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Disclaimers: MTM and NBC own all rights to “The Pretender” and its many characters. I just play with this pocket universe, then return it as good as new. Therefore, please don’t sue. All rights to this particular story go to me under common-law Copyright. Sept. 2000 Spoilers: None. Sometime after first season. Rating is: PG. Comments may be sent to CousinDream@msn.com
MIDNIGHT RUN by R. Schultz
The Bell LongRanger seemed to drift and hiccup, moving like a spastic. Lighter on its feet as Jarod carefully tweaked the collective pitch. Eventually He could feel the skid on one side begin to skitter as the weight went off it. A little more collective and the helicopter began to finally ghost free of the blacktop. Jarod called this chopper the Beast, for it could be controlled. But never tamed.
Wind two to five knots from the northwest, cooler air was coming in. His ankles flexed as he repeatedly forced the foot pedals to correct rotor yaw. Beast fluttered off the ground, fighting the controls. Another foot higher and he carefully enriched collective, fighting the cyclic’s natural tendency to fall over to starboard.
As a pilot Jarod had the sensitivities of an artist and he knew by instinct rather than touch whenever the Beast was going to try to break away from his control. He stayed on top, but it was a perpetual and unending task.
A hair more cyclic and the tail lifted as the Bell began to gain real forward motion. Now it rhythmed as Jarod’s muscles tentatively forced the chopper up to that membrane of states of being, the one between hovering and flying.
Higher and higher, ignoring the darkness outside, surveying his instruments instead of believing his eye’s lies. Jarod fought for altitude while minimizing traverse forward. He let the cyclic pull him backwards and completed his circle at approximately thirty to forty meters. Now he could pull up hard on the collective, still babying it, and pushing the cyclic forward at the same time. He accepted the bare obedience of the machine he controlled, already laying in a sweeping curve and motion. Flying to Houston. In minutes he was at proper sub-Injun Country height.
He thumbed to the control tower at Dallas and logged in on his first step of the flight. The parking lot of the Mall fell far behind him. In his ears he heard the ATC confirm him and give him a weather update. A beautiful night to save a life.
Jarod kept glancing at his instruments, continually noticing all of his many oil pressure’s, torque, fuel, attitude’s, horizon, pitch, voltage, mix, and heading. Checking running safety lights, height. And always one eye keeping track of the universe outside the cockpits windows. Nothing should ever appear there, but some day it might.
Both his feet were easily keeping the tail rotor under control, now that small yaws weren’t threatening and could be casually corrected. He let it cant to one side and increased down attitude to go with the way the Beast wanted to fly.
The Beast was not a pet and never an obedient clockwork. It always waited, there, beneath his feet and hands and eyes. Waiting for that moment when it could tear itself from Jarod’s grasp and hurl them all into a spinning crash. Vibrating with power. Waiting.
It could also deceive, so Jarod kept checking his oil pressure gauges in the tail arm. He personally checked the oil levels there every time he flew.
Jarod was proud of himself. Not for learning to fly a helicopter entirely from his research. But rather, for learning to fly it so well. Two weeks he had flown. Since then he had earned nothing but praise from all his EMT-P’s. Barney, the Paramedic with him now called Jarod Superman.
Houston, here I come. I have a life in the back and this Beast of metal and indifference shall never take it from me.
The bird was sluggish so he enriched the mix and pitch until it was steady and responsive. A commercial helicopter would never be a Cobra gunship in its response, but that was okay. He was here to save lives on his life-flights, not take them.
The nose slightly increased it’s cant and dip as Jarod forced his craft to fly faster towards the ER and possible life for the young victim in back. Salvation awaited in Houston. He heard the chatter on his earphones as the invisible night fed it’s life to his ears.
Barney and the others were visible in two of the mirrors above and below. In the back the light was bright, so they might work on his passenger. Up here it was shades of red and subdued glows. He could see the blinking of his warning lights through the scratched plastic shield. Red toning in the darkness. A steady counterpoint to the more important truths of his instruments.
He was already talking to the local controller, knowing he would be handed off to the next in line. Once across the invisible border of one AOR, he would talk to and be guided by another until he reached the landing pad atop his goal. The hospital that would be the new home of the burnt child in back. If he survived.
It had been a stupid accident, but then they all were. In this cruelty Jarod knew there was no injustice to correct, no evil to destroy. There was no one to fault, no conspiracy or scheme. Just fate, just error and tears.
The same sort of fate that had enveloped so many of his “guests” on similar flights. He was becoming immensely depressed by the frequency with which he would sadly find there was no particular hurry. His passenger never made it to his target hospital alive. He hadn’t brought a victim to salvation yet, and it was eating at him.
He had brought the gift of life to others, true, his cargo an organ from a donor now dead. It was not the same as actually saving someone.
His mood was not improved by his growing realization that his Pretend was focused on a man adjudged innocent by Jarod. Not a villain or incompetent, just a man who had to code too many living victims, who had become cooling deceased ones.
It would not be the first time he had turned away from a target. What he had wearily walked away before had been a break-down of the system. Like this. Not a breakdown of the man. Wrongs had been done, and were still being done. But not by this man. Jarod knew he should be content, but was not. Flying dead people to hospitals was not what he was about.
In the back of the chopper three terribly cramped people fought to prolong a life until the possible salvation of a big-city ER could be reached. Besides the child, there was a caring young doctor, not long out of Internship. Another an elderly woman, thin, with burning eyes, fierce in her focus, her anger a barometer of her caring. One other rode in back. His target. His ex-target, rather.
Somewhere below and behind them a woman’s brother and a County Deputy sped through the night to place a crying and bandaged sister by the bedside of Jarod’s passenger. The mother, herself burnt by the flaming grease.
If the final man in the back of this Beast drank too much, Jarod had also seen him fight, swear and sweat when crying flesh lay under his hand. If he was abusive to his wife, he was skilled if distant when he committed himself to his work of ministering aid to the sick and maimed. If he sneered at some because of the color of their skins, he could also cry when these people flatlined with his plump hands on them. If he smoked constantly, he never smoked while on a run. Never near the Oxygen tanks.
Barney was not a perfect ministering angel, no, but not guilty of evil, either. Perhaps he should have another job, but he was not incompetent. Barney was someone who had the bad luck to be a part of an impossible streak of patient deaths. Statistics once more were playing their little jokes.
Jarod was understanding these past two weeks how to hate statistics and fate. Not a single saving in over two weeks of life-flight’s.
There was nothing here for Jarod. Tomorrow - today - the red notebook would be thrown into a dumpster. Then Jarod Flettner would vanish. Jarod Marigny already had his plane tickets to Logan in Boston in his wallet. Time for another Pretend.
Time to get some sleep, as well. He had done three twenty-four hour shifts already this week and three last week. Even his robust system had begun to degrade. He now planned to sleep in some anonymous motel on the road to Worcester, once he was in Massachusetts.
He felt the Bell shift minutely as a figure entered the cockpit. He turned his head, expecting his Paramedic. Instead he stared into the smiling dark eyes of Miss Parker, black in this red light.
The helicopter skittered sideways and cocked before Jarod could regain control again. The Beast laughing at him and his delusion of dominance. Voices complained in his earphones, but they quieted as the flight southward continued smoothly. A query came over his internal line, worried, unsure.
“Got it under control,” Jarod vocalized into his throat-mike.
“Barney,” Jarod asked, “just the five of us in this life-flight, right? No one else?”
The plump blond man shoved his balding head into the door for a second, looking around. Gazing at his pilot and daring him to explain himself. He had things to do and ignored Jarod this time.
Jarod looked at Miss Parker as she lounged in the co-pilot’s seat. It was too big for her slender woman’s body. She was enjoying his shock and surprise.
The Texan reappeared, followed Jarod’s eyes and then looked around the small enclosure. He looked around once more, ignoring the knock-out brunette in the strap-backs and mini. Once he realized there was no one with Jarod, Barney again retreated to his job in back. Without another word. No doubt thinking the desperate nature of life in EMS was loosening Jarod’s grasp of reality. That was okay. Everyone got buggy in the life-flight service. Pilots most of all.
Keeping his attention on the gauges, Jarod flipped his throat mike to the side. Then he could turn to his nemesis.
“You’re not here, are you?”
“Do you think you’re having a stress hallucination, Jarod? Why don’t you touch me and see if I’m here?” she dared.
“A bit of undigested cheese,” he quoted.
“Oooooh! Dickens! Do I look like the ghost of Christmas Past?” Miss Parker sneered. “Get a grip, Jarod, who did you expect would be on your left side? Mother Theresa?”
“You’re not real. You’re not Miss Parker....” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Or are you?”
“If you want me to be,” she purred. Her hand on his left arm felt as real as it could.
“Does it feel like a temporary psychoses to you?” Miss Parker bent towards him, his eyes automatically following the play of flesh as her legs shifted. He was unprepared for the speed with which the brunette seized his left hand. The collective stayed as it had been, which was what it was supposed to do. Jarod fought the instinctual desire to grab the levers again. Instead he watched Miss Parker hold his hand in the eerie red light. She flipped her leather jacket open and brought it to herself.
She smiled as the palm centered itself around the swell of her breast. He could feel her through the thin blouse, the thin halter bra. He could feel her harden in his hand.
This time he corrected his attitude and drift immediately, anticipating the slewing of the Beast. His heart beat hard and he was sweating despite the night chill. A large part of his new fear was at the way he had twice lost control of the Beast this night.
In the mirrors he could see Barney looking at him, wondering what the hell was causing Superman to be off his feed this night.
Once, days before, Barney had laughed in an insane stress reaction when Jarod had admitted he didn’t know who the comic Superman was. Jarod had joined him, feeling fatigue poisons transformed into hilarious irrationality.
Jarod didn’t feel like Superman right now. Barney stuck his head into the cockpit again, wondering what was bugging his best chauffeur. Seeing nothing, he pulled back, stroking the Doctor and Nurse as he rejoined what he hoped would not be another death watch.
Jarod kept looking to his left, studying the impossible vision in the co-pilot’s seat. Sweating to see her grin.
The worst part of it was Jarod didn’t FEEL threatened. This was the woman who had sworn to return him to the Centre. Despite the churning of his stomach he began to apply his private form of logic to the problem.
“There is no one here.” In reply Miss Parker stroked his arm, leaning far over so she could lick his jacket.
“You are not who you seem to be.” His....first love....clapped her hands in approval. Telling him he was correct. “My mind is supplying the details I see and feel. They do not exist. You do not exist.”
Miss Parker shook her head in a no, arms across her chest. “You know, Jarod”, she sneered, “you should open yourself more to the possibility of uncertainty possibilities in reality.”
“Heisenberg?”
“Among others. When you were a beat cop in Youngstown, didn’t you find witnesses to the same crime could never agree to what occurred or to how the perps appeared?” He nodded his head in the semi-darkness, realizing she could see it.
“Reality is what we see, not what is, Jarod. Same facts, same people, different conclusions, different visions. We are victims of our senses, yes, but especially slaves to our logic’s. Don’t you agree?”
He chuckled uneasily. Knowing she was avoiding telling him who she was. Or what. He had a sudden chill looking at this impossible beauty. He was just now taking in the impossibilities of this night’s delusion.
“Logic is faulty?” he desperately teased.
“Until logic can explain everything, yes, it is.” He was sweating again. He was remembering a comment made to him once by another paramedic who was well on his way to being totally hammered. Sweat rings spotted the bar in front of him. Three more long neck Lone Star beers sat in front of him, sweating. Waiting their turn. Jarod had stayed so he might send the man home in a cab rather than in his car.
“You always have one hitch-hiker on these life-flights, Jarod,” he’d said. “I’ve felt her touch on a cheek or a hand a hundred flights, and it always scares the beejesus out of me and then makes me want to cry.”
Not his touch. Or it’s. Hers.
“Who are you?” he persisted.
“Who do you want me to be?”
“Who ARE you?”
“Do you want me to be someone else?”
“Please. Answer me now....”
She answered him.
Jarod will never remember what he saw. Not when waking into a morning’s light, or staring at the screen of a computer. Not when running his hands through some woman’s hair or letting a child cower against his arm and chest. He knew he would never remember.
He might pick at his memories as if they were a tooth with a missing filling, but he knew he would never recall. He HOPED his memory would never return. He would never see in this life what he knew had been sitting by his side. Drops of sweat ran down his face.
Miss Parker gazed at him now, Jarod imagining compassion strong in her black eyes. Barney shuffled forward, half into the cockpit. He looked up at Jarod, ignoring the beauty behind him. Jarod didn’t remember, but he knew he must have let the Beast run loose in the sky again.
“You okay?” he spoke in Jarod’s ear. He didn’t ask if it was all getting to him. He knew it was. Some pilots lasted years, some just months. Arguments were waged over coffee in a thousand ready rooms as to which reaction was the better one. The ones quick to stumble could get back up and continue on their way. Until the next time. The ones who thought they were made of Iron usually didn’t come back.
Barney saw signs in Jarod he’d seen in others. Or thought he did. He expected to see them so he did.
“Are you gonna get us to Houston okay?” Jarod nodded yes. With that Barney patted him on his arm and returned to dealing with his own Beasts as best he could.
Miss Parker’s humor was gone now, her eyes constantly flickering at Jarod as he got over his sweats.
“Why do you fear me, Jarod?” she finally asked. For the first time he realized he had been hearing her clearly despite the machine roars and growls of the Beast about them.
“Because you’re death,” he managed. “After you there is nothing but rot and absence. After you there may be rejoicing or hallelujah’s, but we the living will never know. Unless you want to tell me. Could you do that? Tell me what is on the other side?”
“What do you see each day, each night?” she replied.
Jarod looked at her hard, no joy on his lips now. He saw unending heartbreaking suffering. Until Death came.
“Without me there would be no release from pain and terror. Without me there would be no beginnings. There is nothing without both parts of the equation.”
“You only live twice.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think of yourself as necessary?” She nodded yes, her classic features vague again in this cockpit’s redness.
“Do you think it Justice for you take many of those you do?”
She stared, a small dark curlicue at one eye visible now. Jarod could also see the small gold ankh cross she wore across her breast, wondering why he had never noticed either before. She was so pale, he saw now. Even in this red light he knew her skin to be the color chalk. He realized however pale this Miss Parker might be, she still made his heart stop to see her beauty.
“I am fair. That is all I can be.”
“FAIR?!?!”
“I am fair,” she stated. “I take nothing that is not mine, and each person gets one life and one life only. That is all they get. Live four hours or four thousand years, they only get one life.”
“What justice is that?”
“Mine.”
A thousand replies came to Jarod, a thousand scathing comments, complaints, rants. Instead he tried to lose himself in the great serenity he saw in her eyes now. How could it be that Death is serene? “Is there no way you, we, us, I may escape this?”
“Do you see me as chained and powerless on a great wheel of fate? Miss Parker asked. “You are wrong. I do not wish to be freed. I am she who brings peace, there can be no higher calling. I am content as I AM. As you should be. As you are not. Are not revenge and justice such very small concepts?”
“I do NOT seek revenge! And I don’t need you to deny what I do. I do what little I am able to. Few of us may ever do all we wish to do. Because I will never bring Justice to every corner of even this country does not mean I should stop. It does not negate what I seek to do!”
“We all seek revenge, Jarod. Some against fate, others against innocents. Some of us act on it, most do not. Maybe you will find your own justice someday, and you will be satisfied.”
“Can’t you tell the future?”
“Not in the sense that you mean it, no.”
For long minutes Jarod stared at the glow of lights that was Houston spanning the horizon. He talked with the ATC, adjusting his vector towards the Houston Burn Center. Staring sometimes at Miss Parker until he had to speak again.
“Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here. I’ve come to collect a soul.”
“What about all the other souls in the world...Miss Parker....do you mind if I call you that?”
“Considering the feelings you have for your nemesis I am deeply flattered. Very well, thank you, I am Miss Parker to you. I shall be her when I come for you some day. Some night. Do you think that would be pleasing?”
“I don’t want to go.” There, he had said it. Behind all his rage and joys, behind all he had said and done, he knew he wished not to die. He felt a little cowardly for the thought.
“You still haven’t answered my question” he reminded her.
“I have been collecting. Do you think what you’ve been seeing is the truth? Because you have not understood my departures and returns with your senses does not mean I didn’t make them. It’s been a busy night, but then it’s always a busy night. And day, elsewhere on this planet.”
“You’ve been collecting souls all the time we’ve been talking?”
In answer Miss Parker put her hands together in front of her. Her hands began to open up and he saw something glinting in the darkness there. Movements. Or sparkling lights. Or moving like.....
Jarod remembered only correcting the sudden yaw of the Beast.
Jarod was breathing hard, staring into the night, wishing for the night to end for him. Immediately he felt a chill in him. He did not want to look at his Miss Parker again. She might show him more things he would pray he would never remember.
“Why are you here? Talking to me?”
“I talk to a few people. Once in a while. It suits me. I get bored, or attracted to them.”
“Now. Tonight. Me. Why here? Have you come for me?” Jarod was immediately ashamed, knowing who was the probable goal of this dark night-woman.
He glanced in his mirrors, seeing the IV’s hanging, feeding life. Seeing the Doctor cutting something, the nurse being helped into another pair of gloves by Barney, his paramedic. Jarod felt not chilled....ANGRY. No matter what Death might believe, it was unfair. Children should not be made to die before they had walked some distance into their journey. A short space, at least.
“Barney!” he bellowed into his mike. “How is our passenger doing?”
“With any luck....” Barney didn’t say any more.
Jarod turned to the pale lovely young woman, his every word tinged with knives edges and hate.
“Blow it out your ear, Lady!” He could see the pad on top of the hospital now. “This one’s mine! I’ve flown across half of Texas in record time and THIS one’s mine! I won’t let you have this one, d’ya hear?”
She did not lose her serenity, but Jarod imagined he could see one single pitch-black tear gathering at the eye with the strange marking. Could Death cry?
“How do you propose to stop me, Pretender?”
He tore his eyes away from that perfectly ebon tear. He growled at this unearthly beauty clad in the guise of someone so special to himself. He could not look into that black tear.
Pits opened up beneath him. “By giving you someone else. I mean, you collect us all in the end, don’t you?” He turned white inside realizing he was offering himself as substitute.
“With all that injustice still to be corrected?” Miss Parker asked.
He hesitated, then firmed his jaw. We all die.
“What about her?” the specter asked. “The one whose body I wear? Without you.....who will save HER?” She meant the real Miss Parker. Jarod’s resolve vanished.
Confusion assailed him, and La Morte caressed his hand, her eyes cast down. “Go, Sir Lancelot” she said. “It cannot yet be your turn.”
“Noooo” he whispered.
Somehow he brought the Beast to a halt on the pad. It was as hot a landing as can be made and not crash. The Beast forced itself down, still coasting forward. Landing hard on the bars, flexing them and screeching protests of abused metal. He turned, watching the child as he was hustled out of the helicopter. After a minute he realized, from the actions of the hospital ER staff, the child still lived.
He’d finally brought one in alive.
“Hey, Barney,” he smiled. “You see that? I brought one in. Finally. No goddamned code for this one. I broke my streak!” Miss Parker almost smiled for his enthusiasm, following his movements with black eyes.
Jarod crouched through the body of the craft until he could pat Barney on his shoulder. Smiling, exhausted, content, on edge as he could never remember being before in his life.
Barney sagged when Jarod touched him, and he had to prop up his overweight Paramedic in the doorway of the Bell. Jarod stared long at Barney, then looked back. Seeing the co-pilot’s seat empty now. No more beautiful woman, Death, whoever she had been. She’d picked up what she came to get and had left.
Jarod carefully adjusted Barney in the curve of the door, not being completely succesful in his need not to cry yet. Closing the Paramedic’s unfocused eyes and muttering a Kadisch for his soul.
“I hope she’s going to give you a good flight, Barney. You deserve that much at least. Fly up front for once, in the First Class. Get the lobster and champagne.”
It was hard to see stars in the humid haze Houston’s night was, but Jarod could make out a few, directly overhead.
THE END
MIDNIGHT RUN by R. Schultz
The Bell LongRanger seemed to drift and hiccup, moving like a spastic. Lighter on its feet as Jarod carefully tweaked the collective pitch. Eventually He could feel the skid on one side begin to skitter as the weight went off it. A little more collective and the helicopter began to finally ghost free of the blacktop. Jarod called this chopper the Beast, for it could be controlled. But never tamed.
Wind two to five knots from the northwest, cooler air was coming in. His ankles flexed as he repeatedly forced the foot pedals to correct rotor yaw. Beast fluttered off the ground, fighting the controls. Another foot higher and he carefully enriched collective, fighting the cyclic’s natural tendency to fall over to starboard.
As a pilot Jarod had the sensitivities of an artist and he knew by instinct rather than touch whenever the Beast was going to try to break away from his control. He stayed on top, but it was a perpetual and unending task.
A hair more cyclic and the tail lifted as the Bell began to gain real forward motion. Now it rhythmed as Jarod’s muscles tentatively forced the chopper up to that membrane of states of being, the one between hovering and flying.
Higher and higher, ignoring the darkness outside, surveying his instruments instead of believing his eye’s lies. Jarod fought for altitude while minimizing traverse forward. He let the cyclic pull him backwards and completed his circle at approximately thirty to forty meters. Now he could pull up hard on the collective, still babying it, and pushing the cyclic forward at the same time. He accepted the bare obedience of the machine he controlled, already laying in a sweeping curve and motion. Flying to Houston. In minutes he was at proper sub-Injun Country height.
He thumbed to the control tower at Dallas and logged in on his first step of the flight. The parking lot of the Mall fell far behind him. In his ears he heard the ATC confirm him and give him a weather update. A beautiful night to save a life.
Jarod kept glancing at his instruments, continually noticing all of his many oil pressure’s, torque, fuel, attitude’s, horizon, pitch, voltage, mix, and heading. Checking running safety lights, height. And always one eye keeping track of the universe outside the cockpits windows. Nothing should ever appear there, but some day it might.
Both his feet were easily keeping the tail rotor under control, now that small yaws weren’t threatening and could be casually corrected. He let it cant to one side and increased down attitude to go with the way the Beast wanted to fly.
The Beast was not a pet and never an obedient clockwork. It always waited, there, beneath his feet and hands and eyes. Waiting for that moment when it could tear itself from Jarod’s grasp and hurl them all into a spinning crash. Vibrating with power. Waiting.
It could also deceive, so Jarod kept checking his oil pressure gauges in the tail arm. He personally checked the oil levels there every time he flew.
Jarod was proud of himself. Not for learning to fly a helicopter entirely from his research. But rather, for learning to fly it so well. Two weeks he had flown. Since then he had earned nothing but praise from all his EMT-P’s. Barney, the Paramedic with him now called Jarod Superman.
Houston, here I come. I have a life in the back and this Beast of metal and indifference shall never take it from me.
The bird was sluggish so he enriched the mix and pitch until it was steady and responsive. A commercial helicopter would never be a Cobra gunship in its response, but that was okay. He was here to save lives on his life-flights, not take them.
The nose slightly increased it’s cant and dip as Jarod forced his craft to fly faster towards the ER and possible life for the young victim in back. Salvation awaited in Houston. He heard the chatter on his earphones as the invisible night fed it’s life to his ears.
Barney and the others were visible in two of the mirrors above and below. In the back the light was bright, so they might work on his passenger. Up here it was shades of red and subdued glows. He could see the blinking of his warning lights through the scratched plastic shield. Red toning in the darkness. A steady counterpoint to the more important truths of his instruments.
He was already talking to the local controller, knowing he would be handed off to the next in line. Once across the invisible border of one AOR, he would talk to and be guided by another until he reached the landing pad atop his goal. The hospital that would be the new home of the burnt child in back. If he survived.
It had been a stupid accident, but then they all were. In this cruelty Jarod knew there was no injustice to correct, no evil to destroy. There was no one to fault, no conspiracy or scheme. Just fate, just error and tears.
The same sort of fate that had enveloped so many of his “guests” on similar flights. He was becoming immensely depressed by the frequency with which he would sadly find there was no particular hurry. His passenger never made it to his target hospital alive. He hadn’t brought a victim to salvation yet, and it was eating at him.
He had brought the gift of life to others, true, his cargo an organ from a donor now dead. It was not the same as actually saving someone.
His mood was not improved by his growing realization that his Pretend was focused on a man adjudged innocent by Jarod. Not a villain or incompetent, just a man who had to code too many living victims, who had become cooling deceased ones.
It would not be the first time he had turned away from a target. What he had wearily walked away before had been a break-down of the system. Like this. Not a breakdown of the man. Wrongs had been done, and were still being done. But not by this man. Jarod knew he should be content, but was not. Flying dead people to hospitals was not what he was about.
In the back of the chopper three terribly cramped people fought to prolong a life until the possible salvation of a big-city ER could be reached. Besides the child, there was a caring young doctor, not long out of Internship. Another an elderly woman, thin, with burning eyes, fierce in her focus, her anger a barometer of her caring. One other rode in back. His target. His ex-target, rather.
Somewhere below and behind them a woman’s brother and a County Deputy sped through the night to place a crying and bandaged sister by the bedside of Jarod’s passenger. The mother, herself burnt by the flaming grease.
If the final man in the back of this Beast drank too much, Jarod had also seen him fight, swear and sweat when crying flesh lay under his hand. If he was abusive to his wife, he was skilled if distant when he committed himself to his work of ministering aid to the sick and maimed. If he sneered at some because of the color of their skins, he could also cry when these people flatlined with his plump hands on them. If he smoked constantly, he never smoked while on a run. Never near the Oxygen tanks.
Barney was not a perfect ministering angel, no, but not guilty of evil, either. Perhaps he should have another job, but he was not incompetent. Barney was someone who had the bad luck to be a part of an impossible streak of patient deaths. Statistics once more were playing their little jokes.
Jarod was understanding these past two weeks how to hate statistics and fate. Not a single saving in over two weeks of life-flight’s.
There was nothing here for Jarod. Tomorrow - today - the red notebook would be thrown into a dumpster. Then Jarod Flettner would vanish. Jarod Marigny already had his plane tickets to Logan in Boston in his wallet. Time for another Pretend.
Time to get some sleep, as well. He had done three twenty-four hour shifts already this week and three last week. Even his robust system had begun to degrade. He now planned to sleep in some anonymous motel on the road to Worcester, once he was in Massachusetts.
He felt the Bell shift minutely as a figure entered the cockpit. He turned his head, expecting his Paramedic. Instead he stared into the smiling dark eyes of Miss Parker, black in this red light.
The helicopter skittered sideways and cocked before Jarod could regain control again. The Beast laughing at him and his delusion of dominance. Voices complained in his earphones, but they quieted as the flight southward continued smoothly. A query came over his internal line, worried, unsure.
“Got it under control,” Jarod vocalized into his throat-mike.
“Barney,” Jarod asked, “just the five of us in this life-flight, right? No one else?”
The plump blond man shoved his balding head into the door for a second, looking around. Gazing at his pilot and daring him to explain himself. He had things to do and ignored Jarod this time.
Jarod looked at Miss Parker as she lounged in the co-pilot’s seat. It was too big for her slender woman’s body. She was enjoying his shock and surprise.
The Texan reappeared, followed Jarod’s eyes and then looked around the small enclosure. He looked around once more, ignoring the knock-out brunette in the strap-backs and mini. Once he realized there was no one with Jarod, Barney again retreated to his job in back. Without another word. No doubt thinking the desperate nature of life in EMS was loosening Jarod’s grasp of reality. That was okay. Everyone got buggy in the life-flight service. Pilots most of all.
Keeping his attention on the gauges, Jarod flipped his throat mike to the side. Then he could turn to his nemesis.
“You’re not here, are you?”
“Do you think you’re having a stress hallucination, Jarod? Why don’t you touch me and see if I’m here?” she dared.
“A bit of undigested cheese,” he quoted.
“Oooooh! Dickens! Do I look like the ghost of Christmas Past?” Miss Parker sneered. “Get a grip, Jarod, who did you expect would be on your left side? Mother Theresa?”
“You’re not real. You’re not Miss Parker....” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Or are you?”
“If you want me to be,” she purred. Her hand on his left arm felt as real as it could.
“Does it feel like a temporary psychoses to you?” Miss Parker bent towards him, his eyes automatically following the play of flesh as her legs shifted. He was unprepared for the speed with which the brunette seized his left hand. The collective stayed as it had been, which was what it was supposed to do. Jarod fought the instinctual desire to grab the levers again. Instead he watched Miss Parker hold his hand in the eerie red light. She flipped her leather jacket open and brought it to herself.
She smiled as the palm centered itself around the swell of her breast. He could feel her through the thin blouse, the thin halter bra. He could feel her harden in his hand.
This time he corrected his attitude and drift immediately, anticipating the slewing of the Beast. His heart beat hard and he was sweating despite the night chill. A large part of his new fear was at the way he had twice lost control of the Beast this night.
In the mirrors he could see Barney looking at him, wondering what the hell was causing Superman to be off his feed this night.
Once, days before, Barney had laughed in an insane stress reaction when Jarod had admitted he didn’t know who the comic Superman was. Jarod had joined him, feeling fatigue poisons transformed into hilarious irrationality.
Jarod didn’t feel like Superman right now. Barney stuck his head into the cockpit again, wondering what was bugging his best chauffeur. Seeing nothing, he pulled back, stroking the Doctor and Nurse as he rejoined what he hoped would not be another death watch.
Jarod kept looking to his left, studying the impossible vision in the co-pilot’s seat. Sweating to see her grin.
The worst part of it was Jarod didn’t FEEL threatened. This was the woman who had sworn to return him to the Centre. Despite the churning of his stomach he began to apply his private form of logic to the problem.
“There is no one here.” In reply Miss Parker stroked his arm, leaning far over so she could lick his jacket.
“You are not who you seem to be.” His....first love....clapped her hands in approval. Telling him he was correct. “My mind is supplying the details I see and feel. They do not exist. You do not exist.”
Miss Parker shook her head in a no, arms across her chest. “You know, Jarod”, she sneered, “you should open yourself more to the possibility of uncertainty possibilities in reality.”
“Heisenberg?”
“Among others. When you were a beat cop in Youngstown, didn’t you find witnesses to the same crime could never agree to what occurred or to how the perps appeared?” He nodded his head in the semi-darkness, realizing she could see it.
“Reality is what we see, not what is, Jarod. Same facts, same people, different conclusions, different visions. We are victims of our senses, yes, but especially slaves to our logic’s. Don’t you agree?”
He chuckled uneasily. Knowing she was avoiding telling him who she was. Or what. He had a sudden chill looking at this impossible beauty. He was just now taking in the impossibilities of this night’s delusion.
“Logic is faulty?” he desperately teased.
“Until logic can explain everything, yes, it is.” He was sweating again. He was remembering a comment made to him once by another paramedic who was well on his way to being totally hammered. Sweat rings spotted the bar in front of him. Three more long neck Lone Star beers sat in front of him, sweating. Waiting their turn. Jarod had stayed so he might send the man home in a cab rather than in his car.
“You always have one hitch-hiker on these life-flights, Jarod,” he’d said. “I’ve felt her touch on a cheek or a hand a hundred flights, and it always scares the beejesus out of me and then makes me want to cry.”
Not his touch. Or it’s. Hers.
“Who are you?” he persisted.
“Who do you want me to be?”
“Who ARE you?”
“Do you want me to be someone else?”
“Please. Answer me now....”
She answered him.
Jarod will never remember what he saw. Not when waking into a morning’s light, or staring at the screen of a computer. Not when running his hands through some woman’s hair or letting a child cower against his arm and chest. He knew he would never remember.
He might pick at his memories as if they were a tooth with a missing filling, but he knew he would never recall. He HOPED his memory would never return. He would never see in this life what he knew had been sitting by his side. Drops of sweat ran down his face.
Miss Parker gazed at him now, Jarod imagining compassion strong in her black eyes. Barney shuffled forward, half into the cockpit. He looked up at Jarod, ignoring the beauty behind him. Jarod didn’t remember, but he knew he must have let the Beast run loose in the sky again.
“You okay?” he spoke in Jarod’s ear. He didn’t ask if it was all getting to him. He knew it was. Some pilots lasted years, some just months. Arguments were waged over coffee in a thousand ready rooms as to which reaction was the better one. The ones quick to stumble could get back up and continue on their way. Until the next time. The ones who thought they were made of Iron usually didn’t come back.
Barney saw signs in Jarod he’d seen in others. Or thought he did. He expected to see them so he did.
“Are you gonna get us to Houston okay?” Jarod nodded yes. With that Barney patted him on his arm and returned to dealing with his own Beasts as best he could.
Miss Parker’s humor was gone now, her eyes constantly flickering at Jarod as he got over his sweats.
“Why do you fear me, Jarod?” she finally asked. For the first time he realized he had been hearing her clearly despite the machine roars and growls of the Beast about them.
“Because you’re death,” he managed. “After you there is nothing but rot and absence. After you there may be rejoicing or hallelujah’s, but we the living will never know. Unless you want to tell me. Could you do that? Tell me what is on the other side?”
“What do you see each day, each night?” she replied.
Jarod looked at her hard, no joy on his lips now. He saw unending heartbreaking suffering. Until Death came.
“Without me there would be no release from pain and terror. Without me there would be no beginnings. There is nothing without both parts of the equation.”
“You only live twice.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think of yourself as necessary?” She nodded yes, her classic features vague again in this cockpit’s redness.
“Do you think it Justice for you take many of those you do?”
She stared, a small dark curlicue at one eye visible now. Jarod could also see the small gold ankh cross she wore across her breast, wondering why he had never noticed either before. She was so pale, he saw now. Even in this red light he knew her skin to be the color chalk. He realized however pale this Miss Parker might be, she still made his heart stop to see her beauty.
“I am fair. That is all I can be.”
“FAIR?!?!”
“I am fair,” she stated. “I take nothing that is not mine, and each person gets one life and one life only. That is all they get. Live four hours or four thousand years, they only get one life.”
“What justice is that?”
“Mine.”
A thousand replies came to Jarod, a thousand scathing comments, complaints, rants. Instead he tried to lose himself in the great serenity he saw in her eyes now. How could it be that Death is serene? “Is there no way you, we, us, I may escape this?”
“Do you see me as chained and powerless on a great wheel of fate? Miss Parker asked. “You are wrong. I do not wish to be freed. I am she who brings peace, there can be no higher calling. I am content as I AM. As you should be. As you are not. Are not revenge and justice such very small concepts?”
“I do NOT seek revenge! And I don’t need you to deny what I do. I do what little I am able to. Few of us may ever do all we wish to do. Because I will never bring Justice to every corner of even this country does not mean I should stop. It does not negate what I seek to do!”
“We all seek revenge, Jarod. Some against fate, others against innocents. Some of us act on it, most do not. Maybe you will find your own justice someday, and you will be satisfied.”
“Can’t you tell the future?”
“Not in the sense that you mean it, no.”
For long minutes Jarod stared at the glow of lights that was Houston spanning the horizon. He talked with the ATC, adjusting his vector towards the Houston Burn Center. Staring sometimes at Miss Parker until he had to speak again.
“Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here. I’ve come to collect a soul.”
“What about all the other souls in the world...Miss Parker....do you mind if I call you that?”
“Considering the feelings you have for your nemesis I am deeply flattered. Very well, thank you, I am Miss Parker to you. I shall be her when I come for you some day. Some night. Do you think that would be pleasing?”
“I don’t want to go.” There, he had said it. Behind all his rage and joys, behind all he had said and done, he knew he wished not to die. He felt a little cowardly for the thought.
“You still haven’t answered my question” he reminded her.
“I have been collecting. Do you think what you’ve been seeing is the truth? Because you have not understood my departures and returns with your senses does not mean I didn’t make them. It’s been a busy night, but then it’s always a busy night. And day, elsewhere on this planet.”
“You’ve been collecting souls all the time we’ve been talking?”
In answer Miss Parker put her hands together in front of her. Her hands began to open up and he saw something glinting in the darkness there. Movements. Or sparkling lights. Or moving like.....
Jarod remembered only correcting the sudden yaw of the Beast.
Jarod was breathing hard, staring into the night, wishing for the night to end for him. Immediately he felt a chill in him. He did not want to look at his Miss Parker again. She might show him more things he would pray he would never remember.
“Why are you here? Talking to me?”
“I talk to a few people. Once in a while. It suits me. I get bored, or attracted to them.”
“Now. Tonight. Me. Why here? Have you come for me?” Jarod was immediately ashamed, knowing who was the probable goal of this dark night-woman.
He glanced in his mirrors, seeing the IV’s hanging, feeding life. Seeing the Doctor cutting something, the nurse being helped into another pair of gloves by Barney, his paramedic. Jarod felt not chilled....ANGRY. No matter what Death might believe, it was unfair. Children should not be made to die before they had walked some distance into their journey. A short space, at least.
“Barney!” he bellowed into his mike. “How is our passenger doing?”
“With any luck....” Barney didn’t say any more.
Jarod turned to the pale lovely young woman, his every word tinged with knives edges and hate.
“Blow it out your ear, Lady!” He could see the pad on top of the hospital now. “This one’s mine! I’ve flown across half of Texas in record time and THIS one’s mine! I won’t let you have this one, d’ya hear?”
She did not lose her serenity, but Jarod imagined he could see one single pitch-black tear gathering at the eye with the strange marking. Could Death cry?
“How do you propose to stop me, Pretender?”
He tore his eyes away from that perfectly ebon tear. He growled at this unearthly beauty clad in the guise of someone so special to himself. He could not look into that black tear.
Pits opened up beneath him. “By giving you someone else. I mean, you collect us all in the end, don’t you?” He turned white inside realizing he was offering himself as substitute.
“With all that injustice still to be corrected?” Miss Parker asked.
He hesitated, then firmed his jaw. We all die.
“What about her?” the specter asked. “The one whose body I wear? Without you.....who will save HER?” She meant the real Miss Parker. Jarod’s resolve vanished.
Confusion assailed him, and La Morte caressed his hand, her eyes cast down. “Go, Sir Lancelot” she said. “It cannot yet be your turn.”
“Noooo” he whispered.
Somehow he brought the Beast to a halt on the pad. It was as hot a landing as can be made and not crash. The Beast forced itself down, still coasting forward. Landing hard on the bars, flexing them and screeching protests of abused metal. He turned, watching the child as he was hustled out of the helicopter. After a minute he realized, from the actions of the hospital ER staff, the child still lived.
He’d finally brought one in alive.
“Hey, Barney,” he smiled. “You see that? I brought one in. Finally. No goddamned code for this one. I broke my streak!” Miss Parker almost smiled for his enthusiasm, following his movements with black eyes.
Jarod crouched through the body of the craft until he could pat Barney on his shoulder. Smiling, exhausted, content, on edge as he could never remember being before in his life.
Barney sagged when Jarod touched him, and he had to prop up his overweight Paramedic in the doorway of the Bell. Jarod stared long at Barney, then looked back. Seeing the co-pilot’s seat empty now. No more beautiful woman, Death, whoever she had been. She’d picked up what she came to get and had left.
Jarod carefully adjusted Barney in the curve of the door, not being completely succesful in his need not to cry yet. Closing the Paramedic’s unfocused eyes and muttering a Kadisch for his soul.
“I hope she’s going to give you a good flight, Barney. You deserve that much at least. Fly up front for once, in the First Class. Get the lobster and champagne.”
It was hard to see stars in the humid haze Houston’s night was, but Jarod could make out a few, directly overhead.
THE END
