14: Sick Time

The sudden chirping of a phone woke me. I started to sit up, but the sudden motion hit my head hard and I groaned. Cate mumbled an obscenity besides me and pulled her cell phone out. I think she was about to shut it off when she recognized the number, so she went ahead and answered it. She was getting up to leave the room but I reached out and held her, feeling this was probably something that I should hear.

“Hello? You’re going to have to keep it quiet, because Alex is trying to sleep,” she answered in an almost whisper.

“What was that, Caroline?” she asked, becoming quickly concerned.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. We’ll meet you here,” she turned to me and explained briefly. “It’s Caroline. They went home a while ago with Chalise’s father and things started to get ugly. The father hit Chalise, and when Caroline went to her defense, he hit her, too. They managed to call the police.”

She listened longer before relaying more information.

“He denied everything, but the hospital had already reported an assault against her by her brother, so the clear signs of an attack meant the police are bringing her to the hospital here,” Cate explained. I figured I’d better respond.

“Yeah, Boss?” asked Gail as she stuck her head in the door. Apparently she’d finished with the police interviews while I’d been out of it.

“Need wheelchair. Need to see Chalise. She’s coming to ER.”

“Uh, if it’s alright with you, how about you stay there and recover, and I’ll do down and make sure they’re OK?” She asked, looking a bit nervous about my moving around.

“Police bringing her. Let them, check her, bring here,” I instructed her in still broken English. It was taking a lot of effort to form complete sentences.

“Aye, aye, chief,” she replied with a quick salute and was off. I looked around and noticed more people than I’d realized were here at first.

“When did everyone get here?”

“They’ve been arriving off and on. Gail would only let them enter if they promised not to disturb you,” Cate told me. My other two sisters were slowly waking up, apparently they’d been nodding off before the phone woke us all. My mother and Natalie were also sitting there watching me.

“How’s everyone else?” I asked her, just to check.

“Everyone has been meeting with the police, off and on, since you zoned out. Apparently Gail, knowing police tactics, was advising us on how to respond. She told us to answer honestly so it wouldn’t look like we were hiding anything, but not to say anything about our relationship to you other than what we decided. She also told us to drop in lots of personal details, as that would disarm them and prevent them from thinking the testimony was prearranged,” Shani explained.

“Good. Makes sense,” I replied.

“Luckily you weren’t completely out, so we were still able to communicate while you slept, but the messages were a bit problematic as they’d come and go unexpectedly,” she explained before continuing on.

“Probably ‘cause sleep fitful,” I said.

“It was funny when they tried to interrogate Anh,” Cate laughed, continuing on. “They couldn’t figure out how to interview her when no one in the family knew how to speak Vietnamese and she kept playing ignorant. When we told them they’d have to wait for you to wake up, they couldn’t seem to figure out how you could possibly know enough Vietnamese to translate for her to the whole family.”

“Good, keep off track,” I responded, still keeping all my comments short.

“I’m afraid they are already thinking you’re leading some kind of cult,” Natalie informed me. “Plus they wanted to know why we were all living in your room.”

I simply asked “Why?”

She answered, “Because you said they could search the house. The first thing they noticed was all the women’s clothing in your room, in a variety of different sizes and styles.”

“Ah.” That was enough encouragement for her to go on.

“They’re still anxious to speak with you, but Gail convinced them to return in the morning.”

“When Becky, Melinda get here?”

“We came as soon as Mom called us,” Becky answered. “It took a while to get here, and I’m not sure how soon she was able to call. We wanted to give you lots of hugs but your bulldog out there wouldn’t let us,” she said, laughing gently.

“By the way, in case you are concerned, the bruising on the sides of your brain appears to be going down, as you can tell by your increased ability to concentrate now,” Cate informed me. She looked ill at ease, sitting so close to me and not holding me, but she was taking her role of keeping me informed very seriously.

“Yeah, better, still hurt,” I said, wincing in order to emphasize my point.

Cate passed me a glass with a straw.

“Allison took off after her interview, assuming you’d be sleeping for a while, to visit your other fans in the hospital,” Shani informed me. “Also Kitty came soon after we got word to her. She went with Allison so she’s anxious to speak with you as well. They’re all concerned about you.”

“Speaking of being concerned about you,” Natalie said, “you should probably try contacting Patricia and Brooke. They called when they couldn’t reach you, the other girls all say that whenever you get in trouble they get these strong emotions from you. I’m sure they’re worried.”

“What bout Anh?” I asked.

“Ah, she went down to the cafeteria to get us all coffee. She said she couldn’t stand looking at you so helpless,” Shani told me.

“Alex, can I—?” Cate asked, suddenly looking weaker now that her ‘official’ duties were over. I held a hand up, holding her off for a second. I knew she needed me, but I also know I could relieve a couple of worried women with only a few seconds communication.

‘Brooke, Patricia?‘ I asked, trying to contact them both in order to save some time. I’d never tried this before, but feeling as weak as I did, I thought it made sense to try it now.

‘Alex? We were so worried about you, ‘ Patricia answered.

‘We got a couple of panicky messages from you, then you wouldn’t respond to us afterwards. Are you alright?‘ Brooke asked.

‘I was out of it for a while, ‘ I answered, finding mental messages a bit easier to handle now. ‘I was struck in the head with a large chair. I’m in the hospital now, but I seem to be improving.’

‘Oh, no!‘ Brooke cried. ‘Have they done any tests to see if there’s any internal damage?‘

‘Even better, Dr. Moore accepted Allison’s diagnosis that I was OK, that it was just some light bruising and that I’d slowly recover.‘

‘Oh, that certainly makes me feel better, ‘ Brooke answered. ‘By the way, we’ll be there shortly. As soon as we got your garbled messages, Rebecca and I called each other. We started driving almost immediately after packing some essentials.‘

‘You’re coming here?‘ I asked, unbelievingly.

‘Of course we’re coming, ‘ Brooke assured me. ‘We’d had most of our stuff packed and ready, so mostly we just had to get the kids organized. They’re both anxious about you, by the way. We had finished the preparations when Dr. Moore called the other day, telling us we had the jobs, so there wasn’t anything holding us back.‘

‘What about Patricia?‘ I asked, having to accept what they told me as established fact.

‘I’m fine, ‘ she assured me. I’d forgotten I was already speaking with her. ‘I really wanted to come as well, but I knew you were depending on me to watch over things here.‘

‘OK, ‘ I told them, already tiring from this extensive discussion. ‘I’ve got to go now, I’m getting weak and Cate looks like she’s about to fall apart.‘

‘Go, go. We’re sure she needs you. I’ll tell Rebecca what you’ve said. The kids are both asleep at the moment, ‘ Brooke assured me.

Once we finished I turned back to Cate and opened my arms to her. She almost leapt into my lap, but held herself back at the last moment, being cautious of hurting me. She ended up just snuggled gently against me and holding me tight.

“You talked to them?” she asked me. I simply nodded wordlessly, not even sure if she could see me, since her head was nestled against my chest. She seemed to as she responded, however.

“I’m sure it must have been hard on them not knowing what was happening to you. It was hell sitting so close to you, afraid to touch you but still having to keep track of everything going on, since I knew you’d want to know everything as soon as you were coherent.”

Again I simply nodded, not yet feeling strong enough to say much. With all of that out of her, Cate began to cry as she let herself go, shaking gently in my arms. I held her tighter, despite the fact her crying was producing sharp pains radiating throughout my head. As I tried to wordlessly console her, I briefly reached out to both Allison and Anh, letting them know I was finally awake. They both answered simply, telling me they’d be here shortly.

It wasn’t much longer when I had to alert Cate by clearing my throat. When she looked up I said, “We’re about to have company.” She quickly stood up, not wanting to announce to the world that, out of a room full of lovers, she was the one lying against me crying her eyes out.

The door opened a moment later. Gail began maneuvering Chalise into the room in a wheelchair while Caroline held the door for her. But as soon as she saw me, Chalise leapt up and raced towards me. She almost made it, too. Gail, blocked by both Caroline and the wheelchair, simply leapt over it, using the wheelchair as a vault, and grabbed her around the waist before she could reach me. She whispered in her ear before she could get upset. Chalise quickly calmed down.

“Sorry,” she meekly said to me. “Are you OK?”

Grimacing slightly, I opened my arms to her and she came to me, gingerly this time. She too gave me a firm hug and sighed once I was safely in her arms.

“I was so worried about you,” she confessed.

“Seems, like the consen ... sus,” I managed to get out. She immediately backed up.

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t be bothering you. You’re still weak,” Chalise protested.

“He’s been suffering from a concussion to a particular area of his brain, he was delirious until a short time ago. He’s recovering, but it’s slow,” Cate informed her, struggling slightly to maintain her strict composure. Chalise just looked at her for a few moments, not questioning how she could possibly know such a thing, then ran to her instead of me.

“Oh, you poor thing, it must have been terrible to have to sit here all this time and not be able to hold him.”

I thought that was odd. She was consoling my sister instead of taking care of her own emotional needs? I wondered if maybe she might not know more than I’d suspected. But then again, they’d been talking, and Cate had been acting attracted to me for quite some time, as everyone keeps telling me.

“So, how are you feeling?” Caroline asked me, as Chalise and Cate whispered to each other.

“Fine, tired, head hurts,” I summarized. “Still, need take control,” I told her.

She looked at me oddly, tilting her head. “Why?”

Gail leaned over. “He feels responsible for all of us. The police were giving us trouble, so he recovered enough to put them in their place. It’s twofold. He needs to do it, and it’s also helping him focus,” she explained.

“Oh,” Caroline said, looking confused. “Couldn’t you have done that yourselves?”

“They rely on me, my responsibility,” I informed her, answering instead of letting Gail respond. Caroline still looked a bit confused, so I simply concluded, “Complicated. They need me be responsible.”

“All right,” Caroline conceded, nodding that she got it. “I take it that’s one of those things I’m not supposed to understand yet. So, who is this newest member of your little menagerie? She mentioned her name was Gail, but that’s about all we could get out of her.”

“That’s all I know as well,” I replied. “Please, Gail, could you tell us about yourself.”

Gail looked a little nervous. “Well, I’m glad you asked, because everyone else seemed afraid to ask me anything without you there, but ... how much am I allowed to say?”

Hoping to curtail any unnecessary questions I quickly reassured her. “Just tell us about yourself. You don’t have to tell us whether you smoke dope in your spare time or something. I’m just interested in who you are.” I hoped that was worded carefully enough that she’d know not to reveal anything about their abilities, but if she slipped, I’d deal with it as I’d been dealing with everything else. It was hard work trying to keep everything under wraps all the time.

“My name is Gail Sanders. As you can tell, I’m an officer of the law. I work out of St. Louis. I was ... uh,” she paused, unsure how to explain. “I was returning from dropping off some case files when I, uh...” She was once again stuck with just what to say.

“She stopped in to visit a friend who was in one of the nearby rooms,” I offered.

While she’d been speaking I took the opportunity to examine the new woman who stood before us. It was hard to really evaluate her, as she had her hair pulled back tightly and it was hidden behind her cap. I gathered it was the way she normally hid herself from her fellow officers or members of the public that she didn’t want to reveal herself in front of.

She seemed strong, like Brooke and Rebecca. Well, probably more like Brooke, who gained her strength and bearing from having to use her muscles every day on her job. It was hard to see, you could tell she was certainly in shape, although she looked a bit softer overall than either Brooke or Rebecca. She wasn’t real tall, but she was more rounded than my other girls. She certainly had a no nonsense look about her. Her hair was dark brownish, falling a little past her shoulders. She had inquisitive eyes and a cute little smile that she’d occasionally reveal, usually whenever she’d unexpectedly look at me. I could tell she could quickly go from comfortable and relaxed to aggressive and demanding as the occasion called for.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, brightening, as she continued.

“And you knew this, how, since you didn’t even know who she was?” Caroline asked.

“Mother!” Chalise warned her mother sharply. “Alex warned me that there would be others who might show up unexpectedly, so it’s hardly surprising. I met another one the other day when we took a tour of the hospital. That one was another patient. Give them room to get to know one another before you start demanding explanations.”

I just had to stare at her in amazement for a few seconds before I could think to respond.

“Thank you, Chalise.” Turning back to Caroline I continued, having had a chance to gather my slow forming thoughts. “My brain is still moving in ... slow motion,” I tried to explain. “I can’t quite think straight yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Caroline offered, looking very apologetic. “Go on, Miss, I apologize for interrupting you.”

“No problem,” Gail replied in an almost mumble before switching to her more straightforward response to me. “Anyway, I stopped by to visit my friend and I met some of Alex’s...”

“He calls them his ‘girls’,” Chalise explained.

“Right, I met a few of his girls out in the hall and we got to talking. Anyway, I came in here and we continued our discussion when suddenly some of the local policemen showed up. I thought they were responding a little strangely, given the circumstances, so I started to stick up for Mr. Alex,” Gail explained, adapting her story to make it sound more plausible.

“Please, no formality, especially with ... me in hospital robe,” I said, still having trouble stringing together all the little nuances of speech, even though I was gradually thinking clearer. “Sides, cops from ... Shawneetown.”

“I’m sorry,” she responded, nodding to acknowledge my correction, “but I’ve been estranged from the church for a long time. It seems they didn’t seem to be particularly relevant in my life anymore, but when I—”

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” I hurried to jump in before she had a chance to explain how I was godlike or something similar. “I’m not religious myself. I just couldn’t convince myself that there was any reason for God to exist.” Caroline looked at me oddly when I’d said this, and I growled at myself, thinking I’d just stepped from one fire into another in trying to avoid a little heat. I couldn’t keep mentioning my atheism without eventually alienating someone.

“That’s how I felt, but I was suddenly afraid all my disillusionment with the church was wrong and you were going to punish me for my doubts,” she stated, her nervousness overriding her thinking through what she was saying.

“Yeah, voices from on high can do that to you,” Cate offered with a quick laugh. I shot her a quick dirty look, which hurt my head, but she seemed to either not notice or ignore it.

“Does he do that with you?” Gail asked.

“Nope. Sorry, but I’m not one of the Chosen few. I’m simply his lowly sister.”

I coughed, loudly, to try to cut this sidetrack short. Both Caroline and Chalise were busy looking back and forth at each of us. Luckily Anh arrived then, carrying a tray full of cups on it. Everyone quickly turned their attention to helping her and hopefully forgot the current thread of the discussion. When everyone had their own cup of coffee their attention turned back to Gail.

“So, Gail, do you have a boyfriend or husband?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes for a change. Although that didn’t seem to have impacted Patricia in the least, I reminded myself.

“Ah, no. I don’t have any significant others at the moment. Not many people are interested in the drama and distractions of getting involved in a cop’s life. It’s often hard on the spouses, you understand,” she explained.

“Can you spend any time with us?” I asked, trying to move the conversation along

“Well, I’m off for the weekend, so I have until midday Sunday,” she offered.

“So there’s no one who’d be looking for you at home?” asked Shani.

“Nope, just me. I haven’t been close to my family for years, and its hard having much of a dating life as a cop,” she explained. “Plus, I walk into bars and everyone immediately freezes cause of the ‘cop’ look.”

“Well, I want you to know you’re always welcomed to come by the house whenever you need or want to. You’re already a member of the family as far as everyone is concerned,” I assured her in what appeared to be my most complex sentence I’d yet uttered.

“Ha!” Cate exclaimed, “I’m sure if you asked Melinda, she’s already a step above family.” I certainly wasn’t about to try discussing Melinda in front of Cate yet. I figured one serious blow to the head in a night was enough, thank you very much.

Before anything more could be said there was a brief knock on the door and Kitty opened it, allowing Allison to push a wheelchair holding Jennifer Pickford in it. I could tell that Kitty wanted to run to me, but she was being very patient and was carefully watching out for poor Jennifer.

“Thought we’d bring a big fan of yours up to see how you were,” Allison explained. “Seems there are more than a few people worried about you around the hospital.”

“Man, you wouldn’t believe how quickly news of you has been spreading across the entire hospital,” Jennifer told us. “The doctors never say anything to anyone, but everyone knows you’ve got to talk to the nurses to ever find out what’s going on in a hospital. They’ve all been abuzz about you since you first arrived on Tuesday.”

Allison quickly pushed Jennifer up to me. I moved unsteadily to the edge of my bed, so I could give her a quick hug, Kitty once more holding back so I could deal with Jennifer before she did anything herself.

“Allison told me you were awake,” Kitty explained, “even though we were already in the cancer ward at the time. I’d first gotten here when you were still asleep, and I was terribly worried, but everyone assured me you were fine. I’m not sure how they could all be so sure about it, though, since head injuries are usually so difficult to diagnose.”

“That used to be the case,” came a clear voice from the still open door, as both Ryan and Dr. Padilla entered the room. “But we’re thinking of starting up a new experimental service at a certain local school to try to treat unexpected head injuries on the scene,” Dr. Moore informed us.

“Because of what Alex does?” Jennifer asked excitedly.

“Well, what he’s been able to help us with, but more precisely from what we’ve been able to learn since he came in with his own injury,” Ryan carefully explained. I was glad he was being more careful in what he said than my own sister was being. But I had to concede that it gets difficult trying to keep so many secrets.

“It seems we have a new technique for evaluating patients quickly, although we’ll still need a doctor on hand to make the official diagnosis,” Dr. Padilla explained. “Luckily we have several new hires that are already fully trained in the new procedure.” He smiled at me as he related this information.

“That seems a safe approach,” I said, not committing myself.

“So, Alex, you helped all of us so much, couldn’t you have done the same for yourself?” Jennifer asked. I just looked at her, mostly because my brain just wasn’t thinking very fast and she’d surprised me.

“Uh, not that I’ve really done anything unusual, you understand,” I stressed, trying quietly to tell Jennifer to hush up, I continued. “But aside from being out of it, I still have no idea what goes on. I have no medical training, so I can’t speak of what is or isn’t medically possible, but I think doing nothing was the best approach in this case.”

“That was exactly our thinking,” Ryan said. “By the way, how are you feeling, Alex? You’re sounding better.”

“His speech is improving the longer he’s up, I think he’s recovering pretty quickly,” Cate offered, possibly in order to save me from having to answer.

“I’m feeling pretty good now, although I wouldn’t fight a nap if I was offered one,” I replied.

Ryan looked around the now crowded room. “I can’t see how you are going to arrange that with all these well-wishers in here. Do you want me to order them all out?”

“Nah, that won’t be necessary,” I assured him.

“Besides,” Chalise replied, “I’m sure his girls would enforce peace and quiet in any case,” she said, glancing at Gail.