11-Jan-2002
Title: The Private
Warnings: None
Pairings: None
Part: 1/1
"Good God! Dorothy are you all right?" Relena Darlian exclaimed as she brushed past a nurse into the emergency room. The nurse gave the young woman an amused smile as she left. Relena hurried to her friend’s side concerned about her well being.
"Yes, I'm fine." Dorothy told her. Relena drew back a moment startled by the soft tone to Dorothy's voice.
"I heard about the crash on the news. I knew it was your corvette the second they gave the description. I dropped everything and rushed over. I was only a few blocks away at a fundraiser."
"As you can see, I'm fine. A few cuts, bruises and singe marks. They were about to send me home." Dorothy's voice continued to have a saddened quality that made Relena fear that there was more emotional damage than what she was letting on. As her friend, although an odd friendship it was, Relena felt she needed to stick around just in case.
"I'll drive you home." She offered. Dorothy arched one eyebrow in an amused fashion.
"You, drive without Pargon? That'll be the day." A tight laugh escaped her lips. Relena chuckled along for a moment.
"Actually, I decided that I wanted to learn to drive for myself. It makes me feel less like a pampered princess."
"But you are a princess." Dorothy reminded her hopping off the hospital bed. Sighing, Relena pulled out a set of car keys from her coat pocket and shook them in front of Dorothy's face.
"A princess who owns a minivan. Now would you like a ride or would you rather take the bus home?"
"A minivan? You own a minivan?" Dorothy asked scooping up her slightly charred coat from where the attending nurse had hung it. "Why?"
"Because would you expect someone like me to own a forest green minivan?" Dorothy shook her head. "See, perfect disguise." Shrugging her shoulders, Dorothy accepted the ride back to her house and the two left the hospital together.
As Relena drove along the lit streets of the downtown area, she only kept half her attention on the road. The other half was concentrated on Dorothy who was leaning against the passenger side window. After nearly seven minutes of silence, Relena knew she had to say something.
"Would you like to tell me what happened to you and the Private this evening?" she ventured not expecting a response.
"We crashed."
"I know, I saw the news remember?" Relena paused for a moment. "I know you loved that car. It was a real find."
"A 1966 cherry red corvette. Mint condition. Was barely driven. It was a dream come true and I paid only a third of what it was worth." Dorothy said dreamily. She shifted position so that she was no longer fogging up the window.
"You were lucky." Relena agreed flipping on the turn signal and making a right.
"Really lucky. Oh, hell with it! You're going to continue asking little questions until you get the whole story, so I might as well tell you." Dorothy snapped.
"If you don't want to talk…."
"No, I do. I do. Not that you're going to believe it, but I don't care at this point." Dorothy growled cutting Relena off mid-sentence. "It all began when I first got the Private.
"I was looking in the glove compartment to see what the previous owner had left when I found a letter. The date was 1966 and it was written by a young man name Private Andrew Malone. There was even a picture of him stuffed in the envelope. Anyway, he wrote that this was his first car and that he'd saved up his pay for nearly a year to buy it. It was his dream car. The letter went on to say that if I was reading this then he hadn't made it home. He said for every dream that is shattered another will come true. Now I had to take his corvette and make it my own, but I'd always be riding with Private Malone."
"So that's where the name, the Private came from. I'd been wondering." Relena commented as the rain began splattering on her windshield. Immediately she turned on her wipers before the rain obscured her vision. This was the second time that night it had rained.
"Yes, I named the car for him. I don't know exactly why I did, maybe it was to honor his memory in some way." Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. "Anyway. After I took the car home and cleaned him up, I began noticing things. At first I just thought it was it was because the Private was old, but that didn't explain certain things."
"Such as?"
"Well, I always had problems with the radio. It never seemed to work quite right. It picked up news okay, rock n' roll stations sometimes, never alternative or pop stations, but that oldies station always came in clear as a bell. Didn't matter where I was, I always could get it. And even if I know I left the radio tuned to the classic station or something, when I next turned on the Private, it was set to the oldies."
"Strange indeed." Relena agreed stopping for a red light. The minivan hummed as it sat idle waiting for the light to change.
"Oh, that's not the strangest part." Dorothy said as the light turned green and Relena put her foot on the gas pedal.
"Really?"
"Yes. There were times I'd be riding along and swear that someone was sitting next to me. A couple times out of the corner of my eye I saw the image of a man in the passenger seat. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, but one time I managed to snap my head around quick enough to see him completely."
"Dorothy, are you telling me that your corvette was haunted?" Relena laughed, Dorothy didn't. Instead she sat sullen in the seat and watched the neon lights of a restaurant claiming "authentic Indian cuisine" flicker out as they drove past. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence Relena apologized. "I'm sorry Dorothy. If you believe a ghost of this Private Malone possessed your car."
"He wasn't possessing it. It was more like he was its guardian spirit. I think he got a thrill by the fact I was driving it around. Something he probably didn't have a chance to do when he was alive. Now you see why I didn't mention anything before. Nobody would understand why I, Dorothy Catalonia, believed in ghosts. It's not something you associate with me."
"No," Relena agreed signaling left and turning onto the on ramp. "You're right. It's not. But there appears to be evidence, at least in your mind, that there was a ghost. So if you believe there was a ghost, I'm not going to say there wasn't."
"How charitable." Grumbled Dorothy as she leaned on the window again. Seeing as she was fogging it up once more, Relena switched the heater to defrost.
"Look, I'm not going to argue with you over this. You said there was a ghost, I'm entitled to believe you. Why? Because you're Dorothy Catalonia, that's why."
Shaking her head, Dorothy tried not to become irritated with her friend. After all there had been plenty of times Relena had probably wanted to strangle her. Turn about was fair play. Still that didn't mean that Dorothy didn't want to yell at Relena now. She'd had a bad day, bad evening and bad tomorrow morning from the way things were going.
"So what were you doing that caused you to spin out like you did?" Relena asked at length thinking that it was time to change the subject slightly.
"I was stupid." Was all the response she got for several minutes. Then with a deep sigh, Dorothy straightened and looked directly at her. "I was being my usual speed demon self and took a curve too fast. And since this is the first serious rain we've had in a week, the road was slick. The combination spelled disaster for me and the Private. I remember trying to get out of the slide I was in and avoiding an oncoming car. Then I apparently did a 360 tailspin, rolled down a ditch and crashed into a small grove of aspen. There was smoke and I was coughing really hard, then I was being lifted and pulled from the wreckage. I'm not sure who pulled me out."
"The nurse at the front desk said that the firemen at the scene were told a young man pulled you out and stayed with you until the paramedics arrived. He was quite concerned about you apparently." Relena informed her as they drove down the two-lane highway that only an hour before Dorothy had crashed on. "Unfortunately he didn't give his name." Dorothy's eyes widened in the darkness of the minivan.
"What did he look like?"
"The nurse mentioned that he was dressed as a period soldier from the late twentieth century." Suddenly Relena paused. "You don't think?"
They drove past a section of road with one police car, a fire engine and a tow truck parked on the side. Slowing down, Relena noticed the wreckage of a red corvette was being loaded onto the tow truck. She had the sudden urge to pull over and stop.
"Relena."
Relena parked the minivan and turned off the ignition. Dorothy already had her seatbelt off and was opening the door. She ran over to crash site with Relena struggling to keep up.
"Hold it miss." A large police officer wearing a yellow rain slicker said holding out his arms.
"But that's my car!" Dorothy snapped. "That's my Private." The police officer blinked and looked at her, then the burnt corvette.
"You were in that?" he asked disbelief written across his face.
"Yes, it went up after I got out. Look, I just want to see if any of my personal items survived. Also, is there anyone here that saw the man that pulled me out?" Dorothy inquired glancing over at the approaching firefighters.
"Hey, you don't look bad." One firefighter exclaimed. "I thought for sure they'd have you in over night. We were the first unit on the scene with the paramedics."
"Did you see the man who saved me?" Dorothy was beginning to feel a bit desperate now. Either this man told her something useful or let her get to what was left of her car.
"Yeah, he was really nice. I guess he was on his way to a costume party, it being that time of year again. He was dressed as a soldier from like the late 1900's. Reminded me of all those photos I'd seen in history books. Anyway, he stuck around until the paramedics loaded you into the ambulance then took off. He must have gone back to his car because I remember looking around to thank him and he was gone. Oh, these were found outside the car. I guess you must have had them in the pocket of your coat and they fell out when you were being taken off." The man handed her several papers. Dorothy took them carefully in her hands and began to sort through them. Relena peered over her shoulder wondering what she was looking for.
Dorothy pulled free an aged envelope from the stack. Carefully she opened it and slid the contents into her hand. Sighing with relief, Dorothy flipped over the picture and then held it up for the firefighter to see.
"Did the soldier look like him?" she asked her heart racing. The man studied the photo for a moment before nodding.
"Yeah, that is him all right. Same uniform too. Is he your boyfriend?"
"No, but he is a friend." Dorothy replied carefully returning both the photo and the letter to the envelope. "And there is no way I'll ever be able to thank him enough for saving me. Except maybe to get another 1966 corvette."
"Good luck. They're extremely rare."
"I know, but maybe my luck will hold until I find another. I owe him that much." Without another word Dorothy turned away from her car and headed for Relena's minivan.
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