Disaster Among the Heavens, Don E Peavy Sr [reading rainbow books txt] 📗

distress were all it took to melt his anger and to call forth his oath as a physician – a medical healer. All of his life he had dreamed of becoming a doctor. He had studied hard and had avoided the marches and protests that were blanketing America. Sacrifices had been made -- he had worked as a waiter, a cook, a taxi driver, an orderly, a nurse’s aide, and many other menial tasks as he struggled through college, then medical school, then an internship. After medical school he received a residency at the county hospital. It was at that moment he entered the rolls of physicians and with it membership in that hallowed sphere of the Black middle class. His medical license was registered with the county clerk’s office – a declaration to the world that he was a legitimate healer of humans. The struggle was over. He had reached his goal. Paradoxically, he became aware of emptiness deep within him – a deep tear in his soul which neither his marriage nor his church attendance could fill. As Black Moses has decreed, sometimes we humans find ourselves in a sad state of affairs like being in quicksand – the more “we wiggle, the deeper we sink.” Likewise, the more Diggs tried to fill that void in his life, with alcohol and pills and extramarital affairs, the wider and deeper the hole became. Perhaps that too worked on him and convinced him to respond to the Assistant’s cry for help.
Maybe it was that emptiness which prevented him from cursing the assistant and slamming down the telephone. Perhaps that is why he found himself not dismissing the assistant but explaining that he could not take him to the hospital. The assistant acknowledged his understanding and stated he did not wish to go to a hospital. After writing down the Assistant’s address, he grabbed his medical bag and went to what became his patient. Along the way, Diggs felt heavier. Could it be that the emptiness inside of him was being filled? Even now he could not answer that question satisfactorily. One thing he did know, at least he now had reason to hope.
Diggs smiled as he recalled his brief but epochal telephone conversation with the assistant and for the first time, wondered how the assistant had gotten his name and number. Strange that he had not thought about this before. With the onslaught of adrenaline, and perhaps even excitement, Diggs rushed to the Assistant’s apartment with no thought of how or why he had been contacted.
Now, in cool reflection, Diggs began to see how anger had given way to excitement and then reckless abandonment. He recalled that first meeting and how, as life oozed out of the Assistant’s body, the wounded rebel retained the fiery tone in which he issued commands as if he were a general on the battlefield. The assistant ordered the Doctor to go by the hospital where a few of his men would assist him in obtaining an ambulance. His apartment was now surrounded by police and he could leave it only as a corpse.
“What about the medical examiner?” Diggs remembered asking at the time.
“Don’t worry,” murmured the assistant through bouts of coughing and wheezing. “I have men handling him. You just get to the emergency room of the hospital. My men will meet you outside.”
It took a long time for the assistant to get out his words. He coughed and wheezed and gagged -- making all the sounds of one caught in the throes of death and struggling to get free. The assistant explained to the Doctor his plan to take a drug that would mimic death; a plan which Diggs deemed too risky and so he tried to dissuade the assistant by arguing the danger of losing consciousness at a time when his body was already in shock. A wry laugh was the Assistant’s only response. The Doctor realized the vanity of his argument and gave up.
He remembered arriving at the hospital and parking his car in an emergency room physician parking space. He got out of his car just as an ambulance pulled up. The driver told him to get in. The driver said nothing more, just drove like a man possessed to the apartment of the Assistant. Again, Diggs questioned why he neither knew nor asked whether the driver and the other attendant in the ambulance were the official technicians or whether they had hijacked the ambulance.
Why had he not asked more questions? What motivated him to go so far so quickly without a single question or demand for explanation? Such actions were so contrary to the caution with which he lived his life and the detachment he had toward the “Black movement.” Even now Diggs refused to push himself for answers. A strange excitement silenced him then and now as he continued his journey down memory lane.
During the journey from the hospital to the Assistant’s apartment, the technician who was not driving took the Doctor’s hospital identification badge and tore out his picture and within a few minutes had fashioned an identification card for the doctor as assistant medical examiner. The man, whose name Diggs still did not know, then rehearsed with the Doctor what to say. Diggs could not refrain from being impressed by their level of efficiency and organization. They were very methodical for criminals, he thought to himself.
“Doc, hear me good,” instructed the technician. “We gonna get da man outta there one way or anotha.” The technician raised a large weapon which the Doctor could not identify.
“You got all of five minutes,” continued the technician as the ambulance turned into the apartment complex. “I mean five real minutes. I’m not talking CP time here!” The technician looked Diggs squarely in the eyes with a look that sent a cold chill throughout the doctor’s body.
The ambulance was waved through the police barricade and came to a stop outside the Assistant’s apartment. Without hesitation, Diggs jumped out, showed his badge to two officers, then rushed into the apartment.
An officer met Diggs at the door and informed him that a police officer had been shot and had already been rushed to the hospital. He then pointed to where the assistant lay on the floor, face down. Diggs gave the body a perfunctory examination and announced the assistant dead. The Doctor smiled as he recalled this event – he learned later that the assistant had made good on his plan and had taken a soporific drug to put him into a deathlike state. Ironically, noted Diggs, that strategy not only helped the assistant to escape the vice grip which the police had on him, it saved his life by slowing down his heart rate and consequently his loss of blood.
After declaring the assistant dead, Diggs told the ranking officer at the scene that the medical examiner wanted to do the autopsy before rigormorphis set in so that he could determine if the assistant was under the influence of any drugs known to be used by members of foreign espionage services. The officer in charge gave him permission to remove the body and the Doctor signalled the two technicians who brought in the stretcher and within minutes were back in the ambulance.
As he left the apartment, the Doctor saw a photographer posed to take his picture. He tried to make a sudden turn to shield his face but was unsuccessful. The flash blinded him, causing him to rub his eyes enough to be able to see the form attached to a clipboard that one of the officers handed to him. Diggs signed the form without reading it while the officer held it.
He handed the officer the pen and released it before the officer could take hold of it. The pen fell to the ground; though Diggs did not notice it for he was inside the ambulance by the time the officer picked up the pen and looked up to see the emergency vehicle speed away.
“Here,” said the passenger technician. He handed The Doctor a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat that gushed from his forehead.
Diggs complied then went to work on his patient who was regaining consciousness. The assistant coughed and gagged and vomited. Diggs, with the assistance of the technician, cleaned him up. Then, making use of the few items in his bag and what he could find in the ambulance, the Doctor struggled to stop the bleeding and to patch up the Assistant, who had been shot three times, as best he could. One of the bullets was lodged in his abdomen and the Doctor was able to remove it. Another bullet was too near his heart to try to remove in the moving ambulance, and the other had gone through the Assistant’s left arm.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the airport, the Doctor had completed the operation on the stomach and sutured it. He repaired the arm on the airplane and gave another look at the chest wound.
The Doctor needed an x-ray to be sure of the location of the bullet, though he could estimate it based on the path it had cut into the Assistant’s flesh. However, Diggs was aware that the bullet could have hit a bone and ricocheted through the body and could be anywhere. If he was to remove it, he had to be for sure. For the moment, he decided to patch up the injury as best he could until they arrived at their location. Perhaps there would be a hospital nearby.
The Doctor did not know the destination of the airplane. He had been so absorbed by the demands of his patient’s condition that he had given little or no thought to the matter. Hence his state of shock when he realized they were at NORAD Headquarters and were mounting an assault against what appeared to be an impervious structure. Then...
Diggs’ mind went blank. He could not recall what happened once they arrived at the base. Though he tried and tried, his mind refused to recall the data. What? Could it be true? Had the government learned some new and advanced technology from the aliens who crashed at Roswell that allowed them to zap a person’s memory? The flash? Remember the flash? He recalled the man at the apartment taking his picture with a flash.
Soon reason took hold of the bewildered Doctor and he dismissed the flash as the source of his memory loss. The flash happened before they ever got to Colorado and NORAD. Wait! That’s it! He remembered. The Air Force General telephoned him a few hours ago and he heard a flash in the background. That’s it! The government had zapped him through the telephone and now he could not remember how they had taken over NORAD.
This startling conclusion shook Diggs from his journey down memory lane and returned him to the now and the urgency of his situation. He reached over and shook Fredda’s shoulder. She mumbled something and hit at his hand as if it were a fly. He tried again. She repeated her action. Finally, he gave up and returned to his thoughts.
. . .

Fredda felt