fic: Chimera — Chapter 7
Sep. 27th, 2015 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingrat7. Rachel Home Alone
Pete waits a judicious week before getting impatient, because if Wilson wants to flex his muscles and show that he’s the boss, then that’s fine with him. Wilson will come around, and the less Pete gets on his nerves, the quicker that’ll happen. Besides, there’s no hurry.
Nonetheless, when there’s no sign of life from Wilson and the kid after a week, he gets ... not nervous, but edgy. He knows they’re moving sometime now, but still! Lisa doesn’t send her weekly picture of the boy. Not that he was expecting her to: even if she weren’t mad at him, she wouldn’t consider herself obliged to keep him up to date, not now that Wilson is in the picture and can supply him with intel if he so pleases. Problem is, it does not please Wilson to do so. It’s the Cold War: there’s been a summit with bad food (if anything shows that Wilson’s intentions weren’t friendly, it’s the fact that he let Nolan make the pancakes), frozen smiles, and declarations of intent, but Wilson hasn’t made a binding commitment, let alone agreed to disarm.
Pete gives Wilson and Lisa another week to get their ‘suburban bliss’ act together, then he tries to contact Wilson via the usual channels: Facebook, then email, and finally Wilson’s phone. Wilson doesn’t respond. That annoys Pete even more than if Wilson had slapped him down. If Wilson were defining boundaries and reminding him of their existence, he’d be acknowledging that Pete has certain rights within those boundaries. Refusing to do even that, however, is tantamount to depriving Pete of all rights. Perhaps Wilson believes that if he keeps him in suspense for a while, he’ll be suitably chastened and cowed. Or maybe Wilson hopes that if he lets sleeping dogs lie, then Pete won’t bark up his tree (read: try to influence the freeloader’s life).
Actually, that isn’t such an abstruse notion: Pete is aware that if Lisa hadn’t forced the issue, he’d still be evading it. Until he knew that Wilson knew, he was quite happy to let things take their accustomed course without interfering. But now that he knows that Wilson is aware of the true nature of things, he’s finding it more difficult to distance himself from the problem. On a rational level, that makes no sense whatsoever: the kid isn’t more his son than he was when Wilson didn’t know that Pete is his father.
Still, out of sight isn’t out of mind, as Wilson should have noticed by now. It behoves him to acknowledge Pete’s advances as what they are: overtures of peace and surrender.
Saturday night he finally loses his cool and does the unthinkable: he phones Lisa. Rachel takes the phone. Asking Rachel why the fuck Wilson is treating him like a fricking Ebola patient isn’t an option, so he asks, “Have you seen Wilson around lately?”
“He’s taken Joel to visit Amy,” Rachel says.
Okay. That’s no reason to ignore his messages, though. “When did he leave for wherever?”
“L.A. On Friday.”
“When’s he returning?”
“Sunday.”
“Tomorrow?” It’s Saturday afternoon on Rachel’s side of the Atlantic.
“No, the Sunday after. He said it’s Joel’s last chance to have a long visit with Amy because he has to start working full-time the week after. He’s gonna work at Mom’s hospital,” Rachel says.
Wilson isn’t answering his messages and he’s somewhere where Pete doesn’t know anyone. There’s no help for it: he’ll need Lisa’s assistance. “Where’s your mom?”
“Uh, she’s sleeping.”
Pete glances at his watch. It’s eleven p.m. in England, which means it’s five p.m. in Philadelphia. “Then go wake her.”
Rachel hesitates. “I … don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s really tired.” There’s something odd in Rachel’s voice; she’s lying or hiding something. Pete doesn’t really care what it is: if Lisa chooses to have lovers over while Rachel is in the house, it’s not his headache.
So he says, “Wilson isn’t answering his phone.”
“Oh, that!” Rachel says, audibly relieved at the change of topic. “He forgot it here. He got all hectic getting Joel ready, and then he left the phone at our place, and by the time Mom found it his flight had left. But he phoned from Amy’s place to say they are fine.”
Okay, now they’re getting somewhere. “Do you have Amy’s phone number?”
“No.”
Pete summons the last vestiges of his patience. “Your mom must have Amy’s number somewhere. She keeps track of everyone and everything.”
Silence.
“Rachel?”
“Yeah?”
“The phone number! Please,” he adds as an afterthought.
“I … Mom …”
“Okay, Mom has the number. I got that. Now go and wake her.”
No response. He’ll have to convince Rachel that Lisa has slept long enough. (Since when does she take long afternoon naps?) “How long has she been asleep?”
“She …” There’s a very long pause. “She …” Rachel whispers something that he can’t understand.
“Can’t hear you!” he yells into the phone.
“She didn’t get up at all today,” Rachel says. And then there’s sobbing over the line, not amateur theatrics, but the real thing. “Something’s wrong with her. And we don’t have any food. There isn’t even milk in the fridge.”
“Call your babysitter,” Pete says. “And tell her to call a doctor. What’s Lisa eating if there’s no food in the house?”
“I don’t think she’s hungry. And I don’t have a babysitter. This place is too far away for my old one, and Mom hasn’t found a new one yet. She said she’d do it, but …”
“Call your ex-neighbour, the one with the godawful glasses and the smelly cats.”
“Louisa. I’ve t-tried.” Rachel’s words are drowned in further sobs. “And Mom said I shouldn’t call Julia.”
Distracted from his desire to contact Wilson, Pete pauses to consider the situation, which is decidedly odd. Lisa in bed, no food in the house, and Rachel upset enough to consider calling in outside help.
“Have you tried your next-door neighbours?” he asks.
“I don’t know them,” Rachel says with the stubbornness of a child who has been taught to never ever talk to strangers.
“It’s a great opportunity to remedy that,” he says. “Go over and —”
“I can’t. They have steps in front.”
Oh, okay, that’s a bummer. “Then wheel yourself as close to the door as possible and holler from there,” he advises.
“I c-can’t. I’m scared! … Is Mom dying?”
“I doubt it. People dropping down and dying from one day to the next isn’t as common as you’d think.”
“She’s been that way for ages!”
Oh, not so good! He hadn’t noticed anything off when he was there, although now that he comes to think of it, she did look under the weather. He’d put it down to the stress of moving — and of having to deal with him. “What does ‘for ages’ mean?”
“Since … since her vacation in Paris? She’s been sleeping all the time since then.”
“What about work?”
“She goes there,” Rachel says as though stating the obvious, but her intonation makes it clear that work is the only thing Lisa does go out for. “But she comes back early and lies down.”
He thinks for a moment. “Can you open the front door?” It’s possible that Lisa hasn’t had it altered to make it Rachel-friendly as yet.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll order food from a takeout and have it sent to you.” He hesitates. He should warn her about making sure it’s the delivery service before opening the door, but she’ll probably be scared shitless if he puts thoughts of burglars and other criminals into her mind. He’ll just have to hope that the area is low on crime and exemplary in terms of neighbourhood watch. “And call your aunt Julie.”
“Julia.”
“Whatever.”
“But Mom said —”
“‘But Mom said’," he mimics cruelly. “I say, phone your aunt. Now!”
Rachel takes a long shaky breath. “Okay.”
“I’ll call you again in …” He checks his watch. “… an hour. Takeout should be there by then, and with a bit of luck your aunt too. Bye.”
He disconnects the call before Rachel can object. He could talk to her all night, but that wouldn’t solve her problem (or his). So he Googles takeouts in their neighbourhood until he finds a place that does pizza, and orders a pizza for Rachel. On second thought he orders one for Lisa too, and some soda. Next, he orders groceries online: toast, butter, milk, cereal, cheese, and eggs, to be delivered the next morning. A few apples, once again as an afterthought. And then he sits back and thinks.
What did he miss? Is it something to do with her liver? He remembers noticing that she shunned alcohol when she was in Paris. Who visits France without trying a glass of wine? If he hadn’t been so distracted by his own problems, he’d have explored that anomaly. He turns to his computer and tries to get access to her medical file at Philadelphia Central, but their firewall is an easy match for his rusty hacking skills. So instead, he considers the advisability of sending an email to Lucas Douglas telling him to get Lisa’s medical files. The man is good at snooping — but there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he’ll run to Lisa to tell her that ‘nasty House’ is poking his nose into her personal business. Make that eighty-twenty, so that’s a no-go. Besides, Pete wouldn’t be surprised if Douglas went running to Julia …
Did Lisa show any symptoms when he was in Philadelphia a fortnight ago? He goes through a mental list:
An hour after his first call he dials Lisa’s number again. Rachel takes the call before the phone rings twice; she must have been waiting next to it.
“Did you call Julia?”
“Yes, but …” Her voice fades.
He wills himself to remain patient and not interrupt her.
“… but Julia made me wake Mom.”
Which you refused to do for me, he thinks. “How’d she make you wake Lisa?”
The veiled accusation is lost on Rachel. “She said she wouldn’t come until she’d talked to Mom. So I woke Mom. And Mom talked to Julia and said everything was fine. And then she went back to bed. I guess Julia isn’t coming.” There’s resignation in her voice, but underneath he can sense fear.
He considers making Rachel wake Lisa so he can talk to her, but it isn’t worth the bother. He has a rough idea of what’s wrong with her, and talking to her won’t change anything. So he changes the topic. “Has the food come?”
“Yeah, pizza came half an hour ago. Mom hasn’t eaten anything.” A short pause. “How much was I supposed to tip?”
The order cost about 25 dollars. “Depends on how cute the delivery guy was. Nothing if he was old and bald, about two dollars if he was young and polite, and four dollars if he was a hottie like me.”
Rachel snorts. Then she says reluctantly, “It was a woman and I gave her ten dollars.”
“You … what?”
“I’ve never tipped before. Mom always does it.”
“Where’d you get the money from?” He’d paid for the order itself with his credit card, but he hadn’t thought to add a tip.
“My pocket money. I didn’t want to wake Mom.”
“You got ripped off, kid. Who does that, cheat a poor cripple out of her pocket money?” he wonders aloud, more for her amusement than because he is bothered. This is the least of his problems. Then again, he needs to make sure that whoever delivers food will be eager to do so again should the need arise. “Look, there are groceries coming tomorrow morning around ten; give whoever delivers them about four dollars. Make that five: it’s Sunday, so they’ll be expecting a bit more. With a bit of luck someone should be with you by then.”
“Who?”
“Dunno. I’ll try to reach Tanja or Louisa.”
“Okay. … When will you call again?”
Not so dumb after all, he thinks. She must have figured out by now that if she doesn’t make sure she’s looked after, no one else will. “Tomorrow morning. When was the last time you catheterised?”
Dead silence.
“Go do it. Now!” Jeez, the last thing they need is Rachel in hospital with a bladder infection that’s gotten out of hand.
After ending the call he scrolls through his contacts. Louisa, the ex-neighbour, is still MIA. That’s no surprise; she’s the kind of person who forgets to recharge their cell phone. (“Oh, dear, all this modern technology! I really have no idea how other people cope.” By using their brains, of course!) He tries Tanja instead. Unfortunately, Tanja has moved on, quite literally. When he asks her to pop over to the Cuddy-Wilson residence to check on Rachel and Lisa, she informs him that she can’t, because she’s living near Pittsburgh now and working as a full-time caregiver for some old geezer with multiple issues. She doesn’t even pretend to regret that she has to refuse his request (which he may have verbalised in a manner more suited to a demand); somehow she and Lisa never really hit it off.
There’s no denying that he has hit a bit of a dead end. In theory he could contact a care provider in the area, but he can’t force Lisa to grant a stranger access to her house. Anyone he hires from afar will probably meet with the same resistance as Julia did. The same goes for the only other people he knows in the area, Lisa’s staff and colleagues at the hospital. (Not to mention that if he spills the beans there, Lisa will have his head on a silver platter. She’s obviously trying to keep up a front by going to work regularly, even if she’s incapable of managing anything else.)
There’s only one other option. It’s the only sensible option anyway, but he’s been trying to avoid it for obvious reasons. He even has the number, because he obtained it when Lisa donated her liver — just in case. Now he dials it with inner trepidation: this conversation is not going to be pleasant by any standards.
“Hello?” a male, probably in his teens says.
“Is Julia there?”
“Hang on a sec. … Mom! It’s for you.”
About twenty seconds later a female voice says, “Hello?”
He clears his throat.
“Yes?” Julia says with a hint of impatience.
“It’s … I’m …” God, he’s pathetic! “Greg House. You know, Lisa’s … uh.”
There’s a dead silence at the other end. Then, “No!”
“Actually, yes.” He’s got to stop this, get down to the nitty-gritty. “It’s about Lisa. I’m afraid she’s —” The beep of the dial tone stops his prepared speech.
Okay, so that’s that. The conversation could have gone worse, he supposes, but the net result is zilch, nil, niente. He has no more aces up his sleeve, no Plan B, no alternatives. So, he makes a few more calls, and then he dials Lisa’s number for the third time that night. It is a long time before Rachel answers it.
“I was watching television!” she complains. “You said you’d call tomorrow.”
“Can’t call you in the morning because I should be with you by then. Just hang in till then, okay?”
Now that the food issue is resolved, Rachel’s interest is limited. “Yeah, okay. Can I go watch television again?”
“Yes. Take the phone with you when you go to bed, then you won’t have to get up if someone calls. Take down my number, in case something crops up before my flight leaves.” He dictates his mobile phone number and makes her repeat it to make sure she’s got it right before ending the call.
It’s past midnight, the best time of day in his eyes, so he goes downstairs and knocks on his landlord’s door. Moving back to Bristol after losing his job in London has paid off in more ways than one. Other than the financial benefit of living in a marginally cheaper city, he lives in his ‘old’ flat again and has his former set of friends to hang out with. And there’s Gavin to annoy and amuse him. Pete’s flat hadn’t been rented out in his absence. Gavin had muttered something about how difficult it was to find reliable tenants in these modern times, which would have been flattering if it hadn’t been absurd: Pete Barnes is hardly the epitome of a reliable tenant. Pete harbours the suspicion that Gavin doesn’t like change any more than he does. Pete was Gavin’s first tenant after his marriage hit the rocks, and from the looks of it he’ll be the last.
Gavin is as much of a night owl as he is, so he shows little surprise at this late-night call. “What’s up?” he asks.
“Can you drive me to Heathrow?” Pete asks him.
“What’s wrong with your car?” Gavin asks.
“Nothing.” Other than that the fifth-hand wreck mightn’t survive a trip to London and back. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away for, so I don’t want to leave it there in the parking facility.”
Gavin nods, satisfied with Pete’s line of reasoning. Paranoid about everyone and everything, he is convinced that long-term parking facilities are badly guarded and that leaving your car in them is tantamount to asking people to key it, slit the tires, or break into it.
“When d’you need to be there?”
“Flight leaves at ten past five, so I’d say at four.”
“Don’t you have to check in two hours before departure?”
Pete shrugs. Gavin huffs and turns back into his flat. “We’ll leave now. I hate rushing. I hope you’ve packed.”
Packing is overrated. Pete goes back upstairs, throws a few items into a duffle bag, gets his Ossur blade in its carrier case, and packs up laptop and passport. He’s back downstairs before Gavin has completed his routine of bolting and double-checking every window and door. Once Gavin has stowed Pete’s luggage in the boot of his Vauxhall Astra they’re off.
Pete doesn’t pay much attention to the route (he wouldn’t know the way even if he had to commute to London every day), but when they’re out in the dark countryside and there’s still no sign of the motorway, he gets edgy. He knows for a fact that there’s a motorway between Bristol and London; he’s been on it countless times, and just because he’d never be able to find it on his own, doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware that they should be on it.
“Shouldn’t we be on the M4 by now?” he asks.
It’s anyone’s guess where they are because Gavin does not believe in GPS. (“They keep tabs on you wherever you go,” he says. He never says who ‘they’ are or why ‘they’ should be interested in the whereabouts of a minor postal employee’s antediluvian car.)
“Road works on the M4 with partial lane closures at night,” Gavin says by way of an explanation. “This route’s better.”
How much congestion can road works cause between one and two a.m.? It isn’t as though the route that Gavin has chosen boasts a dual carriageway that’ll allow them to progress at a steady pace. It’s a narrow, winding country road, unlit except at crossings or in the hamlets along the route, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Not wide enough, Pete mentally amends as a pair of headlights approaches them. Gavin brakes sharply; both cars edge past each other before they pick up speed again. If they meet a tractor here, they’ll have to back up till the previous intersection, because they are literally hedged in. (It’s to be hoped that none of the local farmers are insomniacs.) There’s no way that this route saves time; he’ll be lucky if he reaches his flight in one piece.
Gavin unintentionally strengthens his doubts when Pete asks him whether he’s sure he knows the way.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “Came this way ever so often when me ex-wife — she was me girlfriend then — was working in London. Always drove this way. See that sharp turn up in front? Missed it completely one time; me eyes are bad in the dark. It was a good thing there was a drive straight ahead; if it’d been a wall, I’d a’ been dead. Came to a stop just before I crashed through the wall of tha’ house.” With an oblique look at Pete he adds, “But don’t worry; now I know that the turn is there.”
Very reassuring. “I think I’ll take my chances with the road works,” Pete says, holding onto the door handle.
Gavin gives him another sideways glance. “They monitor your speed there,” he says obscurely. “Have you never seen those signs saying that there’s ‘average speed surveillance’ along the stretch affected by the road works?”
Well, yes, but Gavin isn’t exactly known for breaking the sound barrier. Even at this god-forsaken hour he’s devoutly sticking to every speed limit there is, even the ones saying you need to go slow because of school children, though it’s not likely that there’ll be school kids running around in the middle of the night — and if there are, they deserve to be hit by a car.
“Worried you’ll get a speeding ticket?” Pete asks.
“How d’you think they measure your ‘average’ speed?” Gavin asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “With average speed cameras that recognise your plate number. They’ve got to scan your number plate when you enter the lane and then again when you leave it, so they can calculate your speed. Means, they know you’ve been there. They can track you, righ’?”
Pete refrains from remarking that anyone can track him via his mobile, because Gavin will probably make him throw it out of the window. They drive in silence the rest of the way; Gavin is a weirdo, but he’s happy to keep his mouth shut and do without polite conversation, a quality that redeems him in Pete’s eyes.
When they reach Heathrow, Gavin drops him off at Terminal 5 without any further ado, desiring no effusive expressions of gratitude. Pete gets himself a bottle of bourbon at the duty-free shop: Wilson can’t stock liquor, and Lisa won’t from some far-fetched notion of solidarity, so he’ll have to bring his own. But he nobly resists the temptation to get shit-faced on the flight. He’ll need all his wits about him when he gets to Philly; time enough for a pity party on the return flight.
Pete waits a judicious week before getting impatient, because if Wilson wants to flex his muscles and show that he’s the boss, then that’s fine with him. Wilson will come around, and the less Pete gets on his nerves, the quicker that’ll happen. Besides, there’s no hurry.
Nonetheless, when there’s no sign of life from Wilson and the kid after a week, he gets ... not nervous, but edgy. He knows they’re moving sometime now, but still! Lisa doesn’t send her weekly picture of the boy. Not that he was expecting her to: even if she weren’t mad at him, she wouldn’t consider herself obliged to keep him up to date, not now that Wilson is in the picture and can supply him with intel if he so pleases. Problem is, it does not please Wilson to do so. It’s the Cold War: there’s been a summit with bad food (if anything shows that Wilson’s intentions weren’t friendly, it’s the fact that he let Nolan make the pancakes), frozen smiles, and declarations of intent, but Wilson hasn’t made a binding commitment, let alone agreed to disarm.
Pete gives Wilson and Lisa another week to get their ‘suburban bliss’ act together, then he tries to contact Wilson via the usual channels: Facebook, then email, and finally Wilson’s phone. Wilson doesn’t respond. That annoys Pete even more than if Wilson had slapped him down. If Wilson were defining boundaries and reminding him of their existence, he’d be acknowledging that Pete has certain rights within those boundaries. Refusing to do even that, however, is tantamount to depriving Pete of all rights. Perhaps Wilson believes that if he keeps him in suspense for a while, he’ll be suitably chastened and cowed. Or maybe Wilson hopes that if he lets sleeping dogs lie, then Pete won’t bark up his tree (read: try to influence the freeloader’s life).
Actually, that isn’t such an abstruse notion: Pete is aware that if Lisa hadn’t forced the issue, he’d still be evading it. Until he knew that Wilson knew, he was quite happy to let things take their accustomed course without interfering. But now that he knows that Wilson is aware of the true nature of things, he’s finding it more difficult to distance himself from the problem. On a rational level, that makes no sense whatsoever: the kid isn’t more his son than he was when Wilson didn’t know that Pete is his father.
Still, out of sight isn’t out of mind, as Wilson should have noticed by now. It behoves him to acknowledge Pete’s advances as what they are: overtures of peace and surrender.
Saturday night he finally loses his cool and does the unthinkable: he phones Lisa. Rachel takes the phone. Asking Rachel why the fuck Wilson is treating him like a fricking Ebola patient isn’t an option, so he asks, “Have you seen Wilson around lately?”
“He’s taken Joel to visit Amy,” Rachel says.
Okay. That’s no reason to ignore his messages, though. “When did he leave for wherever?”
“L.A. On Friday.”
“When’s he returning?”
“Sunday.”
“Tomorrow?” It’s Saturday afternoon on Rachel’s side of the Atlantic.
“No, the Sunday after. He said it’s Joel’s last chance to have a long visit with Amy because he has to start working full-time the week after. He’s gonna work at Mom’s hospital,” Rachel says.
Wilson isn’t answering his messages and he’s somewhere where Pete doesn’t know anyone. There’s no help for it: he’ll need Lisa’s assistance. “Where’s your mom?”
“Uh, she’s sleeping.”
Pete glances at his watch. It’s eleven p.m. in England, which means it’s five p.m. in Philadelphia. “Then go wake her.”
Rachel hesitates. “I … don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s really tired.” There’s something odd in Rachel’s voice; she’s lying or hiding something. Pete doesn’t really care what it is: if Lisa chooses to have lovers over while Rachel is in the house, it’s not his headache.
So he says, “Wilson isn’t answering his phone.”
“Oh, that!” Rachel says, audibly relieved at the change of topic. “He forgot it here. He got all hectic getting Joel ready, and then he left the phone at our place, and by the time Mom found it his flight had left. But he phoned from Amy’s place to say they are fine.”
Okay, now they’re getting somewhere. “Do you have Amy’s phone number?”
“No.”
Pete summons the last vestiges of his patience. “Your mom must have Amy’s number somewhere. She keeps track of everyone and everything.”
Silence.
“Rachel?”
“Yeah?”
“The phone number! Please,” he adds as an afterthought.
“I … Mom …”
“Okay, Mom has the number. I got that. Now go and wake her.”
No response. He’ll have to convince Rachel that Lisa has slept long enough. (Since when does she take long afternoon naps?) “How long has she been asleep?”
“She …” There’s a very long pause. “She …” Rachel whispers something that he can’t understand.
“Can’t hear you!” he yells into the phone.
“She didn’t get up at all today,” Rachel says. And then there’s sobbing over the line, not amateur theatrics, but the real thing. “Something’s wrong with her. And we don’t have any food. There isn’t even milk in the fridge.”
“Call your babysitter,” Pete says. “And tell her to call a doctor. What’s Lisa eating if there’s no food in the house?”
“I don’t think she’s hungry. And I don’t have a babysitter. This place is too far away for my old one, and Mom hasn’t found a new one yet. She said she’d do it, but …”
“Call your ex-neighbour, the one with the godawful glasses and the smelly cats.”
“Louisa. I’ve t-tried.” Rachel’s words are drowned in further sobs. “And Mom said I shouldn’t call Julia.”
Distracted from his desire to contact Wilson, Pete pauses to consider the situation, which is decidedly odd. Lisa in bed, no food in the house, and Rachel upset enough to consider calling in outside help.
“Have you tried your next-door neighbours?” he asks.
“I don’t know them,” Rachel says with the stubbornness of a child who has been taught to never ever talk to strangers.
“It’s a great opportunity to remedy that,” he says. “Go over and —”
“I can’t. They have steps in front.”
Oh, okay, that’s a bummer. “Then wheel yourself as close to the door as possible and holler from there,” he advises.
“I c-can’t. I’m scared! … Is Mom dying?”
“I doubt it. People dropping down and dying from one day to the next isn’t as common as you’d think.”
“She’s been that way for ages!”
Oh, not so good! He hadn’t noticed anything off when he was there, although now that he comes to think of it, she did look under the weather. He’d put it down to the stress of moving — and of having to deal with him. “What does ‘for ages’ mean?”
“Since … since her vacation in Paris? She’s been sleeping all the time since then.”
“What about work?”
“She goes there,” Rachel says as though stating the obvious, but her intonation makes it clear that work is the only thing Lisa does go out for. “But she comes back early and lies down.”
He thinks for a moment. “Can you open the front door?” It’s possible that Lisa hasn’t had it altered to make it Rachel-friendly as yet.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll order food from a takeout and have it sent to you.” He hesitates. He should warn her about making sure it’s the delivery service before opening the door, but she’ll probably be scared shitless if he puts thoughts of burglars and other criminals into her mind. He’ll just have to hope that the area is low on crime and exemplary in terms of neighbourhood watch. “And call your aunt Julie.”
“Julia.”
“Whatever.”
“But Mom said —”
“‘But Mom said’," he mimics cruelly. “I say, phone your aunt. Now!”
Rachel takes a long shaky breath. “Okay.”
“I’ll call you again in …” He checks his watch. “… an hour. Takeout should be there by then, and with a bit of luck your aunt too. Bye.”
He disconnects the call before Rachel can object. He could talk to her all night, but that wouldn’t solve her problem (or his). So he Googles takeouts in their neighbourhood until he finds a place that does pizza, and orders a pizza for Rachel. On second thought he orders one for Lisa too, and some soda. Next, he orders groceries online: toast, butter, milk, cereal, cheese, and eggs, to be delivered the next morning. A few apples, once again as an afterthought. And then he sits back and thinks.
What did he miss? Is it something to do with her liver? He remembers noticing that she shunned alcohol when she was in Paris. Who visits France without trying a glass of wine? If he hadn’t been so distracted by his own problems, he’d have explored that anomaly. He turns to his computer and tries to get access to her medical file at Philadelphia Central, but their firewall is an easy match for his rusty hacking skills. So instead, he considers the advisability of sending an email to Lucas Douglas telling him to get Lisa’s medical files. The man is good at snooping — but there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he’ll run to Lisa to tell her that ‘nasty House’ is poking his nose into her personal business. Make that eighty-twenty, so that’s a no-go. Besides, Pete wouldn’t be surprised if Douglas went running to Julia …
Did Lisa show any symptoms when he was in Philadelphia a fortnight ago? He goes through a mental list:
- Weight loss or gain: no. (Or at least, nothing noticeable over and above what you’d expect in a woman nearing fifty who hasn’t been able to exercise regularly.)
- Loss of appetite: he wouldn’t know, since they didn’t eat together. If Rachel is to be believed, that one’s a ‘yes’.
- Anaemia: possibly. She’d been pale.
- Neurological symptoms: none that he noticed.
- Signs of infection: none. She hadn’t appeared flushed or feverish. Besides, her day clinic caters mostly to elderly and immune compromised patients, so if she had something contagious, she wouldn’t be going to work.
- Fatigue: yes (according to Rachel), though she’d been spry enough when he’d seen her. But — she’d been unkempt by her standards. He’d put it down to her having been busy packing, but now that he comes to think of it, there’d been precious few packed boxes standing around. Empty ones, yes, but considering that they were going to move within a few days, Lisa’s household had still been pretty much intact.
- Bitchiness: triple check. He’d expected her to be cranky, but not to the point that she’d involve Wilson and the rugrat in their little ‘misunderstanding’. He can remember — yes, he actually can! — being considerably more irritating than this without provoking such extreme reactions: the time she had to pick him up from the Trenton precinct springs to mind.
An hour after his first call he dials Lisa’s number again. Rachel takes the call before the phone rings twice; she must have been waiting next to it.
“Did you call Julia?”
“Yes, but …” Her voice fades.
He wills himself to remain patient and not interrupt her.
“… but Julia made me wake Mom.”
Which you refused to do for me, he thinks. “How’d she make you wake Lisa?”
The veiled accusation is lost on Rachel. “She said she wouldn’t come until she’d talked to Mom. So I woke Mom. And Mom talked to Julia and said everything was fine. And then she went back to bed. I guess Julia isn’t coming.” There’s resignation in her voice, but underneath he can sense fear.
He considers making Rachel wake Lisa so he can talk to her, but it isn’t worth the bother. He has a rough idea of what’s wrong with her, and talking to her won’t change anything. So he changes the topic. “Has the food come?”
“Yeah, pizza came half an hour ago. Mom hasn’t eaten anything.” A short pause. “How much was I supposed to tip?”
The order cost about 25 dollars. “Depends on how cute the delivery guy was. Nothing if he was old and bald, about two dollars if he was young and polite, and four dollars if he was a hottie like me.”
Rachel snorts. Then she says reluctantly, “It was a woman and I gave her ten dollars.”
“You … what?”
“I’ve never tipped before. Mom always does it.”
“Where’d you get the money from?” He’d paid for the order itself with his credit card, but he hadn’t thought to add a tip.
“My pocket money. I didn’t want to wake Mom.”
“You got ripped off, kid. Who does that, cheat a poor cripple out of her pocket money?” he wonders aloud, more for her amusement than because he is bothered. This is the least of his problems. Then again, he needs to make sure that whoever delivers food will be eager to do so again should the need arise. “Look, there are groceries coming tomorrow morning around ten; give whoever delivers them about four dollars. Make that five: it’s Sunday, so they’ll be expecting a bit more. With a bit of luck someone should be with you by then.”
“Who?”
“Dunno. I’ll try to reach Tanja or Louisa.”
“Okay. … When will you call again?”
Not so dumb after all, he thinks. She must have figured out by now that if she doesn’t make sure she’s looked after, no one else will. “Tomorrow morning. When was the last time you catheterised?”
Dead silence.
“Go do it. Now!” Jeez, the last thing they need is Rachel in hospital with a bladder infection that’s gotten out of hand.
After ending the call he scrolls through his contacts. Louisa, the ex-neighbour, is still MIA. That’s no surprise; she’s the kind of person who forgets to recharge their cell phone. (“Oh, dear, all this modern technology! I really have no idea how other people cope.” By using their brains, of course!) He tries Tanja instead. Unfortunately, Tanja has moved on, quite literally. When he asks her to pop over to the Cuddy-Wilson residence to check on Rachel and Lisa, she informs him that she can’t, because she’s living near Pittsburgh now and working as a full-time caregiver for some old geezer with multiple issues. She doesn’t even pretend to regret that she has to refuse his request (which he may have verbalised in a manner more suited to a demand); somehow she and Lisa never really hit it off.
There’s no denying that he has hit a bit of a dead end. In theory he could contact a care provider in the area, but he can’t force Lisa to grant a stranger access to her house. Anyone he hires from afar will probably meet with the same resistance as Julia did. The same goes for the only other people he knows in the area, Lisa’s staff and colleagues at the hospital. (Not to mention that if he spills the beans there, Lisa will have his head on a silver platter. She’s obviously trying to keep up a front by going to work regularly, even if she’s incapable of managing anything else.)
There’s only one other option. It’s the only sensible option anyway, but he’s been trying to avoid it for obvious reasons. He even has the number, because he obtained it when Lisa donated her liver — just in case. Now he dials it with inner trepidation: this conversation is not going to be pleasant by any standards.
“Hello?” a male, probably in his teens says.
“Is Julia there?”
“Hang on a sec. … Mom! It’s for you.”
About twenty seconds later a female voice says, “Hello?”
He clears his throat.
“Yes?” Julia says with a hint of impatience.
“It’s … I’m …” God, he’s pathetic! “Greg House. You know, Lisa’s … uh.”
There’s a dead silence at the other end. Then, “No!”
“Actually, yes.” He’s got to stop this, get down to the nitty-gritty. “It’s about Lisa. I’m afraid she’s —” The beep of the dial tone stops his prepared speech.
Okay, so that’s that. The conversation could have gone worse, he supposes, but the net result is zilch, nil, niente. He has no more aces up his sleeve, no Plan B, no alternatives. So, he makes a few more calls, and then he dials Lisa’s number for the third time that night. It is a long time before Rachel answers it.
“I was watching television!” she complains. “You said you’d call tomorrow.”
“Can’t call you in the morning because I should be with you by then. Just hang in till then, okay?”
Now that the food issue is resolved, Rachel’s interest is limited. “Yeah, okay. Can I go watch television again?”
“Yes. Take the phone with you when you go to bed, then you won’t have to get up if someone calls. Take down my number, in case something crops up before my flight leaves.” He dictates his mobile phone number and makes her repeat it to make sure she’s got it right before ending the call.
It’s past midnight, the best time of day in his eyes, so he goes downstairs and knocks on his landlord’s door. Moving back to Bristol after losing his job in London has paid off in more ways than one. Other than the financial benefit of living in a marginally cheaper city, he lives in his ‘old’ flat again and has his former set of friends to hang out with. And there’s Gavin to annoy and amuse him. Pete’s flat hadn’t been rented out in his absence. Gavin had muttered something about how difficult it was to find reliable tenants in these modern times, which would have been flattering if it hadn’t been absurd: Pete Barnes is hardly the epitome of a reliable tenant. Pete harbours the suspicion that Gavin doesn’t like change any more than he does. Pete was Gavin’s first tenant after his marriage hit the rocks, and from the looks of it he’ll be the last.
Gavin is as much of a night owl as he is, so he shows little surprise at this late-night call. “What’s up?” he asks.
“Can you drive me to Heathrow?” Pete asks him.
“What’s wrong with your car?” Gavin asks.
“Nothing.” Other than that the fifth-hand wreck mightn’t survive a trip to London and back. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away for, so I don’t want to leave it there in the parking facility.”
Gavin nods, satisfied with Pete’s line of reasoning. Paranoid about everyone and everything, he is convinced that long-term parking facilities are badly guarded and that leaving your car in them is tantamount to asking people to key it, slit the tires, or break into it.
“When d’you need to be there?”
“Flight leaves at ten past five, so I’d say at four.”
“Don’t you have to check in two hours before departure?”
Pete shrugs. Gavin huffs and turns back into his flat. “We’ll leave now. I hate rushing. I hope you’ve packed.”
Packing is overrated. Pete goes back upstairs, throws a few items into a duffle bag, gets his Ossur blade in its carrier case, and packs up laptop and passport. He’s back downstairs before Gavin has completed his routine of bolting and double-checking every window and door. Once Gavin has stowed Pete’s luggage in the boot of his Vauxhall Astra they’re off.
Pete doesn’t pay much attention to the route (he wouldn’t know the way even if he had to commute to London every day), but when they’re out in the dark countryside and there’s still no sign of the motorway, he gets edgy. He knows for a fact that there’s a motorway between Bristol and London; he’s been on it countless times, and just because he’d never be able to find it on his own, doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware that they should be on it.
“Shouldn’t we be on the M4 by now?” he asks.
It’s anyone’s guess where they are because Gavin does not believe in GPS. (“They keep tabs on you wherever you go,” he says. He never says who ‘they’ are or why ‘they’ should be interested in the whereabouts of a minor postal employee’s antediluvian car.)
“Road works on the M4 with partial lane closures at night,” Gavin says by way of an explanation. “This route’s better.”
How much congestion can road works cause between one and two a.m.? It isn’t as though the route that Gavin has chosen boasts a dual carriageway that’ll allow them to progress at a steady pace. It’s a narrow, winding country road, unlit except at crossings or in the hamlets along the route, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Not wide enough, Pete mentally amends as a pair of headlights approaches them. Gavin brakes sharply; both cars edge past each other before they pick up speed again. If they meet a tractor here, they’ll have to back up till the previous intersection, because they are literally hedged in. (It’s to be hoped that none of the local farmers are insomniacs.) There’s no way that this route saves time; he’ll be lucky if he reaches his flight in one piece.
Gavin unintentionally strengthens his doubts when Pete asks him whether he’s sure he knows the way.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “Came this way ever so often when me ex-wife — she was me girlfriend then — was working in London. Always drove this way. See that sharp turn up in front? Missed it completely one time; me eyes are bad in the dark. It was a good thing there was a drive straight ahead; if it’d been a wall, I’d a’ been dead. Came to a stop just before I crashed through the wall of tha’ house.” With an oblique look at Pete he adds, “But don’t worry; now I know that the turn is there.”
Very reassuring. “I think I’ll take my chances with the road works,” Pete says, holding onto the door handle.
Gavin gives him another sideways glance. “They monitor your speed there,” he says obscurely. “Have you never seen those signs saying that there’s ‘average speed surveillance’ along the stretch affected by the road works?”
Well, yes, but Gavin isn’t exactly known for breaking the sound barrier. Even at this god-forsaken hour he’s devoutly sticking to every speed limit there is, even the ones saying you need to go slow because of school children, though it’s not likely that there’ll be school kids running around in the middle of the night — and if there are, they deserve to be hit by a car.
“Worried you’ll get a speeding ticket?” Pete asks.
“How d’you think they measure your ‘average’ speed?” Gavin asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “With average speed cameras that recognise your plate number. They’ve got to scan your number plate when you enter the lane and then again when you leave it, so they can calculate your speed. Means, they know you’ve been there. They can track you, righ’?”
Pete refrains from remarking that anyone can track him via his mobile, because Gavin will probably make him throw it out of the window. They drive in silence the rest of the way; Gavin is a weirdo, but he’s happy to keep his mouth shut and do without polite conversation, a quality that redeems him in Pete’s eyes.
When they reach Heathrow, Gavin drops him off at Terminal 5 without any further ado, desiring no effusive expressions of gratitude. Pete gets himself a bottle of bourbon at the duty-free shop: Wilson can’t stock liquor, and Lisa won’t from some far-fetched notion of solidarity, so he’ll have to bring his own. But he nobly resists the temptation to get shit-faced on the flight. He’ll need all his wits about him when he gets to Philly; time enough for a pity party on the return flight.
| Previous Chapter | Chapter Index | Next Chapter |
Tags:
