Chapter 16

The Secret: Everything Revealed

Nancy had come into Frank’s bedroom and crawled into bed with him. She was about to tell him her story. She said it would be long and it would be painful for her.

“My parents were both orphans. I had a little brother. My parents and Bobby were my only relatives. Dad was very smart and like you, he made a lot of money in the computer field. Mom was well-educated in the biological sciences, but they decided when I was born that she would stop working and stay home to be with their children. I think they went overboard to give Bobby and I a normal upbringing with both parents around since neither of them had that when they grew up. I call him my little brother, but he was only eighteen months younger than me and by the time I was ten he was much taller than me.”

 “I did well in school and finished high school when I was fifteen. Two years later I had a degree in biochemistry. I was driving home from school just before finals and the car in front of me lost control and had a violent crash. There were injured children and some fatalities and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to help and got covered in blood, but I was clueless. When the ambulance showed up a female paramedic thanked me and asked me to stand back. She knew I didn’t know what to do, but she did. She was wonderful, knowing what to do. I think that I was probably killing the children trying to help, but she knew what to do and was saving them. I never knew her name and never saw her again but that was when I knew what I would do after I finished my exams.”

“It had worried Dad because it was long past the deadlines for applying to any advanced programs when I came home and said I wanted to study medicine. He told me it was too late and I would have to wait a year. I went to the university where I wanted to study medicine and asked to see the registrar. The secretary had the same problem with my age you did and to this day I don’t know why I could walk into that busy man’s office and be shown right in but the secretary opened the door and said to her boss there was a little girl wished to see him and his next appointment was late showing up. He said to send me in. When I entered he welcomed me but said the meeting would have to be cut short when his next appointment arrived. I told him bluntly I wanted to study medicine at his school. He was warm and nice but suggested I talk to my high school guidance counsellor. That was when I realized he thought I was much younger than my mature seventeen years."

 She laughed at herself and Frank thought, well so far no tears.

"I got my back up and said no, I knew I was late. I was sorry for that, but I was seventeen years old. I wanted to start in two weeks. I had an honours degree in biochemistry and a GPA of 4.0. I could tell I had his attention at this point. He said, “You are only seventeen  years old?” I told him yes. He then asked what school I attended and asked to see some ID. The registrar of my old school turned out to be a classmate of his, and he asked if it would be OK if he called him to confirm my story. There was a knock at the door and the secretary said his next appointment was here. He said she should ask him to wait and to clear some of his other appointments.”

He called the other registrar and after some brief reminiscing; he asked about me. They were both loud and I could hear the entire conversation. The other registrar asked why he was asking, and he was told I was in his office applying for medical school too late. My old registrar said not to let me out of the office without admitting me to the program. He said to work out the logistics and not to lose me.

“She is cute, funny, doesn’t look her age, and she is also brilliant. One of the rare ones.”

“Tom, she can hear every word you are saying.”

“Hi, April. So you have finally decided on your future. What helped you decide?”

The registrar rolled his eyes and handed me the phone. I talked briefly with him about the accident. He knew both of my parents because of an endowment my dad had given to the school. Then he said to let him talk to the registrar.

When he got his phone back, he heard his friend repeat. 

“If there was anything I could have done to keep her at our school I would have done it. Don’t let her out of your office without giving her what she wants. She is honest and anything she tells you about her academics is true. I will forward her marks to you for your records.”

“Well, April you are an amazing young lady. Unfortunately, I received some very sad news this morning. One of the young men we had admitted to our medical program was killed yesterday in an auto accident. Sadly for him and his family, there is an opening, and I am prepared to offer it to you. Are you still interested?”

“Yes.”

“I will speak to my secretary, and she will help you get organized. If you have questions after that please wait, and we will squeeze you in. There is one problem, and that is with your age. You aren’t old enough to sign legal documents. While your time in a hospital is very limited in the first year, it does occur and you will need to remind whoever it affects that you are too young to sign, and they will make arrangements to take care of that. Please keep in touch with me. You are a very interesting person.”

So two weeks later I started medical school at age seventeen.

“Nancy, I am not sure you noticed, but you used the name April.”

“Please hold me tightly Frank.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“My name is not Nancy; it is April.”

“So what happened next April? I am sorry that seems so strange to call you April.”

“It is strange for me too. It has been a long time since I have heard my real name.”

“I did four years in medical school. I wasn’t smart enough to skip any grades there and then an internship and then a specialty in traumatic surgery.”

She suddenly cried on Frank’s shoulder. He said,

“The next part will be hard to get out, won’t it? Just take your time and when you are ready, I will still be here.”

She had a lengthy cry and had trouble going on, but she told him between sobs that she had finished her specialty and was ready to hunt for the right hospital. Her parents were making a surprise visit to see her and bringing along her brother. A drunk came out of a side street and plowed into them. He had a lot of gas in the back of his pickup in unapproved containers. The fire was so intense that there was very little left.

“They were my only relatives Frank.” and she cried and cried.

Frank said nothing, but the story had made the national news, and he remembered hearing about it. When the names of the victims were released he realized that he knew and had worked with the husband. He thought it was six or seven years ago so there was still a big piece of her story yet to be told.

She sobbed herself to sleep and Frank soon drifted off. He awoke when she got up to use the bathroom.

She crawled back into bed beside him and said,

“There’s more.”

He hugged her and said, “go ahead when you’re ready.”

“After my family died I had to listen to their lawyer talk about money, but I didn’t care about any of that. I  wanted my family back. The lawyer kept pestering me and I told him to put it all in a savings account in my name, which he did. I had a memorial service for them because there was nothing left to bury. The ashes, after the fire, were so commingled it would have been hard to say if any of the ashes were from my family or just burned car parts. I didn’t do well at the service. Many people came because dad was well-known. Someone took over what should have been my duties, and I sat there and cried. I am good at crying since my family’s accident.”

“What was your family’s last name?”

“Anderson, I am April Anderson.”

“I hope this won’t upset you but I knew your dad.”

“How?”

“There was a government contract we both bid on. The government decided they didn’t trust either of us to finish it, so they gave it to both of our companies, each group to work on different aspects of the deal, with the proviso that if either company wasn’t meeting objectives, the contract would default to the performing company.”

“Your dad and I got together and worked out a plan for the project. We were both a little concerned about what we had gotten into as we had the same worry which was that the one company might intentionally try to screw up the other company so they would get the whole contract. Your dad was an honourable man, and we finished the project under a year, ahead of schedule, and below their budget. We both got a lot of work from the government after that. I liked him a great deal. We were both very busy with our lives. I never saw him again.”

“I have often looked at you and wondered why you looked so familiar. You have several of your dad’s features don’t you?”

“If you saw a picture of us together, you would not doubt he was my dad. I’m glad you knew him. It makes me feel like he is here with us.”

“I interrupted you. You were at the memorial service...”

“After the service, everybody left, and I was suddenly alone.”

“You didn’t have a boyfriend?”

“No, my training had been arduous and the doctor I was dating wanted more of my time than I could give. So he dumped me shortly before my family died.”

“I went home and tried to get drunk, but that didn’t work. I have never been a drinker, and all I did was get sick and feel worse. I tried to get interested in finding a job, but I was a disaster at the interviews. They loved my credentials but once they saw the package, they all took a pass. They were right. I wasn’t fit to practice and I expect if I had gotten a job in an emergency department I would have had a nervous breakdown.”

“Just by chance I walked past a military recruiting office. I walked in and signed up. I think I was suicidal,  however, I didn’t have the nerve to kill myself but would have been happy to have someone else do it.”

“They were happy to get a trauma surgeon, but I still had to go to boot camp. It was actually what I needed because they kept me very busy and I fell into bed every night exhausted.”

“When I finished basic training and shipped out for the middle east, I was almost human again. Then I was seeing more in a week than most trauma surgeons would see in a year. I spent four years patching up bodies and watching many people die I couldn’t help. It put a hard edge on me I didn’t like but from the time I entered boot camp until I came home four years later I didn’t cry.”

“Often the locals would be hurt, and the policy was to be nice to them and to give them free medical care. One day they brought in a local for care. He had been in a vehicle that drove over an IED. The people with him were far pushier than usual and I had to have them escorted out of the compound by armed guards. Whenever the locals were in the compound they were being watched closely, but they were usually cooperative and appreciative of the help they were getting. My team spent a lot of time trying to save the guy, but he was too badly injured and died. They came for the body and the looks I got sent chills up my spine. We had returned lots of bodies to the families before but I had never been glared at with such blatant hatred.”

“We soon found out why. The guy was the leader of ISIS. They had accidentally blown up their own man. It didn’t matter to them they had killed him. They blamed me for not saving him. I got called into my commander’s office, and he told me that there was a very large price on my head? They were mustering me out and sending me home.”

“When I returned to Canada various government agencies interviewed me before I was released from the military. One of those agencies was the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). The interviewer was a woman, and she was blunt. ISIS was recruiting born in Canada Canadians and there were so many that they couldn’t keep up with all of them. She didn’t know how great the threat was, but she suggested I have a burglar alarm installed and a firearm in my bedside table.”

“I thought she was being overly dramatic. I was home in good old safe Canada. This mustering out had occurred so rapidly that I hadn’t put a lot of thought into my future. I assumed I would find a job in an emergency department. I had done nothing with my parent’s house except have the lawyer take care of things. So, I went home. There was already a burglar alarm there, and I had to get the cleaning lady to show me how to use it since I had long ago forgotten how and the lawyer was no help.”

“After the cleaning lady left, I ended up in the bedroom I grew up in where I laid on my bed and had the first good cry since I started boot camp. There was no food, so I went out for a pizza. After eating, I bought groceries, went home, put on the alarm and went to bed. I woke up in the morning feeling good but that didn’t last long. I had to leave contact info with the CSIS lady who called to say she needed to talk. She was in my area and asked if it was OK for her to drop by. Her discussion came right to the point. In their intelligence intercepts, they had just learned that the price on my head had been quadrupled. ISIS wanted to make an example of me. I asked what she thought I should do, and she said I should disappear. She reminded me about the Canadians being recruited and now she said they were being trained right in Canada.”

"I didn’t know what to think, and I asked her if there was a program for people like me. She told me that the US has a witness protection program and Canadians think we have the same thing but that is wrong. We have nothing. I didn’t know what to do or think. If I was going to be my own protection program, I would need an ID. She said again that Canada had nothing to offer. She said she would give me a name and phone number, but she would deny it if I ever claimed to have gotten it from her."

“You can get a fake driver’s license with a new name from Don at that number but it will cost you a lot. However, the license will be good and if you get pulled over the license will check out. That is why it will cost a lot."

"I thanked her and she left. I thought This is ridiculous. This is Canada. I need not hide.”

“That night the burglar alarm went off. It’s a silent alarm but gives a beep like an alarm clock in my bedroom. I hid in the closet which in retrospect wasn’t much of a hiding place. I heard someone searching carefully and quietly through the house. This person was on the second floor when I heard the police sirens. There were running footsteps and when I heard the police, I came out of the closet. They told me that the back door had been carefully broken open. The intruder was seen running away, but they could not catch him. I thought it was ISIS but said nothing to the cops.”

“I went to a motel for the night. The next day I withdrew a large amount of cash from my account and ran. I got the driver’s license which cost me $5000. Then I contacted my lawyer and told him I needed to buy a property, reasonably private but not completely isolated. He bought the place next door and I met you.”

“Do you have questions, Frank?”

“Yes, I have a lot of questions, but they can keep until morning. We should sleep now.”

“Can I stay with you?”

“Yes, but in the morning I want us to still be friends, not lovers.”

“Don’t you like me, Frank?”

“More than you know and tomorrow we can talk about that and all the other serious things that are going on in our lives. You have told me everything and tomorrow I will answer questions you have but right now we are going to sleep.”

*****