Hidden

By Robin Wood

Lori, a young mother, struggles for life after years of a mysterious illness. During what appeared to be her last hospital stay before leaving mortality, Joan, her assigned nurse for the night, finds Lori crying out with all the ability of her physically exhausted body, No, not the children, not the children, please, not the children! Joan is quite taken back as she remembers having seen this identical scene two years before. Her own daughter, Bonnie, had cried out in this very same way before she died of an equally mysterious illness. Shocked at the unexplainable similarity, the two women resolve to step out of the norm and discover whats really happening. The truths that unfolded would have been impossible to believe had they not found in the events that followed answers to situations that, against all reason, could have had no other explanation. They stumbled across knowledge of a society hidden from detection. An organized group of people that could enslave, use, and then discard any person they targeted. Lori was being discarded. If she died in a hospital in some normal way, the truth of her slavery would never be disclosed. Nothing short of ready this story is capable of describing the life of a person targeted by this society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450086080

Robin Wood

Robin Wood was a founding editor of CineAction! and author of numerous works, including Personal Views: Explorations in Film (Wayne State University Press, 2006) and Howard Hawks (Wayne State University Press, 2006). He was professor emeritus at York University, Toronto, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema Studies. Barry Keith Grant is a professor in the Department of Communications, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author or editor of many books, including Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films (Wayne State University Press, 2011) and Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Wayne State University Press, 1998) and has served as editor-in-chief of the four-volume Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film.

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Copyright © 2010 by Robin Wood.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

AUTHORS NOTES

INTRODUCTION

This book will appear totally fictional to some and shockingly real to others. Each reader is left to decide for themselves if this book is fact or fiction.

Contained in the pages of this book is but a small sampling of the horrible atrocities inflicted every day upon thousands and thousands of people from coast to coast and in all probability, worldwide.

There are so many people of all ages living lives of such despair and they know not why. These people may be slaves to a well organized community of brutal, cruel people seeking for power, money and the fulfillment of bizarre sexual desires.

Anyone victimized in the ways described in the following pages will have very uncomfortable unexplainable feelings as they read this work. It may arouse in them the most frightening feelings. Please read the entire book. There is hope for you, and you desperately need hope!!

It is for you that this book has been written.

CHAPTER 1

It was a very quiet night on the third floor at St. Luke General Hospital, when suddenly at exactly 1:35 a.m. Joan became aware of someone down the hall to her left crying out. She jumped out of her chair at the centrally located nurse’s station and ran toward the sound. It soon became very apparent that the sound was coming from room 337. That was Lori Anderson’s room. Joan picked up her pace. Lori had been resting peacefully just fifteen minutes before when Joan had made her rounds. What on earth had happened? Joan burst through the door fully expecting from past experience, to see Lori in her usual fetal position experiencing pain from an unknown origin that would measure 12 on a scale from 1 to 10.

Lori was not curled up, it was different this time. Instead of crying out in the agony of personal pain, as had always been the case before, she was just lying there with the most tragic, horrified expression on her face pleading with every fiber of her being. No! Not the children, not the children, please not the children!

The first thought that came to Joan was that Lori was having a nightmare! What other explanation could there be? Joan reached out to shake Lori and wake her from the terrible dream she was suffering from when her arm froze in mid motion. Lori was not asleep; her eyes were wide open and filled with absolute terror. Joan was shocked and could not help but wonder what could possibly have brought on this much panic.

Suddenly it became crystal clear to Joan that Lori was reliving a memory. It had to be. There was nothing in the room that could account for Lori’s display of horror and she was most definitely not asleep. Joan was not sure how she knew with such clarity that Lori was not dreaming but rather remembering something, but she knew. Though the knowledge was born out of instinct, the clarity with which it came into Joan’s mind made it as true as anything she had ever experienced. She fully expected her next thought to reveal exactly what to do next but found she was cut short. Even with a clear knowledge of what Lori was experiencing Joan was floundering in a crisis situation. Her mind searched desperately for direction.

This whole scene has something to do with Lori’s children. What could have happened to Lori’s children that she would be pleading like this? Joan was talking to herself while all the while she was still searching for answers. Joan began vacillating; second guessing why she was so sure about Lori’s cries being a horrible memory and not pain. What made her feel with such certainty that Lori was reliving a memory from her past? Joan’s mind suddenly solidified on a past memory of her own. She had tried to bury that memory in the deepest, darkest chambers of forgetfulness, hoping never to experience even in thought that horrible sight again. The very drama unfolding before her view was a terrifying de-ja-vu. It was not expected and most certainly not wanted, but there it was right in the bed in front of her. There was no denying it, she had seen this before. She stared at Lori in stunned amazement. Why could she not have known this before? She gasped as she realized that this whole scene was so clear and understandable to her now when it had been such a mystery to her the first time she saw this very same thing. It might have been the difference between life and death for Bonnie!

What she had tried so hard to forget for the past two years came flooding back into her mind. Joan’s thoughts raced back to the bedside of her own daughter. She could not count nor did she even want to, the number of times she had witnessed this exact scene of terror.

Bonnie was her oldest child and had suffered severe pain for almost three years before she died at the age of 34 of unknown causes. Everything medically that could be done for her was done; every test, every surgery, each with the expectation that it would finally be the answer, but the pain continued. The last three months of Bonnie’s life she often cried out in this very same way, not for personal relief, but begging for mercy on behalf of her children to some unidentified source, with the same expressions of horror on her face that Joan was again witnessing. Joan’s memory of Bonnie’s tragic last month’s started filling her mind. She remembered everything as though it were yesterday, even the treatment plan the doctors had Bonnie on. She remembered what a mystery her daughter’s sickness had been to the entire hospital staff. They had left no stone unturned and not knowing what was still causing her daughter’s pain they simply had no choice except to treat her symptoms and kept her heavily sedated. The last month of Bonnie’s life her already critical situation got worse. She started crying out more often than ever before and with such terror, pleading for her children. There was no reason for that kind of anxiety over her children. No one was miss-treating them. They were completely safe, staying with her and Adam, their grandparents. The hospital experts had no other choice except to conclude that Bonnie was simply delirious with pain and hallucinating as a result. Her pain medication was then increased until she would fall into a drugged slumber.

Remembering past patients and comparing treatments was not uncommon to Joan. It was often very helpful. There was no reason to reinvent the wheel if a successful treatment from the past could be tried and used again. Joan had worked many years as a full time employee of the hospital; she was a well-trained nurse and followed her training to the letter. She had been involved with Lori’s care ever since her pain became so unbearable that it required hospitalization. Lori had spent the biggest part of the last two years in the hospital and Joan had been the nurse assigned to her often.

As Joan relived in memory Bonnie’s last month, she remembered from past experience that in the crisis situation Lori was currently faced with medication was the treatment of choice.

Lori Anderson was one of the most beautiful women Joan had ever personally known. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, about 5 ft. 7 inches tall with thick blond hair that hung to the middle of her back. She had high cheek bones and a flawless complexion. Her blue eyes were crystal clear. The kind you can look deep into and get lost in. Her clothes always flattered her somewhat slender figure. She walked with head up and shoulders back; always looking more like a model or a cover girl than a mom. There was a natural air about Lori that was electrifying. She could have done a commercial for any health or beauty product and been perfect for the part. The past two years had really taken their toll on Lori physically. As Joan stood at her bed side now this once magnificently beautiful woman was nothing but a shell, clinging to life. Nothing the entire hospital staff had tried made any real difference. They had not been able to restore any vitality or even a small quality of life into to her desperate situation . . . . Life can be so unfair sometimes.

Joan wanted so badly to offer some relief, to somehow minimize Lori’s incredible suffering. Again recalling the all too familiar scene before her, she finally concluded that in Lori’s moment of crisis she needed the same kind of help medically that Bonnie had needed. Instinctively Joan reached into her pocket for the cell phone she carried with her at all times. There was no time to run back to the nurse’s station to call the doctor for permission to increase Lori’s pain meds. She needed help NOW!

Trying to capture control of her run away thoughts, Joan began dialing Dr. West’s private number. Again, her mind retraced the last month of Bonnie’s life. Joan had called Dr. West many times on behalf of her daughter. She knew his number well and found herself a bit amazed that even after all this time she still knew it by heart. Joan had never given much thought until now how often she had made calls to Dr. West during Bonnie’s painful hallucinations about her children. No one understood her hallucinations and medication seemed to be the most merciful answer. Joan was quite taken back at how often and in what doses pain medication had been administered to Bonnie; and suddenly she felt the insanity of repeating the same scenario. The drugs had forced her daughter into drugged silence but it never helped her in any other way. Bonnie’s pleading in behalf of her children continued when the drugs wore off. The hallucinations involving her children became almost non-stop unless she was heavily sedated, right up to the day she died. Joan was now going through the motions of providing that very same relief for Lori.

While Joan’s mind was plagued with thoughts of Bonnie, she knew she was standing at Loris’s bed side. Lori’s situation was critical and because of the incredible similarities and her memories of her own Bonnie, in this moment of crisis Joan’s mind went numb. Then with an instinct born not out of many years of nursing but even more years as a mother, her fingers froze before she dialed the last number. She disengaged herself from a procedure that was like being in auto pilot and forced herself to think clearly. In so doing, she knew that medication would not treat Lori any differently than it had Bonnie. It would simply provide Lori with a pain-free death. She wanted Lori to live. Oh, how she wanted Lori to live! The compassion she felt for Lori’s life surprised her. As a nurse she had seen many people die and though it was never easy, it was an unavoidable part of her job. When all that could be done was done, Joan had always been able to face the inevitable and just go on, but not this time. She just couldn’t let this young woman die! It was too much like watching Bonnie suffer and die all over again.

Ideas began to come into Joan’s mind from heaven only knew where, because her mind had certainly never given birth before to the thoughts that were now forming. Obedient to those thoughts, she followed them trustingly, moving in a direction she could not have guessed even moments before. It made her feel as though she was leaving the familiar beach to swim in uncharted waters; and the waters felt very deep.

Joan quickly arranged with the other nurses working the third floor graveyard shift to cover her duties. Lori could not be left alone. They happily complied with Joan’s request, knowing that no one needed Joan more that night than the woman in 337. Lori Anderson was a name they all knew well. She had been hospitalized on the third floor most of the past two years and always for the very same thing: severe pain. No matter what was done to help her, it never remedied the problem and the hospital would either keep her for extended periods of time or know that if and when they released her to go home she would be back in a very short time. Although everyone felt genuinely sorry for Lori and would have done anything to help her, the fact that nothing ever helped made her the one patient that they all hoped would be assigned to someone else.

Being free to devote the rest of her shift entirely to Lori, Joan’s thoughts began to focus on anything that she might have missed in Lori’s previous hospital stays. She knew she had to do something but wasn’t sure of what that might be. Then with hope that answers would come from somewhere, she looked up and in a whispered prayer sought Devine help.

Joan reached out to touch Lori but suddenly it felt like the wrong thing to do. Joan didn’t understand why, but her thoughts were leading her in a different direction. Trusting her instincts she followed them into the unknown.

Instead of jarring Lori out of her terrified condition, she instead, began to speak to her very quietly; constantly reassuring her that she was in a safe place, and that her children were in a safe place. Even though Joan had no idea where her children really were or if they were safe at all, she seemed to sense that Lori needed the assurance that everything was okay with them.

Lori and Joan had crossed paths in the hospital many times before during Lori’s many admissions but Joan introduced herself again and reassured Lori with all the convincing words she could come up with that she would not leave her side until she no longer felt afraid and in pain. Joan offered words of comfort, suggesting continually that she try to relax. Ever so gradually a visible peace settled over Lori and from all outward appearances she seemed to be falling into a restful sleep. Normally Joan would have let her fall asleep and been thankful that sleep had silenced her anxious condition. But tonight was different. Instead Joan spoke to Lori and said, Are you okay? Is the pain gone? With her eyes still closed and no expression of pain on her face, Lori began to speak, but it was not Lori’s voice. It was a rather odd kind of voice. Like a child trying to act very grown up and manly . . . .

Lori must be in pain or the children will be hurt.

Joan sat straight up, her eyes riveted on Lori. Chills went through her as she asked herself. "Did I just hear what I think I heard? Is Lori some kind of fruit cake? Does she have multiple personalities? The voice Joan heard referred to Lori as a separate individual. Okay! This was just a little more than Joan was able to deal with at the moment. She needed reinforcements!

As fast as she could run, Joan exited Lori’s room and ran to the nurse’s station. I need to see Lori’s chart. Not just this last admission but everything we know about her.

A couple of the other nurses helped Joan gather all the records they had on file pertaining to Lori. Then offering no explanation and with her arms full of files, Joan ran back down the hall to Lori’s room, turning once to call back over her shoulder for someone to get in contact with one of the hospital’s psychiatric doctors and have whoever they could find available call her on her personal cell phone.

As Joan burst through the door to Lori’s room, the odd little voice she had heard just moments before was gone. Instead she found Lori all curled up with her arms covering her head for protection and crying out in a little girl voice for her mommy to help her. There was nothing in the room that should have caused such incredible fear. The TV was not on and Joan was positive no one had entered Lori’s room in her short absence. She had kept a pretty close eye on the comings and goings in the hall from her vantage point at the nurse’s station. Lori was sobbing so hard she could scarcely breathe. Between gasps of air she continued to cry out for her mommy. Most of what she said could not be understood. She was trying so hard to speak, but only parts of words were erupting in a recognizable fashion. The only real discernable message was total terror. The cause of all this terror was an absolute mystery, and all this was happening in a tiny little girl voice. Lori was a full grown women but the voice Joan was now listening to could not possibly have belonged to anyone over three years old.

Joan deposited the volumes of files she was clutching to her chest on the chair next to the bed. Lori, it’s me, your nurse. What on earth are you afraid of? What is happening to you? You are not in any danger. I am not going to hurt you nor will I let anyone else hurt you. Joan repeated this same message in every conceivable way she could come up with, always trying to keep it simple enough for a very young child to understand. Joan was addressing Lori but seemed to be talking to someone that was of pre-school age. She spent ten maybe fifteen minutes trying to bring comfort to a very frightened hysterical little girl, but no matter what Joan said or how she said it, nothing was offering any relief. Lori had gone from pleading for her children to becoming one. This was sheer madness.

Joan felt a great need to try to remember what the odd little manly voice had said. Even though his voice had been very startling to Joan, he had not seemed hysterical like this little girl voice. He had just been making a statement. He had said something about Lori’s pain being necessary or her children would get hurt. It didn’t make any sense; of