The New Life Clinics
by
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(Page 1 from Part I-- In She Goes)
Janet Walters was very nervous. She had prepared for months to make this happen but now it took all her will to keep from getting up from her chair in the lobby and walking back out the door she had entered a few minutes before. Fortunately, it was expected that she would be nervous so her absolute inability to hide her anxiety from the receptionist or anyone else would not raise any suspicion.
She had arrived by taxicab, straight from the airport, at 9:30 in the morning, a half-hour before her scheduled appointment. The Clinic building was similar to those she'd seen for years. They were all over the country now - at least 100 of them. The main entrance and the lobby area behind it were in a towering section at the front of the building. As you approached it you were met with an impressive narrow four or five story tall continuous array of glass panes in a varied and artistically effective pattern to make one gigantic window. It was a beautiful August day and the window sparkled with the reflection of the circular drive around the pool and fountain in front of the building. There was the inevitable flagpole with Old Glory all 60 feet to the top. No recently expired senators or local postmasters, she'd thought. The rest of the building was totally without windows. Something about improving heating and air-conditioning. Energy conservation and all that, but to her it looked like a gigantic amphitheater that had the foreboding presence of a prison.
As one entered the foyer and reception area it was difficult to keep from tilting your head back to follow the shafts of light that slanted down on the mortals below through colored glass skylights high above. It definitely encouraged the feeling that you were about to embark upon something akin to a religious experience.
She had just the small carry-on bag she was permitted to bring with her. Although she was one of the rare self-paying guests she was still subject to the rules. In her bag was a file in which she had papers that would show that she had severed all ties with her previous life. They recorded the sale of all her furniture and disposal of other personal possessions, the closing of her lease on her apartment, the sale of her automobile, and her resignation from her job at the newspaper. Her doctors and dentist had been notified she was moving and she carried their files with her. Her bank, savings & loan, charge, and other business accounts were closed and all her assets were turned into cash which she carried in her bag. A good part of it would go to pay the Clinic and the rest would be put in an account for her to withdraw later.
There were seven Clinics in the New York area where she was from, but it had been thought advisable that she enter this one in Chicago. That would make for less chance of running into anyone she knew during the initial one week preparatory period. Not that it would matter, eventually, but it could result in some awkward situations. Anyway, that's the way they did it.
All that her friends and associates in New York were supposed to know was that she was moving West to try to put things back together after the dreadful year she had just suffered. She knew that many of them guessed that she was entering the Program, especially when the goodbye was more tearful than one might expect. Some of them knew that they would never see Janet Walters again. Now she was waiting where the receptionist had told her to sit until a Dr. Hanson would escort her to the admissions office to arrange her entry and begin explaining the procedures of the Clinic
(Last page of Part I)
On the flight to Denver she had time to review her situation ....
What about going to an office of the FBI? She visualized waiting in a dingy hall until her turn came to go into a dingy office and sit opposite a dingy bureaucrat named Agent Smith.
'Yes ma'am. What is it you wish to tell us?'
'I'm here to report a crime. Actually, more like a criminal conspiracy.'
The word conspiracy would set off bells in his mind and his left eyebrow would raise as he picked up a pen and held it over the form on his desk asking, 'And what is your name, please?'
'Name? Oh, yes. My name is Janet Walters, alias Harriet Miller, alias Millicent Fawcett, alias Joan Blanchard, alias ...' By then he'd be staring at her and wildly pushing the buzzer under his desk summoning the security guards.
She needed to use her newly acquired skills at becoming anonymous to take a time out and figure out some way to bring down the madmen who ran the Clinics.
To start with she'd now also have to abandon the plan she'd set up in the Clinic. Though she'd had no intention of following it anyway, she had taken the first step by flying to Denver, and all her identification was in the name of Sally Rasmussen.
She put her head back and closed her eyes. She slept, dreaming that she was a little girl and her daddy was driving her in their car. They were escaping from something and she heard vague noises behind them as they went out into the open countryside.
The whining and bumping noises of extending the flaps and lowering the landing gear during final approach to the Denver airport woke her. She sat up and looked out the window. There was snow on the nearby mountains but none on the ground beneath them. A thrilling sensation of joy went through her as she once more grasped the reality that she was free of the Clinic. She wasn't safe yet, she knew, but oh it was wonderful to be back in the world again!
When she arrived in Denver and had retrieved her luggage she put her cases in a storage locker and went to the main floor of the terminal. Sally found a restaurant that served cocktails and treated herself to one along with a shrimp salad for lunch. By the time she'd finished eating she'd decided on her next move.
She paid for her lunch with a traveler's check and cashed the rest of the Sally Rasmussen checks at other stores in the terminal buying a few small items that she might need. A purse-size retracting umbrella, a couple of magazines, some cosmetics.
Next, she went into a women's rest room and in a stall removed her red wig and glasses and put them in her purse. A minute at the mirror in the washroom and she recognized, let's see, when had she last looked like that? ... Milly Fawcett. She hoped no one else did.
In the terminal concourse again she examined the overhead displays listing departing flights. When she'd made her decision she retrieved her luggage from the storage locker, walked to an airline ticket counter and asked, 'Is there coach space available on Flight 247 to San Francisco?'
'Yes, would you like a ticket for that flight? It leaves in 35 minutes.'
'Yes, I would, one way please.'
'All right, what is your name, please?'
She was good at this now. Without hesitating or blinking an eye she replied, 'Martha Sedgewick.'
(178 pages)
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About the Book
The New Life Clinics have become a major national institution with facilities in all the large cities around the country. Using psychology, plastic surgery and some special training techniques, they change personalities and redirect lives. It is a compelling concept for many people - a chance to disappear and be reborn a new person in a new place, shorn of the errors or agonies of the past and ready to start over again. The Clinics have applied their methods to ex-convicts so well that the crime rate has dropped 60 percent in a decade.
In Part I of the book, Janet Walters, a young woman newspaper reporter, decides to go through the Clinic program, surgery and all, in order to learn the well guarded secrets of the Clinics' success. However, with the help of a sympathetic Clinic doctor, Janet finds out too much about the Clinic's operations. She learns of a deeply sinister aspect that leads to the most terrifying experience of her life. Although the doctor rescues her from this peril, they both are marked for elimination and she is set on a run to escape the seemingly omnipresent influence of the Clinics and their hirelings.
In part II, Janet must face treachery and death to survive until she can get help to have the truth about the Clinics revealed in a way that no one can doubt. She flees from the Midwest to the West Coast and later to St. Louis using the Clinic lessons well in a variety of roles to help her stay alive and still doggedly pursue her goal.
About the Author
William Rothwell lives in central California in the Sierra foothills and is married to a professional artist. He has worked as a teacher, research scientist, and most recently as a consultant in physical science.
Author of The Vocabulary of Physics and many scientific publications, he turned to fiction with The New Life Clinics, his first novel.
Writing stories as a vocation first tempted Rothwell when he resigned from the U.S. Navy and returned to school to prepare for an alternative career, but he chose to study physics to improve his and contribute to our understanding of the natural world around us. Now he is taking time to give substance and form to the plots of stories which have accumulated in the writer's part of his brain.