Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (46 page)

When they were at less than 3000 feet, the pilot pulled Mary’s cord and she seemed to float up into the air while they continued their descent. Two seconds later, their parachutes also opened. They were safe.

W
hen he opened his eyes for the first time, he could hardly keep his heavy eyelids open for even a few seconds. He seemed to be in a hospital room, or at least that was what he wanted.

In addition to the lack of windows through which sunlight could enter, it seemed to be some unearthly hour also based on the little noise that could be heard nearby. The square clock hanging on one of the walls struck twelve.
Midnight or midday?

It was a rather strange room. The white walls were the only similarity it had to the hospitals he was familiar with. If it was indeed one of them, it was very special.

He wasn’t in any pain to begin with; in fact he couldn’t feel any muscle in his body. He was lying on the bed with a couple of pillows under his back, supporting his upper body. He guessed that the medical staff had decided to keep his body upright to prevent any blood clots from forming in his head due to the blows he had received.

The room was in slight darkness and only the faint light of a table lamp was shining in the distance.

To his right was a wooden armchair with a cushioned backrest and on top of that was a wooden blanket that was reluctant to fall on the floor. Obviously somebody had been catching up on their beauty sleep while he was recuperating.

He tried to get up but when he turned around, he felt incredibly intense pain in the knee which had been beaten. After a few seconds, the pain showed no sign of going away, and instead became sharper and intolerable. He carefully put his hands under the blanket and slid them over his stomach, hip, thigh… until he patted his knee. What he felt then was something truly horrific. His knee was extremely inflamed, something which couldn’t be normal; not even a broken bone could cause such an unusual swelling.

Scared, he turned to the door and shouted for help, but nobody could hear him. The suffering he was going through was becoming unbearable.

He thought that he was going to faint when he discovered a small electronic device, rectangular in shape and with a singular red button, lying on the table at the side of his bed. In between groans, he pressed it as hard as he could, praying that somebody would come as quickly as possible.

The doors opened automatically when they detected the presence of somebody, and a middle-aged nurse entered the room. Her eyes widened when she saw the man they had brought in a few days ago writhing in agony on his bed. She took out a syringe from the inside pocket of her uniform as quickly as she could and using the intravenous opening that he had lodged in one of his arms, she injected the whitish liquid.

He immediately stopped twisting around like a lunatic. The pain faded away until it finally left his body.

Barely a few seconds had passed since the pains first began, but he thought he had been suffering for over half an hour.

His eyes closely studied the woman who was in front of him. He didn’t have much time because they were starting to close and it was increasingly difficult for him to keep them open. He tried to speak, but it was impossible for him to get a word out. The last thing he remembered was the nurse starting to use a damp cloth to wipe away the cold sweat that had collected on his forehead.

At the same time and less than two-thirds of a mile away, five spectacular cars, completely armored and with sophisticated security systems, drove through the rigorous controls which restricted access to the site. The U.S. flags they carried tied to a small mast fixed to the front hood clearly indicated that some dignitary from the U.S. government was visiting them, but it didn’t prevent them from having to show the relevant identification.

In single file, they slowly followed a security car which showed them the way they had to go. The convoy included a black all-terrain vehicle with a long-range machine gun hidden in the rear part.

Eventually they went into one of the hangars, hidden from public view. The five cars parked en masse, one beside the other and just in front of the person who was waiting for them. He was wearing a smart suit with a number of awards and medals pinned on his chest.

Six individuals, also in suits, got out of the cars and walked slowly towards their host. One of them couldn’t resist asking a question as he drew closer and stretched out his hand, looking obviously concerned.

“Is it safe?”

T
he next day, when James woke up, a beam of light shone onto the headboard and partially lit up the room. The clock on the wall was now circular in shape and struck nine in the morning. It seemed as if there was nothing in the room that was familiar to him, this one was much larger, cozier and better lit. He was starting to wonder if everything he thought he had seen had been anything more than a strange nightmare and a product of his imagination, something that happened very often in states of high fever.

He slipped his hand inside the sheets and patted his thigh, moving down to his knee. He was shocked to find that it was in a normal state and not at all swollen.

It must have been a nightmare.

He realized that, just like in his dream, his upper body was slightly tilted on the bed, supported on two soft pillows. The layout of the room was similar; there was even a small wooden armchair with a cushioned backrest which was slightly creased. This time his own clothes were resting on top of it, although it still seemed as if someone had been using it for a period of time. Even the fluorescent lighting, the bedside lamps and the automatic glass doors gave him reason to doubt whether what he had seen had been real or a product of his imagination.

He tried to get up by bending his torso slightly forward, forcing his abdominal muscles to work harder. Incredibly, his right arm had completely recovered and two scabs where there had before been two deep holes were the only consequences of his lethal encounter with the snake.

When he was ready to get out of bed, the doors opened and a man of around forty entered, in a white coat and a stethoscope hanging around his neck.

James started to feel a touch nervous when he saw him. “Who are you? Where am I? How did I get to this hospital?”

The man just glanced at him, took out a folder from the pocket at the foot of his bed and removed a blank sheet.

“Answer me!” he cried.

The doctor continued to ignore his questions and started to scrawl something illegible on the observation sheet he had previously taken out. James was tired of waiting and, cursing under his breath, he tried to get up, but the doctor dramatically rushed to stop him.

“Please don’t get up. I am still unsure as to how your body has responded to treatment.”

James frowned. “Treatment? What treatment?”

The doctor looked confused. He decided to explain it himself. “When you were admitted here, your vital signs were extremely low. The snake that bit you injected a large amount of venom which acted very quickly on your system. We still don’t know why, but we believe that you became slightly more nervous than normal after the bite and this facilitated the spread of venom within your body.”

How could I not have been nervous! They wanted to kill us!
he thought.

“The snake that bit you had a powerful venom which causes tissue necrosis. You’re really lucky that you don’t know basic first aid. If you had applied a tourniquet, we would have had to amputate your right arm.”

James looked at him angrily. The doctor didn’t know that he had known exactly what to do and it wasn’t a result of his ignorance. He had been able to recognize and classify the snake from the outset and had known the steps to take. Even so, he preferred to not say anything and let him continue with his explanations.

“Anyway, you did something wrong. You shouldn’t have made a cut in the wound to suck out the poison. Hermolytic or proteolytic venoms destroy the blood and skin tissue. When the wound is opened, we’re helping the venom to act sooner and much more powerfully.”

“And what about that treatment you mentioned before?”

“Well, we’ve put you through the usual detoxification process. The soldiers who brought you here gave you first aid to try and prolong your life. They injected you with a general antidote, applied electric shocks around the bite with an electroshock gun, and gave you citric acid, which helps to build defenses and immunity in an organism. You were somewhat better when you got here, but we applied the exact antivenom required for that snake and treated you with anti-ophidic serum. After the last analysis, we can confirm that there is no trace of venom in your body. You’re clean.”

James thanked him for saving his life and tried to stand up again.

“Please wait! Don’t stand up yet!”

“Why? Didn’t you just say I’m better?”

The doctor looked at him, surprised. “But you still don’t know?”

“Doctor, you’re making me nervous. Is there something I should know?”

“Last night you had an attack. From what the nurse told me, she found you writhing about on the bed, tightly holding your right knee.”

James looked at him puzzled. Until then he had thought that everything had been a nightmare and the large quantity of drugs he had consumed had made him confuse fantasy and reality.

So it did happen!

The doctor spoke again. “The soldiers who brought you here told us that when you were delirious, you were complaining constantly about your right arm and knee. When we first took a look, it seemed to be slightly inflamed and we decided to perform a MRI on it. The result was alarming. You had four very advanced cases of tendonitis with a great chance of them breaking. The goose’s foot was completely affected…”

“Goose’s foot? What’s that?”

“It’s the name given to the insertion of the conjoined tendons of the sartorius, gracilis and semitendinosus muscles onto the front of the tibia, because it looks similar to a bird’s foot. All three were very inflamed, not to mention the poor state your patellar ligament was in.”

“Did they operate?”

“Absolutely not. That is a very drastic solution and one which the vast majority of doctors try to avoid. Normally, many of the specialists who saw you would suggest that the operation was the only viable option. However, the first thing any traumatologist should do in a case like this is look for a conservative treatment that would yield good results. We’re trying to help the affected tendons to recover and are currently waiting for the results.”

“So, what have they done?”

“Prolotherapy, Mr. Oldrich. Have you ever heard of it?”

“Never,” he replied.

The doctor gave a weak smile. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. Prolotherapy is not widely known, but in the last few years it has become hugely important thanks to its extraordinary results in reconstructing ligaments. It is based on the injection of an irritant solution which stimulates the growth of strong and healthy tissues. These injections promote the formation of collagen and elastic fibers, which are stronger than those originally present, restoring normal stability and eliminating pain in the long-term. Many traumatologists are unaware of its existence and the only option they give their patients is to visit the operating theater, even when there are many other solutions which are less aggressive and have better results.”

“Is that why my knee was swollen?”

“Exactly! Prolotherapy involves injecting the patient with a solution made from glucose, glycerin and phenol directly at the site of the problem. This procedure needs to be repeated between three and six times. However, we have developed a much more effective formula in our laboratory which can achieve astonishing results after just one application.”

“So, why was I in so much pain last night?”

The doctor seemed to hesitate for a few seconds but he explained. “I definitely owe you an apology. It’s fair to say that prolotherapy causes slight pain which usually subsides after three or four days, along with inflammation, which is what actually cures the patient. That being said, it is more of an ache, similar to when you have a tooth removed. However, in order to carry out the technique, we must first treat the patient for heavy metal toxicity, just in case there is any. The site director insisted that you be rehabilitated as soon as possible and we assumed you weren’t intoxicated. We made a mistake. Anyway, I don’t believe that toxicity together with prolotherapy were the causes of your pain. I’m inclined to think it was the large quantity of drugs that present in your system which reacted with one another and caused the problem.”

James lay down and rested his back against the headboard. Then he reflected upon what he had just heard. “Did you say the site director? Where am I?”

The doctor hesitated for a few seconds, it seemed as if he regretted saying those words. “I’m sorry, Mr. Oldrich, but I’m not authorized to answer that question.”

“What aren’t you authorized to say?” asked James, noticeably lowered his voice.

Just them the automatic doors opened and a familiar face walked through them; it was Richard. James turned white and hardly knew how to react, while Richard walked over and gave him a big hug.

“Don’t get up. I don’t know how your knee is.”

James hadn’t even heard him. He stood up and tightly hugged his friend, while several tears poured down his cheek. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry… That bitch deceived me.”

“Don’t worry, but I owe you one. Look at the mark you left on my head!”

The doors opened again. The doctor had just left the room after seeing that James could stand up without any difficulty. The treatment had been a success.

“That bitch,” he said again, “deceived me and showed me proof that you… I’d never have done that to you if…”

Richard smiled. Everything had turned out alright in the end.

James hugged him again. He felt guilty every time he thought about the fate his friend could have had.
Is he alive?
he had often wondered. Now he was much calmer, a great weight had been lifted. “But… now that I come to think of it, what were you doing working for the Pentagon?”