CHAPTER TWO
myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
John Milton Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 73.
THE CONUNDRUM
Lilah tried to get back into the Wyndham-Pryce residence but the door was locked. Maybe because someone knew she was trying to interfere. Maybe she was on Hell's time at the moment and when she was on her own time, she would have different results. That didn't keep her from trying to get to Wesley until she blacked out again and woke up sitting in the lounger in her mother's room at Oaklawn Gardens.
It was toenail-clipping day. The podiatrist was trying to set up her tools, arranging them around the elder Morgan's wheelchair. Lilah's mother was screeching at the doctor to get out of her room, swatting at her. The podiatrist was another person Lilah didn't doubt was a damned soul. She glanced up at Lilah. "Your mother seems agitated today."
Lilah gritted her teeth. "I'll get the nurses."
She dragged down the hall, thinking of Wes and Lindsey instead of her bleak surroundings. Luckily, Lilah's reflexes had been honed in her time here so when Mr. Sterling dug in his diaper and whipped a handful of feces at her, Lilah dodged easily. The old man cackled at Lilah as she hurried along to the nurses' station. Jade saw her coming this time.
"Problems, Ms. Morgan?"
"The doctor wants to work on Mom's feet but she's in a mood today," Lilah said. "And Mr. Sterling is whipping shit again."
"When isn't he?" Jade nodded knowingly. "I'll give you guys a hand."
The doctor was sitting on the floor, trying to pry Mrs. Morgan's foot away from the wheelchair but the old lady had it locked behind the footrest. She kept trying to punch the doctor, ripping at her hair. Jade knelt down and helped extract Mrs. Morgan's foot from the wheelchair.
Lilah caught her mother's arms, trying to hold her firmly without ripping her paper-thin skin. "Mom, stop that. The doctor just wants to help."
"You all go to hell. Fucking bitches!" Mrs. Morgan shrieked. That was another part of Alzheimer's Lilah hated. Her mother never swore. Cursing used to make her blush. If her mother could hear the words coming out of her own mouth, she'd be mortified.
"Think it's a little late for that, Mom," Lilah said bitterly.
"Tell me about it," the doctor said, trying to clip the elder Morgan's thick, yellow nails. Jade tried to hold her leg steady but Mrs. Morgan still managed to keep kicking the podiatrist in the chest as the young lady worked.
Maybe if Lilah had spent more time with her mother in life, this wouldn't have been her hell. She used to say there wasn't time to get out to her real mother's nursing home more than once or twice a month. Maybe she was just a bad daughter but having no time wasn't exactly a lie. Working for Wolfram and Hart had left her precious little time. Before Wesley, Lilah couldn't even remember the last time she had gone on a date. She had no life of her own outside of the firm. She used that as an excuse whenever she saw the nurses in her mother's real nursing home. The brutal truth was Lilah couldn't handle seeing the shell of her mother in the lovely care facility she paid for. It was nothing like Oaklawn Gardens. It had been beautiful and well-staffed but even it had a depressing air, subtle sour smells and her mother had been just as demented and violent there, too.
"Let's do the other foot, Mrs. Morgan," the doctor said, and Jade helped her wrestle the foot into position. The doctor peeled off the compression stocking, making a face. "I don't like the looks of that."
"What?" Lilah leaned closer, seeing the pitch-black area the doctor was pressing on. It seemed soft like rotted melon.
"A bed sore on her heel." The doctor looked over her shoulder at Lilah. "Don't worry, we'll get her fixed up."
Lilah listened numbly as the podiatrist told her the treatment regimes and potential complications. She wondered what would happen if she let her ersatz mother's foot just rot off. Would this old woman die? Would they remove body parts, whittling her away bit by bit, a fate many other residents suffered both here and on earth? Would she black out and find she had okayed the treatment? Would her mother die and be reborn again and again, forcing her to watch her suffer and bury her only to start the cycle again? Lilah didn't want to know. She okayed the procedure and told them she'd be back to see her mother after the doctor was done.
She felt the guilt of leaving her mother but Lilah swallowed it back. She had to know if she would be barred from Lindsey as she had been from Wes. No one stopped her as she meandered through the hallways. She found the door leading to the pediatric ward easily enough. Lindsey was right where she had left him. This time she flicked on the light and he woke up. He had an IV in one arm and an oxygen cannula affixed under his nose.
"Mommy?"
"She'll be here soon, Lindsey," she lied, deciding she couldn't keep up a pretense of being his mom for long. Besides, she wanted him to see her as Lilah and come back to himself. Hadn't Wesley done just that, if only for a second? "I'm Lilah. We used to be friends." Was that a lie, too? Had they ever been friends? Rivals, certainly, enemies, occasionally, but had they ever felt friendship? She couldn't remember, but it was a worthy lie at this point.
"I don't feel good," he moaned, shifting onto his side.
Lilah stroked the hair off his forehead. He might look adult but he thought he was a little boy. Either way he was burning with fever. She didn't doubt that he felt bad. Occasionally her neck twinged but usually it wasn't too bad, not like this sickness gripping Lindsey. She could see it eating at him. "Want me to sit with you for a while?"
He nodded. "You aren't afraid of gettin' sick?"
"I'm not afraid." Lilah held his hand. She saw a bit of red where his nightshirt had hiked up on one side. She ran a soothing hand over his belly to cover the fact she was lifting his shirt up. The bullet holes didn't look like much, dark spots on his abdomen and chest but on his back it looked like oranges had been blow straight through him. She could see the viscera moving around inside. Someone had shot the hell out of Lindsey. Lilah supposed it didn't come as a big surprise.
"I'm gonna die," he told her solemnly.
She fought back the sudden swell of emotion. Lindsey was so afraid and she had no way of making him see the truth. "No, Lindsey, you're not going to die."
"Am, too. Just like my brother and sister. Mommy said they went to Heaven." His bottom lip pushed out as fat tears rolled down his cheeks. "I'm scared to die."
Lilah squeezed his hand. "It'll be okay, Lindsey. I promise you. You don't have to be afraid of dying."
She lost track of how long she sat there with Lindsey, comforting him. Promises of protection, even scaring off a nurse with a rectal thermometer, didn't seem to break Lindsey out of his delusion like it had Wesley. After a while, seeing Lindsey like this was far more depressing than caring for her mother. Maybe that's why she had been allowed to see him, an extra dollop of anguish to digest. Still, he begged her to come back to see him again and she promised she would. The scared-little-boy-act tore at her heart too much for her to say no. Lilah had never wanted kids and now she knew why. They slipped into your soul and took too much. Some would say they gave more than they took but she couldn't depend on that.
Lilah found her mom playing balloon volleyball by the time she got back. She remembered this game back on earth, recalled the wash of depression watching the nurses dragging in chairs for the ambulatory residents and wheeling in the rest to set them on either side of a low net so the residents could bat around a balloon. The occupational therapists said it was good for them. Lilah found it to be numbingly dismaying. Still, if it kept her mother occupied, she was all for it. She thought for a moment about going back to sit with Lindsey some more but that was even more disheartening so she watched the TV instead. Satan take her, Oprah was on. Maybe she could find a spoon to gouge out her eyes.
No spoons handy, Lilah turned her mind off to the outside world and started thinking about Wesley and what it meant that she had broken through to him, if even just a little. The way she had been slammed back into her apartment told her someone hadn't liked that. She worried at that conundrum as balloon volleyball gave way to Bingo. As she helped her mother mark her cards, Lilah kept wanting to call it an early day and go test some theories. She couldn't move from her mother's side. This was a fresh hell. Wesley and Lindsey had given her something new to think on, something to hope for and hope in hell was worse than hell itself. Some higher being must have known of her desire and had pinioned her to her mother's side just so she couldn't act on it.
Hell kept her in Oaklawn Gardens all the way through lunch – her mother hit her with mashed potatoes – and practically to dinner. Lilah drove home, daring a cop to ticket her; that was part of what cops did here, give out tickets, warranted or not, and one was lucky not to get beaten or raped in the process. No cops bothered her tonight, however. Wesley's door was locked when she got home and no one answered her knocks.
Crushed, Lilah went to her place and did the only thing she could; feed Chumley and made herself another frozen dinner. Maybe she should learn to cook but it had been a skill that escaped her in mortal life. It might be even more deadly if she tried now. She and Chumley curled up on the couch in front of Starsky and Hutch reruns. It was the only thing on. Hell had a sense of humor. It didn't take long for her to start hearing the screams next door. Before Lilah could get up and see if she could intervene once more, someone pounded on the door.
"Please, let me in! Help me!'
Lilah ran to the door, recognizing Wesley's voice. She flung the door open and he stumbled in, collapsing to his knees at her feet. She locked the door behind him then put her arms around his shaking body. He sobbed hopelessly as she hauled him up and got him to the couch.
"Can Daddy find me here?" he begged to know.
"I don't know but if he does, I won't let him hurt you." Lilah kissed the crown of his head. "Do you remember me, Wes?"
He bobbed his head. "You're the nice lady from last night."
Whatever had sparked in him last night was gone and Lilah felt like Sisyphus flattened by the boulder. "You know me from before that, Wes. Try to remember."
He curled up against her, trembling fiercely. He kept his face covered as fear-borne tears came fast and hard. She didn't think he was trying to remember so she just held him close, wondering how she force his recall. She had had no luck with Lindsey but Wes was different. They had felt something for each other. He had remembered, however briefly, last night.
Chumley climbed on Wes' hip. He grabbed the gray tabby and cuddled it close. Lilah pillowed Wes' head in her lap, stroking his back. She couldn't help herself. She saw no wounds on his head or neck, so like with Lindsey she turned explorer. It took all of three seconds to discover the huge stab wound in his gut. Lilah wept silently. Wes had died a slower, more lingering death than either she or Lindsey. She wept out of pity and anger. He should have known better than to sign up with Wolfram and Hart. She should have found a way to get past the geas keeping her from warning him away during that one after-death meeting, forcing her to reel him in. They both had failed miserably.
"Do you remember me now, Wes?" she asked after her tears dried and he had calmed.
"From last night."
Before Lilah could try another tack, someone else pounded on the door. "Give me back my son!"
Wesley yelped, jumped up, and ran deeper into Lilah's apartment. Lilah picked up her dinner knife and went to the door. She tore it open and brandished the knife in Roger Wyndam-Pryce's face. "You come here again and I'll castrate you and feed you your testicles," she promised in a soft, glacially calm tone.
It worked. The ersatz Roger – or maybe it was the real one given what she knew of the man – turned tail and ran back to the safety of his home. Lilah tossed the knife in the kitchen after locking her door and went on a search for Wesley. She found him hiding in her closet. She held out a hand. "I got rid of him. He can't hurt you here."
He looked at that hand like he had last night then up at her and she saw the recognition in his eyes. "Lilah."
"Wes!" She fell to her knees beside him. "You remember me?"
"Have I forgotten you?" He looked around, obviously confused.
"You tend to think you're a little boy back in your father's home," she said and his eyebrows raised. "Welcome to hell."
"Oh." He felt his gut. "That's right. I died. I wasn't expecting…she said...." He trailed off, his blue eyes glistening.
"Who?" If Fred's name came out of his mouth, Lilah would probably cry. She knew Wesley had loved that ridiculous twig of a woman but she wasn't ready to deal with it. Even in hell, that would be too much.
"Illyria," he said, his brow wrinkling as if unable to summon up the name.
Lilah shook her head. "I don't know who that is."
"This is hell?" He trembled as he said it.
"A hell at any rate, my hell." Lilah rested against his shoulder. "I'm not sure why you and Lindsey suddenly appeared in it."
Wes's blue eyes narrowed as if he were trying to make sense of it. She stroked his cheek.
"I know it's very confusing. I was pretty disoriented at first when I arrived. It gets better," Lilah said, wondering if it would be true for him since hell seemed to want him to be a little boy reliving childhood traumas. She smiled at him. "I'm not glad you're here, Wes, but I am at the same time. Does that make sense?"
He smiled wanly. "It does."
Lilah leaned in to kiss him. The lights dimmed and when she came out of the swoon, Wes was gone and she was locked back in.
"Damn."