Okay, here's the long-awaited fourth part, once again rated R because it gets pretty dramatic in this part and there is some mild language.
Read on!
Dark Visions Part Four
Rated: R
Pete and Nikki spent several sleepless nights in his office poring over the Zito documents trying to find anything useful, and their frustration and exhaustion showed in their drawn faces and bloodshot eyes.
“Still nothing new on Zito, is there?” Nikki asked, sighing.
“No,” Pete said. “The police have no leads, either. Zito is pretty elusive. It’s almost like he just vanishes into the air after he commits these heinous crimes. No evidence, no traces of him—and all this information is old and dated,” he said, gesturing toward the files. “It won’t help us find him. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it will take MacGyver to find him. I just wish I knew how we could get through to him.”
“Dr. Beatty is still working on it,” Nikki said. “Unfortunately, she still has been unable to make any breakthroughs on his condition, but it will come.”
“I hope soon,” Pete said. “Not only do I want to see him well again—I want to stop these killings.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, Pete,” Nikki said.
She glanced at the photo of Zito in one of the open files. Even his picture was a frightening specimen. Though his expression appeared calm, it was unusually so, his eyes glinting with devilish intelligence, his grin twisted and cruel. It made her shudder just to look at it. It was certainly not a face one forgot easily after seeing it. Having the knowledge that this was the man responsible for MacGyver’s mental collapse made her even more fearful and disgusted by his leering photo. She looked away from it, knowing that his face would now be seared in her memory, as it had to be somewhere inside MacGyver’s fragile, shattered mind. Suddenly, an idea came to her.
“Pete,” she said, grabbing the photo of Zito and showing it to him. “What if we showed this picture of Zito to MacGyver?”
“What for?” Pete asked.
“Maybe he’ll recognize him,” she said. “Maybe seeing it will trigger a memory for him.”
“Nikki, you heard what Dr. Beatty said the other day,” Pete said sadly. “MacGyver is almost completely unresponsive at this point.”
“I know, but this is worth a try, isn’t it? Pete, we have to try something. We have to keep working on MacGyver or we’ll never get him back.”
Pete nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.” He thought about how he would have to remain outside the room so he wouldn’t upset Mac. It was almost unbearable for him. He hadn’t actually had any real contact with his friend in weeks, always getting secondhand reports on his condition from Dr. Beatty or Nikki. “Maybe I should bring a picture of us together as well,” he said. “It would prove to Mac that we’re friends and that Zito is his real torturer.”
“That’s a good idea, Pete,” Nikki said. “Get that picture, and I’ll meet you at the hospital to visit him.”
***
“What’s this?” Dr. Beatty asked, watching Nikki as she entered the hospital room where MacGyver was kept. She noticed Nikki was holding something.
“How is he?” Nikki asked, looking at MacGyver.
“He’s resting now,” Dr. Beatty said, “finally. I don’t think he’s slept in days.”
MacGyver lay still on his hospital bed, his eyes closed and his expression almost peaceful for a change. He looked like a mere shadow of the man he had been before, dark circles under his eyes, his face pale, thin, and scruffy from a lack of daily shaves, and his sandy blonde hair disheveled. Nikki gently took his hand.
“MacGyver,” she said sadly. “Please come back to us.”
“It’s still going to be an uphill struggle, I’m afraid,” Dr. Beatty said, sighing. “I’ve never seen such an advanced case of post traumatic stress, combined with whatever mind control and other trauma he’s experiencing.” Once again, she looked at the objects Nikki was holding. “What did you bring for him?” She asked.
“Pete and I had this idea,” she said. “We believe that Dr. Zito did this to him.”
“Zito? The escaped patient at the maximum security facility?” Dr. Beatty asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve read enough literature on him to know that he is capable of psychologically manipulating and terrorizing people,” Dr. Beatty said. “He’s a high functioning, brilliant psychopath.”
“Zito called Pete’s office himself and claimed responsibility,” Nikki said. “He also confessed to the recent murders and said that only MacGyver would be able to stop him. He succeeded in getting MacGyver out of the way by doing this to him.” Nikki looked at MacGyver with sympathy as he slept. “So, I brought a picture of Zito as well as a picture of MacGyver together with Pete on a fishing trip.”
“What do you plan on accomplishing with those?” Dr. Beatty asked.
“Well, I know it’s a long shot, and it might not work, but I thought I would show these pictures to MacGyver and see if they trigger anything.”
“You’re right, it is a long shot,” Dr. Beatty said. “After hours and days of therapy, I still haven’t been able to completely break MacGyver out of his nearly catatonic state. I’ve tried all options available to me as a psychiatrist, but I’ve made little progress.”
“But you did the first time you saw him,” Nikki said. “You got him to talk under hypnosis and help us learn where he was held captive and tortured. He was still able through all his fear and confusion to escape from that madman. Something of him has to have survived. I know it’s buried, but I’m sure we can keep trying to coax it out into the open. That’s why I brought these pictures. To try something new.”
“You may be right,” Dr. Beatty said. “A new approach is always welcome, especially in a case as complicated as his.”
“Now all we have to do is wait until he wakes up,” Nikki said, watching him.
A few minutes later, MacGyver began to moan and stir. Slowly, his dark eyes opened and he stared at the two women standing over him, his eyes darting frantically between them, trying to figure out who they were and where he was.
“It’s all right, MacGyver, you’re safe,” Dr. Beatty said.
He released a deep sigh and stared up at the ceiling.
“He’s either been like this or he sits in the corner of the room, curled into a ball and rocking back and forth,” Dr. Beatty said to Nikki. “I’ve seen little change in his behavior.”
“Well, let’s see if we can get him to understand,” Nikki said, taking out the photo of Zito. “MacGyver? Can you hear me? This is Nikki.”
He remained perfectly still, staring blankly at the ceiling. Nikki looked at Dr. Beatty, who shook her head.
“Give it another try,” she said, “but I don’t know if you’ll get him to hear you.”
“MacGyver please,” Nikki said. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me. I need your help, Mac. Come on.”
Gradually, MacGyver shifted his eyes from the ceiling to Nikki, staring directly at her. Their vacant, hollow expression scared her almost as much as the picture of Zito did. She was looking into the eyes of someone whose mind was clearly damaged, haunted by a long period of imprisonment and torture. They didn’t look like MacGyver’s eyes at all. The light was absent from them.
“Good,” she said, attempting to smile at him. “I want to show you something.” She held up the picture of Zito so that he could see it. “Do you recognize this man?” She asked.
MacGyver stared at the photo. For a moment, Nikki was dismayed, thinking he was looking beyond it into some fixed point in the distance, but then she saw him frown and toss his head to the side, almost as if he was trying to figure out the identity of the sinister man in the photo.
“MacGyver, do you know him?” Nikki asked.
In MacGyver’s mind, brief flashes of the man’s face appeared before him, laughing cruelly, his face blending with Pete’s. He squirmed on the bed and winced, struggling to understand what the images replaying in his mind were trying to tell him. Did he know this man? He wasn’t sure. He seemed familiar from some distant part of his past, but from where? Who was he, and what was he doing in his dark memories of torture?
Nikki watched him. “You do know him, don’t you, MacGyver?” She asked. “How could you not? You’ve seen him before. You’ve tangled with him before. This is Dr. Zito, Mac. He’s your real torturer, not Pete.” She glanced at Dr. Beatty, who looked at her with an expression of uncertainty.
MacGyver silently moved his lips as if he was struggling to form words, but he couldn’t say anything. He had almost forgotten how to speak.
“He’s the one who tortured you,” Nikki said. “We need your help to find him, Mac. You need to snap out of this!”
MacGyver looked at her with deep, pleading eyes, showing her that he didn’t fully understand, that he was still lost inside his abused mind. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he shook his head from side to side. Nikki gently held his head still and looked at him.
“MacGyver please,” she said, “it’s going to be all right. You have to help us. Zito is the man who tortured you and put you through hell all those months, not Pete. You can help us find him so he’ll never hurt you again.”
MacGyver grunted and squirmed in his bed, looking around the room wildly.
“I don’t think he remembers,” Dr. Beatty said, watching him. “He looked at the picture all right, and that’s progress. That proves he can still hear us, that he’s not entirely lost to us. But it’s obvious he doesn’t know who Zito is at this point. He’s been conditioned so thoroughly that it’s as if Zito obliterated his own face from MacGyver’s available memory.”
Nikki sighed. “Maybe I’m being too impatient and expecting too much,” she said. “Let’s see how he responds to the other picture I have. It’s of Pete and Mac when they went fishing together.”
Dr. Beatty nodded. “Again, it’s worth a try I suppose,” she said. “Anything we can do to get through to him and show him that Pete’s not his enemy.”
“MacGyver,” Nikki said, putting away the photo of Zito and producing a framed picture of MacGyver and Pete holding a giant fish for the camera. “I have another picture for you.”
MacGyver looked at her, his eyes glassy.
“Will you look at it for me? I think it will help you,” Nikki said.
MacGyver nodded slowly.
“Good,” she said. “The picture is of you and Pete. You caught a fish together. Look at it. You’re both smiling. If he was a threat to you, he wouldn’t be smiling with you in a picture, would he? Please try to remember this time, MacGyver. Try to remember that you’re friends. Pete didn’t harm you. Zito, that other man I showed you, is the one who tortured you, not Pete. Pete is your friend. Look at how friendly he is in this picture, MacGyver. Does that look like the face of your torturer to you?”
As MacGyver looked at the picture, his thoughts once again confused him. Pleasant memories of Pete blurred with memories of him torturing him. Soon, the images became too overwhelming in his mind. One moment, Pete was showing true friendship, and the next moment, he was shocking, cutting, beating, injecting, restraining, choking, and drowning MacGyver all at once as well as killing innocent people in front of him as he remained chained helplessly to a wall in a dark, dismal asylum. The images moved rapidly in his mind and whirled around into disorienting blurs, Pete’s evil laugh echoing in his ears. Images of Pete being decent to him superimposed themselves on images of Pete brutalizing him mercilessly, once again reinforcing the idea in MacGyver’s mind that Pete turned on him and hurt him. The laugh in his mind became shriller, piercing his ears. He clutched them tightly, writhing on the bed, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid the excruciating pain he was re-experiencing.
“MacGyver, what’s wrong?” Nikki asked. “Talk to me!”
Dr. Beatty tried to hold him down and calm him, but he struggled violently against her. His eyes opened wide and he looked at the picture Nikki still held in front of him of Pete. He released a horrified cry and grabbed the picture, tearing it away from her hands. He hurled it across the room where it struck the wall, shattering the glass of the frame.
“Oh, my God!” Nikki said, running over to the picture to pick up the glass fragments.
MacGyver fell back into the bed, sweating and shivering, staring wildly at the ceiling, his breathing shallow and erratic.
“MacGyver, listen to me,” Dr. Beatty said, doing her best to calm him, glancing at Nikki as she picked up the broken glass. “Listen to me. Pete’s gone. He’s not here anymore. He won’t harm you. Do you understand me?”
MacGyver looked at her with frightened eyes, still gasping for breath.
“He’s hyperventilating,” Dr. Beatty said. “I need to give him some medication to calm him.”
Before she could administer the drugs or ask for assistance from the other doctors and nurses in the psychiatric wing, MacGyver began to relax on his own, his breathing regulating, his body becoming less tense. He sighed and turned on his side, curling into a ball and closing his eyes, still trembling slightly, muffled sobs escaping his lips. Dr. Beatty gently placed a sheet over him and touched him. He grunted slightly.
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s all right now. You’re safe. You can rest again.”
She looked at Nikki, who was approaching her with the broken picture frame, the shards of glass held carefully in her other hand. A look of complete shock and remorse was on her face as she looked at MacGyver’s crumpled form, trembling beneath the sheets. He looked like a traumatized, vulnerable child, hiding beneath his bed sheets from the terrors of the world.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Beatty,” she said. “I had no idea he was going to react that way, not to a picture of Pete.”
“It’s all right,” Dr. Beatty said. “You had no way of knowing. You were just trying to help him. I thought it might work, too.”
Nikki looked around the room. “I think I got all the pieces of glass,” she said. “Let’s go update Pete on what happened and let MacGyver get more rest.”
***
Pete stared at the broken picture frame that held a pleasant memory between himself and MacGyver. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “All this to a picture of me! A picture! I wasn’t even really in the room!”
“It just shows how strongly Zito’s influence has crippled him,” Dr. Beatty said. “Even a picture of you he has learned to associate with his mistreatment.”
“Zito,” Pete said angrily through clenched teeth. “Damn him. Damn him for doing this to Mac.”
“He looked like he was trying to remember who Zito was when I showed him the picture of him,” Nikki said, “so at least that’s something.”
“Yes,” Dr. Beatty said. “I’ll keep working with him, using images of both you and Zito. Maybe I can condition him to understand that Zito is his real enemy, and get him to trust you again as his friend.” She looked at Pete.
“I appreciate that,” Pete said. “Do what you have to do. Keep working with him. Try everything you have to try, every therapeutic method you know of! I want MacGyver back! We can’t allow Zito to win!”
Dr. Beatty nodded. “I’ll keep working,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that. Somehow, we’ll solve this.”
***
While Dr. Beatty and Nikki were absent from the room, MacGyver could vaguely hear them talking. Quietly, he got up from his bed and walked over to the part of the room where he had thrown the picture frame. He crouched down, searching with his hands for any remaining piece of broken glass. His skin hit a small piece, and its sharp, jagged edge cut him. He could feel its brief sting. Thoughts of Pete cutting him returned to him and he shuddered, but he looked at the glass again, determined to use it. He picked it up and held the sharp edge to his wrist. It was the only way he could stop reliving his hell, and he knew it.
***
“How’s MacGyver now? How did you leave him?” Pete asked.
“He’s resting, although he’s still slightly agitated,” Dr. Beatty said. “I’d better check in on him and make sure he’s…”
Just as she unlocked and opened the door to MacGyver’s room, she gasped in horror. MacGyver lay on the floor in a pool of blood.
“Mac!” Pete shouted, running into the room. He didn’t care anymore. He couldn’t be shut out of that room while MacGyver suffered anymore.
Nikki followed him, watching in horror as Dr. Beatty worked on him. One of his wrists was cut, a piece of glass in his hand. Dr. Beatty removed it. Nikki stared at it.
“I…I thought I had all the pieces!” She said.
“Now Nikki, don’t blame yourself,” Pete said. “You couldn’t see it. It was a small piece.”
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Dr. Beatty said, “but he’s still alive.”
“Doctor! Get another doctor in here!” Pete shouted out into the corridor.
MacGyver stirred and opened his eyes to slits. “List,” he muttered. “List…”
“Try to stay still, MacGyver,” Dr. Beatty said. “It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine.”
“Is he?” Nikki asked, staring at MacGyver with concern.
Dr. Beatty examined the cut on his wrist. “It’s a small cut, but it might still need stitches,” she said. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but fortunately, we caught him in time.”
“I’m so stupid,” Nikki said, tears in her eyes. “How could I have missed that piece of glass? How could I have…”
“Nikki, you did nothing wrong,” Dr. Beatty said. “You didn’t know he would try to harm himself. He’s going to be fine.”
Another doctor rushed into the room, helping Dr. Beatty attend to MacGyver.
“Suicide attempt?” He asked, almost as if it was a routine question. Sadly, for the psychiatric wing of the hospital, it was.
“Yes,” Dr. Beatty said. “It just happened.”
“All right, help me get him to the emergency room,” the other doctor said.
“List,” MacGyver whispered. It was barely audible, but Pete and Nikki heard him.
“What list, MacGyver? What are you trying to say?” Nikki asked.
“List…” he said faintly, closing his eyes and collapsing into unconsciousness.
“NO!” Pete shouted.
The other doctor felt his pulse. “His pulse is weak, but he’s still alive. We have to move him, now!” He shouted.
Both Nikki and Pete stood and watched, paralyzed and helpless as the doctors wheeled MacGyver away on a stretcher to the emergency room.
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
