Sacred Flesh (24 page)

“I don’t need to open it. I know exactly what this is, don’t you?” he asks.

“You’re kidding, you really think so but how?”

“Come on, we need to get this upstairs now!” he says as they both turn and race out the door.

“Isn’t this handicapped parking we could get a ticket,” Antone says as they hurry out of the car and toward the hospital doors.

“I don’t care about that, I don’t have time to drive around looking for a parking spot, think about what we’re doing here I think I’ll be forgiven for parking here,” Belo says.

They race through the front doors then turn left and almost run down the hallway toward the chapel, “It’s right up here,” Belo tells him.

As they get closer they notice a man and a woman leaving the chapel. He hurries into the room and looks around, no one is here, quickly he spies the clock and then the cross, “Over here!” he shouts as they both hurry over to the wall. Standing there they both look up.

“There’s the clock and there’s the cross,” Belo says pointing.

“It should be to the right of the cross which is right there, right where that empty hook is,” he says as they both turn and look at each other.

“Come on let’s go. We’re too late!” Belo says as he turns and runs toward the door.

“Where are we going?” Antone asks as he races after him.

They both stop in the middle of the empty hallway and quickly look around. “The elevator doors just closed someone’s going up,” Belo says.

“So what?”

“Those two people we just saw leaving the chapel, a man and a woman that could be them, they took it! They either are in that elevator going up or they’re out in the parking lot getting in their car. I’ll go this way, you run out to the parking lot and see if they’re leaving and follow them, you got your keys?” Belo asks.

“Yeah, let’s go,” he says as they race in opposite directions, Antone hurries out the front doors while Belo runs over to the elevators.

“It’s them I know it,” he says to himself while standing in front of the elevator waiting for it to open. Discreetly, he moves his hand over his jacket pocket feeling for his gun.

“Your brother is very lucky to have the two of you working so hard for him,” the doctor says as they stand in the waiting room.

“Are we in time?” Eric asks.

“Yes, I think so though not by much a few more hours and we would have lost him. Now the only question is if there is enough of the DNA sample to work with. I think there is but I caution you we have at times had an issue with the amount.”

“It’s all we have it has to be enough,” Eric tells him.

“Try not to worry too much I have a good feeling about this. I think we’ll be okay with what we have but I had to tell you just in case it does present an issue. Listen, it won’t take long, they’re getting him ready now. We’ll know in a little while if it worked or not. Please try to relax and I’ll be back shortly with good news I hope.”

“Okay,” Jill says as the doctor leaves the waiting room.

“My heart’s beating a million times a second I can’t relax,” Eric says while walking around the small room.

“I just can’t believe we found the sample like that. Why in the world did she put it up there?”

“I bet it was some kind of a drop. We weren’t the ones who were supposed to find it,” Eric says.

“Which means somebody’s going be real unhappy,” Jill says.

“Somebody who might be in the hospital right now looking for it,” he says.

“I‘ll make a call and have someone watch the chapel for anything odd. We don’t really know who we’d be looking for, or what they are capable of doing,” Jill says.

“It doesn’t matter to me what they do. I just want Roland to live and get this all over with.”

“That scares me about the amount issue I mean everything we’ve gone through and what if it’s not enough? What if it’s not enough to save Roland and what if there isn’t any left to test? “She asks.

“Then it wasn’t meant to be I guess. There’s nothing more we could do,” Eric says.

“If there’s enough left we’ll have it test and see what we find, then at least we’ll know for sure whose sample it is that Jim Dunbar hid,” Jill says.

“Why test it? We’ll know right away where it came from: if it’s Jim Dunbar’s DNA then Roland lives, if it’s not then—”

“Then what? If it’s the sacred sample, if it
is
the DNA of Christ then what, your brother dies? How could that happen? Wouldn’t the DNA of Christ be capable of saving Roland?” she asks.

“I don’t know right now if it could or not, I guess it could He was known to perform miracles bringing people back from the dead and all that but all I know right now is that Roland is either receiving the DNA of Christ or Jim Dunbar and we will either be going to a party or a funnel in the near future,” Eric says while plopping down in one of the chairs.

“Okay,” she says sitting down in the chair next to him, “I guess we wait and wonder.”

“I can’t sit still. I’m going down to the vending machine. You want anything to drink?” He asks.

Belo walks down the hospital hallway in a hurry trying not to draw attention but already a few staff members have asked if they could help him find something, I must look distressed he thinks trying not to look distressed yet needing to make up time they could be anywhere in any room this is a wild goose chase but it’s all I have to go with. Oh to be so close to the sample, we paid for it. It belongs to us it was put there for us who do they think they are to come along a few moments before and steal everything, everything we have worked for twenty one years. That sample is here somewhere and I can’t leave without it I can’t go back to Rome empty handed what will I say? Oh, but we got real close almost had it in our hands oh well, maybe in the next 2000 years we’ll get another opportunity. He stops in the middle of the hallway needing to catch his breath and think for a second. He looks at the sign ‘restricted area’ in large red letters over the glass doors What is this place he wonders while reaching out and pulling on the locked door and then he sees him. He sees him carrying two cans of soda into the waiting room. It’s him! That’s the man that was walking out of the chapel just before I got there. This is it, the sample is here!

“Here you go, they were out of diet,” he says handing her the can of soda.

“That’s okay, thanks,” she says taking the can and opening it.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Eric asks.

“No, nothing,” she tells him after taking a sip of her drink.

“What’s that?” Eric says as they react to the noise coming from the hallway they rush out of the room to discover three men fighting near the glass door.

“Jerry!” she shouts and runs toward the men, two of whom appear to be wrestling the one to the ground.

“He has a gun, watch it, get the gun, get the gun!” one of the men yell.

After a short struggle Belo lays face down on the floor handcuffed from behind.

“I came as soon as you called,” he says turning to Jill.

“I’m not used to seeing you in action like that,” Jill says.

“Bring back memories of your days on the job?” he says smiling.

“Sure,” she says then turning back to Eric she says, “Eric, I don’t believe you’ve ever meet my son Jerry, he’s a police officer, followed in my footsteps I guess you could say,” she says with a proud smile, (so proud and so happy she is that he reminds her of his father, the man she met twenty one years ago, the man that came to America to talk Jim Dunbar into working for the Church, the man she married and loved and mourned upon his passing a few years ago.)

“Do you know this guy? He was trying to break the door down and when he saw us he pulled his gun,” Jerry says.

“I’m not positive but I think I have a good idea who he is or at least who he’s working for” Jill tells him.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Jerry’s police partner says.

“I’m with you,” Jerry says, “Okay Mom you going to be alright here?”

“We’re fine, just waiting for the doctor to come back,” Jill says.

“Well, there you go, that looks like a doctor,” Jerry says nodding toward the end of the hallway and the approaching figure.

“It is, it is the doctor,” Jill says.

“Is he smiling?” Eric asks, “This better be good news.”

They wait as the doctor walks up to them, "Well, it looks like Roland is going to be just fine, it worked! The procedure went exactly as we’d hoped. We need to keep him here for a few days to get him back to 100% but he should be fine. We are very lucky there was just enough source DNA to work with; we had to use it all.”

“That means,” Jill says turning toward Eric.

“That means there isn’t any left to test. Now we’ll never know for sure whose DNA

sample it was,” Eric says with a look of great disappointment and sadness.

“Wait a minute, think about it, maybe we
do
know,” Jill says.