When Logan returned to his apartment, he had to lie down. The shock of seeing Kim had shaken him to the point of a breakdown.
She looked so much like Max…the hair…the attitude…the eyes, oh God the eyes…her petite figure…it's Max all over again…a doppelganger.
Without bothering to take his exo off, he sat on the couch and stared into space until his vision blurred and all went dark.
It's not fair…why would she do that? Why? I loved her…The last thing he saw etched behind his eyelids was Max's lifeless body on the woodland floor, her pretty brunette head bouncing off a rock like a deflated basketball.
After Logan's sudden and confusing departure, Kim blew out her candles, turned off the stereo and retired to bed herself. The familiarity of her bedroom, specifically decorated to mirror the one back in Idaho, was comforting to her; more than mac & cheese, more that peach candles, more than Kurt Cobain's guitar riff that sounded like nirvana itself.
What a strange place this is, Kim thought to herself as she crawled under the covers. Between wicked blonde witches and rich guys who like to look like beggars.
Kim awoke the next morning to the sound of the telephone. She shuffled out of bed and answered with a groggy, "'Lo?"
"Morning, sunshine," Cal's cheery voice said on the other line, calling all the way from Nevada, where he lived. "How was your first night in Tiffany's?"
"Strange," Kim admitted as she made herself some precious coffee. "I met that guy…Logan Cale."
"Ohh…the Blonde Bitch's boy toy?" Cal joked.
"Yeah." Kim giggled. "He's an interesting fellow, I'll tell you that."
"Oh?"
"He kept asking me about…Wyoming, I think."
"Why?"
"I don't know. We had some wine and he just acted really weird."
"Where did you get wine?"
"Crazy Aunt Sonia."
"Oh…so Logan acted a little weird. So what? You don't have to see him again, that's the beauty of it."
"Well, I guess." Kim swung her eyes towards the ceiling. She sighed and shook her head. "Listen, Cal, I gotta get going. I have to be at work in an hour and a half."
"Have fun," Cal said. "And good luck. I have a feeling you'll be needing it."
Harbor Lights Hospital was a good-sized medical practice that had a busy waiting room where, in most cases, you had to take a number, and a full personnel of only twenty-seven: seven doctors and twelve nurses (though only four doctors and six nurses were on duty at a time), four on the maintenance crew and four in the lab. They ran out of rubber gloves on several occasions, free coffee for the staff was an oddity (most ran on pep pills and ambition). Clean-up was a bitch every night thanks to a cracked concrete floor stained daily with blood, vomit and other bodily fluids. Scrubbing with a despondent mop and filthy water—though boiling hot—didn't help either. The blemishes remained no matter what.
Kim at first couldn't understand why anyone would want to come to Harbor Lights in the first place. She later found out that the staff was caring, kind and well-trained and people came there mainly because they had no money and couldn't afford the fancy kind of hospitals, like Metro Medical and Crestview.
She sputtered to Harbor Lights in her car, already expecting a hellish day. She was on the janitorial "squad", as they joked—the mopping, scrubbing, sweeping—and, by her third day earned herself the job of "gopher": "Kim, go for this; Kim, go for that."
It was a shit job, but it was one of the few available in the city to her.
It's a helluva lot better than doing porn, she thought.
Though everyone talked to her (actually, she really couldn't call it "talk"—it was more like "shout orders at"), Kim usually only conversed with to two fellow employees on a regular basis: Dr. Walker Jackson and Tony Calvino.
Walker, by far the most popular doctor, was more commonly known as simply Happenin' Jackson or Doctor J. He had an fair skin tone and dark hair and eyes to boot, very lanky and tall; Kim had to tilt her head upwards to meet his eyelevel. Always ready with a wisecrack, Walker liked to poke fun at people with lightheartedness.
Anthony "Tony" Del Monte Calvino was a gold chain and a mafia connection away from being a stereotypical Italian, which he was, in his own words. He had wavy dark hair and hazel eyes, a slight overbite and a long face dusted with a stubble, though not as full as Logan's was. His build was a bit muscled and but still a bit gangly. He was always willing to lend a hand to a friend, which was why Kim had taken a liking to him—she admired his congeniality.
As Kim walked in through the doors of Harbor Lights, she was ready to leave. The waiting room was almost filled already. Like many inner-city hospitals, unless you were dying, bleeding severely or in labor, they wouldn't even look up at you if the waiting room was this full.
"Gonna be a long day," sighed one of Kim's co-workers, Sophie Wolf, who was on the janitorial staff with her.
"No kidding."
Kim accompanied Sophie to the back room, sort of a lounge where everyone who had time spent it. There was a countertop with a sink, a refrigerator, a mini-microwave and an abandoned coffee machine. The coffee machine wasn't even plugged in—like there was coffee to come by. There was also a ratty couch, two overstuffed and beat-up armchairs and one large circular table with half a dozen folding chairs arranged around it.
"I want to quit so bad," Sophie sighed, sinking into one of the folding chairs. "But this is the only job I've been able to come by in two years." Sophie was the hard-working young mother of three, only recently having her last baby.
"What about Seamus?" Kim asked, referring to Sophie's husband.
Sophie shook her head, eyes brimming with tears. "Seamus can't find work either. So he has to stay with the kids…I had two weeks of maternity leave. Two weeks!" Sophie paused to reach for a tissue that was placed in a box on the table. She blew her nose and asked, "How do you do it, Kim? Survive?"
Kim shrugged. "Go with the flow I guess." She didn't want to give Sophie her resume, what "positions" she had held previously.
"Ugh." Sophie stuck the tissue in the pocket of her scrubs. "I'm gonna go find Nnenia and ask for some of her nerve pills. Want anything off the trolley?"
Nnenia Ashon was head of the infirmary, infamous for giving out pills to the staff if they needed, since most prescriptions were hard to come by in the first place. She hadn't been caught yet, but Kim figured it was only a matter of time.
"No thanks, not right now."
As Sophie left, Doctor Jackson sauntered in, the usual laid-back "It's aiight" grin on his face.
"Hey Kim, howya doin'?" he asked, going straight to the refrigerator.
"Okay…moved into my new apartment last night."
"Yeah? George and Weezy style?"
"Huh?" Kim raised an eyebrow. Walker was full of Pre-Pulse references that sometimes not even Kim could catch.
"Never mind. What's it like?" Walker pulled a can of Red Bull out of the refrigerator and opened it. He plopped down on one of the armchairs and took a bottle of pep pills from his white coat. "Want one?"
"No thanks. It's pretty cool, the apartment. Looks really ritzy. Wood floors. Big windows…I can't wait to decorate it with crystal prisms and stuff. Make little rainbows everywhere."
"You're such a girl."
"Thanks for noticing."
Walker tipped back a couple of the pep pills and swallowed them with a swish of Red Bull. Kim made a face that said, "How can you drink that stuff?!"
"Hey…Doctor J," Kim asked, recovering from her sour expression. "Do you know, by any chance, anyone named Logan Cale?"
"No, not offhand," Walker replied, after several stunned blinks. "Why?"
"He's just this oddball who lives over me," Kim rolled her eyes. "I met him last night," she added with a chuckle. "He dresses like a beggar. I was ready to give him spare change when he came by to say hi."
"Everyone looks like a g.d. beggar these days. It's the dress code of the new decade, Kim, didn't you get the memo?"
Before Kim could make a wise-ass response, sirens blared outside and Walker stuck his fingers in his ears and winced. When it faded, he shook his head.
"Been working here almost five years and I still fucking hate that noise."
Walker stood up, pocketing the pep pills and brandishing his stethoscope like a mighty weapon. "Well, looks like we're startin' early, podnah."
Logan spent the day alternating between sulking in his office and resting on the couch, recovering. From what, he wasn't sure. He closed his blinds, took a few aspirin and used his time to do useless, menial activities…alphabetizing his recipe Rolodex, reading and re-reading The Complete Works of Saki and The Edgar Allen Poe Collection…downloading some Nirvana songs. Kim was still on his mind.
He slammed closed Shakespeare's Tragedies and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. Going to his liquor cabinet that had remained unopened since he shared a glass of wine with Max on their belated anniversary party, he withdrew a tall bottle of vodka. It was stiff, he knew that. It was what he needed right now.
He couldn't think of anything else to do but drown his sorrows in alcohol.