Winner The Crystal Awards 2016, Best Multimedia Story (3d Place).
A spinster doctor rents her spare room to a brain-damaged patient who doesn't know he is a former undercover agent targeted for execution by a powerful criminal.
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Two days after Jean's surgery, which was the fourth day after the rescue raid, Jean telephoned Dan Kavanaugh to schedule the "favor" Dan had promised him. Dan tried to postpone for a few more days, arguing that Jean needed more time to recover. Jean was adamant, however, and Kavanaugh caved.
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The day dragged painfully by as Jean fidgeted in his bed, unable to concentrate well enough even to read The Pirate's Flaming Heart. Many pages of Jean's sketchpad had flown like miniature white basketballs across the room, to bounce off the rim of the corner trashcan and roll into a pile on the floor. He couldn't hold an image steady in his mind long enough to create a drawing that pleased him.
Jean was a balloon full of air, into which more air was being pumped with every tick of the clock. He was ready to explode by the time Hector arrived with The Diversion.
As happened every day, Hector arrived with a tall rolling cart bearing meal trays for all the patient rooms on that floor of the hospital. Hector normally worked 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but today he was working 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., by special arrangement with another orderly.
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Hector's tall rolling cart rattled off the elevator, in front of the nurses' station, and stopped outside room 2114. The walls of the cart blocked the view of Jean's doorway from the nurses' station. No one saw Hector slide a pair of crutches from the bottom shelf of the cart and slip them through Jean's door. Then, as Hector left the cart in place and began delivering trays one or two at a time to various rooms up and down the hall, Jean had time to hobble carefully out of his room and around the first corner of the corridor, with no one the wiser.
Jean, with his left leg in a cast from hip to ankle, and his left arm in a sling, maneuvered painfully with his crutches. The left crutch was almost no help at all, because of the painful bullet wound still healing in his left shoulder. So, he relied, mostly, on his right arm to keep himself upright and moving, albeit slowly, to the elevator farthest from the nurses' station.
He trusted Hector to close his door and to cover for him with the nurses. Jean had left pillows under the covers of his bed so that, with the lights turned down, it would appear at a quick glance that Jean was asleep, not to be disturbed. He would have to be back before 11 p.m., because someone would be coming then to administer his next scheduled medications.
