Busy Bees

Chapter 1 – PrologueSaturday, May 24th, 2014 –––––––– My doctor is giving me a day pass for good behavior. I took a bullet to the left leg on my last assignment as a Special Agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service that shattered bone and severely damaged nerves. After two surgeries to remove the bullet and some bone fragments and to piece together my femur with rods and screws, I’m healing but not nearly fast enough for my liking. My leg has little capability to bear weight and feeling any sensation at all in it is hit or miss. Doctor Welle, my surgeon, tells me the feeling will come back in due time. I’ve started the rehab work but I hate it... absolutely hate it. I feel so useless and incapable when I can’t do an exercise. But, I also hate being confined to a hospital bed for most of the day. Rehabbing well is my permanent ticket out of the hospital and back to my life. Today, I’m told, is a little reward for the work I’ve been able to put in so far. It sure doesn’t hurt that the outing is with the county Sheriff and that the medical staff knows I’ll be in capable hands! Mel said she was going to take me on a date somewhere special. I don’t care where we go as long as I get to spend time with her and the location doesn’t involve hospital food! ### “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.” I looked up at Mel as she assisted me from a wheelchair into the passenger seat of her sister’s car. “Dana, you’re no trouble. You were shot, for Pete’s sake! Thank heaven it wasn’t worse than it is!” “Well, what it is, is pretty bad...” “I didn’t mean...” She looked at me with such a look of sorrow as she went on the defensive that I took pity on her and decided not to take my frustration out on her, especially on our first real date. “I’m just glad to get out of rehab torture for a bit.” “How long until you’re out of the hospital for more than an outing?” She started the car. “Soon, I think. The bones are set and they’ve started healing. There’s just a lot of nerve damage that’s keeping me from having full capabilities with my left leg, right now.” I stopped talking because she actually already knew all of that. I just wasn’t sure how to broach the real topic at hand; us. “Where will you go when you’re released from the hospital?” “Well, probably back to Cleveland to stay while my rehab continues. Then, I’ll have to be medically evaluated to continue in my normal duty assignment...” She glanced over at me and then quickly turned her gaze back to the road. “And, if you can’t? Do your normal assignment, I mean?” I sighed. “I don’t know.” Mel grew quiet and I got lost in my own thoughts as she drove me wherever it was that she was taking me. “It’s a surprise,” she’d said. I thought about the Chappell mission that had just ended for me as an investigation but that might be with me physically for the rest of my life. I thought about how the jurisdiction battles between my employer the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service, and both the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the courtroom battles over that case might rage for years and I thought about what the end of the actual ground case meant for any possible relationship I might have with Mel. Mel drew me out of my reverie and we talked about the case for a few minutes. After a time, I asked her, “So, where are we going, anyway?” “Actually, we’re here,” she said. She pulled the car into a lot past a teenager waving an orange traffic flag. There were rows of cars ahead of us. She drove toward the front of the lot and parked near an entrance gate. My view of the goings on was blocked by a crowd of people waiting to enter. “I present to you, the Morelville Mushroom Festival!” She smiled and her eyes beamed her mirth. I remembered a statement she had made to me about “not staying around for the mushroom festival” in one of her police interrogation rooms during our inauspicious first meeting and I laughed so hard, tears formed in my eyes. Mel parked, retrieved the wheelchair from the trunk and then maneuvered me out of the car. We bypassed the main gate and entered through a side gate reserved for the handicapped. I hated that but I resolved to make the best of it. My resolve, however, would be short lived.