Hannah Colson sat nervously in the waiting room of Dr. Marstin's office. Anxiousness ate at her, causing her to bite her already too short fingernails. Waiting for test results had never been easy for her. Now, the stress of waiting to see if she would be approved for the clinical trial to help with her Crohns Disease was driving her nuts. Not knowing what else to do she thought back to the diagnosis five years ago.
After experiencing chronic diarrhea, monstrous abdominal cramps, ferocious joint pains and missing so much work for eight months she finally went to the doctor for a colonoscopy. The diagnosis had shocked her. For it is an incurable disease. An auto-immune disease of the intestinal tract. It could flare up at anytime, anywhere, without warning. Rearing its ugly little head like a lion out for a kill.
Over time she came to accept the diagnosis and the treatments she had to endure. Though, she had trouble with it in the beginning. It was like living with a ticking time bomb inside of her, just waiting to go off. Each flare got worse and the healing period became longer. And the steroids did not help with her crying jags and mood swings. Depression and anxiety over her health had made Hannah want to hide away from the rest of the world.
Hopefully, now that would change.
"Think positive, Hannah." Her mother replied to her reassuringly. She had come with
Hannah to provide her support and love.
"Hannah gave her mother a half-smile. Yes, she was optimistic about the drug actually working. Noone wanted it more than she did. But, one thing this disease had taught her was to never get your hopes up.
Her mother replied, "This is going to work." She hated seeing her youngest child suffer.
"From your mouth to God's ears." Hannah answered.
Dr, Marstin knocked on the door and let himself into the exam room. Hannah had a lot of respect for the man who had been treating her for the past few years. He had saved her life on numerous occasions. He had always had time for her questions, no matter how silly or outrageous they seemed. "So," he said helping her lie back on the exam table. "Are you ready to begin the clinical trial?" He felt of her tummy.
"Today?" She asked nervously. Not quite able to believe that everything was happening so fast. Her experiences with the medical profession were that everything was hurry up and wait.
"Yes." The doctor chuckled aloud.
Nervousness chewed in her already fragile stomach. "Yes sir. Let's go for it." She said pushing all her anxieties out of her mind.
"Great." He replied just as enthusiastically as Hannah had. "From all the information coming in from other trial sites, the news is very encouraging and is putting patients into remission for longer periods of time."
Hannah listened intently to the doctor. Silently, she prayed that he was right.
"Any questions?" He asked with obvious concern for his favorite patient.
Hannah shook her head no. Everyone had informed her off the minimal risks associated with the drug and she had even looked the drug up on the internet. She felt secure with her decision to partake on the journey to heal her body.
As if on cue, Lila, Dr. Marstin's nurse walked into the room carrying four syringes of clear liquid. At this point in the study, noone knew if she was getting the real drug or just the placebo. Hannah swallowed hard when she looked at the syringes. "Four needles?" She asked curiously while trying to fight uneasiness in the pit of her stomach.
Lila laughed, "Next time it will only be two and then after that it will be only one every two weeks."
Needles had never made her nervous before and Hannah didn't understand why they were having such an effect on her now. Maybe because it seemed like so many. Or maybe it was the fact she was about to inject some foreign substance into her body. She inhaled deeply and rolled up her sleeves. Two shots in each arm, Lila had explained.
Going in the medicine had burned but it was nothing Hannah could not handle. She had experienced much worse in the past. In no time, the drug was coursing thru her body.
"How are you feeling?" Lila asked as she injected the last syringe.
"Fine."
"Good. We will be watching you for thirty minutes and you can go."
Hannah nodded in understanding as she pushed her red hair behind her ears.
For the next few weeks, Hannah came into the office every week for blood work and injections. Things were progressing so well, the doctor had decided to teach her how to give herself the injections at home. It was pretty easy, Hannah had discovered. She had not experienced any of the side effects from the medicine and she felt safe taking the drug.
Until one day, while out with her dog, she looked up at her neighbor's house and she saw a flash of her neighbor being involved in a car accident. Hannah brushed it off as an over active imagination. Especially since she stayed as far away from the neighbor as she possible could. Two days later, the vision came true. He had pulled out into their street and had been broad sided, leaving a dent in the passenger's side of the car. She told herself it was just a coincidence.
A couple of days later after the creepy feeling had subsided; she saw another flash of a vision. Her aunt would be sick and near death in the hospital. Hannah reluctantly dismissed that vision too. There was no way that could happen. Her aunt was as healthy as a horse. The phone call regarding Kate, her aunt had come in later that evening. For a few moments, she sat at her desk not knowing what to think or feel. Again, she dismissed the vision as just being a coincidence. Surely, she wasn't clairvoyant.
After the third vision of a storm wreaking havoc on her small town came true, she knew something weird was going on. She began to believe in her visions.
Hannah tried telling her mother about them but she would not hear any of it. "Don't say stuff like that Hannah. You know that stuff scares me." Her mother had said unapologetically. She never mentioned them again to her mother. Instead, she decided to speak to Dr. Marstin about them. Hopefully, he would not think that she was totally off her rocker and give her some kind of explanation as to why she was having these visions. After all, the only thing she had done was take the new medicine. Somehow, they had to be tied in together.
A few days later, Hannah found herself sitting in the same exam room as all the other times before. She tried picking up an outdated copy of Cosmo, but it did nothing to help relieve her anxiety. Instead, she saw another vision of Dr. Marstin walking in with a broken leg and on crutches. She knew he had had a skiing accident. She saw the snow and the fall in her mind's eye.
Snapped back to reality by a knocking on the door, she turned her attention to the doctor walking in with crutches under both of his arms and his leg was bandaged in a cast.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he replied non-chalantly. "It's hard to maneuver with these things." He placed the crutches up against the sink.
Oh My God, her brain screamed at her. She had seen his broken leg in her vision. A strange and odd feeling swept over Hannah as she began to shift uncomfortably on the exam table.
"How are you feeling?" He asked concernedly.
Hannah was speechless. She couldn't think or speak.
"Hannah?" He asked again.
"Huh?" She muttered out.
Dr. Marstin asked her again how she was feeling.
"Oh fine." She tried not to stutter out her answer. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Well, I have been seeing things. Little flashes of things that are going to happen. Is there anyway it is connected to the clinical trial drug?" She asked, knowing how stupid the question seemed.
The doctor inhaled deeply and asked, "What do you mean? Seeing things?" Curiosity and unbelief dripped from his voice.
Hannah explained that before he had come into the room she had seen a flash of him walking in with a broken leg and the fall itself down a snowy slippery slope.
"Are you saying you're clairvoyant?" He asked her.
"I don't know. Noone told me about your leg. But I knew about it." She tried explaining without sounding like a lunatic.
Lila walked in with a syringe full of the medicine and handed it to Hannah to inject herself.
Dr. Marstin addressed Lila, "has anyone told Hannah about my accident?" He asked looking at the nurse and then back to his patient.
"No." Lila answered. "Noone even mentioned you when I took her vitals. Why?"
The doctor held up his index finger, to signal that he would explain in a minute as he asked Hannah to explain the vision once again.
Hannah did as he asked. She described everything down to a tee. The yellow parka he had been wearing and how his skis had gotten hung on a tree root. And how his left leg and been folded back behind him.
Unbelief rocked the doctor as he spoke, "its happening again, Lila. Call the pharmaceutical company to see what they want to do."
Unable to control her emotions Hannah began to cry and her voice pitched higher, "Again? You mean this has happened before?" Confusion and anger swam through her system.
Dr. Marstin hung his head and answered almost in a whisper, "I'm afraid you are not the first patient to have this happen to them."
Feeling dizzy and lightheaded, Hannah's vision became cloudy and then dark. The revelation had caused her to fall limp against the wall.

A few moments later Hannah came too with the horrible smell of an ammonia capsule under her nose. Opening her eyes, she tried to focus; everything around her was blurry and fuzzy. She twisted her head from side to side to escape the pungent smell of the ammonia. "What happened?" She groaned.
"You passed out." Dr. Marstin explained calmly as he checked Hannah's pulse.
Oh yeah, she thought. Everything was coming back to her now. The visions and the doctor's explanation. Some of the other participants had experienced the same occurrence. As her the room around her came into focus, she tried to sit up and her stomach gripped her with queasiness.
Noticing the green of her face, the doctored ordered her to continue lying back on the exam table and began checking her blood pressure.
She swallowed hard to bite back the taste of bile burning the back of her throat. "How did this happen?" She asked as she lay back on the exam table.
"We don't really know." He tried to offer as he took the stethoscope from his ears and hung the instrument around his neck. "The researchers at the lab have taken apart every component of the drug and injected participants with the individual drug and only a few of those participants experienced what you have. So it seems, as if it is something in the drug itself. But they also believe that a predisposition to clairvoyance may be another reason for the visions."
Hannah felt like she was in the middle of an episode of "The Twilight Zone". It was so unbelievable and so surreal. "Why?" She asked as she willed her brain to compute all the information.
The doctor sighed heavily as he took a seat on the swivel stool next to the exam table. "A lot of people believe in clairvoyance but, I really can't explain why. We never imagined anything like this when we undertook the clinical trial." He watched his patient closely as she once again tried to sit up. This time successfully. "Has anything like this ever happened to you in the past?"
Hannah thought back over her thirty-five years. Sure, she had had strong feelings of something going to happen. Only she had explained them away as coincidences. Now she wondered if they were just that.
Thinking back, she remembered the time she had spent the night out partying with friends before a huge psychology exam in college and the next day she had known the answers to all the questions. That had been just pure luck, she had told herself. Also, remembering her best friend had breast cancer without the benefit of a mammogram. She had used that feeling to persuade her friend to having the lifesaving test. Only to be proven that she did in fact, have breast cancer and it had been caught early. Also, the time she had known at the exact moment her grandfather had passed from this world to the next. She had been at work, yet, she had the feeling of sadness and peace settles over her. Still she shook the occurrences off as coincidences. Not clairvoyance.
She answered him honestly, "I've had feelings that something was about to happened and they did. I never thought I was clairvoyant."
"You're predisposed to clairvoyance. Research shows a lot pf people are but just don't acknowledge their gift."
"Gift? Sounds more like a curse to me." She quipped at him.
Dr. Marstin snickered at her statement. "Some people think that. But think of the good you can do with your gift."
"Like predict the lottery numbers. Now, that would be great." She said facetiously.
His snicker became full blown laughter. "I don't think it works like that. However, winning the lottery would be nice."
Hannah glanced at the doctor curiously and bit her lower lip. "This seems so unreal to me. Like I am in the middle so some kind of nightmare." She felt like crying but bit back the tears. She hadn't asked for any of this to happen to her. She had only wanted her body to heal.

"At first, we thought it was a fluke until more and more patients began experiencing visions just as you have," He explained.
Hannah shook her head. "I can't believe any of this. I never asked for any of this." The tears she had been forcing back slowly erupted from her eyes and down her cheeks.
"I know," he told her as he stood and rubbed her back to offer comfort as best as he could. "Hannah, we need to discuss how to proceed with the clinical trial."
Hiccupping through sobs she asked, "What do you mean?"
"Of course, you can withdrawal from the study and there would be no hard feelings. Or you could stay in the study and increase the dosage enough that your visions would be more vivid and come more often."

Anger hit her square in the chest. What was he saying exactly? "You have got to be kidding me?" Her voice pitched higher. "Stay in the study and increase the dosage so the damn things happen more often and are more vivid? Are you frigging nuts?" She yelled at him as she jumped down off the table. She was unable to believe he was even suggesting the idea. The need to run out of the office was great, but she fought to keep her feel firmly on the floor.
"I understand your reluctance. But think of all the good you can do, if you are able to see the visions more clearly and possible summon them at your will." He told her.
Anger like she had never felt before in her life bubbled deep in her belly. "You're friggin' crazy." She told him again, watching her words carefully. Just because she was angry enough to use a curse word, the doctor was still an elder and it wasn't polite to use such language to an elder. "I want out of the damned thing! It's bad enough I have to live with this disease, I will not be a freak too!"

"Calm down." He told her. "If that's what you want, then I'll start the paperwork today. But I have to inform you that the visions may not stop after the medicine is stopped and out of your system. The visions may stay with you for the rest of your life."
What had she done to herself? This was her own fault. Because she had been so desperate to feel better. Angry at her own self and the doctor, she began pacing back and forth in the tiny room.
"If you can control the visions, you'll be able to predict and possibly thwart terror attacks, warn people of the horrendous storms and God only know what else." He explained to her.
"You're crazy." She snapped at him. "Don't we have agencies for that kind of thing that our good tax money goes to pay for?"
"Yes." He shrugged. "Maybe, I am crazy. But Hannah, think if the innocent lives you will be saving. Children, the elderly, and even our own country." He countered. "We need people like you that can help."
We?
Hannah stopped pacing and gave her doctor a hard glare of suspicion. Why was her consent so important to him? "That's all good and everything, but I will have all kinds of people coming out of the wood work."
Dr, Marstin was about to explain that noone other than the people who had to know about the visions would know, when someone knocked at the door. He hobbled on his good leg and opened the door.
Hannah eyed the man suspiciously as he walked into the small room. With his presence, the room seemed to shrink in size. He was a good two feel taller than she and his broad shoulders looked like a brick wall. But his eyes intrigued her more. They were as cold as ice as he met hers. Her belly quivered as a vision of the towering man kissing her came in front of her unexpectedly. Shutting her eyes tightly to ward off the vision, she asked with skepticism, "who is this?"
The man's voice boomed in the small room when he answered. "I am Dr. Jamison from the drug company that makes the medicine you are taking. I would like to speak to you regarding your potential." He stretched out his hand to shake hers.
The man was all male, Hannah realized. Though, it didn't stop her from laughing at him. "You're lying!" She yelled as she grabbed her purse. "I don't know exactly who you are, but I know you are lying."
The man looked and Dr. Marstin and shrugged his shoulders. "You are correct. I am lying."
She had had enough. "I'm out of here!" She snapped at the two men and pushed her way through them and ran out of the office. "Consider my participation over!"
"Wait!" The doctor and the stranger yelled to her back.
Hannah ran to her car. So angry at the two men, she fumbled in her purse for her keys and dropped them to the ground. "Shit!" She cursed aloud.
The man who had claimed to be a doctor was there beside her and bent over to pick up her keys. Standing straight, he put her keys into his pocket and said, "You're to upset to drive. Let me drive you somewhere until you calm down."
"You're crazy!" She yelled at him as her eyes shot daggers at him. "I am not going anywhere with you!"
"Lady, you have no choice." He said calmly as he took her by the forearm and led her to the dark suburban sitting the back of the parking lot. The windows were tinted and she couldn't see in. He opened the door and all but threw her into the vehicle.
Stunned, she sat in silence as she watched him walk around to the driver's side. She couldn't help but notice his strong jaw and rugged good looks. She was a woman after all. If the circumstances had been different she would have found him attractive. "This is kidnapping. I'm calling the police!" She screamed at him as he climbed in behind the wheel. She reached in her purse for her cell phone.
The man grabbed her purse from her hand before she could pull the phone out and threw it into the backseat. Pulling out of the parking lot, into the street, he sneered, "Honey, I am the police."
She shut her gaping mouth and realized her life had gone from bad to worse.
He kept his attention on the road ahead of them. "I am not going to hurt you." He told her.
Hannah stared at him and noticed despite the heat of the summer and the force he had used to get her into the van, he was not sweating. Turning her attention to the passing scenery, she ignored the lying stranger whose dominating presence seemed to be taking up most of the van.
"I want to help you." He told her kindly.
Almost too kindly for Hannah. She snorted her reply at him.
"Remember 911?" He asked her.
Who didn't? She wanted to ask. "Of course."
"That attacks in London?"
"Yes."
"The tsunami?"
"Yes." God, did he think she hadn't been on the planet when everything happened.
"Hurricane Katrina? The bombings in Madrid? The bombings of the U.S.S. Cole?"
"Of course. I haven't been living under a rock." She snapped at him. She couldn't help but notice his mouth curving upward in a smile. "But what exactly does this have to do with me?" She wasn't a terrorist, Mother Nature, or even God. What could she do?
Forcing the smile down, he kept his gaze on the road ahead as he led them out into the country. "Someone like you, with your gift." He said the word gift with disdain. "Could possibly predict events before they happen and save millions of lives."
Hannah eyed him with suspicion. "Exactly who are you? I know you are not a doctor." She brought up his lie.
He didn't flinch and showed no emotion whatsoever. "I am with the government and we need your help."
"Unbelievable." She laid her head against the clothe seat and closed her eyes trying to fight the tears behind her eyes. "I can't believe this is happening to me."
A few moments later he parked the truck at an abandoned farm house and got out. Opening the door for Hannah, he placed out his hand to help her down out of the truck.
She looked up at him warily, unsure if she could trust him.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He tried to assure her. "Come on I want to show you something."
Reluctantly, she took his hand and the vision of his mouth on hers bombarded her again. No! She yelled to herself. There was no way she would kiss the man who had laid to her and had man handled her. As soon as her feel hit the ground, she broke the contact and followed him inside the dilapidated house.
"Sit down." He barked the order at her.
"First, tell me your name." She stood with her hands on her hips.
He lied again. "Phoenix."
Hannah knew he was lying but didn't call him on it. Instead she watched him move around the room and turn on the plasma TV and DVD player. "If you wanted to watch a movie, all you had to do was ask." She tried to break the tension that filled the air.
He didn't break a smile at her. "Sit." He ordered her again.
This time she did as he had told her to do and sat in the chair furthest away from him and happened to be closest to the door.
He stood at the entry of the door and watched her reaction to the DVD closely.
Hannah couldn't believe the horrors unfolding in front of her eyes. Bombings if soldiers in foreign countries, planes being used as bombs and colliding into buildings and then the worst thing she had ever seen in her life appeared before her eyes. A small child being ripped from its mother's arms by raging water. She began to cry again and looked up at the man in search for answers.
"If you continue with the clinical trial, you may be able to help people just like these." He nodded to the TV screen. You may be able to stop these atrocities from ever happening again." He stared at the TV screen.
"I can't stop these terrible things from happening. I am not God." She argued with him.
"No. But you could save lives. Think about the mother in the DVD who lost her child in the tsunami. If those people had known beforehand, she would not have suffered a great loss. And the soldier's who have lost their lives, they left behind grieving families. You could keep them safe, Hannah." He explained.
How had he known her name? He worked for the government. They know everything. "I don't know." She turned back around to look at the screen. "I can see it now. Local girl claims to have visions, story at eleven."
"I can protect you from all that." He gazed at the back of her head.
"How?" She asked trying to keep anger from her voice. "You've lied to me. Man handled me and drug me out of a parking lot by force. I can't trust you."
"True. I did those things. But I had too."
"Yeah. Right." She said unbelievingly.
"I'll be with you every step of the way." He tried to assure her.
Oh God, she thought to herself.
"At least, for awhile."
"Like a bodyguard?" She asked him as she turned to face him again. She noticed he had been staring at her and her hair. Her belly gave another flip and she fought a smile.
For the second time, the man who called himself Phoenix smiled at her and her heart thudded in her chest. And what a beautiful smile it was, too, Hanna noticed as she smiled up at him. "Sort of. If another country knew about you and your capabilities, you could be in danger, possibly killed. We can't afford to let that happen."
"Oh. Can I think about it?" She asked him.
He moved away from the door and sat down on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. His eyes met hers. "I wish I could say we have the time, but we don't. The sooner we get started, the sooner you can help."
Hannah couldn't believe she was actually contemplating going ahead with the trial and actually helping this man. One she didn't know if she could trust completely. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined herself doing anything so unordinary. The danger he had explained to her didn't frighten her half as much as the man sitting in front of her did.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes to think of all the people she could help with her visions. Mothers, children, soldiers, the list was endless. She licked her dry lips and was about to give him her answer when she felt his lips on hers. She should have pulled away from him the moment their lips met, but she couldn't force herself. Not when his tongue outlined her lips and she parted them for him.
Just as their tongues met, he pulled away abruptly. "I'm sorry. That should not have happened." He stood up so quickly, he almost knocked the coffee table over.
Opening her eyes, she noticed he was just as confused over their kiss as she was.
"It won't happen again." He told her as he moved away from her.
Her hand went to her lips where she could still feel his on them. She was a little hurt at his words and tried not to show it. "No. It won't."
He turned to look at her and placed his hands on his hips and waited eagerly for an answer. "Have you decided yet?"
Hannah's eyes opened wide at his stance. Along with having a beautiful smile and shoulders so broad, she felt she could get lost in, his hips, although clothed were amazing.
Deciding to forget the kiss and get on with her answer. With a sense of purpose she hadn't felt in a long time, she gave him the answer he wanted to hear, "When do we start?"
"Thank you, Hannah." He replied with pure gratitude in his voice. "Let's get you back to Dr. Marstin's and begin."
Remembering some very famous words from that horrific day in September 2001, she thought it was appropriate to repeat them now at this juncture in her life. "Let's roll!" She all but squealed with enthusiasm with her new role in life. Deep down, she knew life as she had known it was going to change forever.

THE END