There is someone positioned near the top of the gurney, next to her head. He’s the one who protested because the Man-In-The-White-Coat wants to smoke ‘that thing” around the anesthesia gasses and ‘blow us all to Hell’. She can only see him, briefly, when on occasion, he leans over her.
He has dark hair; it is thinning, and a scruffy brown beard sprinkled with grey hairs weaving out wildly like hands grasping for long-forgotten youth.
He’s doing things she can’t glimpse. She can, however, hear sharp clinks of glass, upon glass, upon metal. Painfully unintriguing, everyday sounds, which, unless one found themselves strapped to a table in a strange room, with two strange men, wouldn’t typically fill one with anxiety or dread.
“Okay, now I’m ready,” says the protesting man, arranging the Schimmelbusch mask, placing it over her nose. He piles several sheets of loosely woven, 4x4 inch, cotton gauzes, one upon the other in a neat, fluffy, stack upon the delicate wire frame and fine strainer wire. He positions his liver-spotted hands, holding them inches above her face. The man’s holding a tiny glass vial of drop ether, he’s preparing to induce anesthesia. The girl cranes her stiff neck to see, but she still can’t see enough to draw a conclusion as to what her fate will be.
“Uh, oh,” says the protesting man. He removes the Schimmelbusch mask from the girl’s nose, tossing it to his work-table.
“What’s wrong?” says the Man-In-The-White-Coat, not seeing the woman coming this way until it’s too late.
“It’s alright, Rose,” says a tall woman, blowing into the room, her voice is comforting, but there is sadness and fatigue coating the words, only barely discernable. The door the woman opened is heavy and thick and reinforced with a well-ordered pattern of bolt-heads, which protrude from both sides. It’s built to withstand almost any attempt to breach it, from within or from without.
The woman’s hair is a vibrant brown color from where it peeks out from just around the edges of the material of the surgical cap she is wearing. Scant, wavy, grey hair paints her temples, but her youth is still evident. Her eyes are brown; so dark that they are nearly black. All Rose knows is that she likes this lady, and she wants her to help her escape this place.
The woman addressed her as, Rose, when she came into the room, and she likes that name and likes the way it feels on her parched tongue when she mouths it. Rose likes the name much better than, R – Zero – Five – E. The lady reminds Rose of the woman on the cigarette advertisement, on the calendar. She looks like a beautiful lady, from some far away, exotic, court, in a medieval land, complete with long flowing robes that are caught up in the updrafts of a summer’s breeze.
“You! Bastard,” says the tall woman. She spits her words at the Man-In-The-White-Coat.
“Miss Valentine,” the protesting man greets her.
“It’s Doctor,” says Dr. Valentine, correcting the protesting man, and shutting him up.
Rose knows by the tone of Dr. Valentine’s voice that she’s unhappy with the Man-In-The-White-Coat. Very unhappy indeed.
Seeing an opportunity to leave, the protesting man places as much space between him and Dr. Valentine and exits posthaste.
She stomps hard on her heels, crossing the floor to stand directly in front of the Man-In-The-White-Coat.
“Dr. Valentine, I…,” the Man-In-The-White-Coat commences speaking in his own defense. The way he raises his hands in the air and pumps them up and down in front of him, palms down, makes Rose believe he intends to get Dr. Valentine to calm down, without telling her to do so, which might anger her all-the-more. “…I didn’t want to concern you with this. It’s just a small test this time. Nothing too… uh… invasive I assure you. Really, it’s just more of the same-old, same-old. Endless research, you know how it is. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be off-base performing field research on the Turned?”
“This is unacceptable. Who approved this? Was it Connors? Did Major Connors approve this? Well?” Not waiting for an answer that she doesn’t give two fresh monkey craps about, Dr. Valentine clutches the gurney by its handles and pulls it towards her. It fails to roll, but rather just skids a few inches on its hard rubber wheels, making faint black marks on the stained linoleum floor.
Rose watches nervously, still testing the resolve of the tethers. Dr. Valentine searches for the gurney’s brake release. When she finds it, she stomps on it, firmly, with her foot, to make it release. Then Dr. Valentine says, to the Man-In-The-White-Coat, “I told you, Shaw, not this one. I told you I wanted to observe this one for a while longer before you started cutting her up like a god damned lab rat.”
“I just wasn’t thinking, that’s all. Don’t remember discussing it.”
“Well, which one is it? You just weren’t thinking, or you couldn’t remember?”
Rose feels the gurney rolling. Dr. Valentine is wheeling it to the door. Rose can’t see the Man-In-The-White-Coat anymore, but now he has a name, and it’s Dr. Shaw, and she can hear him raising his voice. He’s not pretending to be apologetic anymore. His tone has changed. It’s deeper and more dominating. He’s telling her, with his voice raised, “You’re getting too close to these… these things. You know how important… no, Valentine…, you comprehend how critical it is that we perform the procedures on them.”
“Not on this one, and not right now. She’s different than the others. I saw that much, in the field, when we found her.”
“How is she any different than the others? Other than the color of her eyes you can’t be certain that she’s any different at all. There are countless variations and mutations of the Turned out there. We don’t even know how many people were affected. There’s no telling how many different types of these things there may be based on how it affects the host DNA. Her eyes might simply be another variation of —”
“— I’m not sure… entirely,” she says as she swings the gurney around and pulls the heavy door open, “but there’s one thing for sure, we’ll never find out if you continue to cut pieces off her. If you keep this up then soon there won’t be enough of her, or any of the others, left to study. She could be the very key to the door that we’ve been looking to open… an answer to everything. An honest to God hope for a cure. We could save these children, and I have a gut-feeling that Rose will be able to help.”
“She might be the key to something, but it won’t be a cure. It might, however, be a way to end this craziness all once and for all. Unless we dig deeper inside of her and the others like her, we will never know for sure. Will we? And we don’t even know what this one can do yet. She hasn’t shown any hint that she can do anything like the others.”
“She’s only been here for four days,” says Dr. Valentine. “And for the majority of that time, we’ve been monitoring the head injury.”
“She’s very dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than any of the others, we don’t know yet. You need to be more careful Dr. Valentine, or one of your ‘hope-for-a-cures’ may end up being the end of you.”
“Go to hell, Shaw. Go straight to hell and die.”
“They won’t let me in there, you know, Merna,” says Shaw, jokingly. He’s trying to bring the situation back to somewhat-normal by alleviating the rubber-band tight tension between them before it snaps.
“What? Hell let you in? I’m pretty sure you have a key, so let yourself in,” she says, wheeling the gurney through the door and down a dark, narrow corridor, made all the tighter with small file carts, stainless steel rolling tables, and other discarded surgical equipment lining the walls. As she wheels the gurney angrily down the corridor, two soldiers fall in close behind her and follow her to her destination.