Your Neighbor Too

 204.

Having spent all day Sunday on the 80% it is time to detail the 20. I have the outline and script prepared for my presentation. It has been edited, revised, updated and stripped clean of exposition. It is a bare facts review that at last count contains nary an adjective nor a single adverb. It is, as one of my favorite TV characters used to say, "Just the facts." It has always struck me as an interesting paradox that there are two ways to tell a good story; one, to pick a subject that by its very nature is exciting, dramatic and controversial, and two to select a subject matter that is not, but by the skill of the author, make it so. In this assignment I am firmly in the iron-clad grip of the former. The only thing missing from the Hollywood perspective is the motive. And that I see as my license to create the necessary response from the audience of one.

Drysdale's update was spectacular. His investigative work, spanning the eight months since the ambush, contained enough intel to plausibly leverage her situation in pushing our narrative. She, by Drysdale's testimony, is under the terrorists version of house arrest. His source has revealed her health to be decent and morale acceptable. Seems, true to her modus operandi, her only issue is one of attitude. We each chuckled over that bit of no-news. While not exactly sure of her location Drysdale has narrowed it to be somewhere between the Idaho panhandle and Bozeman, Montana. He answered my inquiry about the drone and related accessories with the update that the hack crew of mutineers are trying to reverse engineer its mechanics, electronics and operating system. One of the reasons, he feels, she is still alive is due to her knowledge of these billion dollar engineering secrets. She is, Drysdale offers, to her estranged group what Einstein was to the Manhattan Project. This gets no chuckle.

We talked well into the night, finally wrapping our session with barely time to sleep, Mina reminding us with a last call from the soon to be closed kitchen.

Our meeting with Hartaugh is less than six hours away, so it now appears that I will be running on my favorite elixir, adrenaline and purpose. Accepting this I skip the pain killers and sleep enhancers Mina delivers along with the nightcap cup of steaming camomile tea. Thanking and dismissing her for the night, I look over at my wheels. There, tucked into the side pocket is the card that the Neurologist presented at my discharge ceremony.

I slowly make my way from the bed to the chair, pinch the card with my good hand and open it. In a fine and flowing cursive hand it reads:

"You're always better off when your neighbor is too."