Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 9, 2011 15:32:59 GMT -5
Chapter Seventeen – A Cure at Last
and two nurses
“Jarod is usually quite easy to get along with,” the nurse leading them informed Nick and Chris as he lead them through the corridors toward a door to the outdoors, “so we allow him more privileges than some of the others. He likes to spend his time outside, so that’s where we should find him.”
Chris and Nick followed him through the doors and into an inner courtyard of sorts. On one side were a garden and a picnic area. On another side was a basketball court. There were several people throughout, some clearly patients, others nurses, and a few appeared to be guests.
The nurse lead them to a picnic table where a man sat looking up at the sky. Nick grinned and quickened his pace. “Hey, Jarod, how have you been?”
The nurse looked at Chris. “I’ll let you guys talk.”
Chris nodded at him. “Thanks.” As the nurse walked away Chris walked over to join Nick and Jarod.
“Jarod,” Nick said as Chris reached them, “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”
Jarod looked over at Chris expectedly. “Let me guess,” he said in a teasing tone. “This is your son whom you’ve only just discovered you have.”
Nick gave him a look and then with a straight face he said, “You know I only have daughters.”
Jarod chuckled. “Since when?” When Nick didn’t immediately respond he frowned. “Wait. You actually have daughters? When did that happen?”
“No,” Nick replied finally. “I don’t have any daughters, no children at all.”
“Nick, when?” All evidence of laughter had left Jarod’s face. For someone who was so cursed he was sent to a mental hospital to deal with it, he seemed to have kept a generally merry personality, but right now he wasn’t interested in any of that. His focus was fully on his friend.
Nick sighed. “High school. Long before I met you three idiots. They died and so did their mother.”
“They?”
“Twin girls,” Nick mumbled. “Rosabelle and Alyssa. I was seventeen. It was a very long time ago. This is about now or at least more recent than that.”
“This is more interesting,” Jarod decided.
“It’s about the crystal.”
Jarod’s reaction was immediate and violent. He backed himself right into the picnic table and fell into a sitting position. “Not interested.”
“You will be,” Nick assured him. “It’s about a cure.”
“There is no cure,” Jarod informed Nick in no uncertain terms. “And don’t go quoting that stupid book of yours. That’s just a fairy tale.”
“How about I quote Reggie then,” Nick suggested. “I could tell you what he said when he called me this afternoon. This guy,” he said, indicating Chris, “works for him.”
“Worked,” Chris corrected. “I worked for Mr. Hollis at Centennial.”
“Mr. Hollis?” Jarod repeated questioningly. He turned to Nick. “Is he serious? He calls Reggie Mr. Hollis?”
Nick nodded. “Be glad he doesn’t call you Mr. Powell. He works . . . worked . . . with your daughter.”
Jarod grinned. “She’s a good girl. Did you get along?”
Chris shrugged. “We worked well enough together.”
“What do you have to do with Nick’s outrageous claim?” Jarod asked. “If you know anything about that crystal, you know to avoid it at all costs.”
“From what I saw today, I certainly agree with you,” Chris informed him, “but avoiding the crystal wasn’t an option. My brother was infected along with three of his co-workers.”
“I’m sorry for you, but that doesn’t make you an expert,” Jarod argued.
“I’m not an expert,” Chris admitted, “but I do have a cure that works.”
Jarod looked at Nick. “This is why you are here?”
Nick nodded.
“Why should I trust him?” Jarod demanded. “Just working with Reggie and Jody doesn’t make him trustworthy. “
“Reggie called me,” Nick told him in an almost gleeful tone. “This guy gave him the cure and it worked.”
Jarod stared at him. “Reggie’s cured?”
Nick nodded. “Ev, too. He called while we were driving here, wanted to let me know that Chris had been over there and given him the cure. That just leaves you.”
“Chris?” Jarod looked at Chris. “That’s you?”
Chris nodded. “Chris Halliwell. I’m only here to help. What can I do to convince you of that?”
Jarod shook his head. “I don’t know. I gave him up the idea of a cure a long time ago. Now, you tell me that there is one and that you’ve already tested it on my friends.”
“And my brother,” Chris reminded him. There was no reason to bring up Wyatt’s co-worker, again.
Jarod eyed Nick and Chris, again. After a moment he shrugged and laughed nervously. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t get it in here.”
“I’ve got it with me,” Chris assured him.
Jarod frowned. He sighed and looked at his friend. “This is real?”
“I believe so,” Nick assured him. “I know it’s your choice and I know I’m the least affected, but I want this to be over. I want all of you to be as close to back to normal as possible.”
“No more voices, clamoring with hate,” Jarod considered.
“Just yours,” Chris assured him.
“All right,” Jarod said finally. “You’ve sold me on it. Where is it?”
“In my pocket,” Chris informed him, fingering the potion in question, “but we need to go somewhere less visible. Is there some place we can go that’s the cameras can’t see and the staff won’t be looking?”
Jarod considered this. “That depends on how much time you need?”
“I guess that depends on how fast you can drink something that smells and tastes bad,” Chris returned with.
“I’ve got practice,” Jarod informed them. “You haven’t tried some of the medicine they give us here.”
Chris bit back a laugh.
“You laugh now,” Jarod noticed, “but you wouldn’t if you’d tried it.”
“Probably not,” Chris replied, not planning to ever try it. “I suppose if you have no trouble getting it down, then less than a minute.”
“I can give you maybe thirty or forty seconds,” Jarod informed him, “and we’d need to be heading back by the time they found us. Can this happen in that amount of time?”
“Thirty or forty seconds,” Chris repeated. “They look that fast?”
Jarod nodded. “They don’t like us off their radar. There are some rooms that don’t have cameras, but you can’t get in those without permission or looking awfully suspicious and even then, I doubt you’d reach them.”
“Point taken,” Chris agreed. “In that case we’ll need to talk here. There is a bottle in my pocket with a screw on lid. It smells bad and everyone seems to agree it tastes bad, too, but it works.”
“You’ve already convinced me,” Jarod informed him. “You don’t need to go through the spiel.”
“Right,” Chris nodded a little chagrin. “Once you’ve drank it, there’s going to be green bubbles coming out of your head.”
Jarod and Nick looked at each other. “Sounds about right,” Jarod mumbled to himself.
“Yeah,” Chris commented. “That’s about the same as what your friend Ev said.”
Jarod chuckled. “He would.”
“The bubbles go down your body until they disappear in smoke from your feet,” Chris continued, “so you’re going to need enough time for that to happen.”
Jarod nodded. “Noted. Anything else I need to know?”
Chris considered this and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Lead the way.”
Jarod grinned as he began to walk toward the garden. “In that case I’ll give you a tour of the grounds. I’ll tell you when you can give me your cure. We’ll keep walking and leave the area as soon as possible. Hopefully they won’t question it, but I’ve been here long enough. If this will get me out, I can deal with a little bit longer of a delay.”
“No voices telling you to stay away from me?” Chris asked as he and Nick followed Jarod.
“Plenty,” Jarod admitted, “but today I don’t care.”
Nick laughed. “Glad to hear you aren’t letting this get to your head.”
Jarod shrugged. “Letting it get to my head is the only way I am controlling the voices in my head, thank you very much.”
Chris fingered the bottle in his pocket.
They walked behind a trio of trees and Jarod stopped. “Now.”
Chris pulled out the bottle and handed it to Jarod.
Jarod took it and unscrewed the lid. He wrinkled his nose as he lifted it to his lips and drank it down. Once he had finished he handed it back to Chris. “Nick, would you mind grabbing some apples off one of the trees.”
Chris took the bottle and screwed the lid back on. He stuffed it in his pocket and watched as the green bubbles appeared right on schedule.
Nick watched the bubbles for a second before looking up in the tree. “Jarod, I don’t see any apples?”
Jarod frowned and looked up. He snorted. “Apparently, we must have had an issue with apples. There were apples here a few days ago.” He shrugged. “Oh, well, just tell them I brought you here to pick apples and then we found none.” The bubbles ran down his legs and disappeared in a puff of smoke at his feet. His eyes widened and he looked at Chris. “That really did work. Wow.” He heaved in a deep breath of air and smiled. “Is that it?”
Chris nodded as the crunch of footsteps on the ground was heard coming toward them.
“Then, let’s get going,” Jarod directed them as he headed back into the cameras’ line of sight. He stopped at a rose bush and leaned down to smell it. “You should always stop to smell the rose,” he informed Nick with a wink.
Nick grinned back. “Always.”
“He never does,” Jarod informed Chris.
“Is everything all right here,” a second nurse asked as she approached them.
Nick looked at her surprised. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Patients are supposed to stay in sight at all times,” she informed them.
Nick gave her an apologetic shrug. “He said there were apples over there and he wanted to show us.”
Chris fingered the empty bottle in his pocket. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.
“There weren’t any apples,” he informed her.
“Of course not,” she returned. “Those are maple trees. The apple trees are over there,” she pointed toward a fenced off area.
Jarod frowned. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Of course I’m sure.”
He looked up into the branches of the trees. He walked around them and did a little arm pump. “Come here,” he directed them.
The weary nurse walked over to him followed closely by Chris and Nick.
Jarod pointed up into one of the trees, a different one than the one Nick had looked up into. “What’s that?”
The nurse looked up and her eyes widened. “That’s an apple.”
Jarod nodded. “I thought so. Apple tree.”
Nick snorted.
Chris chuckled. “I’ve got to get going. I work for my mom, which means I’d better not be late for work.” And since his mom had altered his hours for the day already he now had two hours to get there.
“Won’t your mom understand?” Nick asked, looking at him surprised.
“Yeah,” Chris nodded. “Callie, however, will not.”
Nick considered this and decided not to ask. “Thanks, then.”
The nurse looked at them confused.
Chris nodded his head with a grin. “Glad to help. Nice to meet you, Jarod. Your daughter’s a good person.”
Jarod smiled at that. “I think so, too.”
“I’ll help you out,” the nurse offered.
“I can find my own way,” Chris told her.
“We have rules,” she told him. “You’ll need to come with me.”
Chris shrugged. “If you say so.” With a last look at the two friends, he smiled and headed back to the door inside.