Page 61 of G8
G8 recognized that voice and the music that followed afterwards before someone began talking about their weight loss. Someone nearby was watching TV. Watching that Mayberry show about the sheriff and his one deputy that always made him laugh.
Then it hit him. A TV? Where was he that they had a TV?
For a long, dreadful moment G8 wondered if he’d been dreaming all this time about escaping these labs. If he’d fantasized about discovering the real world that existed outside.
More heartbreaking, did Ingrid really exist? Or had he conjured her up in his imagination?
He took a slow, deep breath. The rancid odor of alcohol almost burned the insides of his nostrils, and the truth slugged his gut with an iron fist. He’d dreamt it all. He was back inside the labs. He’d never left. Worse, he was inside the hospital wing where apparently they were doing more tests on him.
Everything he thought he’d lived through had been no more than his imagination fueled by all the television shows and movies he and the others had grown up watching. Reminders of the world as it had been and was no more.
The hardest part was knowing there was no Ingrid. That the woman he’d fallen in love with never existed. He’d conjured her up out of whole cloth, and with that realization he felt an emptiness, a deep and hollow emptiness, within himself.
He didn’t realize he was crying until the TV suddenly shut off. Something moist and soft wiped his face. He smelled water, then a voice gently shushed him.
“Hey, hey, hey. You’re going to be fine. You did great! The doctors are proud of you, and so am I and the others.”
G8 hesitated. It sounded so much like Ingrid’s voice—but it couldn’t be.
“G8? Open your eyes, sweetheart. Can you open your eyes for me?”
Turning his head toward the voice, he lifted his eyelids to find a face that shouldn’t exist smiling at him. “Ing-Ingrid?”
“Hey, there!” Her smile widened. “How ya feelin’, big guy?”
He tried to lift a hand to touch her to convince himself she was real, but the IV line running from the back of his hand kept him from reaching her. Seeing he was having trouble, Ingrid bent down to where he was able to caress her cheek. “Ingrid? You’re real?”
Her snort was a warm puff across his knuckles. “About as real as you can get.”
He kept his hand to her chin as he glanced around. “Where am I?”
“In the hospital, dummy. Where else would you be?” she teased.
“I was shot?” He met her blue gaze. “Did I hear the EMS guys correctly? I got shot?”
She sat up, breaking his connection with her, but she slid her own hand inside his and gave his fingers a squeeze. “Yes. You got shot in the back, right above the hip. With all the fighting you were doing, you were lucky you didn’t bleed out. You came mighty close, though.” The smile returned. “The doctors are astonished you’ve been able to heal as quickly as you are. But I remember reading in your dossiers about that being one of your abilities. Yours and the others’. It’s probably what saved you.”
“What about K8 and the babies?”
“They’re doing great. Once the two K8s reconnected, we learned a lot about what had been going on. Oh! And here’s an odd tidbit. The sheriff found a police band radio inside that house.”
G8 gave her a confused look. “What’s that?”
“It’s like a…an old CB radio, except people are able to listen to the police and fire department and all talk on it. You learned about CB radios from watchingSmokey and the Banditmovies, didn’t you?”
G8 grinned. “Ten-four, good buddy. So what you’re saying is they overheard everything Sheriff Biggs and the deputies said over the radio?”
“We think so. Sheriff Biggs and the district attorney, a woman named Irene Black, are having a field day. They’re preparing to bring charges up against that Dorsey woman for kidnapping and a whole slew of other things.”
“What about…Dr. Farenthold?”
“The sheriff told me the man was killed by a bullet from the gun one of those men had in their possession. Which, by the way, they weren’t allowed to own in the first place since all three were prior felons.”
“And the guy P8 killed? The guy I slammed into the dirt?”
Ingrid bowed her head for a moment. The overhead ceiling lamp cast a glow over her light locks. Over her shoulder, he noticed the pillow and blanket lying on the short divan against the far wall. She’d been staying with him during his recovery.
When she looked back up at him, she’d grown more serious. “The man you attacked, he’s alive, but he’s here in the hospital with a cracked skull and some internal bruising. I talked to Mrs. Black, and she’s going to try to have you cleared on the grounds of self-defense. That, and the fact that Sheriff Biggs had appointed you a deputy and claimed you were following protocol. P8’s charges are a little more serious.”
