George hadn't brought much with her. In fact, Mason felt she brought too little. She had some changes of day clothes, a single pair of shoes, some underwear, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush.
"Where'd you get the clothes from," he asked as he sunk his teeth into his Pop-Tart (which was still frozen towards the center). She smirked, both proud and embarrassed for herself.
"I broke into my parents' house and stole them." Mason laughed out loud.
"A girl after my own heart," he said with a smile. It dimmed a little when he realized how that expression was slightly inappropriate. "By the way, I didn't mean that like it sounded." He could feel his ears coloring. Now it was George's turn to laugh.
"Whatever. Anyway, I sort of knew that it'd make you proud as I was stealing from my own parents." He shrugged.
"Rotten thing to do really, stealing from your folks," he said, gazing absently at the wall and pushing sprinkles off his pastry with his thumb. "Not to say I didn't do it myself before my parents bit it. And even before I bit it."
"Little kleptomaniac, you were?"
"Little what now?"
"Kleptomaniac. You know, someone who steals compulsively?" Mason wrinkled his nose as he gnawed at his breakfast.
"Oh, don't use big words, they make my head hurt."
She rolled her eyes. "Just what the world needs. Another genius."
Mason smiled a little, stretching his arms out and yawning. As he did this, he looked down to his feet. He looked back at George from under hooded eyelids and grunted nonchalantly, "It obviously didn't bother you that I didn't put any pants on after I woke up." George shrugged.
"Um... I was so shocked that I forgot to say anything...?"
"Didn't mean to frighten you, darling. I'll go change," he said as he turned to the door.
"You don't have to," she called after him. "I mean, there's nothing about it that's particularly, you know, distracting."
He stopped into the door, turning back to her and saying with fake sincerity, "No, no. One can only handle so much of the sight of my man-bits at once. And what's more, I'm going to have to put them on eventually," he said as he headed towards the stairs.
"Why's that?"
He barely placed his foot on the first step as he said, "Can't be walking into Der fucking Wafflehous without any knickers now, can I?"
He felt her firm grasp on his wrist suddenly. "Wait," she said, tugging him back to the floor. "We have to meet up on a Sunday? In the condition you're in, I'd thought we had Sundays off."
"We just had this particular Sunday morning off, you and I. We have to show up for lunch. Besides, people still die on Sunday." He gently tugged his wrist away, and she just stood dumbstruck at the bottom of the stairs as he headed towards his room.
"Un-fucking-real!" she groaned as she turned back to the kitchen. Mason smiled to himself; she was rather lovely when she was angry.
It was now that he knew she'd prove to be an interesting roommate.
They slid into their normal booth at Der Waffelhous, taking either side of the table.
"Oh, I see you did take my advice," Roxy said to George as she and Mason walked in together. She beamed, mostly at herself, and went back to her hashbrowns.
"Good morning, my little spots of sunshine," Rube said dryly as he pulled the rubber band off his planner. "Lovely day for Reaping souls." He licked his thumb, picked up a yellow Post-It note, and slapped it in front of George.
"Shut up, old man," Mason grunted as his Post-It was slapped in front of him.
"Oh, but Mason, he's right," Daisy said with acerbic sweetness. "I find that the smell of death hangs nicely in the air this morning." Mason wasn't sure if this was meant to put him or Rube down. Or both of them.
("Suck up," Roxy muttered.)
Rube didn't seem sure either. Mason glanced down at his Post-It and grumbled. "This is the hospital, right?"
"Yes," George said without hesitation. Rube and Mason both looked surprised. George's shoulders tensed. "What?! My assignment's there too. " Rube waved his hand dismissively.
"Nevermind. Anyway, hospitals are always crowded. And bustling."
A sneer wrinkled Mason's nose. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
He gave Mason a shove, urging him out of his seat. "It'll take you forever to find your Reap, so you'd better get moving. Go on, scram."
"But we just got here! And I'm starving," Mason whined. "Hell knows how long you've all been here, why are your assignments later?!"
"Mine's in fifteen minutes," Daisy said, smiling.
"Oh, so you'll come with us then?"
"No." She pointed towards the other end of the restaurant. "He's sitting over there." Mason rolled his eyes.
"Oh, come on, Rube. Can't I trade with Roxy or something?" Roxy quirked a brow at him.
"No trading," Rube grunted from behind his crossword puzzle.
"I can't believe this!" Mason squeaked. "I mean, I had half of a frozen toaster pastry for breakfast, I'm sitting here in my usual drunken fog, and I--"
"Mason," George said in a sing-song voice over Mason's ranting.
"I am not about to go picking through droves of doctors and sick people to--"
"Mason," George called, with a little more volume.
"If you expect me to do this you should at least allot me some fucking time to have a proper breakfast--"
"MASON!" George said, leaning forward in her seat. He stopped, looking up at her. She reached forward and stroked his arm reassuringly. "It's okay, Mason. I'll go with you. It's not a big deal, you can do this." And she pinned on a sugary grin. Roxy chuckled at the childish tactics needed to calm the likes of Mason. He drummed on the table.
"Alright... fine." George nodded, satisfied with herself, and gestured to the door.
"Age before beauty, Mason." He nodded briskly.
"Yeah." He slid out of the seat and started towards the door. George rolled her eyes and followed him.
"If I'm not back by--" (she looked down to her Post-It,) "quarter till 11, order me a ham and cheese omelette, okay?" she said, looking pointedly to the three who remained at the table. Daisy nodded, as if to say "Whatever." George broke into a light jog after Mason, catching up with him at the door.
Daisy shook her head as she watched Mason and stirred her tea. "I worry about that boy sometimes."
"Right," Mason said as they walked in through the hospital doors. He looked around, at all the activity, all the heads rushing past. "Who's your Reap?" he said to George. She glanced down at her Post-It. "G. Warrick. 10:24." Mason looked at his.
"Mine's T. Nguyen, 10:24."
"Uh oh," George said. "Once you Reap yours, you should clear."
"Oh, relax. If this accident involved more than two people, there'd be more Reapers."
"But what if there are Reapers employed at the hospital?"
"Oh, codswallop. How could there be Reapers that we don't know about?"
George shrugged. "It probably is going to take forever to find our Reaps, so we'd better split up."
Mason nodded. "Aye. Good luck."
"You too." And with that they separated. Mason looked around. Too lazy and hung over to use logic, he turned to a nurse. "Excuse me, you don't happen to be T. Nguyen, do you?" The nurse passed him by frostily. "Oh, that's real nice. Thank you," he groaned sarcastically. He bent down and asked a man in a wheelchair who was being pushed towards the front. "Have you seen a T. Nguyen? Yes? No? Maybe?" Still nothing, and the wheelchair rushed past him. He looked up above the crowd, hopping a little from his knees. "T. Nguyen?! T. Nguyen, where are you?! T. Nguyen?!" He poked his head through the door of a patient's room. "Is T. Nguyen in here? No?" He did the same to the patients next door, and the patients thereafter. He grabbed a janitor by the arm, "Pardon me, do you happen to know a T. Nguyen?"
The janitor shook his head. "No English." Mason clapped a hand to his forehead and watched as new people entered the room and more people left.
"Oh, bollocks," he sighed. "Someone's going to die alone."
He looked down at his watch. 10:19. Wonder if George's found hers. "George?!" he called out. "Georgia!" He looked anxiously around the room. "GEORGI--" He stopped, finally spotting her standing at the window of the maternity ward, looking in. She showed no signs of having heard him at all. He jogged towards her, weaving in and out of all the people around him that seemed to appear out of nowhere. "George, there you are. I was almost worried." She didn't say anything, just looked thoughtfully through the glass at all the newborn flesh. He craned his neck to look at her face, see if she was still awake, which she was. In comparison to the state of panic he was in, she seemed oddly thoughtful and placid. "George?"
"Don't you ever stop and... think about it, Mason?" she said, turning to him slightly. He looked askance at her.
"Think about what?"
"How old Reapers really are. I've tried talking Rube and Roxy and Daisy about it, but they think I'm crazy. You probably will too, but I mean, Roxy and I are two decades apart, you and I are four decades apart, Rube's older than dirt... And then look in there," she said, softly tapping the window, where all the pink, crying infants lay. "I mean, any one of them could become a lawyer or a teacher, or maybe even an OB-GYN and deliver other little pink things like the ones they are now." At this Mason smiled quietly. "Or," she continued, "in twenty-something years one may fall off a cliff, or get strangled by a sock, or drill a hole in his head, or get incinerated by a flaming crapper, and become a Reaper. One of our future co-workers might be in there. In those little cribs. And they'll be condemned, like us, to lose their identities and stand still in time, taking the souls of the rest of humankind. The possibilities are just... staggering."
Mason shrugged. "Yeah... All that... potential."
"Exactly," she said, turning to him. But she broke off, a faint smile reluctantly crossing her lips. She had this indescribably distant look in her eyes, as if she was looking right through him, like he was the only person she could relate to in the whole, wide world.
She turned her face away from him, seemingly a little embarrassed, and looked back into the maternity ward. Mason wanted her to look at him like that again, to pierce him with her gaze. He also wanted to shake himself of thoughts like that, but he didn't feel any sense of urgency about it.
But his daydreams were interrupted by a voice behind them.
"Excuse me," the voice said. They spun around to find a nurse looking up at them. She was a little shorter than George, and while she wasn't particularly attractive, she still held a mild sense of authority over them. "Can I help you two?" George and Mason stood stock still; they hadn't thought of an excuse for being there. Before they could jog their minds for one, the nurse nodded pointedly to the glass behind them. "One of them belong to you?"
Mason's mouth silently opened and shut as he fumbled for words, making him look like a rather stupid fish. He choked out through his cracking voice (because his voice always cracked when he was nervous), "Er, yes. Um--cute little buggers, aren't they?" He nervously looked back to the glass. But then the nurse turned to George, and tilted her head to the side.
"Odd. You don't look like you just had a baby."
"Oh," George said, rolling her eyes as she thought. "I had a cesarean--um--birth." The nurse still looked skeptical. "And he was premature," she hastily added. She sighed, "We're just coming to visit. You know, check up on him." The nurse nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. George stole a furtive glance of her Post-It, mostly eyeing the ETD. She tugged Mason's sleeve gently and said as here eyes absently scanned the room, "I'm going to... find a bathroom. I'll catch up with you later." As she brushed past him, she whispered, "The tigress zeroes in on her kill." She hurriedly passed the nurse, and disappeared into the bustle.
Mason looked after her as she left. Wanting to avoid any conversing or further inquiry from the nurse, Mason also rushed past her, saying, "I probably should... get the car." He felt a slight sense of relief as she fell out of his field of vision, but he could feel her eyes on his back.
"Wait," she said. Mason turned and looked over his shoulder at her. She extended her hand, holding a small Post-It note between her fingers. "You dropped this." As she spoke, she glanced over the writing. The nerve! Mason thought. I mean, think of all the things it could've said.
He could see her lips discreetly mouth 'ETD 1:24'. As he took the Post-It from her, her eyes searched mysteriously around the room. Mason was about to turn away, when she pointed to the reception counter, at a tall, young Asian man. "That's Dr. Tom Nguyen. Just graduated from USC with honors and transferred here from Cedar Sinai, in California." Mason was unsure that he was hearing her right, and slowly turned back to her. She shrugged as she glanced down at the Post-It in Mason's hand. "That's a shame. Oh well." She pushed her sleeve up and looked at her watch. "You'd better hurry. It's 1:22." And with that she turned and walked determinedly in the other direction.
"Wait a minute," Mason called after her. "Where are you going?" She didn't say anything, didn't even look back, but reached into her pocket and held up a simple yellow Post-It.
He felt some dust from the ceiling fall onto his face; he looked up, only to see a Graveling looking ahead at T. Nguyen, with a glint of mischief in its eye. It licked its dry lips, the spines on its back bristled, and it pounced off the ceiling with the intent of flying at the doctor. Mason swung his arm up and knocked it out of the air, like a serve to a volleyball, and it flew across the room and smashed into a nearby wall. "I haven't taken his soul yet, cocksucker," he shouted to it. It rubbed its head with disdain and contemptuously growled at him. Mason ignored the various suspecting glances as he slid through the hordes of people between him and the front desk. When he arrived at the counter, he reached over and brushed his hand over T. Nguyen's shoulder. "Excuse me..." he said uncertainly. The familiar white rush of light surged through his arm as he turned around.
"Yes?" Mason inwardly slapped himself in the forehead again. He fumbled for an excuse.
"Yes, I'm looking for a Doctor... um... Doctor...." he glanced sideways, spotting George as she was taking her Reap. "Dr. George Lass," he finished. T. Nguyen frowned, as he jogged his memory.
"I'm sorry, I'm not aware of a Dr. Lass. And besides, I'm new." Mason nodded in silent thanks. T. Nguyen smiled faintly as he pointed to Mason's face with his clipboard. "Come to see him about your eyes?"
Mason scowled. "What's wrong with my eyes?!" he demanded. T. Nguyen jerked back in surprise.
"Oh--I just thought they looked a little pink, and that--"
Mason waved his hand and laughed, "No, that's just cannabis." He laughed alone until he noticed T. Nguyen looking at him skeptically; then he was quiet. He looked up, and recognized George's Reap walking towards the counter. Not a good sign.
"I've--got to go..." he said as he turned and ran for the front door. T. Nguyen called after him. "Wait! What about your meeting with Dr. Lass?!"
Mason turned and shouted back at him through his cracking voice, "I can't. Er--the Pope might drop by."
The doors automatically slid as he approached them, but he turned around at the sound of a Graveling's raspy snarl, and looked on as an old air conditioning unit above the desk came dislodged from the roof, crushing a young doctor and a young med student under its weight. There was screaming, and general chaos ensued. He sighed.
"All that potential," he muttered to himself. But he heard George's voice from outside the open door.
"Hey!" He turned. "Are you coming? I haven't had lunch yet, I'm starving!" Mason jogged out to meet her, not looking back.
"Where'd do you want to eat?"
"Well, Rube dictates that we're always in the mood for waffles."
"Right." They quietly, leisurely strolled through the parking lot as various people heard the commotion inside and ran in to see the mess for themselves. Mason finally cleared his throat, "George, is there something noticeably wrong with my eyes?" She didn't even have to look at him.
"They're a bit pink. And puffy. Especially this time of day. Why?" Mason shrugged.
"Just wondering."
