Beep. Beep. Beep, go the monitors.
I open one eye.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I'm feeling way better now. I wonder... I open my other eye.
There are people around.
No one is tasing me. I breathe a sigh of relief.
A nurse is talking to me. Things are looking up. I'm in a hospital!
If I could, I would have done my happy dance. However, I'm hooked up to all kinds of wires. It's like I'm swimming in spaghetti.
She has a soft voice. Soothing. Sorta pixie like.
I smile at her, she is a cute one. Slender, blond hair.
After a while, having been poked and prodded by the medical establishment and declared awake, it was time to chat with law enforcement.
They were a matched pair. A hard case detective and a beat cop. They start grilling me and me being just not that bright, am telling the truth.
"So, they put you on a plane, a private plane, fed you weed infused gin, flew you to a secret lab..." I don't think the beat cop believed me.
We got into the nitty gritty of it. My story stayed the same, retelling it over and over.
They left thinking I had my bell rang. Which, of course was true, I couldn't deny that. I had spilled my guts, told them everything. Well, almost everything. I really didn't see where the smoking hot bad ass chick in boots who had introduced me to a whole new level of blow job, even without a happy ending, was worth mentioning.
They left promising to check my story.
I finally got a moment and asked for a phone.
I was about to make a call when the hospital's billing lady stopped by for a nice chat. We got to fill out a bunch of paperwork. I didn't have my wallet, but it turns out hospitals have computers, so they knew who I was and more importantly, who was my insurance provider.
I signed on the bottom line, quality medical care doesn't come cheap.
Finally! I call my office I get Dorothy on the line.
"Hey, it's me" I said.
"Holly shit, where are you? Michael is pissed, you blew off a ton of customers!" She exclaimed.
"I'm in the hospital" I say to our hold music.
Michael comes on. "What the hell Bob!"
"I'm in the hospital Michael." I said, I can hear him deflate.
"I'm in DC, I was mugged". Hey, after the looks the cops gave me, I figured the truth wouldn't be my best opening.
The next morning the Doctor Tribe visited with me. After the poking and prodding, which is apparently the way Doctors say hello, we got down to brass tacks. Some stuff was torn, but nothing broken. A couple of strains and a whole bunch of black and blue for decorations. I figured I got off easy.
The cops came back in the afternoon. The TSA had found my "abandoned" luggage and as a precaution they had blown it up. The CCTV didn't catch anything, but the system was notoriously glitchy, or so they said.
The biggest problem they had with my story was there no record of a private plane's departure around that time. Air Traffic Control had no such a plane in their system; not on the ground, not in the air, no plane here and no plane there, the FAA doesn't see the plane anywhere...
So, nope, the cops didn't believe a single word of it.
I used to think being in a hospitals was boring, now, I found it relaxing. They "released" me the next morning. Michael had Dorothy book my flight home.
What wasn't relaxing was being in the D.C. airport. I stuck to the walls. I watched my back and I avoided cute gals...period. After a very long flight I landed on the west coast. Good to be home. Bad to be in another airport.
Michael picked me up and hauled me to my house. He told me to take my time, get well, and be at work the next Monday.
I hobbled into my empty house. Every time I walk in it hits me. Empty. She isn't here anymore. I sighed and dragged myself up to my bedroom and collapse on the bed. Fuck, what a week!
***********
A couple of weeks have gone by. I know what happened, but there is no evidence, except the lingering pains and bruising. The cops back in D.C. have written me off as a whack job. I have no leads, and frankly nothing make any sense. It is really starting to drive me a bit crazy.
Why? Why me? Oh boy did I have a bunch of questions...
My work was suffering, I sure as hell wasn't going anywhere near an airport. Michael was pissed that I had canceled my trips that week. I just couldn't do airports.
***********
It's been about a month. Michael fired me today. I can't blame him, it's part of the job to travel, and I'm just not up to it. I was grateful he carried me through the month. It really helped.
I'm starting to question my own sanity. My friends have pretty much written me off. My only companion is an ally cat that I leave opened tuna cans for.
**************
It's December. This far north, the days are pretty short, it's been raining for the last two months. I have some scratch in the bank. I sold the old place, downsized. I have turned into a detective. I sift and filter the internet. I am looking for reports of other men who have also claimed to have been abducted from airports.
I have found 28 police reports that mostly match my experience. I dove deeper into the internet. We are kinda like the folks abducted by aliens I guess, but those folks talk about it. Eventually I ran across a blog of another "abductee".
I sent an email to the blogger. In minutes he responded, yes he wanted to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to him. 5 minutes later we were chatting on the phone.
It was a breakthrough for me. I wanted to meet him face to face. The good news was that he lived in Portland, just south of me, and only about a 3 hour drive.
************
I arrived at a fancy condo building in Portland's Pearl District. On street parking was a bitch. I finally found a space about 10 blocks away and wandered back through the Portland mist.