Chapter Ten
Tony left Lucky after he handed him a 10-sack of White Castle hamburgers. "A little gut-rot might do you some good, Spencer. Put some meat on those bones."
"Ooooo," said Lucky, opening the sack and sniffing the genuine onion burger aroma.
After eating and burping about twelve times, Lucky fell asleep, and Tony left to tend another round of patients with sore throats and cut-up fingers.
Lucky's eyes moved under his fluttering
eyelids, and he began dreaming of a time and a place that he'd rather forget.
*** He was back at the compound where Faison held him prisoner. Lucky was perpetually on edge because Faison was always surprising him with his actions, but never offered any explanations. He'd been there for over six months, but Faison had yet to answer a single question. Lucky had developed a bad habit of biting his nails and cuticles until they bled, and he had loads of nervous energy - he had to keep moving or doing something to take his mind off of the continual uncertainty of his life.
Lucky had a million questions, but zero answers. If he could just figure out why he was there, why Faison chose to do what he did when he did it. Lights would be turned off for no apparent reason and for odd lengths of time. Beatings would be administered when he was trying his best to cooperate, and sometimes he'd get away scott-free with sassing Faison or the guards. There just was absolutely no rhyme or reason to his life anymore, no cause and effect.
One night, the guards roughly snatched Lucky out of his bed while he was in the middle of a very deep sleep. Lucky automatically kicked and flailed at his assailants, but they slapped him hard and dragged him down a brightly-lit hallway to a room of Lucky's worst nightmares. The room was bright and totally white. It had the disinfectant reek of a hospital OR. The guards threw him down onto a cold, metal table and fastened his arms, legs, and neck into tight restraints. One guard laughed and patted him on the shoulder, and then they left him alone in the room for what seemed to be half an hour. Lucky just stared up into the bright, fluorescent lights and trembled with fear. This hadn't happened to him before. What will Faison do? Why am I here? Will they hurt or kill me? Lucky tried to turn his head to look around the room, but the restraint on his neck cut into his skin and burned his flesh. Lucky began crying.
Faison entered the room as Lucky was crying. He bent over Lucky and leered at him as his dirty, gray hair hanged down in Lucky's face. Lucky tried to turn away, but it was useless.
"Don't you remember your appointment with destiny?" chuckled Faison. "We've had many discussions about it."
Lucky tried over and over to comprehend what Faison intimated. What is he talking about? Why can't I remember? Ohmigosh. What was that? Lucky heard the sound of metal on cold metal, a repetitive clinking noise.
Faison brought a metal tray to the side of Lucky's face. In his peripheral vision, Lucky could see what looked like instruments of torture lined up and ready for immediate use - scalpels, drills, screwdrivers and who knows what. Faison laughed evilly at Lucky's dismay.
"A few more preparations, Master Spencer," he sneered.
In an adjoining room, Lucky heard what he thought were drilling noises and a high pitched whirring whine.
Lucky's eyes widened as he recalled that Marathon Man movie with Dustin Hoffman. He'd watched it on television one night last year with his dad. Dustin Hoffman was being questioned by an evil man, but gave no answers. The evil man turned on a drill and began drilling holes into Dustin's teeth - with no anesthetic.
Lucky began shaking and crying in earnest when he heard the door to the room swing open and the clanking of the metal tray.
Faison leered above his face again and said with an unnaturally wide grin, "Maybe next time, Lucky. I'm not ready just yet." Faison unfastened the restraints holding Lucky down and pushed him from the table and onto the floor.
"Take him back to his room," Faison ordered the guards.
Later, in his room, one of the guards
offered Lucky the drug in the syringe to "ease his worry." Lucky gratefully
accepted. ***
Lucky sat up in his bed at the free clinic and screamed his head off. Tony came racing in to see Lucky scrambling up on the bed and trying to escape through the wall. Lucky kept trying to climb away and slapped at the wall and bed repeatedly.
"Let me go, leave me alone!" he kept shouting as he turned toward Tony with wild, unseeing eyes.
Tony was alarmed and a bit horrified at the sight of Lucky. What has happened to him? he thought frantically. Why is he behaving like this?
Tony slowly approached Lucky and calmly said, "Lucky, it's Tony. You're in the free-clinic, remember?" Tony reached out to Lucky and took his arm, gently pulling Lucky down. Lucky passively sat down on the bed.
All of a sudden, a breathless woman interrupted them yelling, "My father, he's having a heart attack! Please! Come quickly, he's dying!"
Tony frowned worriedly with indecision as he looked at Lucky, but instinct took over, and he raced out to the front room to begin saving an old man in mortal distress.
~*~*~*~
When Tony returned to Lucky after stabilizing the old man and watching the ambulance pull away to transport the man to GH, he was dismayed to find an empty bed with a dripping IV soaking the exposed sheets.
~*~*~*~
"Bobbie!" Nurse Spencer turned around from her files at the nurse's station to look at the angry, red face of Tony Jones.
"Tony," she replied coolly. "What do you want?"
"What I want is for you to give a damn about your family, and your nephew Lucky in particular," he stated vigorously. "Now he's missing. The kid has pneumonia and no place to call home. He left before I could even write him a prescription."
"Tony, I told you that I will not accept Lucky's behavior! I don't need that in my life right now," Bobbie explained as if to a toddler.
"That's a cop-out, and you know it. You have plenty of time for your jailbird lover. You shack up with a convicted felon, but you won't give a troubled kid the time of day. What happened to your priorities, Bobbie?"
"And what about your priorities?" Bobbie asked archly.
"Aw, forget it," Tony said as he threw up his hands in defeat. He turned and walked out of General Hospital.