Extracted - Chapter 16 – Please Don’t Hate Me – Part 2 of 2

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 16 – Please Don’t Hate Me – Part 2 of 2

 

Doctor Montcliff watched the video monitor carefully.  The room she was looking at had tables stretched lengthwise from nearly one end to the other, dividing it in two.  Only a small space at each end allowed someone to walk from one side to the other.  With everything ready, she gave the command.  “Let them in.”

At nearly the same time, a door on each side of the room opened.  It was a moment before she saw anything, then Stephen walked slowly into the room, looking around.  A few seconds later, a young girl poked her head through the other doorway, took one look at the large boy in the room, then pulled her head back again.  She saw Stephen notice the girl and he stood in his half, staring at the opposite doorway.  A few moments later, Nancy walked into her half of the room.

“You’re…me.” Stephen said.

“And you’re me,” Nancy replied, unable to take her eyes off the body that should be hers.

Twelve year old Nancy, in Stephen’s big body, simply didn’t know what to think.  She didn’t know it, but neither did seventeen year old Stephen in Nancy’s little body.

“My God, you look so big,” Nancy suddenly said.  “I didn’t know I was that big.”

“I didn’t realize how small I was, compared to how big I am now,” Stephen told her.

“Yeah,” Nancy replied.  “It’s been hard for me to get used to.”

“Me too,” Stephen admitted.  “It is kind of cool though to be able to reach things that I couldn’t before.”

“And I can’t anymore,” Nancy told him.  “It gets frustrating sometimes.”

“Yeah.  I’m sure.”

“I guess you finally got to see your real mother and father?” Nancy asked.

“Finally!” Stephen replied.  “But…they didn’t want to believe it’s really me.  I think they do now.  I hope they do now.”

“Oh wow!  I’m so sorry.  At least mine finally said they knew for sure.”

“Mine did too, sort of, but not for a long time.  When they didn’t seem to want me, I cried and cried.  It was worse I think than waking up in this weird new body.”

“At least they finally believed you,” Nancy reminded him.

“Yeah.  At least they said they did.  You have no idea how relieved I was.”

“I’ll bet,” Nancy replied.

Stephen looked around the room.  “Why do they have it fixed so we can’t even touch each other?”

“I don’t know.  It seems dumb.”

“Yeah, it is.  Wait a minute.”  He walked to the end of the room, went around the table, then walked toward Nancy.

Nancy smiled and held out her hand.  “Hi, I’m Stephen,” she said.

“And I’m Nancy,” Stephen told her as he shook her hand.  “Except that now I’m Nancy.”

“And I’m Stephen,” Stephen finished.  “Do you think anyone would believe how weird this is?”

“Probably not,” Nancy replied.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t know.  I guess they just wanted us to see each other.”

“Probably,” Stephen agreed.

“I know we should probably have a lot of things to talk about, but right now, I can’t think of any.”

“Me too.  So what do we do?”

Nancy, being mentally the older one, went to the door and opened it.  “What now?” she asked the agent on the other side.  “How long do we have to stay here?”

In another room, watching the TV monitor, Montcliff snorted.  “Well, that was quick.”

 

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There were only three, but they all thought that just the three of them was enough.  The President of the United States thought that only the three of them were enough as well.  He was the one who had brought them together and tasked them with coming up with the answers.

From the start, the president had given them almost no information at all.  Almost nothing.  He had only gotten them all together and said to look into the situation and figure out what was going on, and to especially assess if there was a danger to national security or not.  One of them, Daniel Curmett, was used to the president asking about issues pertaining to national security since he was the president’s National Security Advisor.  The other two men were simply…experts.

The only information they were given were the names of two children who had been abducted, the names of their parents, and the fact that one had been in a New York hospital and the other in a hospital in Philadelphia.  Beyond that, they had contact information for the Deputy Director of the FBI who was overseeing this project personally.

After speaking with the Deputy Director, they soon had the names of all the major people who had already been involved in whatever this was.  They also had the name of the two psychiatrists who were supposed to be working with the abducted kids, although one of them had been dropped by the family.

Since the president needed this to be handled as fast as possible, the three investigators requested that both families involved be brought to some place where they could easily talk to them all.  None of them expected the meetings to take place at a nice resort in the Catskill mountains, but none of them minded that fact either.

The three government experts had met a number of times to discuss how they wanted to go about looking into whatever this problem might be.  Finally, even though most of the players were already being gathered at the Catskills resort for them, all three investigators decided it would be better if they started with the hospitals where, other than the abductions, the beginnings of the real problems seemed to arise…whatever it was that the problems might be.  They were purposely not asking what the exact problem was so they could come to their own conclusions.  They needed to talk soon with the police and FBI who had been investigating the abductions, but evidently those people were already at the Catskill resort.  They would get to them after they investigated things at the hospitals.

There was only one person who they thought should have been in the Catskills along with everyone else, but wasn’t.  That was a psychiatrist by the name of Christopher Faucet.  They didn’t know why he had been excluded, but they were determined to talk to everyone.  Since he was in Philadelphia, they decided they would get to him right after they finished with the Philadelphia hospital.  After that, they would head to the resort in the mountains.

They started at the hospital in New York, spending a good part of the entire morning there talking with doctors, nurses, and even the cleaning people.  Anyone at all who might have had contact with the kids.  They learned little that concerned them though.  There were some things that were medically concerning for the girl who had been abducted, but nothing that they considered to be that outrageous.

And then they started talking to the people in the Philadelphia hospital.  It was there that the obvious connection between the two cases really came to light.  In New York, they had been told that the young girl had for some reason seemed to think she was a boy named Stephen Marsh.  At the Philadelphia hospital, they learned that the abducted boy, Stephen Marsh, now thought he was really a young girl named Nancy Stiller.  That fact alone struck all of them as strange.  Really strange.  The two hospitals were in different states.  Hours from each other by car.

Finally, done with the two hospitals, they stopped at the behavioral center where Doctor Faucet had his office.  The patient he was working with just then was politely but firmly asked to leave, and the three experts went in and sat down.

“Doctor Faucet,” one of them said.  “My name is Daniel Curmett, and I’m the president’s National Security Advisor.”

Faucet was more than a bit surprised.  “I thought you looked vaguely familiar,” he admitted.

Curmett nodded towards the man on his left.  “This is Doctor Holfstrom, professor of Theoretical Physics at MIT.”

The psychiatrist was startled at that one.  “Physics?”

Curmett glanced to his right.  “And this is Doctor Blake, Chief Neurologist at John Hopkins.”

That one impressed Faucet almost as much as having the National Security Advisor sitting right in his office, right in front of him.  “What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked.

“You recently had a patient named Stephen Marsh.  We need to know everything you can tell us about his case.”

“I had a patient by that name,” Faucet told them.  “The operative word being had.  The family didn’t seem happy with what I told them Stephen’s problem was, and they decided to seek help elsewhere.”

“What were Stephen’s symptoms exactly?” Blake asked.

Faucet shook his head.  “You know as well as I do that I can’t discuss that information, even if that patient is no longer an active patient.”

Instead of answering, Curmett opened his briefcase and pulled out a piece of paper.  He passed it across the desk to Faucet.  “That’s a warrant authorizing you to give us whatever we want, and to tell us whatever we want.”

Faucett quicky looked at the paper.  Of course these men would come equipped with warrants for what they needed.  He looked over to Blake.  “Stephen Marsh, for some unknown reason, firmly believed he was a little girl named Nancy something.  I’d have to check my notes to be sure.”

“Check!” Holfstrom told him.  “It’s important.”

Reluctantly, Faucet dug his case notes out and went through them.  “Here it is.  He thought his name was Nancy Stiller and that his father was a U.S. congressman.  Stephen somehow invented a wealth of information about being this Nancy persona.  The mother claimed his fantasy was extremely advanced, but I only met with Stephen the once.  Still, he was more than a bit interesting, I can assure you of that.”

Outwardly, none of the experts acted like the information was of interest to them at all, but all three of them grew a bit more concerned.

“And your diagnosis?” Blake asked.

“Easy!” Faucet told them.  “Multiple Personality Disorder.  Absolutely, without a doubt.”

“Without a doubt?”

Faucet shook his head.  “There’s nothing else it can be.  In this case though, the original personality was being completely squashed in favor of the assumed personality, and the original persona hadn’t remanifested itself at all.  Usually, an alternate personality is a defense mechanism created by the brain.  Due to the boy being abducted when the new personality manifested, the diagnosis only makes sense.  I don’t know what the boy went through during that abduction to cause this situation.  As I said, I only got to meet with him once, but I have no doubt it had to be horrifying, especially since the boy was obviously older, and quite large.  Muscular.  I believe they said he played football on the high school team.”

“Doctor,” Blake said.  “Have you come across any other cases like his to compare it to?”

“Not exactly like this, but there was an FBI agent in here with them once who claimed there was another similar case.  That was the day the Marshes walked out, and I never saw them again.  But I doubt that other case was exactly the same.  And even if it was, what else could it be but a form of multiple personality?”

“But you know of no cases with these exact symptoms.”

“Not exact, but similar enough.  The primary persona is squashed, and the secondary persona has control.  That’s all this is.”

“I see,” Blake said, looking to the other men with him.  The doctor was right.  It did make sense.  It was just all the other facts that they now knew that threw it all into confusion.  “Any other questions?” he asked his colleagues.

“None from me,” Curmett replied.

“Me either Holfstrom agreed.”

“Uh…Doctor Holfstrom,” Faucet said quickly before they got up.  “While you’re here.”

“Yes?”

“Since you’re into physics, is there any chance I can take advantage of the situation and pick your brain about something?”

“About physics?” Holfstrom asked.

“Believe it or not, yes.”

“What’s that?”

“I recently got an invitation to attend a discussion by a group of…PhDs.  Mostly in engineering.”

“Engineering PhDs,” Holfstrom said, suddenly more interested.  “This sounds more serious than I thought.”

“Probably not,” Fauct admitted.  “But what I’d like to know is, are you aware of any energy situation where that energy can maintain some kind of memory?”

“Memory?  I’m not sure I understand?”

“Our group discusses the properties of ghosts.  And in case you never noticed, ghosts all exhibit some of the same characteristics all over the world.  One of those primary characteristics is memory.  For instance, they always remember who they used to be in real life.  However, ghosts have no physical substance at all.  None.  So how can they have memory if there’s no physical brain?  As far as I’m aware, there is only matter and energy, and since ghosts have no physical state, they must be some form of energy…unless you’re aware of a state that’s not matter and not energy.  So, since ghosts must be energy of some sort, is it possible for energy to have memory?”

“Doctor,” Holfstrom said, “I can assure you that I know of no state other than matter and energy, and while I am aware of there being some physical materials that can develop types of shape memory if you will, I am not aware of any kind of energy that can maintain any kind of memory at all.  I’m sorry.  As to ghosts, it’s not a subject I pay much attention to.”

Doctor Faucet nodded.  “Thank you.  It’s quite a conundrum for us.  I enjoy my ghost hunting excursions.  They can be quite intriguing.  I’m hoping I can convince the group to accompany me on my next little trip.  I’m sure they would love to see what kind of spirits I’ve been able to dig up.”

Back in the car, Holfstrom said one simple word.  “Ghosts?”

“Indeed!” Curmett replied.

“I’m ready to get to this resort wherever it is and get a good drink,” Blake added.

“Indeed!” Curmett said again, this time with far more enthusiasm.