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PEET PUSHED HIMSELF up off the couch, struggling to not move his leg any more than necessary, which of course was an abysmal failure. “Oww. Dammit, ouch! Six teeth of a tooth fairy, that hurts!” he grumbled as he stumbled to Dr. Song’s favourite chair.
Alexa laughed at his swear words, knowing he changed them for her. “Six teeth of a tooth fairy?” she giggled, grabbing a stool and dragging it over under his leg.
Peet scowled at the imp. “Do you really think they get all their teeth from youngsters like you? They steal them from adults too, you know. Although they hide it by posing as dentists. That is why you have to lie back in the chairs so far, so you can’t see the bump of their wings under their lab coats.”
Alexa howled with laughter. Peet hid his smile in his shoulder, unwilling to give up the game, quite yet. He was glad to see her in good spirits after their flight from the government agents, getting shot by those selfsame agents, and then forcing her to drive his car. That either of them was alive was a miracle, and she deserved to laugh.
“That’s not true, Peet! You are teasing me.”
Peet replaced his smile with a wince and a groan, then mock glared at Alexa. “You think I am joking do you? Why pull out teeth when they can make them? Answer me that one.”
“They pull them out when you don’t brush your teeth.” Alexa grinned at him, assured in her knowledge of this matter. “Didn’t you brush your teeth, Peet?”
“Of course I did! Once every three months, as instructed by the tooth fairy, err, I mean dentist.”
Alexa laughed. “No, no! You have to brush them every day! To keep the gremlins away.” Alexa smirked, enjoying the childish game. Gremlins were much more fun than tooth fairies. She did not believe in either, hadn’t believed for a very long time, but it was fun to play along.
Peet ran his hand over his stubbly chin, frowning. “Gremlins, you say? Gremlins? Well I suppose they could have been gremlins. They come in the middle of the night, right? Sometimes during the day too, if you are scared of dentists and have to sleep in the chair.” He shifted slightly then said, “I will make you a deal. Next time you have a wiggly tooth, give it to me and I will stay awake to see who comes to get it. Deal?”
“Deal!” said Alexa, flashing her cheekiest grin around a mouth full of perfect teeth. “I am afraid you will lose this bet. I have all my adult teeth. I think you will end up losing some before I do.” Peet grinned back, gap toothed. Three teeth were missing in the front row. Alexa hugged him hard. “You are the funniest man I know! Even funnier than that cartoon duck. I can’t remember his name but we used to watch it on Saturday afternoons on TV when I was really little.” Her smile faded as she remembered.
Seeing her mood changing, Peet said. “Well, are you going to get me a cup of tea? That is why you woke me up, wasn’t it?” Her smile returned and she scooted out of the room, calling for Dr. Song as she left.
Peet eased himself into a more comfortable position then picked up a magazine that sat on the side table. The title proclaimed it to be a science magazine, several years out of date. The cover featured a weathered old farmer, kneeling on one knee in a field, examining a withering plant. The soil beneath his boot was dry and cracked, huge furrows running in all directions. It had been many years since any farmer had attempted to plant crops under the naked sun. As the clouds had vanished and the drought deepened, farming had moved indoors, to warehouses and ice rinks and sports facilities, any place where the environment could be controlled, and moisture created artificially. Moisture collected from sweating pipes and air conditioning coils was meticulously collected, the water life-giving in a dying world. The headline on the cover proclaimed “Worst Drought In A Century Grips The Farming Heartland”
At that moment, Dr. Song shuffled into the room, carrying two cups of tea. Alexa walked carefully behind him carrying a plate of crackers. Seeing his patient sitting up, he smiled at Peet. “Well it’s about time you woke up. Your colour has returned. Good.” He set the tea on the side table and took Peet’s abandoned spot on the couch. “How do you feel?” Alexa placed the crackers beside the tea then skipped out of the room to return with a small jar of jam with a spoon stuck in it. She put it down beside the crackers then joined Dr. Song on the couch.
“As well as can be expected, for recovering from a gunshot wound and no hospital nearby. I am grateful we are both alive. Alexa did a hell of a job getting me here.” Alexa beamed at the praise.
“She is a smart girl. You must be very proud of her,” said Dr. Song.
“She is not my daughter. She is the daughter,” Peet hesitated slightly over the small lie, “of a friend.” In actual fact, he had never met Alexa and Avalon’s parents, as they had disappeared many years ago, as a result of a government cover up and scandal that had resulted in the two girls being orphaned on their own farm and forced to live on the streets to survive. It was his personal belief that they were still alive and that their current host may be able to enlighten them to why the government abducted the two eminent scientists, in the first place. “She is the daughter of Ellen and Albert Gainsborough,” he said quietly.
Dr. Song’s brows lifted in surprise, and then he glanced over at the child seated beside him. “You are quite the surprise, my dear.” He focused back on Peet. “I do not believe that you were shot on purpose, just to get access to me. I also do not believe in coincidences. I am thinking you were coming to see me anyways and just got shot along the way.” At Peet’s nod of affirmation, he grunted. “So then, tell me why you are here?”
“We found some information in the hospital records.”
Dr. Song raised a white brow in question. “Found, or stole?”
“How about we say acquired. You worked at the hospital for over thirty years. You know all the doctors who have been in and out of that facility. Yet there were two on loan from the government about ten years ago, who had no I.D. yet full access to all programs and services. They were studying some strange disease on a specialty basis, and the results were encrypted. The timing of this is suspicious in the extreme. It was only a short time later that the Gainsborough’s went missing. I think you know what this is about, Dr. Song. I think it is why you chose to hide away from the world. I think you want everyone to forget you ever worked at the hospital.”
Dr. Song stared at Peet. “I don’t deny it. I wanted nothing to do with the hospital when I left. I retired, and faded from view as quickly as I could. I live a peaceful, quiet retirement here. I prepared in advance for this time. I knew it was coming, you see. I knew the land was dying.”
“How did you know? You are a medical doctor.”
Dr. Song took a sip of his tea, then stared at the swirl of leaves in the bottom of the cup, gathering his thoughts. “In the beginning, the signs were subtle. The doctors in the ER started dropping offhand comments about the poor diet of the patients coming through. Cases of Scurvy and iron deficiencies were the early indicators that something catastrophic was occurring in the local food supply. The cases of severe nutritional deprivation and diseases related to these conditions such as Rickets & Beri Beri multiplied, until the trend was undeniable.”
“What trend? What did you discover?” asked Peet.
The old doctor lifted his head. “Something was poisoning the food being handled and eaten by all of us. The food that was being grown was nutritionally deficient, and fewer people had access to healthy food. Something in the environment was affecting the food, but not just the nutritional value, but also the produce itself was coated in a toxin and those closest to the problem were the first to show signs of illness. The first cases came from the agricultural community, those doing the planting and cultivating and growing. Farm workers and farmers. Then we started seeing those who handled the produce becoming ill- grocery store employees and warehousers, truck drivers, cannery employees, the list goes on and on. Anyone who came in contact with the produce became ill. The plague acted like a virus, infecting all who came in contact with it, yet it was undetectable by the normal screening processes put in place by the Department of Agriculture’s standardized testing.”
“How do you know it is undetectable?”
“A government agricultural tester was one of the patients that came into the hospital in the second wave of illnesses that flooded into the hospital. He told me about a pandemic they were trying to contain but that was undetectable by their current methods. He had a bronchial infection that he thought he had acquired from working in one of the hot house greenhouses. This was back when they were still privatized operations. When I questioned him further about his exposure, he said he couldn’t say anything more, that they were under orders to not talk about it to anyone on the outside. He had only come in because he couldn’t breathe any longer. We did the usual work up on him and took x-rays of his lungs. He had tumors the size of my fist. He died within hours of arriving at the hospital. There was nothing we could do for him.”
Alexa’s sat with her mouth wide open, as she listened to the adults talk.
Peet swore for real this time. He had forgotten she was there. He held out his arms. “Come here, Alexa.” Alexa ran over to him and he pulled her close to his side. “Don’t you worry, you are safe. If you were infected, you would have died a long time ago. This is something that happened a long time ago too, around the time your parents went missing. Ok?” He gave her a little shake and smiled down at her. Her head bobbed acknowledgment. Over her head, he said, “Do the two unidentified research scientists have anything to do with the cases?”
“Yes. They were sent by the government to study the cases. They were not there to treat them, but more like scientists observing lab rats. They took most of the patients who showed symptoms away with them to be studied in a secure facility somewhere. We were happy to see them go, frankly. The last thing we needed was a hospital full of people who could not be treated. We did not question it overly much, believing at the time that the government had specialized help brought in just to handle the issue.”
“The patients never returned though, did they? Are you aware of any who were cured?”
Dr. Song shook his head. “No. They all died in their care. We received copies of the death certificates so that we could close the hospital record, but that was it. We assumed the bodies were passed on to the next of kin.”
“Did you ever figure out what was causing the disease? I mean, you must have had some thoughts around the disease. Was it something ingested? Airborne? Passed on by physical contact?”
Dr. Song shook his head. “No. The closest we came to a working theory centered on some pollen collected from the coveralls of the greenhouse worker. One of my colleagues put the pollen under a microscope as a joke, wondering if it was a hyper allergen. What he discovered was that the pollen was a thousand times sharper than regular glass shards. Every spike on the minuscule particle was a tumor waiting to happen.”
“Did you report this?” said Peet his voice sharp.
“To whom?” said Dr. Song, equally as sharp. “The government doctors? They were the ones hiding the evidence! They took away every single person who presented themselves at Emergency, citing section this and section that. They were ready to shut down the entire hospital and turn patients away who were not part of this problem. They were willing to let people die in the ambulances lined up at the door! We had no choice.” Silence filled the room. “But...it does not mean that we kept no records at all. We just didn’t keep the type they can easily find.”
Alexa piped up. “You wrote everything down. Computers are easy to copy.”
Dr. Song winked at her. “That’s right, Alexa. We made paper records and kept them in a very special place.”
“Where?” she asked. Peet leaned forward, better to hear the answer.
“Right here.” Dr. Song got up and pushed the couch out from under the window. Lying flat on the floor underneath the sofa was a black leather briefcase hard-sided briefcase. He bent over and picked it up by its handle. “I assume this is what you were looking for, Peet?”
Peet nodded. “Thank god. Now we can get to work.”