So: Still pre Kanes and Abels. No ending cliffhanger this time, but Veronica deserves SOME time off, don't you think?
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns Veronica Mars. I'm just renting it out for a few days.
X X X X X
Things were kind of a blur for the next couple of hours.
I remember the paramedics coming; I remember them checking Mom over and carrying her into the back of an ambulance, then mentioning the name of the hospital they were going to, which I don't remember; I remember being bundled into Mac's Beetle; I remember telling Mac Dad and Logan's cell phone numbers; I remember filling out forms – when I had trouble writing my own name, Mac took over and gently guided me through the rest it.
ThankgoodnessMac was there. In all the scenarios I'd ever had in my head for my reunion with Mom, finding her lying unconscious on a bed possibly dying of alcohol poisoning wasn't anywhere on the list.
The doctor came out – I forgot her name five seconds after she said it – and said, "Miss Mars?" At prompting from Mac, I acknowledged that I was, indeed, Miss Mars – "It's good you found her when you did. Your instincts were good; she's indeed suffering from acute alcohol poisoning. "
"Is she going to be okay?" Mac asked.
"It's too soon to tell," the doctor said. "But we're going to do our best to make sure she is."
"Thanks," I said. I think it was the first time I'd talked since I told Mac to call 911 back in Mom's hotel room.
Mac and I went back to sit down in the hospital waiting room.
Dad came running in later. I have no idea how much later. "Veronica!" he said.
"Daddy!" I shouted as he ran up and hugged me. And that's, finally, when I started crying. He didn't let me go until I was done.
That's what Dads do.
When I was done, Dad turned to look at Mac and said, "Thank you . . ."
"Mac," she said. "Um, Cindy MacKenzie. But everybody calls me Mac."
"Veronica's told me a lot about you," he said. "Thanks for helping her."
She shrugged. "Friends do that." Then she stood up. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go . . . get something to eat. I'll be back, Veronica, don't worry."
I appreciated Mac's concern, but I think my long cry while Dad held me shook me out of my numbness. Still, I owed her big. This wasn't the kind of thing you could repay with money or favors.
Dad went over and talked to the on-duty nurse for a second, then came back and sat down next to me. "Wallace is going to take care of Backup," he said.
"That's good."
"Now, Veronica –" he said.
"I had no idea I was going to find Mom today," I said. "I swear."
"I know you've been looking for her," Dad said.
I couldn't argue with that. "Yeah. But today – I'd been getting crank calls from a pay phone up here since Valentine's Day. Someone would call and hang up, call and hang up. I was just trying to figure out who it was."
"And what if they'd been –" he stopped himself. "No. This isn't the time. Not now." I knew what he'd been about to ask: What if they'd been dangerous? And it wasn't a question where he'd accept the answer of, "but she wasn't."
"It's my fault, Dad. Mom being here is my fault."
Puzzled, he said, "You can't believe that."
"Of course I can," I said. "If I'd tried to track her down sooner. If I'd tried to call her back every time. Maybe she would have had answered." Even though she never did. "Maybe someone else would have. But she wouldn't be in the hospital –"
"It's not your fault, sweetie," Dad said, hugging me again. "Your mother chose –"
"Miss Mars?" The doctor said. Just in time. The next word's out of Dad's mouth would either have been "to leave" or "to drink," and neither one would leave me in a happy place right now.
Dad was right. Blaming myself for this was counterproductive and stupid. But blaming Mom wasn't right, either. No, no one forced her to drink. But it hadn't been her choice to leave.
It was Clarence Weidman's.
I got up; Dad followed me over and shook the doctor's hand. "I'm Keith Mars," he said.
"Dr. Mahmoud," she said.
"What's my wife's condition?"
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "But while your daughter got there in time to save her life . . . her brain hasn't been receiving enough oxygen for too long."
"You're saying she's brain damaged," I said.
"Almost certainly." Dr. Mahmoud said. "We can't be certain as to the extent. It could range from mild neurocognitive deficits to irreversible coma. We won't be certain of that until we run some more tests."
"Run them," Dad said.
"Of course, Mr. Mars, I just need you to sign some papers . . ."
They walked over towards the nurse's station where they began a discussion. They'd gotten as far as, "Now that I think about it, maybe we should wait –" when Logan entered the room and came over to me. Taking my hands in his, he leaned forward, gave me a quick kiss, and said, "What happened?"
I told him the whole story. "And now," I said when I was done, "You understand why I'm going to kill Clarence Weidman."
He held onto my hands. "Veronica," he said quietly, "You can't."
"I don't mean literally. Although I'd like to. No, I mean –"
"You mean nothing," Logan said. "Believe me. There is nothing more I'd like to do right now –" and just for a moment his calm slipped – "than go tearing back to Neptune with you and toss him bound, gagged and tied to cement blocks into the Pacific Ocean. But we can't. The consequences –"
"I know. You could end up in jail. Or death row."
He shook his head. "No. If all this were about was me, I'd have been out of here with you five minutes ago. But it's not. It's about you also. And I'm willing to get myself hurt. I am not willing to get you hurt. I love you too much for that.
Deflated and calmer because, dammit, he was right, I went back over and sat down. He came over and set next to me, his hand never leaving mine. "Since when did you become the cool-headed rational one and I become the psychotic jackass?"
He quirked a smile at that one. "Careful, Mars," he said. "I may have to sue you for trademark infringement." Then he got serious. "Since you found your mother in an alcohol-induced coma. I think that would have set Gandhi off."
"I still want to kill him, though."
"Kill who?" Mac asked as she sat down a couple of seats away.
"Um . . ." I was drawing a blank again. I hate it when I do that.
Logan supplied the save. "That bartender," he said. "The one who let Veronica's mom keep drinking."
"Oh, that," she said. "You don't need to worry about that."
"Why?"
"Well, within the next couple of weeks, the Sage Brush Cantina is going to be getting visits from the fire inspector, the health inspector, and the liquor board." At my look of disbelief, she held up her laptop. "What? Did you think I was spending all this time getting food? I may not be Lara Croft like you, Veronica, but it doesn't take me fifteen minutes to get an energy bar and spring water from a car two hundred feet away." She looked at my expression and said, "You're going to come over and hug me now, aren't you?"
"Yup." And I did. "Mac -- I owe you –"
"You owe me nothing, Veronica," she said. "It's like I told your father. Friends do that."
X X X X X
We didn't leave the hospital until later that night. Mac, Dad and Logan were all still there. Mac had called her parents and explained what had happened, and they told her to stay as late as she felt she needed to. More proof that parenting is more than genetics. They knew she cared, therefore they cared.
Dad had made arrangements to have Mom transferred back to Neptune for the brain scans she needed and there was no point in us staying at the hospital all night. It was obvious there wouldn't be a change in her condition for quite a long time. (If ever.)
So that left me a choice of who to ride back with: Logan or Dad? (Mac had driven me up and since then she'd gone so far above and beyond I wasn't going to do anything to put herself out any more.)
She smiled, understood, and drove away.
Logan made the decision for me. "This is family time," he said. "I'm not family." Then he drove off, too.
Dad and I mostly drove home in silence. But it wasn't the silence of two people who didn't want to talk; it was the silence of two people who didn't need to.
I apologized for interrupting his search for Abel Koontz's daughter. "It's okay, sweetie," he said. "She was on a road trip this weekend anyway. I'll try her again on Monday. Besides, even if she'd been about to hand me exculpatory evidence on a silver platter, I would have come running. You know that."
"I do," I said. Dad was the one person in my life who had never let me down.
"This girl Mac seems like a really good person."
"She really is." I hadn't quite realized how good until today. Wallace kept making jokes about it, but a lot of it was true: I never let friendship get in the way of using people.
I was never going to be able to stop that unless I got out of the detective business altogether. But I needed to temper it – or at least make sure the people were my friends first and my devoted servants second.
We got home past midnight. Wallace was sacked out on the couch, with Backup lying at his feet looking content. Well, they'd bonded, at least. Dad told me to get to bed while he called Alicia Fennel.
He got no argument from me.
X X X X X
That night I dreamed of Lilly again. We were sitting at one of the Neptune High lunch tables.
"God, Veronica Mars," she said. "Like your life wasn't a soap opera already."
"I was actually going more for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I get your point."
"You're going to have to let go of something, you know?" She polished her nails. "So what do you think? Should I go for cherry red or deep crimson?"
"Let go of something?"
"You're going to go crazy if you don't. Your Mom and Logan and –" she shuddered. "Dick Casablancas and proving who murdered my fabulous self. And of course, whoever raped you. Not to mention that Weidman guy. He takes creepy to a level beyond creepy. I'm definitely going with the deep crimson."
"I can't, Lilly. I can't. Somebody has to do this."
She shrugged. "Your call, Veronica. But I'll always love you even if you don't prove Aaron killed me."
"And I'll love you too."
"Well, of course! Who wouldn't?"
X X X X X
The next morning, Dad absolutely would not let me go with him to the hospital. "Day off," he said firmly. "No going to the office. No helping a friend. I'll call you if anything happens with your mother. I promise."
So what to do?
There was a knock on the door.
I opened it and Logan was standing there.
Well, that's one question answered . . .