Interlude 1

Interlude 1

 

            She looked out the large bay window and noticed that it had stopped raining.  There was just a hint of the sun trying to pick through the otherwise overcast sky.  Reaching down, she selected another Crayon and continued to work on her coloring book.  Just a flourish of red and she smiled widely with pleasure at her completed artwork.  Picking up her coloring book, she stood and ran towards the center of the room where her mother and the doctor were talking.

            “Look at what I made for you, mommy,” she said with exuberance.

            Gasping her mother took the lingerie catalog from her daughter, “This is not appropriate for you to be looking at!”  Her mother exclaimed.

            “Don’t admonish her,” the doctor said calmly, “it is a healthy release for someone with her condition.”  Looking at her, he smiled and said, “That was a very good choice of color.  Why don’t you go color us another one?”

            “Ok!  Thank you!”  She said and turned to go back to the table.

            The doctor continued to talk to her mother.  “You have to understand that while she may have the mind of a young child; her body is that of a young adult.  But regardless, even with the medication helping to curb her behavioral problems, raising a girl with Down’s syndrome is never going to be easy.”

            She liked the doctor but she hated taking her medication.  She was always so tired.  Sitting back at her table in the large bay window, she folded her arms on the small desk and lay her head down.  Perhaps just a small nap while the sun poked through the clouds would make feel a little more energetic.

 

 

 

            Widow woke with a start and looked at the dimly lit clock on the night stand next to her bed.  It read 4:30am.  ‘What the fuck was that dream all about,’ she thought.  “That’s what I get for eating Mexican food so late at night,” she mumbled to herself.  Reaching into the drawer of her night stand, Widow pulled out a bottle of liquid antacid.  Her stomach felt like a pot of boiling hot sauce mixed with broken glass; yet another side effect of eating so late at night.  Sitting up, she grabbed her SmartTab off the night stand and pulled up the map of the water treatment plant.

            Getting in looked fairly easy but Widow knew better.  Water treatment facilities always had more security than they let on to casual outside observation.  She fully expected cameras, motion detectors, and a multitude of guards once she got inside.  Christian Hallard would meet her on the east side of the fence and they would continue their infiltration from there.  She frowned at the thought of having to do this with him at her side.  It was quite obvious that he was not really cut out for clandestine work of any kind.  He would definitely be a hindrance to her getting in undetected but he had insisted that he come along and he had refused to give up the data chip with the antidote.  She would just have to make do with 98.6 degree chain around her neck.

            Feeling the antacid finally start to take effect, she set the SmartTab back down and curled back up in bed.  Yawning, she pulled the covers up around her shoulders.  ‘No more ridiculous dreams tonight,” she thought.