"Agent Dunham?"
Everything hurt.
Olivia woke up feeling like she had gotten trampled by a few dozen tanker-sized horses. Forcing an eye open, the room spun at an alarming speed and she immediately regretted doing it.
"Walter?" Her voice was ragged; raw and drawn.
She squeezed one eye and tried to focus out the other—to some success—Walter was standing over her, wearing a worn plaid robe holding a cup of coffee and wearing a confused sort of grin.
Coffee.
The smell of burnt beans immediately took her, reaching down her throat and threatening to pull it back up with it. She pulled her face away from the revolting smell; clamping her hand over her mouth and nose in an attempt to keep the contents of her stomach from the uprising revolt.
"Oh," Walter muttered, rather high and sign-song, realizing the gaffe. He shuffled back a few feet, swinging the mug too quickly and spilling some on his hand and slushing the rest on the floor. She could hear the yipe escape him, but refused to open her eyes to see. She concentrated on breathing evenly in the vain attempt to get the pounding in her head to subside and her stomach to settle.
What the hell was Walter doing there? And why did she feel like she had eaten the wrong end of a cigar.
She tried to piece together the images of the prior night… all she had was broken bits and pieces of pictures she didn't understand. Flashes of flickering lights and faces, but nothing she could grasp onto.
"I know just what you need Agent Dunham," she heard Walter yell from the kitchen. She could hear cabinets opening and closing, and she wondered if he wasn't being unnecessarily loud because of the burn or because he was just being Walter.
She tried with some effort to sit up—she was on a couch. In the Bishop's house. The spinning was less now, the nausea temporarily subsided. She stood, instantly regretted it, but stayed planted on her feet. Looking down, she realized she was clad only in an old MIT shirt and checked to make sure that Walter was safely tucked away in the kitchen. As an afterthought, she grabbed the old quilt from the couch and wrapped it around her before going after him.
She could see the fuzzy outline of Walter milling away in the kitchen, plying a scoop from an open tub of strawberry ice cream in a revolting looking concoction he had sitting on the counter. He finished it by cracking a raw whole egg into it, it plopped very unceremoniously into the middle of the goo.
Walter nudged it toward her, looking expectantly at her reaction.
Olivia stared at it in revulsion.
"Walter," she started warningly.
"Trust me, it will help—" he started, nudging it a little further. He turned to find what was left of his spilled coffee poured some more of the black creation from the burner. The smell hovered and the nausea returned and Olivia had to clamp her hand over her mouth again and backtracked. There was no way she could get whatever that was down.
Walter made a little "oh," sound and put down the mug, once more forgetting the coffee reaction.
"Sorry about that," he smiled, wiping his hands off on his robe. "Please, drink that, you'll feel much better I believe." He pushed the glass of brown liquid into her hands. She stared, incredulous. Hesitantly, she brought it to her lips and took a sip. It was the texture and not much better tasting than mud.
"You're not pregnant, are you Agent?"
She choked, the mud stuck in her throat and causing her to hack up whatever had already slid down her throat. Walter uncertainly patted her on the back.
"No," she said between coughs, "of course not, Jesus Walter."
Walter raised his hands like he was approaching a frightened horse, "Now, now—I had to ask; the contents of what your drinking would adversely affect a fetus—"
"Stop," she waved him off. He went instantly silent. She tried to get down more of the drink just for something to do. The drink was disgusting, but for some reason it stopped the churning in her stomach.
"What is this?" She asked.
This seemed to revive Walter, he excitedly pattered back around the kitchen toward his already cold coffee, "a concoction of my own device, developed it in college when I would spend one too many nights out," he explained with gusto—taking a swig out of his coffee.
There was an awkward silence between them that Walter appeared unaware of. She took another drink, with effort, but was feeling almost normal again.
"So," she began, unsure where to take it. She decided on honesty, "why am I here?" She asked mildly.
It seemed to dawn on Walter that this was particularly unusual. His eyes darted Olivia toward the living room, like he half-expected Peter to be asleep on the couch with her.
"Is Peter not down here?"
Olivia's stomach went cold; it could have been from the drink, but she knew it probably wasn't.
"Peter?" As she asked, images of bar bathrooms and Peter's livid face exploded into her mind; him pulling a man off her, her crawling on top of him in the middle of the night, him telling her no, being rejected…
She dropped the glass—the contents spiraled upward like a mushroom cloud, splattering her with showers of sticky mud.
"Jesus," she breathed, she turned toward the sink and barely had enough time to shove Walter out of the way before she heaved whatever made it into her stomach into the kitchen sink.
She heard Walter standing over her, casually saying over her shoulder, "are you sure you're not pregnant Agent Dunham? I've never seen this reaction before to my cocktail…"
