Heroic Measures (continued)

There was a long moment of silence.

“Is that it?” Walter finally asked. “Are we done?”

Raynes’ eyebrows rose slightly, clearly surprised by Walter’s question. He glanced over at Dr. Hansen and then back at Walter.

“Actually, Walter,” he said, sounding a bit sheepish, Walter realized, “we hadn’t quite started yet.”

Walter felt a cold knot in stomach.

“Then . . .” he swallowed hard. “Then what was that?”

”That,” Raynes repeated with emphasis, “is a good question.” He studied Walter for moment. “I assume it was a flashback to your days in the hospital after your . . . incident, something that happened there that being here reminded you of.”

Walter nodded slowly. “It was,” he said. “From when they tried to test me and . . .” he swallowed hard against the resurgence of the memories.

Raynes reached over and patted Walter’s arm. “It’s okay,” he told Walter. “We don’t need to go there right now.” Watching Walter’s eyes, he asked, “Do you still feel up to finishing this?”

Walter nodded with only the slightest hesitation. He was not about to let Raynes down. Besides, he had to know.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’d be a good idea to let Dr. Hansen administer that sedative?” Raynes suggested without any hint of coercion. “It’s entirely your choice, though.”

Walter glanced toward the polished tray and then looked away.

“Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh. “Maybe we’d better.”

He closed his eyes tight as he saw Dr. Hansen reach for the tray and waited to feel the prick of the needle in his arm. In his personal darkness, nothing threatened him but his own fears. He almost had not dared to close his eyes, afraid that he might once more find himself inside the bright white chamber, but he feared the needle more than he feared returning to that room.

Forcing himself to take deep, controlled breaths, Walter felt Dr. Hansen swab alcohol on his arm. Its cooling effect spread quickly and, as it turned out, was the most discomfort Walter experienced.

For a moment, and it seemed to him that several of them had passed, Walter began to wonder if there was a problem, or if Dr. Hansen was waiting for just the right moment to inject him. He had no understanding of these things, so his imagination was more than happy to fill in the blanks for him.

“All set,” Walter heard Dr. Hansen say.

He opened his eyes cautiously. The physician was turning away to return the syringe to its place on the tray.

Dr. Hansen turned back to Walter and checked a spot on his arm.

Probably where he injected me.

The twinge he felt then Walter knew was almost certainly imaginary.

“Just relax,” Dr. Hansen said. “It’ll be a few minutes before it takes effect.”

Walter did as he was told and settled back in the chair. He tried to relax, attempting to focus on anything besides what was going on inside this room. It took some effort, but he finally managed to begin filling his mind with other images: the hot fudge sundae he was going to treat himself to when this ordeal was over, the annoying indicator light that kept turning green on his dashboard that the mechanics could not recreate, Abigail in that pale green summer dress with the . . .