Amanda helped Jesse out of her car and into the wheelchair she had unfolded in the driveway to Mark and Steve's home. She held out her hand for him to grasp, yet her mind was somewhere else. Who had killed Dr. Higley and why? How was Marion dealing with the death of the one person she knew from her home city? She snapped back to reality when she felt Jesse release his firm grip around her wrist.
"I really don't think this is necessary," he complained from the chair. "I'm sick, not injured."
Closing the car door, Amanda carefully wheeled her blond friend to the front of the beach house. "If you were still in the hospital, you wouldn't be allowed this much."
"All right, I agree, it is a lot better out here. Back there in the hospital; it was so weird, having my co-workers taking care of me. I just couldn't take it."
Amanda flashed back to the previous day, when she had been watching Mark and Jesse converse in Jesse's room.
"Mark, you have to release me. I can't stay here any longer. I have to get out," Jesse had pleaded.
"Jesse, your condition isn't stable yet. And we still haven't determined what exactly is making you sick. If it's contagious, we're putting others in jeopardy by releasing you," the older doctor had replied. "That's a risk we can't afford to take."
"But I've shown no signs of being contagious. Neither you, nor Steve, Amanda, Marion or Susan or anyone else who's been in here has displayed any symptoms. Please Mark, let me go."
"Well, all right. I'll release you. But only on these conditions…"
One of those conditions had been to have Jesse stay at the beach house, and to have Mark or Amanda come by once a day to check up on him. He was to take his vitals three times a day and get as much rest as possible. Amanda pushed Jesse's chair into the house and then brought him to a stop.
"Oh, it's good to be back," he said, standing up, taking a cool, refreshing breath of Malibu air. Before Amanda could tell him to sit back down, he collapsed onto the couch in a dramatic coughing fit. Holding up one hand to Amanda to signify that he was all right, he tried to suppress his coughing. After roughly a minute of such violent coughing spasms, he managed to regain control of himself, looking imploringly up at Amanda, who returned his gaze with one full of pity and question.
"If we were at the hospital we could do something about that…" Amanda started, but Jesse cut her off with a threatening glance.
"I told you, it's nothing. I was sick even before I drank that coffee. You forget, I'm a doctor," pulling the afghan that was placed on the couch over his shaking knees, he whispered to Amanda in a hoarse voice.
"Everyone knows doctors are the worst patients," Amanda replied while helping Jesse get situated on the couch. After she had piled just about every blanket onto Jesse's shivering body, she went into the bathroom, and seconds later, emerged, holding two small white tablets. Handing them to Jesse, along with a glass of tap water, she told him, "Here, take these. After what's been going on, you haven't been getting much sleep."
Jesse tried to protest, but to no avail. Amanda had to practically force-feed them to him like a small child, but he finally gave in. When the sedative was beginning to take effect, Jesse very faintly heard Amanda say to him, "Jesse, I'm leaving the phone right here next to you. If you need anything, just give Mark or I a call and we'll be over as soon as we can."
Jesse nodded weakly before his eyelids sank like stones in water. He perceived the sound Amanda close the front door before drifting into a pool of drugged blackness.
**
A ringing brought Jesse back into the world of the living. He rolled over and tried to muffle the sound of the telephone, but his attempts were futile. When the ringing stopped, Amanda's voice came out of the answering machine, telling Jesse that, because of a bus crash, neither her nor Mark would be able to check in on him until later on in the afternoon. She went on to say that Steve was at the station and that if anything went on, Jesse should call him.
When the message ended, Jesse struggled to fully awaken himself. His eyes slowly opened as he swiveled his legs over the edge of the couch and tried to stand up. But his weak legs wouldn't support his weight as he staggered to the bathroom to take his temperature. Leaning against the sink for bracing, he splashed cold water from the faucet on his fevered face, fighting to rouse himself. Still half-asleep, he placed the electronic thermometer under his tongue and waited for the telltale beep. When the device revealed a temperature of one hundred and two degrees, Jesse pulled the disposable cover off and threw it out. He stumbled back into the living room and crashed on the couch.
Minutes later, after Jesse had fallen back to sleep, the phone rang again. This time, it was Marion calling. The alarm lining her voice startled the young doctor.
"Jesse, I know you're here. Please pick up the phone. I'm scared. Someone keeps calling my hotel room. Making threats, things like, 'you're next,' and, 'you saw what happened to Andrew Higley. Why don't you go back to where you belong?' It won't stop…" At that moment, Jesse picked up the receiver and quickly tried to get Marion's attention.
"Marion, I'm here. I know you're scared, but I need you to tell me exactly what is happening," Still trying to come to grasps with the situation, Jesse spoke as clearly as his tranquilized mind would let him.
Panicking, Marion tried to explain what was going on to Jesse. "I've been getting calls all day, since I haven't been at the hospital, but it was only, like, a half an hour ago they started making threats," she said. "Whoever killed Andrew is going after me now."
"Listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you," Jesse warned her. "They might be watching your place, so…" he bit his lip, thinking. "Why don't you come here? But, in case they follow you, park your car a few blocks away and take a long, twisted path to get here. And, um, try to get lost in a crowd or something so they can't follow you."
Calming down, Marion replied, "Okay, I'll be over as soon as I can. How are you doing, now that you aren't in the hospital?"
"I'm fine, well, actually…we'll talk about it when you get here."
"Alright, you just rest until I arrive," Marion said, getting out the hotel notepad and monogrammed pen out of the table drawer to record the directions from Jesse. When she had written them down, she hung up the phone, leaving Jesse alone in the beach house. He closed his eyes again, wrapped the afghan tightly around his shoulders, and slowly drifted off to sleep.
**
"Jesse, honey, it's me, Marion."
Jesse tried to shake off his sleep, but it lingered over him like a dark cloud. He attempted sitting up, but Marion's gentle hands held him down. Tucking the blanket around his shoulders, she offered him a kind smile.
"You need to rest. I just didn't want you to be too startled to find me here. How are you feeling now?"
His eyes closed, Jesse responded softly, "I've been better. And worse."
"Worse? This seems pretty bad to me," commented Marion confusedly.
"A few years back I got a mutated smallpox virus and nearly died."
"Suddenly, this doesn't seem so bad," Marion said with a laugh, running a cool finger down the side of Jesse's fevered head. "You have a fever, Jesse. You really should be in the hospital, you know, until you're recovering…"
"Oh, not you too!" Jesse moaned. "Whenever something happens to me, I've got Amanda and Mark fussing over me the whole way. I get the flu, and they make sure that I stay in bed until I'm ready to return to the hospital. It's just so frustrating!"
"All right, all right, you made your point, I won't be at all concerned with you or your health," Marion said resentfully.
"So, how well did you know Dr. Higley?" Jesse changed the subject back to the woman sitting on the couch-
"Andrew and I met in our freshman year of college," Marion said, a dreamy look in her eyes. "We met at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, in the waiting room of the blood lab."
"Technician training?" Jesse suggested.
"Hardly. I was there for blood work, and so was he."
"Blood work? I don't understand."
"The summer between high school and college, I was diagnosed with leukemia. A went into remission before I started school, but I was missing classes for blood work and outpatient treatments. I found it hard to fit in anywhere else but at the hospital."
Andrew had been in a car accident when he was in the eighth grade and he needed a blood transfusion or else, he'd die. But that was before they screened the blood, and, by the time he graduated, he officially had AIDS."
A flood of emotions overcame Marion, and she sniffed, stifling the tears that were rapidly filling her eyes. Jesse laid a comforting hand on her arm and stroked her flesh tenderly. It took Marion a minute to regain her composure, but when she did, she continued her story without stopping.
"Anyway, I was waiting for my lab results, and so was he, and we just, sort of, fell into step with each other. We had so much in common. His parents had died not long after he started school; mine had just drifted away and apart after I started. Both outcasts, we started hanging out. Working together, studying together, going in for blood work together."
When we were both going off to med school, and by some miracle, to the same school, we considered marriage and having children. We would adopt, of course, given Andrew's condition. Only just after we started taking about the possibility, my leukemia went out of remission. I had to go back to the hospital for chemotherapy, only this time it was better and worse. Andrew stayed with me the entire time, and it helped, but I also knew that the cancer coming back meant that there was a greater chance I wouldn't recover. But, by the love out our God, I went back into remission six months later. I had more treatments and blood work, yet again destroying my chance at being 'normal' with the new crowd of people."
Jesse, listening profoundly, held Marion's hand tightly in his. Being a doctor, he had always been near cancer and the like, but he never had it affect someone he knew. He thought of saying something, but the right words wouldn't form on his tongue. Instead, he looked up at her wistfully, begging her to continue.
"So, when we graduated, and finished our internships at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the same place I went for chemo, we both applied for residency. Another miracle, we were both accepted, and we started, he as a psychiatrist, I as an ER doctor, like you. Once we got settled in, we brought the topic of marriage back up. After a long, drawn out talk, we agreed it would be best to stay friends. We had thought it a good idea before, but we both had potentially life-threatening conditions. If we got married and if we adopted children, and if the other one died, that would leave a child with a parent who could also die. We didn't want to put either one of us in that situation, so we decided against it. My feelings for Andrew eventually dissolved; I felt nothing more than a close friendship."
We decided to apply for the Doctor's Exchange Program, together. We got our approval letters on the same day, and well, here we are. Or rather, here I am. I still can't believe it. Andrew's dead."
After a few moment of silence, Jesse spoke up, "Tell me about the phone calls. When did they start?"
"Well, the first call was at oh, seven this morning. See, I was taking the day off from the program, and I had taken a sedative the night before so I don't recall exactly what the person said—"
"Welcome to my world," Jesse said jokingly. Marion laughed along with him for a second until Jesse stopped abruptly, asking her proceed.
"After that, I was getting calls every two hours or so. He; it was a man, would say stuff about me going back to Boston, about Andrew, about coming after me next. Actually, there was one more thing….it was something I didn't completely understand…something about.…his son. I was still half-asleep when I got that one, I'm not sure what he meant."
"Well, if it's any consolation, my friend Steve, you know, the cop, has been assigned to the case. He's great. There hasn't been a case he hasn't cracked. I'm sure he'll find out what happened to Andrew," Jesse said, his eyes slowly closing. "Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to go back to sleep now. You're welcome to anything in the fridge, you know the drill."
Marion nodded at Jesse and planted a soft kiss on his forehead. He smiled, she replied with a beam of her own. Marion walked back into the rest of the house as Jesse quickly drifted into a peaceful rest. The last thought that passed through his mind was, Marion couldn't have done it. She had no motive. She was the one who decided not to get married, not Andrew. Whoever has it in for them either has a thing against people from Boston, or just the two of them in particular.
Sorry guys, my Beta is busy the entire month, so this one's unedited (by her.) Be brutal, but please, no flames. I would like any help on improving my story!! ~Mariah