by JJ Pike
The memory broke through: Dr. Stephen “Smooth Operator” McKan was the one Petra said had the hots for Mom. Paul searched his face, determined to track down those puppy dog eyes and hangdog looks he kept throwing around their living room during the barbecue. Mom hadn’t looked at him twice. Why would she? She was mad in love with Dad. The anger rose white hot and pure, popping the cork clean out of the volcano of fury that had been building inside him all day, sending mad chemicals raging throughout his body. He didn’t think, he only acted. He drew his arm back and threw a punch, right into Stephen McKan’s stupid, smiling face.
His knuckles crashed into cartilage and bone, then slid off Stephen’s cheek, skimming his ear and pulling Paul’s center of gravity off-kilter. He righted himself and drew his hand back again, but Stephen was in his space, grabbing his hand, twisting it behind his back and yanking it up towards his shoulder blades.
“Easy, Tiger.”
Paul struggled, then slumped. If McKan thought he’d surrendered, he’d loosen his grip. Worked every time. He waited, counting down the seconds.
“We all good here?” Stephen eased his grip on Paul’s wrist.
Paul nodded.
“Try to punch me again and I’ll hit you back. Are we clear?”
Paul shrugged, waiting for the weasel to let up. Stephen let go and Paul sprinted towards the NICU. The door opened and a short woman with a black bob strode into the corridor. He dodged her and ran smack into a balding man with glasses and a pocket protector.
Paul slid to the ground and lay at their feet. The ceiling was waving at him. That wasn’t right.
“Paul?” she smiled down at him. “Is that you?”
“Professor. Don’t let him hurt me.” Paul struggled to his feet, then turned and caught sight of McKan. Blood was streaming from his nose into his mouth. Good.
“Is she here? Is Alice here?” The Professor was excited, happy, expectant. How could he tell her that he hadn’t heard his mom’s voice for three or four days? Or was it longer? When had he last spoken to her? Had he told her that he loved her or had he blown her off? Did he even answer his phone that day? Or had he gone out with his buddies, promising himself he’d get back to her another time? It was too much. The room eddied and flowed as his grief sloshed against the implacable mountains of guilt that threatened to bury him.
Paul grabbed for the Professor, trying to regain his balance. It wasn’t Stephen’s blood that made him queasy, or the fact that his hand throbbed and stung, or the fact that he was running on empty. Was it possible he’d dodged his mom’s call the last time she tried to contact him? The ceiling moved down, faster and faster. The walls pressed in, squeezing the breath out of him. The floor rose up, making his knee buckle. And Paul Everlee blacked out.
Chapter 10
“I have no clue who Eloise Farmenday is,” said Aggie, but Jo wouldn’t let it go. She’d been hammering away at the so-called “State Department’s list of possible industrial saboteurs” for 30 whole excruciatingly boring minutes.
“Eloise isn’t a name you hear that often. She could have shortened it to Elle or Ella.” Jo had changed since she’d gotten off the phone. Gone was the easy-going “country hermit weirdo” they’d all believed lived next door. In her place was this intense, tightly-wound, looks-right-through-you person who was standing too close to Aggie while Petra preened and purred and fussed over Sean, oblivious to the rest of the world.
Aggie shifted her weight to her other foot so Jo wasn’t smushed up inside her personal bubble. People in polite society understood the three-foot rule. Jo seemed to have lost that memo or she was ignoring it in an effort to put more pressure on her. As Aggie inched away, Jo moved closer.
“Try again. Think hard. Eloise or Ella or Ellie or Louise? Maybe Lou or Lulu? Ringing any bells?”
“Nope. I don’t know who she is. Michael Rayton I met for, like, ten minutes. But he’s a nothing, a nobody. Mom didn’t even introduce us to him.”
The ICU didn’t lend itself to this kind of interrogation. Weren’t they supposed to be there for Sean? Jo had made sure they got to the hospital faster than the speed of light, then strong-armed the staff into seeing him immediately, but now he was invisible to her; all she could do was pepper Aggie with questions. Aggie didn’t like it. It gave her the wiggles. Like somehow this was down to her, that she held the key, that what was inside her brain, her memories, would be the thing that led them to the answers. It wouldn’t. It couldn’t. She didn’t know squat.
“Introduce you, when? You’ve been to K&P’s laboratories?” Jo didn’t let up.
“They came to us. In the summer.” Aggie inched towards Petra beaming “rescue me from this madwoman” thoughts into the back of Petra’s head.
“Came to you? Where? When?”
Petra didn’t even flinch, let alone turn around. So much for the family mind meld; must only work for twins. Aggie shrugged.
Jo backed up, smiled, gave her neck a roll to each side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to press you so hard,” she said. “I get this way. It’s my weakness. Once I get my teeth into a lead, I can’t let it go.”
Aggie smiled, but on the inside she was whatevering in the biggest way.
Jo beckoned her over to the chairs in the corner. They were hard plastic; easy to clean, awful to sit on. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Jo, “but if this is a case of industrial sabotage, we need to learn as much as we can, as fast as we can, because our people are having a hell of a time getting a handle on this.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her ankle over her knee. Now she was trying too hard to look chill. “Whatever you can remember about these two—Michael Rayton and Eloise Farmenday—would be of interest.”
This was too much pressure. Aggie was desperate for an escape. She couldn’t disturb her sisters, though. Petra was glued to Sean, waiting for any sign that he recognized that she was there for him. Midge was at her side, watching him almost as intently as her big sister.
Midge had taken something of a shine to Sean, probably because he didn’t talk down to her. He treated her like a person, while the rest of them treated her like the baby of the family. Aggie made a mental note to switch up her attitude towards Midge.
Sean mumbled. Aggie was up and over at his bedside in a second. She was more interested in getting away from Jo, but no one else needed to know that.
His eyelids moved but didn’t open.
“He’s going to be okay,” said Midge. “I know it.”
Petra wrapped her arm around Midge. “I know it, too. He’s a fighter. He’ll never give up. He lived in Manila for a while, did you know that? His parents do business over in the Philippines. This one time, he was just walking along and some kids jumped him; like three on one. They wanted his wallet and belt and phone. Two of them held him, while the third guy punched the stuffing out of him. He gave them everything, which was stupid because later, when they emptied out his wallet and realized who he was and where he lived, they came back and told him they would kidnap him for ransom if he didn’t give them, like, three-thousand dollars.”
Midge’s mouth hung open. She was glued to Petra’s every word.
“He didn’t want his mom and dad to know. I mean, the guy had been mugged but he wasn’t going to tell his parents. Can you imagine? They think everything is his fault. Like, if you met them, you would just hate them. They’re not like Mom and Dad at all. They’re totally the opposite. He can’t even walk right. His mom is all ‘stand up straight’ and ‘look at your posture’ and ‘you look like such a moron when you wear that hat…’ And I don’t mean just one time. He’s not some over-sensitive fruit bat who complains over every little thing. This is, like, every day. Even when other people are there. They literally don’t care if his friends hear them putting him down. Like, one time, I was over there…”
Sean groaned. Aggie was glad of the interruption. “Thirsty,” he said. It was barely above a whisper, but it had Petra running around the bed to the nurses’ station as if it wa
s the most important request in the universe.
She ran back to his side, clutching at his hand. “They’re coming, Fuzzy. I’ll get you water or anything else you want.”
Sean eased back to sleep. The anesthetic would take a few hours to wear off and then there would be the pain medicine. He was going to be tanked up to the eyeballs for a long, long time.
Petra looked right at Aggie. “What?”
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“I can hear you being all judgmental and stuff. So, I call him ‘Fuzzy.’ Deal with it.”
Aggie backed up, smiling. “Pet, I don’t care if you call him Pookietwostep the Triumphant, he’s your boyfriend.”
Petra looked back at Sean, googly-eyed and mushy. “He is, isn’t he? I tried to push him away, but he’s just the best.”
Midge pulled herself up using the safety bar along the side of his bed. “Is he okay? He closed his eyes and they aren’t doing that thing they’re supposed to do when you’re asleep; they’re not moving from side to side.” She looked up at the monitors at his side. “He must be okay if they are still beeping, right?” What she meant was, “Is he still alive?”
Aggie hoped—for his sake as well as hers, but in reality, mostly for hers—that he pulled through. Midge’s world was already in pieces. She didn’t need another person “disappearing” on her. That was when it dawned on her she had started thinking about the possibility that her parents were gone. As in “gone” gone, not just “away for a spell” gone. She wouldn’t go there. She didn’t want to think about them literally being dead. And what about Paul? He hadn’t checked in with Petra since they’d left. That never happened. The two of them weren’t joined at the hip, they were joined at the brain, which was even more intense. He would have called her if he could. The fact that he hadn’t meant something bad—as in The Worst—had happened. Or not. Channel Dad. Stay positive. Look on the bright side. Don’t give in to negative thoughts.
The nurse’s aide brought in a cup of ice chips. “One at a time,” she said. “His stomach will be a little jittery for a while. We don’t want him to vomit. But it’s good to keep him hydrated. I’ll be back with more in a while.”
Petra hovered with the ice chips, waiting for Sean to wake up again. When one melted in her hand, dripping onto his covers, she wiped her palm on her jeans and picked out another. She was ready. No one could say she wasn’t trying hard. Getting injured was the best thing that could have happened to him. Aggie reprimanded herself, internally, for the thought. But it was true. Petra had barely been giving him the time of day until they started work dismantling the house. And when he fell and slashed open his leg? Well, bingo! Winning move on his part. Pass Go and collect $200. She was all over him like cupcake and icing on a kindergartner.
“We should get going,” said Jo.
Aggie had thought it, more than once, but she didn’t dare say it.
Petra shot Jo a look of white-hot hatred. “I am not leaving him.”
“Sure,” said Jo. “But the rest of us should get back. There’s a lot of work to do.”
“What do we even care?” Petra put the ice chips down on the side table and crossed her arms over her chest; her number-one war stance gesture. “It’s an impossible job. Just go with Aggie’s original plan and build an extension on the barn. That way, no one else will get hurt. The house is an accident waiting to happen.”
“We’ll talk about it,” said Jo. “Aggie?”
Aggie didn’t want to go with Jo. Not alone. She’d start interrogating her again. No matter how many different ways she tried to go at the question, Aggie had no answers. Michael Rayton was a gopher, a low-level scientist. He worked under Professor Baxter in K&P’s lab. It didn’t even make any sense that he was on the list. He just worked there. And as for Eloise whateverhernamewas, she’d never been to their house and she’d never heard her mom talk about an Elle, an Ella, or an Eloise.
“Midge, I’m going to need you to come with me.” It wasn’t only that she needed a shield from Jo. Midge ought to come back home. They all needed some food and some rest.
Midge climbed down off the side of the bed and joined Aggie by the door. No protest. That meant she was desperately tired.
Aggie waited for Petra to kiss Sean and coo at him and tell him she loved his Fuzziness or whatever. Petra didn’t move.
“We’ve got to go,” said Jo.
“I’m staying here as long as he’s here,” said Petra.
Aggie wanted to protest, tell her sister they had to stick together, point out that they were stronger as a team, drill down into all the whys and wherefores of what might happen next. But firstly, she didn’t want to alarm Petra and secondly, she knew better than to fight with her eldest sister. Once Petra’s mind was made up, she was like Mom, there was no way of changing it.
Aggie had a surge of sadness when she thought about where her mom might be. They hadn’t heard a thing in 18 hours. Not even from Dad, and he was better at staying in touch. He would have called to give them a progress report if he could. The best-case scenario was they had all lost their phones. But that was statistically unlikely. If the cell towers had gone down or a massive blackout had hit Manhattan, she wouldn’t have been so worried. But even if Paul and Dad had both lost their phones, they would have found someone to loan them one. They weren’t a “phone” family. They were an “in person, phones as a last resort” family. But this was different.
She wrapped her arms around Petra and squeezed her tight. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Petra stroked Midge’s hair. “Take care of Aggie, Margaret. You know she worries too much. She needs you to help her remember to kick back every once in a while.”
Midge nodded and laced her fingers through Aggie’s. It was impossibly hard to leave Petra behind, but she knew they had to get back to the cabin to finish what they’d started. She wasn’t sure when it had taken on such gigantic proportions, but suddenly getting the place stripped of plastic was eating a hole right through the middle of her stomach. She wasn’t like Midge. She didn’t generally give herself over to magical thinking, but she couldn’t help herself. Doing what her mom had asked them to do was the only way to keep her alive. It was bananas, but that was where her mental math had landed her. She was going to strip the place of all wires and pipes in order to bring her mom home safely.
The ICU unit had been a combo of silent dread, blaring beeps, and scary flashing lights. Aggie was glad to get out of there. The elevator ride was a depressing drop from the high of knowing that Sean had made it through surgery, to the low of the lobby with its drab reminder that people were getting sick with colds and the flu and random accidents that left them with a screw sticking out of one thumb. The guy with the screw smiled at her. That had to be the shock. There was no way he wasn’t in excruciating pain.
As they passed the Family Lounge, Aggie saw that the TV was still showing the same rotation of pictures of the accident site as they’d seen when Sean had been in surgery and they’d had to wait and breathe in all the germs of the ER. As she passed, something caught her eye. It was a new picture. She dropped Midge’s hand and sped back into the lounge.
“Turn the sound up,” she said. No one moved. They weren’t watching the TV; they were worrying about their kids or moms or dads or whoever was in surgery right now. Then she remembered, there had been no sound.
She pounded over to the Reception Desk. “Do you have the clicker for the TV?”
“Sorry,” said the receptionist. “The clicker?”
Aggie mimed punching keys on a remote control. “The clicker. You know, to change the channels?”
“I have it in here some place,” she said, “but I don’t think I can give it to you. The Family Lounge is a place of rest. People go there so they can escape the noise of the hospital.”
“What the…” Aggie scooted around the desk and opened a drawer.
“You can’t do that.” The receptionist was on her feet, closing drawers as
fast as Aggie opened them.
“I want that clicker.”
“Aggie?” It was Jo. “You need to see this.” Her face was flat. She was deliberately not smiling. Something bad had happened. Jo had her phone out, watching a live stream of a local channel.
“Coming to you live from Midtown, I’m Cass Cassidy with Channel 8 News. Reports are coming in of a secondary collapse.” She held her hand to her earpiece. “That’s right. There has been another collapse in what is turning out to be one of New York’s worst accidents in recent history.”
Aggie looked up at Jo. “Did they say where? Did they show pictures? Because I swear there was something different in the rotation on the TV in the Family Lounge.”
Jo nodded. “They sent in a remote control drone to get footage. You know what I mean? Those little flying copters with cameras? They’re everywhere now…”
