The familiar characters of this story are not my own but are the property of corporate entities (DC Comics, December 3rd Productions, ABC, etc.) other than myself. This work is a labor of love and is presented with no expectation of remuneration.
Warning: This story is NOT a deathfic!
Nobody dies in this tale. But someone vitally important to the Lois and Clark universe thinks she’s going to die, so she does some very unusual things, some which might be considered – eek! – out of character. Please trust me when I say that she thinks she has a very good reason for behaving this way.
This story takes place at the end of Season One, after Lex has made his pursuit of Lois plain but before he bombs the Daily Planet. It replaces the end of the Lois-Lex romance arc.
It also takes place before many of today’s legal restrictions on sharing of personal medical information in the United States were put into place.
Enjoy.
<< Prologue >>
Bill Cumberland was bored out of his skull. He’d thought that a degree in chemistry would be an easy slide into an exciting life, full of thrills and chills and important discoveries. He’d envisioned himself as assistant to the next Louis Pasteur, finding a cure for some exotic disease. Or maybe he’d work in a lab where the next miracle drug would be developed. Failing that, he could work at S.T.A.R. Labs and assist important scientists in their research into the mysteries of the universe.
Instead, he was stuck in a small lab on the north side of Metropolis, pushing vials of blood through a machine which printed out the chemical results.
No intrigue, no mystery, no excitement, just mind-numbing grunt work any trained chimp or stoner with the munchies could do. But no, they had to have someone with a degree in chemistry to oversee the tests for the doctors and scientists who sent their samples to the lab for analysis. His boss told him it was to satisfy the various attorneys and insurance companies involved, but Bill didn’t believe it.
Well, he thought, if he had to do something so impersonal and joyless, at least he should get paid well for it.
No dice there, either. Bill barely made enough money to support himself in a cheap one-bedroom apartment. It wasn’t enough to support a girlfriend, which was why Candy had broken up with him the day before.
It was also why he was not only bored out of his skull but also frustrated and depressed.
Even the course catalog for the Master’s program in chemistry lying open on his desk didn’t draw his interest today. An advanced degree would give him some of the opportunities he longed for, and he’d made the decision to look into the program at Metropolis University, but he hadn’t done anything about it yet. The cost of the program was out of his reach at the moment, and he was two months behind on his current student loan. The collection officer had made the appropriate sympathetic noises and then had told him that if he didn’t get caught up soon, they’d have to report him to the credit bureau as a bad risk, and he might never get a better job or better place to live or a newer car because of it. Things were so bad he was actually contemplating moving back home to live with his parents – or worse, moving in with his brother.
So he was bored, frustrated, depressed, and morose about his job, his life, his romantic prospects, and his immediate future.
And those were probably the reasons he inadvertently switched the report for “Lane, L” with the one for “Lani, L” and put each result with the other’s return envelope.
Bill never realized what he set in motion that morning. But since it didn’t gain him any money, get him a new girlfriend who was more interested in him than she was in what he could get her, push him toward that advanced degree, or drop some excitement or intrigue into his life, he wouldn’t have cared in the slightest. The only thing that kept him from deliberately switching results around was his inherent honesty.
That was all that would save him from being prosecuted later on when it all came out.
And it was also the only thing that would keep a certain mis-diagnosed patient from hunting him down and dismembering him slowly and excruciatingly. That, and the myriad activities and their consequences with which she would soon be swamped.
So, without knowing it, Bill really had it good at that time of his life. He never had to face Mad Dog Lane in person.
