Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:10:01 -0600 (MDT) From: "Katherine R. Freymuth" Subject: Whale ch 29 (resend) Message-ID: Chapter 29 Al Calavicci laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The dreams were coming back again. They always came back. No matter how much progress he had over months, no matter how often he was close to being released, they came back to haunt him and to destroy him. It was a continuous circle that plagued him for the past nine years. His room long ago had begun to feel like a home rather than a hospital. *"You are going to die in a mental hospital, just as your sister did."* He shook the leering male voice which haunted him in his dreams, the voice which continually threatened his ex-fiancee Maxine's life. It tormented him, taunted him, tortured him. It was the voice which Al tried to avoid with a lack of sleep. He swallowed slightly at the thought of the crime he had committed. It wasn't the crime the Navy said he had done but rather the crime he knew he had done. Even now, nine years after the fact, he knew deep in his heart that he had not tried to kill his best friend. No, he had done something far worse. He had broke under pressure. He had told the man everthing demanded from him. He had betrayed everything and everyone he loved and, in doing so, had betrayed himself. *The head of the cane swiped across his face. He screamed in agony from the horrible pain. The image of the cane was all in his head but the pain was all too real. Gawd! So much pain! What the hell is happening to me? Who's doing this to me? It wasn't a cane, though. It was a hand - a woman's hand. It was huge. It slapped his left cheek hard, making his head whip roughly to the right. It wasn't a hand, though. It was a bamboo stick against his back. It hurt immensely as it made yet another red mark on his already bleeding back. It was a cane, a hand, a bamboo stick. It was his darkest secrets coming to torment him, to haunt him, to make him scream for mercy.* He screamed, sitting up abruptly. He screamed even after Dr. Etleman entered his room quickly a couple of minutes later. He screamed even after she hugged him as she always did after he had the dream, the same dream he had had several times over the past nine years. "It's okay, Al," she said in a soothing voice. "I'm right here. It's over, right? The nightmare's gone." Al's scream had diminished and he was now breathing hard as he pulled away from her with a nod. "It's only gone because I'm awake," he told her, forcing himself to calm down. She nodded. "I know. Do you want to talk about it?" Al looked at her firmly. "How many times are you going to ask me that?" She smiled at him. "As many times as it takes for you to finally say yes." He exhaled slowly. "The last time I talked about it, the last doctor discounted it as fantasy." He looked at her with intense eyes. "I'm not going to make the same mistake twice." Dr. Etleman nodded slightly. "So this is the same dream you've had before. The one with a man named Tim and a pain inside your mind." Al lowered his eyelids in annoyance. He turned his head away from her and took a breath. "I want to see Dr. Elesee-Beckett," he told her. Dr. Etleman raised her eyebrows in surprise. "What made you change your mind about social calls?" Al looked at her intensely. "Donna knows the truth." "About the incident?" Al nodded. "Yes." Dr. Etleman sighed sadly, as if she were very familier with what Al had just said. Al frowned at her. "You don't believe me. You think I really am crazy. I don't care. I want to know the truth about what happened to me. Something happened involving Sam's project and I want to know what it was." Dr. Etleman shook her head and exhaled. She knew it was useless to argue with Al when he was like this. Maye Donna Elesee-Beckett could finally convince him that this memory he says he has is really just a fantasy he created. "Okay," she finally said. "I'll call her and let her know you want to see her. I don't know if she'll come, though." Al gave her a slight smile. "She'll come. I know she will." It was only an hour before his statement came true. Donna walked into the room slowly, deep concern on her face. She looked at Al with sympathy, seeing the man sitting on the floor with his knees aginst his chest and his eyes closed. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from something, trying to block something out of him. "Hello, Al," she said gently. Al opened his eyes and looked at his friend for a moment before smiling. "Hi, Donna," he replied. Donna walked closer to him and sat on the bed, facing him. "This is different," she commented. "The last time I came here, you didn't want to see me." Al took a deep breath. "It wasn't a very good time for me." "It was only a week ago," she told him. He nodded. "I know. You may think I didn't hear you the last time but I did; it just didn't register right away." He stretched his legs and folded them Indian-style. He looked at Donna firmly. "What did you mean?" Donna blinked, looking at Al with question. "What did I mean?" she repeated the question for clarification. Al nodded. "What did you mean when you said the leap to prove my innocence had happened?" He looked at her firmly, waiting for an answer. Donna exhaled slowly. "I shouldn't have said anything. It's classified information." Al thought about her response. He wasn't sure he wanted to push into the subjest, to get into something he shouldn't and possibly interfere with Sam's project. He lowered his head, not wanting to ask the question on his mind but knowing he had to ask. "Donna," he said quietly. "Am I crazy? Did I..." He exhaled. "Did I make these memories up?" As Al spoke, Donna lowered herself onto the floor beside him. She touched his arm gently. "No," she said quietly. "We now know you didn't." She took a breath. "I know you know about the project, how it works..." "Donna, just tell me what the hell happened to me," Al begged her. She hesitated a moment before looking into his eyes. "Sam isn't the only leaper. There's another one who had been changing history for the worst." She paused. "She leaped into you and tried to kill Sam. I don't know why it happened but we think that those nightmares that you've been having may be repressed memories of your experience in their Waiting Room." She paused again, giving Al a chance to say something. He said nothing but looked at her to continue. "The man in your dream, the man you call Tim, is probably Thames, one of the members of the other project. The person who leaped into you, her name is Zoe." Al raised his eyebrows in question. "How long have you known about these people?" "For about two years. After we encountered them the first time, we suspected that someone had leaped into you to kill Sam." Al glared at her, unfolding his legs and standing up. "Two years?! You knew the truth for two years and you didn't even tell me?!" Donna stood as well. "You've been on suicide watch on and off since you were admitted and both Ziggy and Verbina agreed that you shouldn't be told until we had absolute proof of our suspicions." Al glared at her. "What did they do to me, Donna?" he demanded in a low voice. "How did they get me to betray Sam? And why the hell didn't you do anything to help me when they were torturing me!" he yelled. "We didn't know," Donna answered in a whisper. "You didn't know?" Al paraphrased angrily. "After everything that had happened, after everything I told you, you didn't know?" He looked into her eyes carefully and was shocked by what he saw. "You didn't believe me. You never did." Donna took a slow breath. "I was wrong. I'm sorry I ever doubted you." Al hesitated, a little startled by Donna's words. He was ready for her to give him an explanation, not an apology. He wasn't sure how to react. He slowly walked to his bed and sat down, silent in thought. "I'm not sure what they did to me," he finally said quietly. "I remember being hit across the face with a cane by this... What did you say his name was?" Donna didn't answer immmediately. She sat down beside Al, a saddened look on her face. "Thames," she finally replied. Al nodded at her answer. "Yeah, Thames." He took a breath. "And then there was this intense pain all over, like something was forcing my brain to cause me pain. There were these floods of terrible memories...." He took a shaky breath before finally looking into her eyes. "It was horrible. I just couldn't take it anymore. It was as if they took my entire eight years as an MIA and forced it on me in a mere matter of hours. Gawd! I just couldn't take it!" He paused, taking a breath. "I broke, Donna. I told them everything - about the project, about Sam, about his theories. Everything. I betrayed Sam." Donna gently took his hands into hers. "You didn't betray Sam, Al. They knew the answers before you even told them, I'm sure." Al was quiet for a moment. "Then why did they question me so adamantly?" he asked quietly. Donna exhaled, wishing there was another way to answering the question other than directly. "You probably wanted to make sure you were broken," she said in a near whisper. Al laughed sickly. "I guess they succeeded, didn't they." He exhaled shakily as he sat on his bed. "Gawd! Why?" Donna shook her head. "I don't know." Al put his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. A moment later, a quiet sob came from him. "They have NO RIGHT to play with someone's mind like that!" he bellowed between his fingers. Donna sat beside him and wrapped her arms around him, giving comfort to the broken man.