Checkup

"That's odd."

Not exactly what you want to hear from your nurse as they change the bandages on the gut wound you spent hours in surgery getting fixed.

"Nurse?"

You thought your voice was under control, but she looked up at you and smiled that professional smile. The one that says, no problem! Nothing to concern you in a wrong way. Only you aren't buying it. Her face smoothes out as she relents.

"It's just that you seem to heal remarkably fast." She tells her assistant to get the surgeon. "Let's finish cleaning up. I won't put new bandages on until the doctor can see you." She hesitates, "Would you like to see it?"

Your curiosity is aroused. "Yes, please." She brings over a mirror and holds it so that you can see your abdomen without craning your head or tensing your muscles. Your stomach looks like Jason and Freddy played tic tac toe multiple times. "Woah..." Only you notice what she meant; the wounds and incisions are far more healed than they should be. "Do you think the doctor will take the stitches out?"

"We will let the doctor decide that."

Moments later, an annoyed doctor bustles into the room, muttering about incompetent nurses, only to stop in mid-mutter and whisper, "what the hell?" He becomes all professional after that, examining the wounds and exclaiming how remarkable it is—snapping orders at the nurse, who is responding like a robot. Finally, you have had enough.

"Doctor." He acts like he didn't hear you. "Doctor!" Finally, you reach out and take him by the arm. He looks at you with a frown.

"Let go."

"Not until you apologize!" You glance at the nurse, making it clear who deserves the apology.

He seems genuinely puzzled, "What for?"

"Doctor, when you came in here, you insulted her professionally. You will now apologize for that insult and mean it."

"I did no such thing!"

"You came in here muttering about incompetent nurses. Apologize!"

His face hardens, "you will let me go immediately!" Your grip tightens. Your face feels like stone. "Apologize!" He struggles; your grip tightens further, "Let go!"

The nurse steps up to your side, "Please, Mr. Smythe, let him go. I don't mind. He's absent-minded about everything except surgery. He's the best there is."

My grip relaxes, but not enough to let him pull free. "I saw how you reacted. I won't tolerate insults, even absent-minded ones. He can learn to treat everyone with courtesy." As you speak, you glare at the doctor, waiting for his apology. Every two seconds, your grip tightens again. "Can't you, Doctor?"

"Nurse? I apologize for my intemperate remarks. I can only say that the initial report was so fantastic that I assumed a mistake was made."

I released him. "Was that so hard, Doctor?" The look he shot at me was answered with a dead stare. He dropped his gaze first. I let it go.

"So, Doctor. Can the stitches come out? I want to take a real shower."

Back on a medical basis, he hemmed and hawed a bit but finally started snapping orders again. Only this time, the nurse wasn't a robot.

That shower felt fabulous.

I was fully mobile from that day forward. A few specialists came by, and one wild-eyed surgeon wanted to open me up again.

"No."

"But..."

"I said, No, doctor. You'll have to make do with the imaging done." Could you believe he pouted? "Doc, you are not nearly cute enough to pull that look off as anything other than a bad joke." He grinned.

"Hey? I wouldn't know until I tried. You mind?"

Actually, I did mind, but when he wasn't being a knife-happy pest, he was downright charming.

"Well, how about this? We've got a project to study human healing and how we can improve it. I think you'd be perfect for it."

Okay, charming or not, there was no way I wanted to be a guinea pig forever. I wanted a contract with a specified period and no weasel wording.

I mean, I'm not a totally self-centered bastard. I could see how this would improve everyone's life. But I wanted...

What did I want?

How did I end up here in the first place?

For that matter, where was here?

I had more questions than answers, and Doctor Charming turned into Mister Hyde. I was already part of the study, and as much as they would have preferred my willing cooperation, they didn't feel constrained by not having it.

I was told cooperation would benefit me, but my insistence on knowing the benefits before I cooperated annoyed them.

"Fine. You've got me." And yes, there were benefits, but the price was too damned high. I took the extra payment out of them by insisting all the support people who worked with me were treated courteously.

The doctors and senior staff may have hated my guts, but the nurses, physical therapists, janitors, and all the rest of the support staff loved me.

Since I wasn't ready to commit murder (yet!) I stuck it out.

They finally made a fatal mistake.

•••

"Damn, he's flatlined."

"Resuscitate?"

"No. We haven't learned anything from our tests this last year that we didn't already know."

"Yes. Doctor."

That first voice was Doctor Charming in Hyde mode.

The second voice was that first nurse that I insisted be treated courteously. I was struck by how much hatred she could put into her last reply. Hyde didn't even notice. Once he left the OR, I let my body rouse to full life again.

"Easy, Nurse Pink. And don't call out. Mr. Hyde just gave me my walking papers."

"You. You're immortal?"

"Seems so, but I'd rather not push it any further. I was clinically dead, yes?"

"Yes, you were. No brain function, no heartbeat, you don't get much deader than that."

"Okay. That means I'm off Hyde's radar. It's time to start figuring out how to bust out of this place. What I want to know is who can we trust and who wants to come along."

We talked while she finished disconnecting me from the test rig. The first thing to go was the biosensors. It wouldn't do for Hyde to stop back in and see activity.

I finally decided that there was no viable way to take anyone with me unless we shut this place down hard—smoking hole in the ground hard.

Depending on the available materials, that was doable... How the hell did I know that?

"I saw you when you were brought in. You were wearing a Navy uniform. A Senior Master Chief and your tunic had an imprint on it. The Trident."

"I was a SEAL? How did I end up here?"

She didn't know. It had been her first day on the job, and she hadn't found out just how tight security was either.

When I came in, I was nearly-dead cube steak. The old saw said, "Not quite dead is a little bit alive." They put me through treatments she'd never seen before, and I survived.

The subsequent years were one experiment after another, trying to figure out the secret of my healing.

By now, I was pretty sure Hyde knew the secret but couldn't quantify it. He made me this way and had enough clout to drag people in like this. Bad combo and not legal under any laws I knew. That made this a black op. Which branch of the government was it?

As long as it wasn't Intel, like the CIA, we had a chance. Shops like the CIA were perfectly willing to kill everyone, and say "what secret hospital? We are an intelligence agency, not the NIH."

Anyone else might have a few scruples left.

Location was another issue, but Nurse Pink (Yes, a code name. I'm not stupid.) could narrow it down to somewhere in the North West. From the mountains, it could have been Idaho or Montana.

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