Rollie left Angie’s room, stung by her words. He knew that she was afraid of this man Brabon and there was still something she wasn’t telling him, he was sure of that. But his sight, he had to have his sight back! If there was a remote chance, he would have jumped on it as well. He couldn’t even think about what he would do with himself if he were blind for the rest of his life. No, his work, his family was that important to him to risk this surgery so that he could be restored to functioning as before. Damn the mind stuff, he told himself, that could get healed in time. He knew Angie’s stubbornness, he also knew how much she had suffered during his absence. He asked a nurse to take him back over to the NICU where Aidan was and once inside the unit, sitting next to his incubator, he began thinking about everything from the time Michael and he had entered the clean room.

 

"Do you want to hold him, Mr. Tyler?" the nurse asked, her voice the one from earlier that day.

 

"Uh, could I?" he asked, hopefully, for he wanted to hold his son, to feel the reassurance of his tiny, moving life-force in his arms.

 

"No problem, in fact, Mr. Aidan Tyler is awake and moving about here. He must know you are here!" she replied as Rollie smiled.

 

He could hear his son making little grunting noises as he was placed in his arms. Rollie’s fingers lightly stroked his forehead. Although an IV was still in a scalp vein, the nurse had told Rollie that the antibiotics would be ending by morning. He gingerly felt his little face for structure, wanting to see it so badly. Angie had been right about the little cleft in the chin, as he felt the little dent and he felt his ears and fingers and toes as Aidan continued to grunt and make sucking noises.

 

"When do you think he can come home?" Rollie asked, remembering that Angie had said she was going home sometime tomorrow.

 

"He’s gained some weight, I think he is up to almost five pounds, so really, once he finishes the antibiotics and is seen by the neonatologist in the morning, I would say maybe in two days."

 

"Great, that’s wonderful!" Rollie remarked and whispered to Aidan, "Hear that, two days…and you’ll be home with your mum and dad."

 

Outside the NICU, Angie stood at the glass. She could see Rollie sitting inside with Aidan and the nurse and a tear slipped down her cheek as she quickly wiped it away and tried to regain her composure. So, they both had the same idea, to see Aidan and just think about what had happened in the room. She knew she had hurt Rollie’s feelings and regretted what she had said but she had just gotten him back! She couldn’t go through any of this ever again, she told herself. As she watched Rollie’s head tilt slightly as he put the baby up on his shoulder and his head touched Aidan’s, she smiled. He wanted to see his son so badly.

 

"I glad to see all the Tylers in good condition," said the deep voice from behind her.

 

She turned and looked at the face, and remembered the moustache, the strong arms that had carried her out of the loft, the man that had gone back in and found Rollie.

 

"What are you doing here?" she asked, feeling vulnerable and wary around him.

 

Michael looked at her face, saw her fear; "I just wanted to see, and to talk to you as well as Rollie."

 

"What more can you say, Michael? Sorry I got you into this…sorry your husband is blind- sorry that I made a move on you. I don’t get you at all, and what’s more, I don’t want to know."

 

"Angie, Rollie has the opportunity to see again, the surgery – the retinal implants do work. The eyesight is restored a hundred percent and then some…I should know. I have them as well."

 

Angie looked up at his eyes, as they focused on each other. He was close to her and she was trying to get some type of feeling, she wanted to feel honesty from him.

 

Michael lowered his lids for a moment, "I am sorry about the move in the apartment, Angie. I can’t take it back, I know. You will probably never understand it, so I won’t go any further. As for me being responsible for Rollie’s blindness, okay. Yes, I did not go after him initially but I had a job to do. It took precedence over all else. Those files had to be retrieved."

 

"Yeah, so you could make your big busts, I saw the news!" she retorted, looking back at Rollie who was rocking their son contently.

 

"The busts were the small rewards, but not the major reward here, Angie. All the debriefers have been stopped. Do you understand? The splinter organization is gone. The wet works, the killing- they were never sanctioned by CIA, do you understand? The lifetime servitude to the company is gone."

 

His desperation at trying to make her understand was not overbearing as he usually tried to be, it was somewhat more honestly presented. He kept his hands tightly clenched, for she knew he probably wanted to just shake her.

 

"Who did you kill, Michael? That top CIA official, that was you, wasn’t it?" Angie asked, her voice condemning.

 

Michael looked at her, shaking his head, "Yes, I freely admit it. I had no choice, him or me. I chose me. If that is selfish, then my wanting to live free is a selfish act that I will always relish. But gone is the covert recruitment for agents for his group, and gone is the torture and methods he employed for his control. I, for one, will always be grateful for Brabon. It was he that restored my sight and will to go on and fight for this freedom. All the busts, all the covert work since then, an attempt to keep going and find the files. It took years, do you understand? Years ! All that time, watching, waiting…and Mira!"

 

He paused, exasperated as she suddenly felt deep within her the truth of his words. In his tortured mind, his heart had always been for Mira. The substitution of women he met, the ends to justify the means, was always to him to get closer to Mira.

 

"Do you know how hard it was and still is to see Mira? When I saw her with Rollie, I nearly lost it. I could see she liked him, worked well with him. Yeah, jealous- and yet, I also saw something else. When I finally got to see her again at that bank robbery, the look in her eyes…the feeling that she gave me. It gave me hope, Angie."

 

"I remember," Angie replied, looking back to Rollie, her hands on the glass, "I was jealous as well."

 

Michael smiled and she smiled back at him for the first time.

 

"I won’t begin to explain the whole ramifications of my acts in the past five years. Suffice it to say, yes, my life as a cop in midtown south is over. I can never go back, nor would want to. This face," he pointed to the re-sculptured features; "is it…there has been too much carving here. Angie, Rollie needs to have the surgery to see again. It does work. I trust Brabon with Rollie’s life. I will stay around until the surgery is over. If you want, I will stay where you can see me. If you want…" and he stopped then, looking down and pulling out a gun which he slipped into the pocket of her dressing gown; "if something goes wrong, you can use this."

 

Angie’s face contorted into anger as she reached in her pocket and retrieved the gun, handing it back to him; "You still have a long way to go, Michael. Guns don’t solve it for you, taking your life if something happens to Rollie won’t fix it for me or for you. Get over your death wish and your guilt with this kind of solution, okay? It’s really psycho!"

 

He smiled; "You know, you’re the only one that just calls it like it is, Angie. Yeah, psycho is a good word for me…but hey, just don’t let it become a word you would use for him," he continued and pointed inside the glass at Rollie; "he has a great chance to live a normal life- something that I was not allowed to have."

 

Angie looked back at Rollie, knowing that his eyesight was his life.

 

 

"I guess…" she began to say and turned around but Michael was gone. She was talking to herself. She shivered slightly. Michael’s words had sunk in and her feelings with him were guarded but had changed. She could see that Rollie had given Aidan back to the nurse and another one was wheeling him out toward her. She started to leave, trying to rush ahead of them for the elevator. Her incision pain was worsening with the effort and she knew she could not make the stairs.

 

"Damn it!" she said under her breath as the wheelchair arrived beside her at the elevator. She smiled at the nurse but before she could say anything to Rollie, he said;

 

"Would you mind taking me back to my wife’s room first. I have to tell her something important." The nurse raised her eyebrows for she recognized Angie immediately and Angie smiled and waved at her, embarrassed.

 

"Rollie…"

 

"That was fast," Rollie remarked, puzzled but then smiled; "so, been eavesdropping on me, eh?"

 

"Uh, sorta…say, how about you and I just going over to this lounge a moment and talking?" she asked as the nurse followed Angie toward the deserted lounge. It was close to midnight as they walked inside.

 

"I’ll wait outside," the nurse told them and left them there alone.

 

There was a silence in the room, Angie was replaying what she had said to him the last time that they had actually been together and she squirmed in her seat trying to come up with an apology.

 

"Angela…" Rollie broke the silence first, using her full name and she worried, "I’ve been thinking, yeah- going to see Aidan was part of it, you know."

 

"Rollie, don’t, I need to say something…"

 

"Wait, I realized how much suffering and pain you went through while I was gone. I mean, you ran the business, carried this baby- I know it was tough and I know you were exhausted! I know that you don’t want this whole business of Pollepel and Michael to ever happen again…and I guess with Brabon here, it just won’t leave."

 

"Rollie…I need to say something…"

 

"Wait, I know what you are going to say so I will say it for you, I won’t have the surgery. I will look for some other specialist. Who knows, there maybe a chance with traditional medicine in the near future? I can wait."

 

His face showed his resolution, not just an attempt to patch up an argument and she smiled and suddenly kissed him gratefully as Rollie, feeling her in his arms, was enjoying the greatest medicine of all.

 

"Oh Ange, I don’t ever want to feel that you would leave me…" he whispered, hoarsely.

 

"Are you insane?" she replied, holding his face in her hands, "with all the bills and the collectors coming after me, now?" Her joking made him laugh but then she added seriously; "Rollie, now- I am going to tell you something and you’re going to listen. I want you to have the surgery. I want you to have Brabon do it now."

 

"What? I don’t understand?" he replied, confused at her change of heart.

 

"Don’t ask…I just realized that I was being too overprotective, too untrusting. Sometimes, you just have to leap out there and take the offer. I should have listened to you. You are the one that has been through so much. You have the right to do anything you please."

 

Her words were too much for him to fathom at the moment and the only thing he could get out was more emotional than he had planned; "I want to make love to you so badly, to feel you!"

 

Angie chuckled as she touched his leg, sliding her hand up his thigh; "Hold that thought, 'cause neither one of us is in any shape or condition to go there…"

 

He smiled and answered; "but in the dreaming, I can always be there."

 

"Good, then just remember to dream me about twenty pounds less, okay?"

 

Rollie lay on the operating room table, his throat dry, his heart racing. Brabon was just coming into the room. He had brought in a special team of specialists to assist him and they were busily setting up the room and talking softly amongst themselves. He had left Angie that morning, early- with hope and a thumb’s up as she bravely kissed him and wished him luck. Mira and Francis had rejoined her to sit with her. She would not leave the hospital that day.

 

"So, Mr. Tyler- we are ready for this now, you will not believe your vision when you wake up!" Brabon told him, enthusiastically.

 

"So tell me again, what exactly will you be doing?" Rollie asked, as the anesthesiologist prepared a needle and injected the vein in his arm for a new IV.

 

"We will be taking a light-sensitive diode array which will be mounted on your retinas. We will also place an intraocular lens in both of your eyes that will have a miniature electronic camera that will image the outside world for you and transfer that image to the diode array implanted on your retinas. This ray will produce a two-dimensional pattern of electrical signals, which will then be picked up by the underlying malfunctioned retina and then transmitted to your brain for interpretation as vision- three dimensional imagery as a result. And as a bonus- 20/20 vision for the rest of your life."

 

 

"Will the miniature cameras, have some sort of power units that have to be changed?" Rollie asked, understanding the concept but worried about battery failure.

 

"Hmmm, quite the little scientist, I see.." Brabon replied, grinning.

 

"Actually, the power unit is a tiny little uranium powerhouse. So far, none of them have failed."

 

"Great, a nuclear storehouse in my eyes! I feel like the 6-million dollar man," Rollie replied, staring at the darkness, his anxiety increasing.

 

"The cost of these implants is high, but fortunately, we, that is- former employees of a defunct organization have our ways…"

 

Rollie smiled and added; "how long will this take?"

 

"About three hours more or less…You should be back in your room for high tea, awake and sipping it with your crumpets."

 

"Ah Doc, in the Outback, we don’t eat crumpets!"

 

"Beg your pardon, Mr. Tyler- I imagine the hospital food will be much more enticing!"

 

"I believe, it’s time for you to sleep, Mr. Tyler…" and Rollie felt a taste of garlic under his tongue as the anesthesiologist told him he would taste it. It was the last thing he remembered.