Haven: Collapse 4: Detox & Brothers
Jun. 20th, 2014 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amichanAfter a while things make more sense and the orderly lets go of me, and the nurse and Julia take me to the shower while the orderly strips and changes the bed. This is decidedly the least sexy shower with two women which is both surprising and unfortunate given one of them is Julia. The nurse leaves Julia to towel me off and dress my lower half while she goes to get more of whatever medications they are, after replacing the catheter bag. I sit on the closed toilet leaning my head against Julia's chest while she towels my back and hair.
She lifts my head up after a while and kisses my forehead and my nose, “Feeling more human?”
“Mmphf,” I mutter.
She kneels down in front of me and wraps her arms round my neck so my head is resting on her shoulder, “It'll be okay.”
I bring my hands up around her back and nuzzle into her shoulder but I can't say anything right now. I just keep tight hold focusing on her to stay in the moment. She holds the back of my head and rocks me gently, from side to side. For once my head isn't spinning but I do feel achy, and I know I'm starting to shake. She calls to the orderly asking if the bed is ready, and when she's told it is the orderly comes to help her get me in there.
“Nice artwork,” the orderly, still Meers, remarks, pointing at my right shoulder tattoo, the skull with butterflies, and then examining my other arm, there's the compass on that shoulder, the quote on my inner arm, and I have the the [bird] with the key in it's beak and the music coming from it which goes part way across my chest on the left side.
“Thanks,” I say, as I lean back against the pillows.
Julia looks me up and down, “Maybe we can get them to not bother with the gown,” she remarks with a wink.
The orderly pulls up the sheet but it feels as though where my legs are bare is being covered with sand paper so I push him away from it then murmur apologies and explain as best I can given my mouth doesn't want to work properly. Julia retrieves a bottle of water and brings me some.
“Where's the damn nurse?” she asks.
The orderly takes that as a cue to leave in search. Julia goes into the bathroom and wets a towel and brings it back to me and puts it on my forehead and then leans me forward and ties my hair back and then puts the towel on the back of my neck instead.
“Say it,” I murmur, feeling the weight of having to stay here being right.
“What?” she asks.
I turn slightly to look at her.
“Oh,” she says, and then shakes her head, “I'm not going to gloat about this. You're in pain.”
The orderly comes back with someone. It's a different nurse but it's a nurse, and Julia's mood improves considerably seeing her and her tray of plastic pouches and tools. The orderly has a blue checkered hospital gown over his shoulder.
“Very sorry,” the nurse says. She introduces herself as Elisa, “They decided to haul us in for a brief staff meeting right at shift change and it took a while to pass messages between me a Cheri so I could slip out and get things in here. Not a good morning?”
“Very much not,” Julia answers, “Maybe we can leave the gown off?” she asks the orderly, “Given the sheet was causing irritation.”
He nods and sets it on the counter nearby.
I'm hooked up to drips again, and the orderly takes a breakfast request, though it will be someone else who brings it up. We sit for a little while, Julia absently scratching the top of my head but she's in the bathroom wringing out the neck towel when another man knocks on the door, bringing a tray of food off a cart that he has outside.
He lifts the lid off the tray cautiously, “Sausage, eggs and toast?” he asks.
“Yes!” Julia calls, “and...”
“Waffles,” he lifts up another tray lid.
“Bingo!”
The food is brought in and put on the table. After a brief...discussion Julia eats because I'm not up to it. We agree to wait until the meds have kicked in a bit more. I lay back and breathe slowly and try not to be too pissed with myself. The body is dealing with chemical reactions, blah blah blah. I should remember this. It's not like I've not been through the bullshit before. Slowly, my arms and legs begin to feel less prickly and overheated and she chops things up for me and insists on feeding me again. I don't try to protest. She's been chatting to me about small things going on in town that aren't related to Troubles.
“I'm going to have to leave you for a while,” she says, sounding guilty, “there's some things at The Gull that I'll need to be there for since you can't.”
“I wouldn't have it any other way.”
“Do I have to call Nathan and Audrey for handcuffs to make sure you don't try to make a break for it while I'm gone?” she asks.
“I'm surprised you didn't have them leave you some.”
She laughs, “Well, they do need them for work. There are things they have to do that aren't related to the Troubles or so I'm told.”
“I promised I'd stay,” I remind her, “and this has proven you were right to make me.”
“I didn't want to be,” she murmurs, leaning over to kiss my temple just above my right eye.
“I know,” I carefully pick up the bottle of water and drink a little from it, “It was just...”
“It was a lot,” she says, looking at the time on her phone, “I'll have a new one of these for you when I come back too, okay?”
“Have you actually been here this whole time?”
She doesn't answer that.
“Julia...”
“You're the one who is sick,” she says, standing up, “I'll be fine. I'll go by the Cape after I go by The Gull, and we have loyalists guarding everything while I'm up here. Believe me. Just like when I went up to Boston to break you out.”
“Okay,” I tell her, “I just don't want you to wear yourself out or get sick.”
“I'm fine,” she leans over and kisses me, “but I have to get going. I should be back in about three hours or so. You saw the buttons I pushed to summon the minions?”
I nod.
She kisses me again and then she leaves.
$$$$
I flip idly through the channels on the television in the room not really able to focus on anything but being grateful that my hands aren't shaking so much any more and I can actually grip the remote, the flipping and the noise at least gives me something to focus on. The orderly knocks on the door frame.
“There's a visitor for you—thought I'd let you know first.”
“Oh?”
“Your brother,” he looks apologetic.
“Are you upset because you're having to tell me? Or because he exists?”
He doesn't answer the question, “You want me to tell him you're sleeping?” he offers.
“No, it's fine. He'll probably just hover and pester you.”
The orderly nods and disappears again, patting the door frame.
Wade. Wonderful. Julia had said he kept hanging round The Gull when I was “lost at sea”. He kept hopping back and forth from New York making a nuisance of himself like he was just waiting for proof for me to be actually dead to stake a claim on things. He probably doesn't think that I would have the foresight to have made a will.
“Here we are, sir,” the orderly says, showing Wade into the room like he's the butler at a fancy house.
Wade sidles in with a cursory nod at the orderly who after finding out there's nothing I need reminds me that I can get in touch with the call button and then tips an imaginary hat and leaves. Wade looks after him curiously for a moment before turning back to me. It's like seeing him super imposed over the landscape of the room. It reminds me of the first time I saw Evi, standing there on the docks, and I thought she was manifested there by some Trouble. If I didn't have accounts from Julia and patrons of The Gull that he'd been here on and off I'd be sure it was the same sort of thing, or a drug induced hallucination.
“Hey, baby brother,” he says.
“Wade,” I answer.
“You look like crap.”
“Well, you have a house fall on you and see how you look.”
He gives a slight laugh, and sits down in one of the chairs, “You have the lives of a cat, I swear. Lost at sea, now this...”
“What can I say?” I do my best to spread my arms out, “I have always been lucky. Maybe there's some Irish blood somewhere in here, who knows? Not that there's any one to ask.”
Wade gives a slight snort, “True.”
“So, did you just show up here to tell me I looked like shit?”
“Crap. I said, crap.”
“Right; but I mean, normally it's the phone call thing and that's it.”
“You disappeared, Duke. I was worried...and then a house fell on you. Your quiet little town seems to be a disaster magnet,” he waves towards the windows, “How do you afford insurance on that bar of yours?”
“I know people,” I force a smile, “Your concern for my financial well being is touching.”
“It sort of comes with the accountant territory.”
“Uh-huh.”
He leans back in the seat and crosses one leg over the other which he stretches out in front of him, “No, but aside from being worried about the fact you went missing, when I came up here to find out exactly what was going on. There were some things that happened.”
I adjust my position in the bed and my neck pops which has me seeing spots for a moment, “Wade—if this about The Gull and how--”
“It is about The Gull actually,” he says.
Oh, wonderful. Though it will be interesting to see how his account matches up with what I've heard from Julia, the Guard witnesses and the couple of locals who tossed him out when he showed during actual hours too.
“I see.”
“We'll brush aside the fact that I was assaulted on several occasions,” oh will we? How gracious of you, “People just didn't seem to know me—but we don't quite look alike, and you apparently didn't mention me to anyone. Still here I am trying to make sure your interests are being taken care of.”
“Wade--”
“The people who work there seem to think they can just run the place and that I would have no--”
“Wade--”
“--authority to make sure that you—I mean, I'm your brother and your bartender--”
“My who?” comes out right as he's hit with the fork that was still on the table by my bed. I threw it at him because he wasn't stopping talking to listen to me.
“Your bartender.”
“The Gull has more than just one bartender,” I point out, “and if you're talking about Julia.”
He hesitates then. Probably because my tone is becoming more than the just mildly irritated it was at first. I'm sure we both have Dad's temper and mine is all the shorter at the moment.
“That might be her...” he says, cautious now, “So high, dark hair, this length...”
“Do be careful what else you say...” I warn him.
We exchange stern looks for a moment and then he adjusts his position in his seat.
“How is it no one in Haven knows about me?” he asks.
“Wade, we talk maybe two or three times a year. You haven't been to Haven since you were...what ten? Eleven? Whenever it was your Mom cut off Dad's visitation.”
“There was a good reason for that.” Wade says, “I suppose. Your Mom is...was...is...?” he looks at me.
“How would I know? I haven't seen her in over a decade and if you're trying to paint him like some sort of saint in all that...really don't.”
“He could have tried to get rights back,” Wade remarks.
“When? From beyond the grave?” It does make me wonder what ghost Dad would make of Wade. Part of the reason his Mom came and got him and decided he shouldn't come back, if I'm remembering right, was that Dad was pissed that Wade threw up when Nathan broke his arm and Wade's Mom felt that Dad should have been more “sympathetic” and “less of an asshole” because there was “no reason” to “hit him over that” and she didn't want to hear about it because “throwing up is a normal reaction to a bone sticking out of someone's clothes” They argued out in front of the rented house we had a street or so from the docks as Wade sat sullenly in the car, and...I think I was making faces at him through the front window, actually.
Wade doesn't say anything for a moment, “He had time.”
“Yeah...sure...” I wave at him dismissively, “Please tell me you didn't come all the way up here and start harassing people because of Dad. So, not worth it.”
“No,” Wade mutters, “I keep alerts on news of you, considering...”
“Considering?”
“The trouble you've gotten yourself in to in the past,” he points out, “Things you do are...not exactly above board at times.”
“Which is why you shouldn't get involved in any of it and stay away from here.” I point out.
“Excuse you,” he says, “I mean, you told me you'd gotten the bar...” Did I? “That comes across like my little brother had been trying to turn things around for himself, finally. Then you go missing, “lost at sea” I mean, really. The stuff you've done—lost at sea, that's code for someone caught up with you and did you in, isn't it? Everyone in the town just seemed to be in denial.”
“Do I look done in?”
“Well, no...” Wade sighs.
“Seems like you're the one who was in denial then.”
“What would you have thought if you were me?” he persists.
“I would have stayed out of it.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
Wade shakes his head, “I don't believe you. Anyway, I get up here to sort things out. I'm your only living relative.” That you know of, “That's my job and no one will let me. I'm told by your—your--” he waves his hand.
I level him with a glare, “are you referring to Julia? Because she is not a bartender.”
“Oh, right. Personal assistant, then.”
The way he'd been saying bartender was bad enough, as though Julia was a scullery maid caught posing with the daughter of the house's dresses, but this tone is more as though she's just a substitute for my right hand.
“Do you remember what I said just before about being careful what you said?” I ask him, evenly.
He looks at me, but doesn't say anything in reply.
“You keep implying very insulting things about the woman I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with.” Hopefully that should do it, because I don't think I can follow through on anything physically very well right now. Though I get the impression the orderlies might be more than willing to act on my behalf.
Wade swallows, “I...didn't know.”
“You barged in to my life. Of course you didn't know anything that was going on. It's not your business.”
“I'm your brother.”
“Who I talk to maybe twice a year. I'd give The Gull to Nathan before I'd give it to you.”
“Nathan?” he queries. Damn it. Some of this would be easier if he'd been around more often.
“You might remember him as the kid whose broken arm you puked at,” I point out, “Though you'd have to be around here more for the weight of that to really make sense. The point is you've been butting in where you shouldn't and you need to leave this all alone and stay in New York where your family is.” He starts to say something but I cut him off, “I'm not an idiot, you know? I have legal documents and a will in place dictating exactly who is supposed to do what and what goes where when I'm not here and if I should actually die. If any of it goes to you you'll find out.”
“What do you mean?”
I have to laugh a little, “There's a certain sequence of events that would have to happen. Wade, seriously. I guess I should appreciate what you tried to do, but it kinda looks like you were being a self-serving asshole trying to get a cut of someone else's pie; but maybe that's the medication they have me on talking.”
“What exactly happened?” he asks, probably wisely changing the subject.
“I'm not properly sure,” I tell him, “I just know the building came down. Probably shouldn't have pushed myself so hard so soon after getting back—but I couldn't leave Audrey buried like that she would have gotten cut in half. The paper said something about unstable foundations? Plumbing? At least that's what Julia said. I didn't want to read it.”
“You seem to get a lot of gas leaks around here too,” Wade says.
I shrug, “Pipe systems wear out. I'm not the one whose job it is to repair or replace them.”
“I'd be worried about my bar if I were you.”
“You're not me besides The Gull is right at the docks and we don't have gas.”
“It has been damaged before though...”
“All bars wind up getting fights from time to time...” and the one stalker golem. Why the fuck are you harping on this right now? “I'm not in the mood for more of this right now. You can stay if you'll talk about other things, but if you're not going to, you're going to have to leave.”
He shifts in his seat, apparently not willing to leave just yet. He moves so he's sitting with both feet on the floor again, but looks up at the drips that are going into my arm, “You got hurt?” No, I'm in the hospital for a vacation.
“Something went through my foot,” I explain, “I should check what they did with that. Maybe I can keep it.”
“Put it on display at The Gull?”
I find myself laughing at that, “Maybe...it'll depend what it looks like. If not I'll just keep it on the Cape somewhere.”
“I'd like to see her some time before I go,” he remarks.
“Hm?”
“Your boat. Julia wouldn't let me on.”
“Again. She doesn't know you, Wade, and from what I've heard you were being an asshole and the Gua—friends of ours had to forcibly remove you from The Gull because she didn't feel safe. Why the hell would she let you on the boat?” I shake my head. Shit, things went spinning then. I bring my left hand up to my temple which is awkward because of the tubes and massage there.
“You alright?” Wade asks.
“No,” I point out, “and this isn't helping. What's going on with you and your family? Your job?”
“Fine,” he says, dismissively, “We're doing renovations to the house. Builders trying to screw us as always happens with those things.”
I just manage to stop myself from shaking my head again, “You don't know the right people,” I pull the cord on the call button so that it slides up the bed towards my hand.
“And I suppose you do?”
“Not in New York. I haven't been down there in years.”
“You were in New York and you didn't stop by?” he says, accusingly.
“When I was in New York I didn't know you were. You might not have been. It's gotta have been at over a dozen years ago like I said years. You wouldn't have wanted to see me then.”
“Oh,” he says, “No, I was probably still in New Hampshire then.”
“Good for you,” I'm getting more terse, definitely. I wonder what time it is. I press the call button down the side against my leg. I should probably get rid of him as well as getting things checked and readjusted or whatever the hell it is they do, but I have a feeling he'll just hang around outside and accost Julia when she comes back if that's the case and she's had to deal with him enough.
“Wow,” Wade leans back, putting his legs crossed on each other again, “We changed the subject. I thought your mood was going to improve...wasn't that the deal? You're supposed to be the fun brother, aren't you? At least that's one of many things I've had thrown at me while I was here.”
I rub my right hand around the back of my neck where Julia would put the towel trying to fumble out the looming headache and itchiness, “It's usually easier...but I did kinda get hit by a house after all. I'm a bit sore. It's making me...crabby. I'm sorry.”
“Yeah, a house,” he murmurs, “You best be careful,” he adds, “Pretty sure addiction runs in the family, especially your side. Who knows what painkillers they've got you on.”
My brain shuts off for a moment because I'm not exactly sure what Wade is saying. If he's just being generally insulting or if he's insinuating something else that is slightly more accurate but yet not given he doesn't know about the Troubles and has therefore probably decided that I'm following in my Mom's footsteps and might be wondering if he can form a new plot around that.
The orderly returns then though and has apparently been talked to by the other one, “Yeah, Duke, what can I do you for?” he tips the fake hat again.
Wade shakes his head.
“A couple of favors,” I say, carefully, “I need an adjustment, so if you could get the nurse I would appreciate it, a lot; but also if you can get this jack ass out of here and see he doesn't come back then that would be...simply amazing. I will make it worthwhile.”
“Oh?” he inquires as Wade protests, loudly.
“You have perhaps heard of The Gull?”
“Of course, and...oh!” light dawns across his face.
“Get him out of here, and we'll talk.” I promise, leaning back and closing my eyes.
“You want ice or something before I go?”
I shake my head, carefully.
“Seriously, Duke?” Wade turns on me, “Seriously?”
“Come on,” I hear a minor scuffle which has to be the orderly taking him by the arm, “The man said you have to go.”
“This is ridiculous!” I hear Wade from down the corridor, and then nothing else from him. I turn my attention back to flipping channels on the TV until the nurse comes in.