Authors’s note – each paragraph indicates a time and/or space change.

It wasn’t as though he’d ever planned to stay, after all.  He’d disliked everything from the moment he was guided into the damp, poorly lit entrance hall.  He had shuffled along, a fast-talking man assuring the two people with him that their father would be well taken care of.  His father was here, of course.  He’d been coming around for a while now.  You never knew when he might show up.  The rest of his family thought his father was dead, but he knew better, didn’t he?  He had always known better.  In fact, there his father was now!  Right there, standing in the shadows behind the dusty potted plant.  He knew better, all right.

                        Watching her father conversing animatedly with a fake plant nearly caused Lisa to break into tears again.  “It’s been hardest…watching him deteriorate,” she choked out. 

“I – I always wanted to keep him with us, but I can’t do it anymore.  The children –”  she swallowed.  “The children don’t understand why they can’t have friends over.”  Reassured by the Director of Patients’ somewhat bland smile, she knew she had nowhere else to turn.

            Two weeks had passed, and he was not adapting.  At meals he sat alone, glowering at his gray-green peas.  He had finally figured out what was going on – he had clearly been taken captive by the enemy.  Oh, they pretended to be friendly, all right – knocking before entering his room, calling him ‘sir,’ but he knew what he knew.  He didn’t, however, know just yet what they wanted with him, and as he sat glaring at his now cold meatloaf, he made up his mind that he would stick around to find out.  But he couldn’t just leave, oh, no.  They had spies everywhere.  But one afternoon, as he pretended to be asleep to avoid taking his medicine,  he noticed that the aide would leave if the patient appeared to be asleep.

            He bit his lip.  The pillows were properly arranged under his blankets and he was standing behind the door.  He’d been standing for about ten minutes, waiting.  His bad knee was cramping up, but he didn’t dare reach down and rub it, for fear that an aide would come in at that moment.

Lisa was standing at the window, unable to shake a feeling of – something.  When her husband came home, she allowed herself to be gently turned away from the endless sea of grass sloping away.

            An aide strode briskly into the room.  As she went in, she left the door open, and he slipped out and into the hall.  He stopped, panic suddenly flooding him.  Which way should he go?  Where were the hidden traps?  Silently berating himself for neglecting to plan this part of his escape in detail, he spotted the plant by which he’d seen his father.  He had to be near the door!  Limping slightly on account of his knee, he headed for the heavy wooden door and the freedom beyond. 

            Lisa reached for the telephone as it rang.  She listened breathlessly, issued a hurried, “Thank you!” and hung up.  “John!” she called.  “John, there’s a new medicine – it might work for Dad – still experimental, of course, but hopes are high – ”  The telephone rang again.

            The farther he roamed, the more his panic increased.  It wasn’t the same, nothing was the same, what had happened?  He stumbled in the tall grass and couldn’t catch his balance in time.  Finding himself facedown, he couldn’t summon the energy to rise again.

            Heart pounding in her throat, Lisa ran down the hallway.  A quick glance confirmed what she had been told over the phone – her father was gone.  A GWP – Gone Without Permission – was a red alert at this facility, and through the windows she could already see tan shirts fanning out in search. 

            He rolled over, old army instincts coming back to him in waves.  Stay low, stay hidden, and stay calm.

            He was asleep when they found him.  At first Lisa thought he was unconscious and had to stifle her cry of horror.  They led him back, still half-asleep, to the home.  As he gained more and more consousness, he fought, but in a futile effort.

“Did you see his face?” Lisa asked her husband as she paced the kitchen floor.  “Did you see what he looked like as they led him in there?  Like a prisoner led to his execution!  Something’s not right, John.”

            Nervously, he settled himself in a wooden kitchen chair.  He still didn’t understand hy he was here with these nice people instead of at the prison ward, but he found he didn’t really care.  Soon after he’d been taken back to his room, the lady had stormed in and demanded his release.  He found the conditions here much more acceptable, with the exception of the large pale pill they forced him to swallow at meals.

            “Is it true?” he asked abruptly.  “Is what true?” Lisa said absentmindedly as she chopped carrots at the countertop.  He paused, looked at her hard, and said, a little hesitantly, “Is it true…that you’re my baby?”