C3 THE EXTRACTION

A L E X

I stretched tiredly in the back seat of my Lincoln Navigator, lulled by the movement of the car. I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep. Just ten minutes would do, at least for now. As I closed my them, I was plagued with visions of a pain-filled Aretha. She had not been able to sleep at all last night. She had tossed and turned, holding her stomach and groaning in pain. Even the strong pain killers given to her by the doctor had not worked. I felt helpless as I had sat beside her. I couldn't even hold her close anymore as her body temperature was through the roof.

Her fever had broken sometime in the early hours of the morning and she had finally stopped clutching her stomach, but the worst was not over. As doe-eyed as I was and as much as I wanted it to be so, I couldn't hide away from the fact anymore.

My wife was dying.

The truth grabbed me by the hair and slapped me in the face. That was when the hysteria came. I lurched out of our room, the same room we had spent many nights making love and planning for the future. I didn't know when I stumbled into junior's room, a room that had never housed a child. A child that was killing my wife.

I knew what rage meant at that moment, or maybe for one hour. I started with the wooden cot fit for a king's child. It sat grand and majestic, mocking me with its emptiness. I didn''t know where I got a hammer from, but I rammed it into it until it was but a wooden pile of crap on the carpeted floor. Next, I went for the fittings on the wall and wrenched all of them off. Nothing escaped my wrath, nothing was spared. By the time I was done, the room was in a mess, and that eased my heart, but only for a few minutes.

After that, the pain came back in full force. Worse than before.

The car jerked to a stop, breaking me out of my reverie.

"Boss, we have a situation upfront."

I groaned and opened my eyes to see chaos. A short distance ahead of us a crowd of people had gathered, but try as much as I craned my neck, I couldn't see anything. I checked my time. I only had ten minutes to spare. I couldn't not make the meeting on time.

"Stay!" I said to Eric, and got down from the car.

I had only gone four paces forward when I stopped and looked down at the clothes I was wearing. Blue tailored pinstriped trouser suit with gold cufflinks worn with pure leather crocodile loafers. I looked around the neighborhood we had stopped and thought better of my hair-brained idea of going to check out what the problem was.

As I still stood, pondering over what to do, an ambulance arrived and the crowd opened up to allow them carry the stretcher through. I caught a glimpse of a woman lying on the ground, her head twisted in an awkward angle, and then blood, so much blood, it put Aretha's problem to shame. And then the crowd was closing in on her once again.

It didn't take long before the police came next, blaring their sirens to my consternation. They cordoned off the area around the woman.

I waited. I don't know why. It wasn't like I hadn't seen blood before, but just watching that woman lying inert on the ground brought something to life inside of me. To my left was a long haulage trailer. All the huge containers on it were on the ground and their contents had been spilled all over the ground. Oil. That made passing this route impossible.

I turned and walked back to my car, but something caught my attention and I stopped and turned back. Underneath the trailer, a woman's purse lay. A few meters beside it lay some other items scattered in the dirt, obviously spilled from it. I knew the purse belonged to the woman who was lying bleeding out on the ground.

I didn't want to think about it because if I did, I probably wouldn't have rushed towards the trailer. I saw a part where the police hadn't cordoned off, and I slid underneath. I knelt down and assessed what lay scattered around on the dirt. A lipstick, her social security card and a few other knick knacks women put in their purses. I picked them all up and put them back into her purse.

As I turned, ready to walk away with her purse, something else caught my eyes, something that lay a few paces away. A picture. I bent and crawled towards it, intent on just picking it and shoving it inside the purse when I froze. Within the lines and pixels of the picture, lay a familiar face that stared back up at me.

My face.

I looked in wonder and shock at it.

How did my picture get here?

What was it doing lying in the dirt beneath a trailer?

Unless. . .

The wheels in my mind began to spin. I spun round and looked over to where the crowd had begun to thin out around the woman. The paramedics had put her on a stretcher and had her neck supported by a brace.The fact that she wasn't dead didn't mean she was going to last till the next morning.

I shook my head to rid it of my morbid thoughts and began the calculations from the distance where she lay to where the trailer stood.

Once I was done, I came to the conclusion that my picture was inside the woman's purse and because of the impact of the collision with the trailer, it flew out and landed a few meters from it.

That was the only plausible reason I could see and think of.

I knew what I had to do.

I pocketed my picture, grabbed her purse from the ground where I had dropped it, and got out from under the trailer. I intercepted the ambulance as they were about closing the door.

"Hi! My name is Alexander Moore." I brought out my company ID card and showed it to the woman. "She's my secretary." I pointed to the woman on the stretcher.

The lie had jumped easily to my lips.

The woman glanced briefly at me from top to bottom and then she looked at me again, this time slower. "What did you say your name was?"

My brows squeezed together. "Moore. Alex Moore."

The woman took a step back and looked behind me. "Where are your bodyguards?"

"My who?" What was she mouthing off about?

"You mean you don't move around with bodyguards?" She looked at my ID card still in her hands and then looked up at me. A look of reverence jumped into her eyes. "It's really you, Mr. Alexander Moore of Raften pharmaceuticals. I'm so pleased to meet you, you don't know how much of an honor it is to see you in the flesh, and you're such a simple man as well."

I didn't know what I would do if she continued her blabbering.

Her colleague joined us, his brows squeezed together. "What's the hold up about?"

I collected my ID card back from the woman and faced the man. "My secretary." I bobbed my head towards the back of the ambulance.

I saw the respect instantly jump into his eyes as he looked me up and down. "You can follow us behind, sir, we're going to Almond hospital on 23, Creek road, it's actually not far from here."

I nodded. I briefly remembered seeing a hospital on the drive here.

I fast-walked to my car. "Change of plans, Eric, follow that ambulance."

"But, boss, what about your meeting?" Eric glanced at me from the rear view mirror. I could see the shock lining his eyes.

"I'll call Kelly to cancel. This is important."

I saw the struggle in his eyes to continue arguing, but he chose the wise route and didn't. "As you wish, boss."

I nodded to myself and sank back into the plush leather seats as Eric made a U-turn and began following the ambulance closely. I had begun to feel the effect of not sleeping at all.

Aretha always said. . .

I shook my head to stop myself from thinking of her. Instead, I focused on why a recent picture of mine, the one that had been taken during the Tokyo seminar of the scientists, was doing in the purse of a woman I had never set my eyes on before.

I had a very good memory, one that helped me get to the level I was at today. I racked my brain to see if she had been among the protocol team that welcomed us last year, but I came up empty.

Then maybe an overzealous woman that came for an interview as a lab assistant a month ago?

Naah! Couldn't be. How could she even have gotten my picture in the first place?

From one of the many magazines in the lobby on which my face was splayed on. Yeah, but the picture I currently had in my possession was a real picture, not cut out from a magazine.

I gave up when all of the options I thought off fell through.

After about twenty minutes of moving behind the ambulance, the hospital loomed ahead, big and daunting. I gritted my teeth in frustration. I had enough of hospitals to last me a lifetime. I watched as the two men came down from the ambulance and opened the door at the back. Three nurses poured out through the hospital doors to assist them, and they wheeled the unresponsive woman on the stretcher inside.

I gave them ten minutes to find her an available room, hook her up to the IV and take her vitals before I came down from the car. I stretched, arching my back and sighing in pleasure as a bone popped into place in my waist.

It was show time.

I strolled to the front desk and pasted on my 'showman' smile. The lady behind it blushed and immediately directed me to the emergency ward. There, I encountered another administrative officer who seemed immune to my smile. She, however, directed me to a doctor who explained to me the situation with the woman that had just been brought in.

"You say she's your staff, Mr. . ."

"Moore, Alexander Moore, CEO of Raften Pharmaceuticals."

Once again, respect danced into his eyes and he became more aware of his words.

"I'm afraid your staff doesn't look to be in good health. She's got blunt head trauma caused by the head-on collision when she hit the ground. The reason why she's not yet dead is because she was wearing a helmet. The accident would definitely have caused her other bodily harm which I haven't yet ascertained. For now, she's not yet out of the woods so we're observing her."

"Please, see you give her an all-around-the-clock observation. I'll pay for all and any bills accrued. Matter of fact, I'll leave a check before I go that will cover all the expenses, and if there's any more, this is my card, don't hesitate to call me."

The doctor took the card from me and nodded. I don't know why I did it, I didn't know the woman from Adam but I was curious about how she had gotten my picture.

Call it fate or stupidity, but I didn't want her to die.

The doctor said he would call and update me in the evening about her situation, if anything changed.

I left the hospital feeling better than I had felt ever since Aretha was diagnosed with womb cancer.