thought hovered in the back of her head, refusing to fully reveal itself, like a word hanging on the tip of her tongue. She was missing something. But what? Scooting her chair over to the computer, she opened up a new web page at the National Alliance for Mental Health and typed in her password. The glare from the screen burned into her eyes. She lowered her glasses and briefly rubbed her eyelids. She clicked on Amaya’s file and stared at the information that had been provided by Dr. Cortez on the center’s annual psychiatric patient census.
Patient Name: Mary-Beth Templeton
Age: 23
Diagnosis: Schizophrenia Catatonia
History of Abuse? (Detail where possible): N/A
Check all that apply: Dissociative flashbacks (
Dr. Cortez had provided an abundance of sparse information. Since Nichessa’s first meeting with Amaya Templeton, she hadn’t felt right about any of Dr. Cortez’s cases. There seemed to be oddities with all of them but Amaya’s case stuck out like a black woman in Johns Hopkins’ class of ‘67. Amaya had perhaps one of the most straightforward cases of PTSD that Nichessa had seen in her thirty-something year career; and yet, Dr. Cortez had completely overlooked the diagnosis.
“Now, why would he do that?” she muttered.
Nichessa thought that he didn’t appear like he scraped by in med school with the bare minimum. He looked smart: too smart. And she’d noticed his immaculate office and ex-service paraphernalia. She’d dated a Navy man a long time ago, back in college, and she remembered the neat stack of whity-tidy’s he kept in his drawers, all immaculately folded in three by four squares.
Attention to detail, she thought. That’s what they teach you in the Navy. You don’t ignore the details by accident.
She had been further irritated that Dr. Cortez kept an antiquated paper file system on his patients. He’d told her he didn’t like the thought of putting his patients’ details on a computer for all to see. ‘I don’t trust those gadgets,’ he had said. Doctor Gooding found that statement more than pertinent; she trusted him as far as she could throw a bowl of melted Jell-O on a hot summer’s day.
It wasn’t just his arrogant demeanor that had peaked her suspicion, but rather his eyes. He had empty eyes, the eyes of a man who had secrets. He’d shown no empathy for his patients, dismissing them as ‘Too far gone for any of your voodoo magic.’ After that comment, she ordinarily would have expected an apology, or at least a moment of uncomfortable silence, especially when she had repeated his words slowly back to him. Instead, he had coolly locked his gaze onto hers and made reference to ‘Macumba.’ She had stormed out of his office, realizing that further conversation with him would be pointless, and unnecessary. She did not need his approval for the trials. She would simply avoid him as much as possible.
She returned her thoughts to the present, and looked quizzically at Amaya’s file: it looked new, and clean. Too clean. Not a stain or even a small crease. A perfect yellow file with crisp white sheets inside.
She opened it and shook her head solemnly.
Inside the file were three sheets of paper.
That’s it, Nichessa thought. The girl’s been under his care for eight years and all he has is three sheets. He’s hiding something. Gross incompetence maybe.
Perhaps he had never even seen the patient, signing off on their files so that they could legally be medicated. If that’s what he’s doing, she thought, I’m going to report him.
She looked at her interview notes and shook her head in dismay. Amaya exhibited signs of all six APA diagnostic criteria: she had experienced a traumatic, catastrophic event—exposure to meth lab living and the death of her father under bloody circumstances, she suffered from intrusive recollection through traumatic nightmares and psychotic reenactments, she exhibited avoidance, her hyper-vigilance was in the form of almost complete paranoia, and her life had been affected for over eight years because of her symptoms.
Nichessa wondered how he could possibly have misdiagnosed her; how a prominent psychiatrist who specializes in the mental health of trauma victims just overlooked meaningful symptoms and kept sparse patient files. Exactly what he was hiding, Nichessa didn’t know.
Unable to formulate an answer, Nichessa turned back to her work. She hoped that some thought would materialize soon. She reasoned that she couldn’t go to someone with this. Not quite yet. She needed more—some kind of solid evidence. She looked at the lab sheet and began to type on the screen.
After entering Amaya’s low cortisol levels and high epinephrine and norepinephrine levels, she sat back and looked at the screen in deepening disbelief.
Amaya Templeton had the distinct lab profile she would expect to see in a person suffering from PTSD.
The cursor blinked at the lower portion of the screen, next to the input prompt for behavioral avoidance.
She struggled to remember what Amaya had called the imaginary man.
Puzzled, Nichessa looked from the file to her notes, and back at the file.
That’s strange, she thought. I could have sworn I wrote it down in her file.
She remembered Amaya’s warning. ‘Write down what you want to about him but I’m telling you, next time you see that file it won’t be there because he knows.’
“The Operator,” Nichessa said. That was it. She calls him The Operator.
She thought that perhaps, she just didn’t secure the note in the file. Or maybe someone had taken it out on purpose.
She typed her thoughts onto the screen.
Patient avoids reminders of trauma by referring to ‘The Operator,’ possibly an imaginary person who ‘physically’ stops patient from revisiting or remembering key events. Perhaps some kind of gatekeeper?
Rereading her words, she leaned back in the chair and pondered over the thought that someone might have taken the note out. Cortez perhaps, she wondered. Or a file clerk. She took a last sip of tea, placed her right hand over the rim, and swirled it three times. Something wasn’t right at all, and yet she could not put her finger on it. Something about the name. It sounded familiar. But from where? She plonked her tea cup back down and winced at the loud clinking sound the cup made on the saucer.
She picked up a ballpoint and wrote down on a blank sheet The Operator. Looking at the words asquint she muttered an excited exclamation under her breath. She rummaged through the stack of papers and files on her desk. It had to be there somewhere, she thought. She riffled through Samuel Green’s chart and notes. He had mentioned the same name. She was sure of it. He had mentioned a man called The Operator. Only the note was no longer in his file.
“Steinbeck,” she mumbled. Rebecca Steinbeck. She had something similar. Something about an alien called an ‘operator.’ Surely they couldn’t all have mentioned the same name, the thought, rummaging through Rebecca’s file and finding no reference to an operator.
I know I wrote it in here, she thought, as she scoured through her own patient notes that she had kept separately: a personal notebook that was off-record. She skipped through the pages. She found the correct date and ran her finger down the lines. There it was in black and white. Patient refers to The Operator as some kind of ‘alien’ who tortures her periodically. She whipped through her notebook to the session with Louis Wentworth. She had written down notes on Frost’s poetry and someone that Louis called ‘The Man.’ She struggled to remember if he had mentioned someone called The Operator. She thought that perhaps he had. A coincidence? She asked herself. Perhaps not. She jotted down a note in her book.
Mass hysteria possible in PTSD patients?
She had never heard of such an occurrence, but made a mental note to ask one of her colleagues the following day about it. Perhaps she would even make a few inquiries around the facility—perhaps even asking Dr. Cortez directly.
They all call that man by the same name, she thought. Why wouldn’t he mention that detail before?
Doctor Gooding neatened the stack of papers and grabbed her tea cup. She had almost forgotten to read her leaves. She peered into the china cup and drew a startled breath. Her hand began to tremble. At the bottom of the cup, the tea leaves had settled into the unmistakable outline of a coffin, laid over a monstrous black cross. In a lifetime of tasseography she had never seen both together. She had never seen such a clear, ugly message.
Her hand shook almost violently and she lost her grip on the handle. The cup fell onto the floor, hit the metal foot of the table, and shattered.


Amaya shambled backward. Her trembling legs felt like pillars of rubber.
The gimlet-eyed man stepped forward tentatively, his horrible eyes transfixed on her, as if he expected her to bolt.
“Amaya, we’re just here to help, walk with us back to your room and we’ll get you settled in. Don’t give us any trouble now!”
Her eyes darted to John, who had his attention focused on Becky. He closed in on her like a sheepdog.
Becky still had her eyes closed, and her arms outstretched. It’s like she’s on another planet.
Amaya stepped backward slowly, but not slowly enough. In a frantic moment, she stumbled. Her knees buckled under her and she fell to the ground. The palm of her hand landed on top of the rock that Becky had removed from her hiding place. Pain shot up her arm, but she did not let go of the object. Instinctively, she wrapped her fingers tightly around it.
In one terrifying moment, gimlet-eyes stepped forward, his arms outstretched for her.
Amaya grabbed the rock and with a guttural scream, hurled it through the air toward him. She grimaced at the unexpected thud, like she had whacked a chicken’s head with a hammer. Startled, she stared wide-eyed at gimlet-eyes.
He had his head cradled in his hands. His legs moved around haphazardly under his bent over body. He muttered expletives under his breath as blood trickled into his palm.
Run! While you have the chance! Run!
She scrambled up, willing her rubbery legs to move, feeling them wobble and shudder beneath her, unsure if they would actually carry her forward. She uncovered a strength she didn’t realize she had, and bolted straight forward, past gimlet-eyes, past the oak trees, and toward the mezzanine and its clinical smells.
A jumble of deep, angry voices exploded behind her. As her legs pistoned wildly, she expected to feel a hand on her ankle, a hand that would make her fall forward and bury her face in the dirt. It would wind her, leaving her helplessly flattened on the ground, waiting for that split-second in time when she would realize there was no escape from the sickening crunch of the bat as it pummeled her arms and sent huge white streaks of pain through her whole body.
He’s not here. There’s no bat.
But they have something for you, something more terrible.
She sped across the mown grass and cut over the concrete path. She leaped over a flowering shrub, feeling the men behind her. She felt—imagined—their heaving breath, and heard their thundering footsteps.
Becky’s high-pitched scream wailed in the distance like a feral cat.
Panic overwhelmed Amaya; she leaned into the wind and ran faster than she had run that night in the cornfield, long ago. As she turned a corner she half-expected an alien with a baseball bat to be lying in wait. She could almost hear the crunch as the bat made mincemeat of her shoulder, crumpling her to the ground and rendering her helpless once more.
But the ogre wasn’t there.
He’s still coming for you.
It’ll be worse if you run, much worse. You’ll make him mad and he’ll break your legs too this time, break them because he’s angry, angry that you ran away—
Stop it! Stop it!
She raced back through the mezzanine, and hurled herself around another corner—into an alcove whose towering, maleficent walls sneered down at her. She stopped suddenly in front of a voluminous dumpster, arms flailing, body doubling over as she caught her balance. The cramped alcove reeked of packed dirt and rotting food. To her left, a plain steel door taunted her.
Locked, it’s got to be locked, I know it.
The sound of nearby commotion rose above the hum of an air conditioning unit.
She looked feverishly around the shadowy alley. The soaring walls imprisoned her. She almost launched herself into the dumpster until her imagination produced a sickening image that stopped her from moving: her maggot-infested, forgotten body.
Her eyes widened in a crushing sense of defeat.
Cornered, I’m cornered, oh God.
She looked behind her.
Nothing.
Yet.
Hurried footsteps slowed down.
“She’s down there,” a man’s voice shouted.
Any second now.
Her heart felt ready to explode in her chest. She tried to catch her breath and thought briefly of running. Couldn’t beat a kid in a sack race right now.
Clicking, ominous footsteps drew closer and echoed through the enclosed space. A long shadow crept out from the corner, its stygian form seeping over the pavement toward her.
Terror-filled tears pooled in her eyes as she resigned herself to being trapped. In one last, desperate attempt to escape, she hurled herself onto the door, grabbed the handle, and twisted it.
Please, oh God, please let it open.
The handle turned and she stared at it in disbelief. Letting out an incredible gasp of relief she realized she had been holding her breath. She opened the door and sprinted through it into a short hallway lit by flickering, orange emergency lights. Several, darkened doors lined the passageway, their paperback-sized windows black and lifeless. She raced down the hall, shoving doors, furiously yanking handles. Sweat trickled down her forehead. She shot a terror-stricken look behind her at the exit door.
It creaked open like a crypt.
Nauseating spurts of anxiety coursed through her veins as she stumbled and raced past the elevator’s closed doors. As she crashed through the stairwell door, it swung violently behind her.
She stumbled up a few steps and tripped over. The concrete slammed into her body like a quarterback. A familiar metallic taste filled her senses as blood pooled in her mouth. She eased herself up, expecting something to buckle, something to sear with such wrenching pain that she would simply fall flat down and she would be unable to move. Her breath raw in her throat, she clamored up six more stairs.
Police. Got to call the police.
No, they’ll lock you up, for good this time.
She came across a pair of familiar steel doors.
The club?
Inside, the sound of…
Moans?
…dissipated into the night air.
She hesitated. A flashlight beam came crawling toward her. She thrust the doors open, hurried inside, and closed them behind her. She held her breath and listened for noise, before turning around. She expected to see the eerie club interior with its candle-lit corners and dancing shadows.
Instead, she reeled with astonishment.
In front of her lay a starkly different room, with mottled gray tiled floors and standard Navy gray walls that stretched up to the two-story ceiling. She stepped gingerly across the barren space, and gazed, dumbfounded at the differences that surrounded her. Several motivational pictures hung bleakly from the walls, their corny phrases and accompanying photographs rejoicing that mountaineers should ‘Climb as high as your dreams’ and ‘Find out where you are so you can know where you are going.’
Those weren’t here before.
It’s like it’s the same, but different.
Now you sound like Elmo. Stop! Keep moving.
A dozen tables and chairs—the type you would see in a middle-school cafeteria, surrounded an area that earlier had been a dance floor. The bar window had been replaced by a shuttered window, the H2O sign taken down and replaced by an oversize photograph of Riverside and a motto that read:
Riverside: building bridges, not walls.
She blinked incredulously at the picture, wondering why she hadn’t noticed it before.
It was dark in here.
Not that dark. It must be a different room.
She made her way to the bottom of the stairs, consumed with the thought that she must have come into an identical building, perhaps right next to the club.
But what is this place?
Before she could answer her own thought, she passed a familiar swing door to her left. A recognizable ‘emales only’ sign was centered on the cream door. She stared quizzically at the plastic sign, and recollected the missing ‘F’ immediately. Her hands damp with sweat, she wiped them on her back pockets.
Same, but different.
She backed away from the door and touched the metal stair rail in trepidation, remembering the ornate staircase she had seen before, wondering if it would transmogrify back to its original state as if in a dream.
She pinched herself and winced.
I didn’t wake up.
She ventured forth up the stairs, sweeping the ground floor nervously with her eyes as she climbed, moving softly, so that her footsteps would not echo in the chamber.
Upstairs, rows of metal doors lined the austere hall with the same book-size windows as downstairs.
Her instinct kicked in to full throttle.
Something’s wrong up here.
Her eyes locked on a figure at the end of the hall. The thing’s face was blackened in the shadow of the backlit emergency lights. Her heart felt as it would explode.
No! Oh God, no.
You had to tell ‘em didn’t you Mary-Beth, didn’t you?
Amaya screamed, her voice shrill with horror. The nightmarish figure lunged down the hall.
She tried to turn and run, but instead tripped over her own feet and collapsed to the floor.
“Amaya, stop!” it vociferated.
She felt hands on top of her. Long bony fingers sliced into her flesh, halting her escape.
Amaya’s panicked limbs flailed as she tried to get away from the figure.
A husky woman’s voice yelled out, “Amaya! Good gracious!”
Amaya flipped over suddenly, and crabbed away from the statuesque figure with thin horns that stuck out of its head.
Not horns.
Chopsticks?
The adrenaline subsided slightly from Amaya’s body but left her weak and shaking.
“Doctor Gooding?” What if she’s one of them?
The figure knelt down—her elegant form hunched over, her delicate hands gripping Amaya’s. Her laughter-line framed eyes scanned Amaya’s face in puzzlement.
“What happened to you? You’re bleeding.”
Amaya scanned the Doctor’s kindly face, looking for clues. “I—I fell over. On the stairs.”
“Now, what are you doing out here?”
She doesn’t know?
Amaya raced her eyes around, looking for signs that someone else was there.
You’ve got to trust her.
“Please, help me, he’s after me, I—”
Doctor Gooding regarded Amaya quizzically. She glanced around. “Who is after you?”
“Please, we have to hide…”
“Well, come with me then,” she said. “Don’t be afraid, just come into the office. We’ll fix up your face, then I’ll call someone to take you home.”
Amaya grabbed Doctor Gooding’s arm firmly. “No, you can’t call anyone.” There’s no one to call. No one can help us.
The Doctor paused for a second, a troubled look hung on her face. She removed Amaya’s hand, then opened her office door.
“Come on in, let’s talk about it in here.”
Amaya glanced surreptitiously behind her, then entered the room. Doctor Gooding walked behind the cherry wood desk, grabbed some paper towels and ran them under the cold faucet. She motioned for Amaya to sit.
Amaya’s whole body trembled as she sat on a familiar-looking leather couch.
I hate this kind of couch.
Pictures flashed in her head of John’s cold eyes and Becky’s wailing.
This place—feels wrong.
“Did they move it?”
Doctor Gooding strode forward and placed the cool towels on Amaya’s sweating face. “Did they move what?”
“This office. It wasn’t here before, it was—”
Somewhere else.
“It’s just that I’ve never been in this building before.”
Doctor Gooding’s probing eyes peered over the top of her glasses.
Why is she looking at me like that?
Just forget the building, tell her about The Operator.
“Please, you have to help me, they had me outside, they’re chasing me, they—”
“Now, Slow down,” Doctor Gooding said. “Start from the beginning.”
She reached for a penlight and shone it in Amaya’s eyes.
Amaya flinched as the bright light blinded her vision momentarily. She swiped away Doctor Gooding’s hand. “Why are you doing that?”
“You’re eyes are dilated. What happened to you?”
“The Operator has Becky. You have to help her.”
Doctor Gooding’s face formed a dubious expression. “Becky? You mean Rebecca Steinbeck?”
“I don’t know her last name. They took her.”
“Who took her?”
“John, and this thin man with an afro.”
Doctor Gooding’s face lost its puzzled look. She nodded slowly. “An afro. I see now. Simon. John and Simon were with you.”
“Simon? I don’t know a Simon. John took me to this club—”
Doctor Gooding raised an eyebrow. “A club?”
“Yes. Out there. Earlier, it looked different,” Amaya said, wiping a trickle of sweat from her forehead with the paper towel.
Doctor Gooding’s face looked grave. “Amaya, do you know where you are?”
“Of course I know where I am! In your office in Riverside.”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant. I mean…” She paused, with a sympathetic expression. “You can’t have gone to a club. You’re in a facility.”
“A facility? What are you talking about? I live here.”
“Yes, I know. But Riverside is a psychiatric facility. An inpatient facility. You’ve been here for eight years.”
Amaya’s eyes widened in alarm. “No! The Operator, he’s making you think that. He controls what everyone thinks. He got to you didn’t he?”
“Amaya, calm down,” the Doctor said gently. “There is no operator. He’s a character, a fictional character you invented in your imagination to help you cope with—”
“No! He’s real. I met him.”
“He seems real. To you, he is real. But you made him up so that you didn’t have to deal with what happened to you.”
Amaya shook her head deliberately as her eyes widened. She crushed up the paper towel and threw it to the floor. “No. You don’t understand. I’ve seen him—he made me do things I didn’t want to.” Oh my God, she’s with them. “I’m not in a facility. I have a life, I paint, I have a friend, and apartment—”
“You have a room, Amaya. An inpatient room in a low security part of the building. It’s a kind of a halfway house for non-violent patients.”
Doctor Gooding moved forward.
Amaya sprung up from her chair. “Don’t touch me.”
Low mutters and shuffling sounds came from outside the door.
They’re all in on it. Mercy be, he got to all of them.
A red light flashed on Doctor Gooding’s desk. Footsteps thundered down the hall.
“You called him?”
“I had to Amaya, it’s procedure.”
Procedure? Amaya turned and bolted for the door.
She’s with them! Oh no, she’s with them too. I have to escape. Get out of here. John, Doctor Gooding. All of them. Becky was right, there was a conspiracy bigger than she ever could have thought.
She hurled open the door and ran straight into John and the gimlet-eyed man.
A sharp jab hit her left buttock and before she had any time to react she felt herself falling into a black pit.
She hear lapping waves just before she blacked out. She could smell the salty ocean, hear the scuttling crabs.
She was going home.
Chapter 8
Nichessa checked her watch as she strode toward Cortez’s office door.
Her Timex ticked toward eight forty six. Good, she thought. He should be there. The main receptionist had cheerily informed her that his rounds would start at nine.
Her left arm stacked with paperwork and files, she peered through the long glass window into Cortez’s office and gave him a slow, appraising look.
He had his back to her. His Brobdingnagian form was bent over his attaché case, with his white shirt-sleeves rolled up neatly. His bare elbows revealed significant patches of plaque psoriasis, its ugly silver scales spread on top of inflamed skin and cracked like a dried out gully.
He removed the contents of his case and slammed them down on the counter.
I think I can guess what’s upsetting him, she thought.
She rapped curtly on the door. Cortez jerked his head to the right. He studied her critically then continued emptying his case without acknowledging her further.
Nice to have such a warm welcome, Nichessa thought.
She opened the door and hopped in. She regarded him incredulously as he straightened his paperwork in an apparent attempt to ignore her.
“Let yourself in all the time do you?” he said.
“Sorry if I interrupted your, um, work,” Nichessa said.
Cortez turned to his left, snapped open a filing cabinet underneath the counter and shuffled hastily through the dividers.
“I have a very hectic morning ahead of me. You should come back later.”
“Yes, well, this can’t wait.”
He turned his attention to his desk and straightened his picture frames and mouse pad meticulously. He turned a gold inkwell forty five degrees and glared at it obsessively.
“Damn cleaners just can’t put things back where they belong,” he said.
She moved toward the desk, where the distinct, foul smell of stale alcohol hung in the air. Repulsed, she stepped back a couple of yards and wafted her hand over her nose. He stank like he had closed the bar the night before.
“I just need to ask you a question or two.”
Still standing, Cortez turned on his computer and jabbed the keyboard impatiently.
Nichessa cleared her throat. “Dr. Cortez…”
His eyes narrowed speculatively at the screen.
“It’s about Samuel Green,” Nichessa said.
If this donkey thinks he can ignore me he has another thing coming, Nichessa thought.
Cortez glared momentarily at her, his face a dark mask. “Yes, I heard about him. Terrible shame. But I don’t have time to discuss his case right now, so if you don’t mind…”
He made an angry, dismissive gesture.
Nichessa cemented her feet in place and scrutinized his hostile features for clues. “His body temperature peaked at 107 degrees,” she said. “I expect the autopsy to reveal that his hyperthermia was caused by high levels of MDMA.”
Cortez looked up with a deadpan expression. “Doctor Gooding,” he said in a business-like manner, “Samuel Greene had a history of uncontrolled high blood pressure. He refused to take his medication many times.”
Change the subject why don’t we, she thought, taking in a deep breath.
“If you knew he had high blood pressure when you administered MDMA—that would make you guilty of murder.”
“And that comment would make you guilty of pure speculation,” he sneered. “How dare you charge in here and accuse me of something so preposterous. I do not have access to MDMA, nor can I think of any logical reason why I would want to give a hallucinogen to any of my patients.”
“Does that include Mary-Beth?”
“Yes, that includes Ms. Templeton. These patients need old-fashioned psychiatric care, not glow sticks and back rubs.”
“Perhaps you would be interested to learn that I requested blood work on Mary-Beth. Her dilated pupils and speech patterns last night were symptomatic of—what was it you said? —glow sticks and backrubs.”
He stood upright, folded his arms, and fixed his eyes in a smoldering look. “Well isn’t that interesting. I was alerted by her orderlies last night that she was out of her room and apparently with you. I was here doing paperwork at the time.”
“Paperwork? How can you look me in the eye and lie so blatantly?”
Cortez assumed a puffed up posture of superiority, his elongated mustache trapped in a sneer. He raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes as if to challenge her to the next round of intellectual banter.
Nichessa stood her ground, not moving an inch. It was like Cortez was playing a game of ‘let’s see who can intellectualize half-baked truths the best.’
“Her orderly told me that you were present in the group therapy room,” Nichessa said.
Cortez’s eyes blazed murderously. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the desk. “Let us suppose that these patients had ingested MDMA. It seems to be that the most logical choice, if you want to point a finger, would be you. I do believe that you are the only physician allowed to access that particular controlled substance.”
“That’s true. However, I just went to the lab, and it turns out a significant number of pills are missing, apparently without proper authorization from anyone.”
Cortez snorted, and looked as though he would erupt in gales of laughter at any second. His voice raised an octave in a mocking tone. “How positively dreadful. Perhaps one of the lab workers helped himself. Heaven knows half of them have a drug problem.”
He has an answer for everything, Nichessa thought.
“Well, the authorities will get to the bottom of that. They will not take missing psychotropics lightly.”
Cortez’s lips pursed with suppressed fury. “Are you done making accusations, Doctor Gooding? I have patients to see.”
Done here, she thought. But not done with you. “Thank you for your time; I am sure we will be talking again.”
Nichessa turned and headed for the door. As she reached for the doorknob, a deepened voice radiated from behind her.
“No, Doctor Gooding, I don’t think we will.”


Cortez watched Nichessa blaze a trail down the hall. Her lab coat billowed behind her.
“Bitch!”
She reminded him of his third-grade teacher, a withered, liver-spotted know-it-all named Mrs. Bentley. She had the audacity to question if he had stolen her missing purse. The fact that he had taken it was beside the point; he had become angered at her questioning his honesty. He had shown her the true extent of his cleverness when he paid Bobby “white-trash” Smithson two Twinkie bars and thirty-four cents to piss in her coffee. She sipped then spluttered the liquid out all over her desk; her retching caused the entire class to erupt with laughter. Bobby got expelled: Cortez had been untouchable. He had been cleverer than old prune-face then, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some uppity, wattle-faced witch beat him in the game this time.
He stomped over to the phone and dialed downstairs on the speakerphone.
A gruff voice answered. “Pathology, Gringham.”
Cortez cleared his throat and let the anger subside from his voice. “Yes, Arnold. Emilio Cortez here. Just wondering how long the autopsy is going to take on Samuel Greene.”
“I’m not sure I can answer that right now. I’m not even sure we’ll be doing the autopsy.”
Cortez breathed a sigh of relief at the good news. “Yes, well, I didn’t think one was necessary, I—”
“Oh, no, that isn’t it at all. We might have to refer this case to the medical examiner is all I am saying.”
“The medical examiner? Whatever for?”
“In cases of suspicious or—”
“I know what cases get assigned downtown,” he snapped. “What I want to know is why this particular patient is being assigned downtown. Isn’t this a routine case?”
I bet that witch had something to do with this, Cortez thought.
“It’s far from routine. It’s one of the most suspicious cases we’ve seen—”
“Suspicious? That’s preposterous! Why would someone deliberately OD a patient?”
“I didn’t say it was deliberate. In fact…”
A pause hung on the line.
“In fact, I didn’t even say it was an overdose. But either way, our guidelines state that—”
Cortez slammed down the phone. I know what your goddamn guidelines are, he thought. Idiot!
He paced back and forth behind his desk and scowled at the phone, his fists convulsing with suppressed rage.
I’ll blame the pharmacy tech, he thought. Yes, that was it. She gave the patient too many pills last night. He told her three. No, two, sounds better. Two. He had insisted on two. But she had overdosed him. Gross incompetence, that was it. They would believe his word, Dr. Emilio Cortez, PhD, FAACP and ten-year board member of American Mensa, not some community-college educated pill counter.
A knock on the door broke his train of thought and he glared at the door, blood surging to his fists. Control yourself Emilio, he thought. Anger is the enemy of control.
An overweight, fifty-something momma popped her head around the door.
Cortez glared at the intruder. “What is it?”
The woman’s beaming face faded to a spastic smile when she locked eyes with Cortez.
“Just checking that smell’s gone Doc, I’ll leave you alone now.”
Cortez furrowed his brow quizzically as the woman’s tightly-permed head disappeared back behind the door.
“Wait! What smell?”
The woman stepped gingerly back into the office, half of her body behind the door, her eyes as wide as a pair of cue balls. “Well, I—I saw one of your patients had puked see. Puked all over the place and it was a mighty mess to clean up.”
“Vomit? What the blazes are you talking about woman?”
The woman pointed a crinkled finger over to the corner closet. “Friday night. All over the floor and around the wastebasket. Big chunks of potato I think. Maybe spinach. Stunk like rotting chitterlings.”
Cortez’s stomach heaved. He waved his hand in a stop motion. “Enough. Spare me the details, please.”
“Just let me know if you need me,” she said, as she slinked away. She shut the door with a resounding click.
Cortez studied the wastebasket acutely and realized that someone had been in his office after he had left. He glanced sideways at the inkwell he had previously straightened on his desk. It was slightly out of place. His eyes searched over the area and he noticed his desk drawer stuck out slightly. He grabbed the handle and pulled the drawer open.
His eyes blinked with incredulity. Papers jutted out of their dividers. That yokel ass-wipe came in here looking for his pictures, he thought as his gaze inspected the rest of the office. Did Graham think he was stupid enough to leave the evidence in his office for Graham to just stop by and pick up?
His searching eyes stopped at the corner closet. A sickening pit of fear welled in his stomach as he noticed a crack in the door.
That’s not possible, he thought. It’s always locked. I must be seeing things.
He stepped forward, eyes fixed on the black slit of the open door. The breath caught in his throat as he gazed in horror at the ominous crack. He charged over to the closet and swung the door open. His heart hammered in his chest as if it was going to explode.
Inside the closet, his file box sat on the third shelf up, exactly where he had left it. With one marked difference. One of the files stuck out an inch on top.
Cortez grabbed the box and frantically shuffled through the dividers, looking for any signs of missing photographs. The slightly disarranged sections laughed at him mockingly as Cortez realized they had been tampered with.
His fingers came upon an empty slot, dated eight years previously.
Enraged, he placed his white-knuckled hands on the shelf and caught his breath, panting like a mad dog.
“Graham,” he said under his breath. “Oh, Grahamy-Boy. You have no idea what you have just done.”
Chapter 9
Louis slammed his pen down on the coffee shop table and shook his head in disgust.
I just spent an hour writing garbage.
He reminisced about the last clear memory he had of the previous night: Amaya and her captivating smile. His recollections after that point blurred into a fragmented haze of malignant faces and dream-like sequences of nonsense. He wondered if he had passed out because of the pills. But no matter what the cause, he simply could not recall anything coherent after he had gazed into Amaya’s magnetic eyes.
He scanned the bland faces of the half-dozen other customers seated sporadically around the small outdoor patio. One cadaverous fellow stirred his coffee continuously and stared into space. A bird-faced woman with clawed fingers played chess with a buck tooth gloomy gus, although in the half-hour or so Louis had been there, he hadn’t seen either of them make a move. At a far corner table, a couple of thirty-something women occupied themselves with their daily drivel, with neither one taking much notice of what the other was saying. At the next table a hunchback man with a badly combed-over carrot-top sat motionless as if waiting for life to pass him by.
Disheartened by the lack of inspiration surrounding him, he placed his head in his hands. I’d find more jubilation in a morgue.
He wanted desperately to go to his beloved park and write in the breeze under the live oak tree, but ever since the crazy schoolgirl woman had accosted him in the park and shown him the camera, he had avoided going there. He had noticed people following him, and every so often he had the distinct, uneasy feeling of being watched.
He couldn’t be alone again.
Because that was when he would come.
Louis looked forlornly at his dog-eared poetry book. It contained his entire life in rhyme and he couldn’t ever remember not having it. The foxing on the inner pages—small brown spots of some living organism—told him the antiquated hardcover must have belonged to someone else. His father perhaps.
He leafed through the book, smoothing out some of the more ratty pages as he went. Scotch tape fastened many of them to the binding, and he was careful not to inflict further damage. Random thoughts from years ago were scribbled in ink, between the printed text. He had filled up the book many years ago, and instead of purchasing another, he had simply written over the older, worn out text, creating a palimpsest that served to contain his most private thoughts.
His fingers stopped at the current day’s page, and he stared with fascinated horror at the red-ink scrawled over page seventy nine.
What the-—?
I didn’t write this.
His skin crawled as he reluctantly read the lines.
The silent scream erupts from my lungs.
Choked in the cloth of the drug-laced gag.
You’ll like how this feels, he whispers.
Venomously as he inflicts more pain.
Louis shivered as a grotesque image of The Operator’s face slipped into his consciousness; he immediately pushed the repulsive image away.
Why would someone write in my book?
He struggled to think when the book had been out of his possession.
Last night maybe. Last night, when I was asleep.
But Louis remembered he just had that particular page open.
And it had been blank.
His gut started to turn like a dough kneader as he tried to push out the only rational explanation.
It’s starting again.
He’s coming back for you Louis-O. He’s coming to force you to do those things again.
Why now? Why is he coming for me after so long?
He remembered the time long before The Operator. Louis had come to Riverside to escape his memories, to forget the sight of his mother’s body idly swinging, as the beam above her head creaked from the rope tied around it. He would never forget the sound of her wheezing, whistling, as she tried to catch air. He had grabbed a chair and tried to slice through the noose with a carving knife, but at eight years old he had been too small. After what seemed like an eternity of trying to reach the noose with the knife, his mother’s body had gone limp and the dreadful whistling sound had stopped. He had sobbed and clung to his mother’s lifeless body, before emitting a long, painful howl when he saw his mother’s popped eyes and purple, swollen tongue. The only thing that Louis had succeeded in slicing that awful day was his own face.
Louis glanced down at the final line in the poem.
Sorry I killed you momma.
Tears came to his eyes as he scribbled out the writing. I don’t want to remember that time.
But you are remembering. All coming back to you now, isn’t it Louis.
He had a sudden feeling of being watched—a common feeling for the last few days. He glanced over at a thin, afro-haired man standing in the coffee-house doorway, leaned up against the side of the steel doorframe. His steely gaze fixed on Louis.
Louis shuddered.
I’ve got to leave this place.
But you can’t. If you leave you’ll be in a place where your memories become real and everyone will know you killed your parents.
A feeling of helplessness washed over him.
It wasn’t my fault. That’s what the doctors said. It wasn’t my fault.
Louis ripped the page out of his book, crumpled it into a tiny ball, and threw the page on the floor. He looked at it in horror.
I didn’t write that. I write only of love.
He picked up his pen and started to write.
She grieves in secret, my bewildered butterfly: Amaya.
A tap-tap-tap from the table next to him made him lose his train of thought.
Pft!
He scratched out the words and glowered in the direction of the noise.
Next to him, the carrot-top man stabbed a packet of sugar with his coffee stirrer.
Tap, tap, tappety-tap, tap.
“Excuse me,” Louis said.
The man ignored him, seemingly transfixed on poking holes in the sugar packet.
“Excuse, me but would you be so kind as to stop.”
The man ignored him and continued to stab the sugar packet.
Louis decided to tell him to politely stop once more, although no one ever listened to him. Maybe he would have to make him listen.
Louis stood up, grabbed his book and walked two steps over to the next table. The man continued to tap his straw.
Tap tap tappety-tap.
“Excuse, me,” Louis said.
The man’s bulbous eyes fixed on him: the left one wobbled like a belly dancer’s midriff.
“Let me guess,” carrot-top said in a kindly whatever-could-be-the-problem voice. “You want me to stop this ‘ere tappin’.”
“Well, yes. If you would be so kind.”
“Saw you looking up at me. Looking all perter—perterb—annoyed.”
“I have no quarrel with you, Sir, but may I ask why you continue to stab the sugar if you saw my displeasure?”
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” the man said as he jabbed incessantly at the sugar. Small crystals shot up in the air like indoor fireworks.
Louis noticed the man’s lazy eye suddenly shoot to the left of its socket like it was attached to a piece of internal elastic. It straightened up as he spoke then suddenly sprung to the left again. Louis concentrated on the right eye instead.
“I will try,” Louis said.
Maybe you will stop that incessant tapping.
The man raised an eyebrow in a questioning slant and turned his attention to Louis’s book. “That yer name, Robert Frost?” Tappety-tap.
Robert Frost? Who is that?
“No,‘tis Louis Wentworth.”
“Then why you holding a book that has someone else’s name on it?” The man’s eye sprung to the left again.
He should wear a patch over that ridiculous thing.
“‘Tis my name, Sir. On the cover, I think you are simply misreading it.”
The man emitted a mocking laugh. “I saw you over there scribbling in that library book. Don’t read many books myself but know enough that you shouldn’t be scribbling in them books now.”
“Library book? Sir, you are mistaken. ‘Tis my book to do with what I please.”
Suddenly the man stopped tapping and grabbed Louis’s book.
Louis reached out in horror. “Give it back!”
The man twirled around and opened the book, dodging Louis’s outstretched arms.
“Says here Riverside Library. You jus’ gone and destroyed a library book. Look at this. You’ve gone and wrote over every page—well, I’ll be—”
Louis grabbed the man’s arm and yanked it toward him. “Give me it back.”
“What you writing the same thing on every page for? I am a poet, I am a poet? Ain’t even rhyming. An I know ‘bout rhyming things from school.”
How dare he taunt me? The fellow obviously can’t read.
Louis barreled into carrot-top and landed square on, sending them both flying onto the table. Cups flew into the air, accompanied by the crashing sound of metal on concrete. In the midst of the struggle, a man yelled, and hurried voices sounded in the distance. Louis elbowed carrot-top in the neck and the poetry book went aloft, floating through the air and away from Louis’s grasp. As he went to catch it, a fist landed on his cheek and sent a flurry of white stars in front of his eyes. He tried to scramble up, but carrot-top’s sudden weight on top of him pinned him down. Louis’s hands pummeled the air in a desperate attempt to hit carrot-top back. The Jell-O-eyed man raise his fist, and Louis braced for the impact.
Without warning, two men in white suits grabbed carrot-top and pulled him off of Louis. He opened his mouth to say thank you for the unexpected rescue, when he found himself being pulled up by two more men wearing the same white clothes. Louis began to protest, when he saw his poetry book on the floor, pages turning in the breeze.
He was pulled roughly to his feet.
A third, Amazonian figure appeared next to him and Louis recoiled in horror.
The man’s aphotic eyes burned into him.
“I’m just going to give you something to calm you down, Louis.”
Louis recognized the man immediately.
No, no it can’t be.
He looked different, the curled mustache, the pock-marked face.
But those eyes.
He screamed out loud and fought with all his will to back away from that thing.
He’s found me. The Operator has found me.
A haze drifted over his eyes as he felt suddenly detached from his surroundings.
The book’s pages flipped in front of his eyes as if some unearthly hand was turning them deliberately. It opened completely and laid flat. Louis could just make out the writing.
He stared at the book in disbelief.
I am a poet I am a poet I am a poet.
Chapter 10
Nichessa pulled open the stairwell door against the resistance of a creaking hinge and walked resolutely along the third floor passageway toward the patient rooms. She glanced at her watch. Eleven twenty. She’d been up since four o’clock, barely able to snatch two hours of sleep.
The corridor afforded a spectacular view of the city on the opposite river bank, where several eclectic buildings towered over a dreary expanse of turn of the century architecture. Shadows from rain-bloated cumulonimbus clouds glided across the murky St. Johns River. Two stories above her, a glass walkway jutted out across Wharfside Way and impaled the main hospital on the opposite side of the street.
Nichessa had crossed over the bridge just minutes before, as she returned from a frustrating visit to records. She mulled over the uncooperative—and sometimes downright rude—behavior that persisted at Riverside. Her muscles tensed as she thought about the last two hours and her fruitless attempts to uncover Amaya’s history. The records clerk had told her curtly that the only information on the computer was that Ms. Templeton’s bill had been picked up by the state. Next of kin, emergency contact, and religion were left blank or labeled ‘declined to answer’.
Nichessa had protested that they must have misplaced the information and insisted on talking to a supervisor.
A short, pen-wielding man emerged from behind a mountain of paperwork, outfitted with pocket protectors like some kind of cubicle commando. He suggested that she should contact the state Agency for Health Care Administration if she wanted to file a complaint.
A muscle in her jaw twitched as she stared at the reticent desk fool in front of her whose name badge stated Dick Redding, Health Records Supervisor. Rankled by the prospect of yet another dead end and with a sense of frustration that bordered on rage, she gave up and hard marched out of the building.
She was hesitant to use the word ‘conspiracy’ but felt something corrupt under Riverside’s clinical façade. Her tea leaves had been quite clear: death was on the horizon. Nichessa had seen two symbols of death in the bottom of her cup just once before—the night her husband had passed away suddenly after only two years of marriage. She’d imagined in med school that they would open up a joint psychiatry practice after graduation. Instead, she had turned to research for the solitude. It definitely was not for the pursuit of respect. Everywhere she went, colleagues treated her like an unwelcome outcast, especially with regard to her current research on the therapeutic benefits of MDMA. ‘The illegal drug Ecstasy has no place in the modern psychiatric facility,’ she heard too many times to count. It reminded her of the oft-repeated 1912 quote by Professor M. Foch: ‘Airplanes are toys with no military value.’
In a few years my research will be complete and they’ll eat their words, she thought.
The clatter of a passing meal cart broke her concentration and a robust female orderly marched past with a cart that reeked distinctively of what her French-Canadian husband had called vomi d’hopital.
A paunchy figure emerged from one of the patient rooms in front of her and Nichessa recognized Amaya’s orderly immediately.
“John, do you have a couple of minutes?”
John adjusted his square glasses, turned his back, and rummaged through the drawers on his cart. Nichessa’s nostrils bore the brunt of the food trolley being opened; her stomach churned at the thought of soggy mashed potatoes stewed in a puddle of watered down gravy.
“Afraid not,” John said. “I’m kind of busy. Lots of patients to feed.”
Nichessa felt the muscle twitch on her jaw again. She wondered if everyone had been told not to talk to her.
“Perhaps I can accompany you then,” she said insistently.
John’s bloodshot eyes flickered at her in alarm. “I guess.”
She stepped up to John’s side and looked down at his compact form. He reminded her of the figures her daughter played with as a toddler. Little round people with no arms and legs, weighted at the bottom so that if they were pushed they just bobbed right back up again.
Weebles, that was it, she thought. He looks like a Weeble.
“Late night?” she asked.
He removed his glasses and rubbed them carefully with his shirt.
“Yeah, I played The Art of War on my computer until five a.m.”
“Is that all you did last night?”
John placed his glasses back on and pulled out a tray from a center compartment. “Look, if you’re asking about what happened in the therapy room, I don’t know anything.”
He opened the metal door, backed in with a tray in his hands, and placed it next to a disgracefully fat patient who sat motionless, watching TV.
“Lunch, Tom,” he said, patting the patient’s arm.
The fat man acknowledged him silently and turned toward the food.
John returned to the hallway and closed the door.
“So you were in the therapy room when it happened?” Nichessa said.
Perspiration glistened on his forehead. “Look, uh, Doc. I’m not supposed to say anything. You have to understand: I’ll lose my job.”
Cortez got to you I bet, Nichessa thought.
They walked down the hall and reached the next room. John stared intently at the cart and shuffled the trays around.
“Perhaps you can tell me about Amaya then,” Nichessa said.
John looked up and eyed her skeptically. “Amaya? Who’s that?”
Somehow, his statement took her completely by surprise. How could he not know her? she wondered.
“Mary-Beth,” Nichessa said. “She likes to be called Amaya.”
He wrinkled his mouth. “Oh, didn’t know that. What about her?”
“You didn’t know she likes to be called Amaya?”
“Nope. She never talks to me.”
John stood up with another tray of vomi d’hopital.
“I was under the impression that she regards you as a friend.”
John chuckled. “A friend? She’s never said a word to me.”
Nichessa wondered why Amaya would say that if it wasn’t true. “How long have you been with her?”
“A few months.”
“She’s never said anything? I find that considerably hard to believe.”
John grabbed a carton of milk and placed it neatly on the tray. His face displayed remarkably angelic features.
“She’s never said anything directly to me. Always mutters things under her breath and half the time I can’t figure out what she’s saying. Like last night—”
He stopped mid-sentence, guilt embedded in his expression as if he was about to reveal a secret.
“Well, guess it won’t do any harm to tell you about what happened in her room. She wouldn’t come with me. Just kind of made these jerking movements and tried to slink away from me, mumbling all this crazy stuff under her breath. I had to threaten to go away and get another orderly, one of the built guys.”
“But she came with you?”
“Yeah, she normally does. Follows me around like a puppy dog.”
Maybe because you don’t look so threatening, Nichessa thought.
They reached Amaya’s room. Nichessa peered through the window.
Amaya sat catatonically in a chair, surrounded by kindergarten-esque paintings of a circle-headed stick figure on a beach. A strip of watercolor paints—the type you would find attached to the front of a child’s painting book—sat on the side table.
Nichessa and John walked into the cheery pastel-colored room together.
John placed the meal tray in front of Amaya.
She continued to stare into space as if she were in a persistent vegetative state.
“I’m going to have to help her eat,” John said.
Nichessa walked in front of Amaya and bent down. ”How are you doing? It’s Doctor Gooding.”
Amaya looked through her.
“Why has she been sedated?” Nichessa said.
“Oh, she isn’t sedated. She’s doing her usual. She’s off somewhere else if you know what I mean.”
John fished for something in his pocket and placed two gold rods onto the nightstand. They tinkled as they hit the veneer.
“What are those?” Nichessa said.
“Her earrings. She left them in the, uh, therapy room.”
Nichessa squinted close to study them. Straightened out, the cracked gold hoops had two pearls missing. “What happened to them?”
“Dunno. She flattened them out for some reason.”
“Why would she do that? She loves those earrings.”
Nichessa wondered if John could somehow be a part of the mysterious goings on. He certainly possessed enough suspicious characteristics: white, mid-thirties, a loner. Was he hiding some small snippet of gross psychopathology that he didn’t care to reveal? Did he perhaps torture small animals? She told herself to stop being irrational, that John was just an average, harmless computer geek. She wondered if Cortez was harmless too, that perhaps her distaste for uncaring institutions was clouding her judgment.
Nichessa stood up and took a closer look at one of Amaya’s paintings. A child-like yellow sun whose rays resembled bicycle wheel spokes hovered above an expanse of blue sky and yellow sand. The stick-figure held a rectangular object in his hand and Nichessa could just make out the letters: POME.
She regarded the painting curiously for a moment then turned her attention to John. “I want to ask you about a name that Amaya mentioned. The Operator.”
Suddenly, Amaya breathed in and emitted a deathly sounding wheeze.
Nichessa jumped back reflexively and realized that Amaya had heard her. She walked over to Amaya’s side and placed her hand gently on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Nichessa said softly. “It’s me, Doctor Gooding.”
Amaya’s eyes momentarily became as large as saucers. A split-second later, she resumed her placid, catatonic posture.
John scooted a chair over to Amaya’s side. He lifted a forkful of mushy-looking peas to Amaya’s lips.
“So, do you know who he is?” Nichessa asked.
John shrugged his shoulders. “I heard the name once or twice. She’s muttered that name under her breath, all paranoid.”
“Paranoid? How so?”
His eyes widened as he mimicked Amaya’s brief, terrified expression. His high-pitched voice degenerated to a whisper. “The Operator is coming for me.”
Suddenly, Amaya screamed and flailed her arms around. The mushy peas went flying into the air as she knocked the spoon from John’s hand. As soon as the outburst came, it disappeared.
“Oh hell,” John said. “Now I have to clean up this mess. I wish you wouldn’t do this Amaya.”
Nichessa stood back, startled. She’s deathly terrified of him, she thought. Whoever he is, he’s affecting all of them, which means—
Suddenly, a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Code blue, room 382.”
John looked up and furrowed his brow. “382?”
“Whose room is that?” Nichessa asked.
John’s face grew ashen. “I think that’s Rebecca Steinbeck’s room.”
Nichessa gave a startled gasp. “Steinbeck? It can’t be…”
Her hackles rose as she bolted out of the room into the hallway. A quick look at in either direction told her that room 382 was to her left. She charged down the hall.
Please don’t let it be Rebecca, she thought. Samuel Greene died last night…Rebecca would make two of my patients dead.
She didn’t have to look at the room numbers to find the code blue location. The crash team had arrived ahead of her and she could see them surging into the room. She stopped at the doorway. A chemical stench greeted her. Her stare darted around the room and fixed on the pasty figure laid out on the bed.
It wasn’t possible to hold her breath: it was taken away in an instant.
Rebecca. Mercy be, I can’t believe I’m seeing this, Nichessa thought.
Feeling faint and woozy, she steadied herself on the door frame.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the disheveled body spread out on the white sheet, breasts exposed. A technician slapped leads one her chest while a nurse intubated her and placed a bag valve mask over her face. Another nurse started an IV line. And at the end of the bed, Cortez stood shaking with rage, his fists contracted into tight balls.
Nichessa backed out of the doorway a foot so that Cortez could not see her.
That bastard, Nichessa thought.
The EKG machine picked up the electrical impulses and translated a graph of Rebecca’s heart beats to a screen.
The team stood in silence for an elongated second before the technician announced “Asystole confirmed in two leads.”
“Where’s the goddamn TC pacemaker?” bellowed Cortez.
“It’s on its way.”
“What do you mean it’s on its way? Damn it!”
Nichessa stared in horror at the flatline. With confirmed asystole, TC pacing was the only option.
“Epinephrine, five milligrams,” Cortez said, gesticulating furiously. “And make sure you have that mask on straight!”
The nurse looked worried. “Five? Are you sure Dr. Cortez? That’s—”
Too high, Nichessa thought. Her face grew tight and pinched. She wanted to run over and take charge of the situation. She doubted if Cortez really had Rebecca’s best interests at heart.
“Just do it, and do it now!” Cortez yelled.
Nichessa wondered for a brief moment if Cortez really didn’t want to resuscitate Rebecca, and even if he had caused the asystole somehow. She tried to calm herself with deep breaths, but her heart continued to beat like she’d drunk a pot full of Espresso. Cortez was her senior, and so she could not possibly interfere. She would be immediately removed from the room by security and possibly by the entire team.
The flatline continued on the heart monitor.
“Atropine, one milligram,” Cortez said.
The causes for asystole barreled through Nichessa’s head as she stared at the unfolding scene. As the team worked frantically to revive Rebecca, Nichessa wondered what the odds were that a healthy patient would suddenly develop asystole. They were minute. Drug overdose was a possibility. So were a dozen other causes. Deep vein thrombosis, asthma, anemia, even cyanide poisoning could have caused it.
Her eyes filled with dark portents as she glared at Cortez. Despite all of the possibilities, she knew that Cortez was to blame.
The scene unfolded in an instant. Cortez barked more orders. Four more doses of atropine were administered.
Becky lay unresponsive and the monitor continued to emit its low, deathly buzz.
Cortez’s voice became rasping and panicked.
Three more minutes passed by.
The room settled into silence as the technician turned off the EKG.
All eyes were on Cortez.
The scribe nurse held her clipboard tightly to her chest. “Dr. Cortez, are you going to call it, Sir?”
Cortez’s gaze swept the interior of the room as he examined everyone’s face. He looked up at the wall clock, then down at his wrist watch.
He adopted an elaborately casual expression.
“Time of death, eleven fifty three.”
Without warning, Nichessa’s pager vibrated in her pocket. She let out a small screech and immediately covered her mouth with her hand. She yanked the pager upwards and as she turned it off, she saw the lab had paged her. She immediately shrunk back behind the door frame, hoping that she hadn’t been noticed.
But it was too late.
Cortez turned and glared in her direction. His leaden face held no mercy.
Chapter 11
A surge of elation flowed through Amaya as she inhaled the air on her island. The layered breeze smelled like salt with a hint of wet sand and sea grass underneath. Clear skies and crystal water, the perfect tonic for her frail reality.
She worried as a girl that she would be trapped in her imagination, but now a tide of joy washed away any thoughts of ever returning to that other terrible place. On her island she had learned that she just had to think hard enough, and she could make the mephitis of the world sail away with the breeze.
She remembered wishing for a sharpened spear like Alex’s from the Black Stallion. When she found it, she rationalized that another castaway must have left it there. She stood on top of the jutting rocks, spear in hand, unable to use it. The fish were too beautiful to kill; she found it peaceful to simply watch the schools of multicolored Tetras and Danios jostle each other like haphazard ballroom dancers between the dazzling underwater coral gardens.
There was a bird that visited the island: a coal-colored swift that kept his distance. His long wings swept back like a boomerang as he swooped toward the fish below.
She had never seen him land, and as she thought about the possibility that he might even sleep on the wing, she watched intently as he fluttered into a high speed dive. Her interest turned to concern, then to horror as she realized the bird was plummeting directly toward her, caterwauling like a messenger from Hell.
She spluttered backward faster than a red-clawed crab. Sand flurried around her as she scurried to the safety of a palm tree. She grabbed the tree in a panic and stiffened in apprehension for the blow.
When she heard only the serene lapping of waves, she released her breath and opened her eyes. She looked around and saw only infinite, peaceful shades of blue and turquoise crystal water.
She settled down onto the sand again.
The ghastly sounds of the next caterwaul roared next to her head and she felt the bird swoop past her, all the while emitting its ungodly wail. She flailed her arms around and screamed back, but the thing was relentless in its attack. Adrenaline charged through her. She heard her own, terrified scream as she fought wildly against her attacker. She wished with all her might for the bird to go away, back to the place from which it had come. Within seconds, silence engulfed her again. She opened her eyes and the swift had returned to its ocean outpost, floating on t
written on the MDX file??? :eekani:
 
Level 10
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Dec 26, 2009
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It seems that my model has grown a mind of it's own.

What the hell. That story written on my MDX file is part of a book my mom wrote. The same one on the flash drive I used to transfer it from my gaming computer to my internet computer. I think the model got screwed up when I put it on my flash drive.

Sorry about your computer, Chilla_Killa. May I suggest removing the model now?
 
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