Part 4
As she walked away from Adrian's bedroom and toward the elevator, she stopped. She thought about exactly how bad of shape he'd been in just a few moments ago, and how he'd needed help to even walk to his own bedroom. She sighed, and turned back around. She decided she would stay, just overnight to make sure he was okay. She had no idea what was doing this to him, and was sure he wouldn't tell her, but that didn't mean she had to deny her sensibilities. She would stick around and make sure he'd be okay, then get back to work. What else would she do? The building her apartment had been in was gone, and for the few days after the attack, she'd been staying in a hotel on Roosevelt Island, just a bridge away from Manhattan. However, it was a good few hours drive back there, and she figured it was full by now, with all the homeless refugees that survived.
So she flipped on a few lights and sat down at a desk that was situated against the glass wall overlooking New York. She turned the computer on, and went immediately to an online translator. Hey, just because she was working for the smartest man on earth didn't mean she had to be the smartest woman. She chose English to German, and found, with some sorrow, that Adrian had said "Alone. All alone."
Alone? Did that mean he'd lost many people in the blasts? Everyone he felt close to? She didn't know. After a moment of snooping through his computer and finding that all folders with any kind of interesting title were password protected, she decided to look around his apartment.
Usually with people as widely well-known as Adrian Veidt, there was always some old ex that spread what a slob their hubby had been, or how indecent a lifestyle he'd lived. But the only articles on Adrian Veidt were in respectable magazines, talking about how he'd used his Watchmen fame to build an empire. There were plenty of paparazzi pictures of him, but he was never with anyone that would count as a significant other. To say he'd avoided being cavalier in his personal life was a massive understatement. She'd never even heard rumors of a girlfriend… boyfriend… whatever. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
And his lifestyle didn't prove much. He lived clean, that was for sure. Every surface was dust-free, and nothing was out of place. And not only were all the books on the shelf, they were neatly alphabetized. She examined his book collection, and quickly decided that very few of them held any interest to her. She preferred mystery novels and things of that nature. These were all philosophical, psychological; books that pondered the meaning of life and the purpose of the human being. Stuff way too deep to be considered at nearing 9pm.
She followed the other hallway; the one leading off to the left of the sitting room, and found a workout room with pretty much every piece of equipment of a professional gym and then some. She smiled to herself at the image she got of him working out, and quickly torched it. She couldn't be fantasizing about this guy when his life was clearly spiraling downward.
She finally wandered back into the sitting room, and decided to curl up on the couch under her parka and try to get some sleep. She kicked off her boots and set them on the rug by the elevator, to avoid spreading any mud or anything that might have clung to them. She turned off all the lights except one; a little lamp on the table behind the couch, just in case she had to get up for any reason. She was reminded of her high-school babysitting days, and almost smiled.
She tossed and turned for hours, and had just lolled into that slightly awake but almost asleep stage when a commotion coming from Veidt's room stirred her. The glowing clock that was settled among the bookshelves read 2:00am. She sat up immediately, and listened, and when she heard more movement, she realized that it sounded like he was getting sick.
She rushed around the couch, into his room, and around the corner to the bathroom, where sure enough, Adrian was leaning over the toilet, forehead in his good palm, choking slightly. He was clad in only a pair of black slacks, and she could see his stomach muscles working as he gagged. Pity shot straight through her.
"You alright?" she asked, and he jumped, looking up at her and squinting against the lights.
"Ms. Turner. You're still here," he said, his voice sounding even more hoarse than originally.
"Oh, yeah. Well… I just figured…" she paused, looking for correct words. "You know, you were… maybe I should… oh hell. I wanted to stay and make sure you'd be okay."
He grinned despite his obvious pain. "Thank you. That's very kind."
She half-smiled back, then repeated, "You okay?"
"Oh, it's just a migraine. I'll live," he said, rubbing his forehead and grimacing.
"Anything you can take for it?" she asked, reaching for the medicine cabinet.
"Not really," he said, shielding his eyes from the light of the bathroom. "I have some anti-nausea medications, but I usually ironically loose them before they can work."
"Better than nothing," she said, pulling a bottle of Phenergan from the cabinet and spilling one of the pills into her palm and handing it to him. When he held out his hand, she noticed that he was trembling again, and that pity welled up again.
"Let me get you a glass," she said, and dashed out into the kitchen, where after some turmoil, she found the glasses in a cupboard above a huge stove. She sub-consciously wondered if he actually used that stove, or if it was just there to look pretty.
She scurried back into his bathroom, just in time to catch the tail end of yesterday's meals. If he'd eaten at all, which seemed unlikely to her, with how weak and pale he'd been. She filled the glass with water from the sink, and handed it to him. He took it with his bandaged hand, with some difficulty, and downed the pill in one gulp.
He sighed, and went to get up. He made it halfway before she noticed his eyes getting a little unfocused, and she rushed forward to support him. He staggered, and held on to her as she helped lead him back to his purple and black king-sized bed. Before she knew that purple was a color of royalty, she would have thought all the purple was a little much. But with the way he idolized Ramesses and Alexander the Great, it wasn't that big of a deal.
He collapsed against it, still shivering, and pulled his covers up. "Have I thanked you yet, Ms. Turner?" he asked, looking up at her.
"It's Grace. And yes, you have. Many times," she said, walking over to his bathroom and shutting off the light.
"Well, thank you," he sighed, and the pain in his voice was still evident.
"Not a problem… Adrian," she said, his name finally sounding correct coming from her lips.
She walked to the door, and as she slipped out, she whispered, "You're not alone, Mr. Veidt."
After crumpling on the couch under her parka again, Grace hardly remembered falling asleep. It wasn't difficult, after two nineteen-hour helicopter flights, and caring for Adrian, she had been running on empty for far too long. She knew she should have eaten something, and forced Adrian to eat something as well, but really the only thing both of them needed was sleep. So sleep she did, dreaming uneasy visions of explosions, collapsing buildings, screaming people, and razed cities.
So she nearly screamed when she was woken by another sound coming from Adrian's room. She shot upright, her hair flailing madly and getting stuck to her lips. The curtains were still drawn, but the sun was creating little light-snakes in the tile floor at their base. She listened for a moment, only to figure out that the shower was running. Well, that was good sign, as long as he didn't fall down in there.
She yawned, stretched, flipped on a few lights, and trudged to the other bathroom, just outside the workout room, where the Monster from the Blue Lagoon stared tiredly at her from the mirror. She grunted, attempted to tame her mane, and after failing miserably, decided to raid Adrian's refrigerator.
It was incredibly organized, and there was not a shred of eggs, milk, or lunchmeats of any kind. Of course, she'd forgotten; he was a strict vegetarian. Among other health foods, there were a few bottles of name-brand water. She'd always found that water was water, but apparently it wasn't to Adrian Veidt. He'd probably lecture her on the amount of pho-somethings in the water and its effects the body's something-system. A huge sentence that she probably wouldn't understand. She huffed a sigh, shut the fridge, and explored the cabinets. She finally came across a pantry, where she thankfully found a few boxes of cereal. It was strange, considering that Adrian Veidt ate cereal. He struck her as the kind of guy who could survive, and thrive, on dust particles. But of course, in the last twenty-four hours, he had proven her completely wrong.
She went back to the fridge and found a carton of rice milk, which she grimaced at, and rummaged around until she found some bowls. She sat at a small silver table hovering in a corner of the large kitchen, and poured herself a bowl of California Raisins cereal. The rice milk wasn't actually that bad; she hardly noticed a difference between that and regular milk.
Halfway through the bowl, she heard the water shut off in Adrian's room, and a few minutes after that, she heard his bedroom door open and footsteps coming down the hall.
She stood, walked around the half wall and turned to round the corner.
"Morning," she called before rounding the corner. "I was going to make some breakfast, but I remembered you're a veg…"
Her sentence was stalled when she rounded the corner, where Adrian stood, his skin covered in water droplets, his hair wet but neatly combed, and a black towel hanging dangerously low around his waist. She'd seen him shirtless last night, but not like this. This was… impressive.
Grace wasn't good with computers. So naturally, she'd spilled numerous liquids on them and seen them short circuit. She had no idea brains could do the same thing.
Adrian smiled, but it was different. This wasn't the smile he gave to reporters and businessmen to charm them into liking him, this was something else. Something more like… guaranteed-to-melt-your-clothes-off.
She gathered what was left of rational thought, and tried again. "I remembered you're a vegetarian, so is there something else you make in the morning… besides cereal that is?"
He was brushing over his wet hair with a smaller, purple towel as he said, "Not really hungry."
"Uh huh. Yeah. So, does lying through your teeth come with the whole genius thing, or do I have to pay extra for that?" she said, leaning her weight on one leg.
He stopped brushing through his hair, and stared right through her, as if considering her for the first time, then he actually laughed. Come to think of it, she'd never heard him do that before… ever. It was… strange; sort of unnatural.
"Cereal is fine," he said, and turned to return to his bedroom.
In the midst of admiring his statue-worthy sculpted back, she called, "you feeling better today?"
He didn't stop walking away from her, just said, "Well, I'm not dead. That's progress."
She grinned, and on her way back to the kitchen, stopped and peeked through the curtains. Bad idea. She'd been on the twelfth story all of the other days after the attack, and from there, you couldn't quite see how bad it was. From the twentieth, every collapsed building was viewable, every construction site that had only just begun to work. There were no streets, just debris piled on more debris. She gasped as she looked, and shut the drapes again to avoid bursting into tears. True, she hadn't lost anyone too close to her, but that didn't mean she wasn't distraught over having her city, her country, the entire world attacked unexpectedly.
She shuddered, and was almost back to her cereal when her cell phone rang from her coat on the couch. She scurried to the sitting area, and pulled her brick-sized phone from the large pocket of her parka. She had always wondered why phones had to be so damn… big, with all the technological advances they were making, but hey, she still needed a phone.
She answered and found that it was Mr. Campbell.
"The media contacted us again, they're really nagging us about getting a speech or statement of some kind from Mr. Veidt," he said, and it sounded like he hadn't slept in a week. Probably hadn't.
"Why are you telling me this? His personal secretaries take care of that business," she said.
"They're all gone. You are his personal secretary," he replied. She almost laughed at the fact that he had no idea how personal. She figured watching someone have a panic attack and vomit up his stomach's contents classified her as more of a babysitter.
"Ohhhkay," she said, rethinking what she had planned for her day. "What do I need to do?"
"Where are you?" he asked.
"Uhhh," she figured 'in Mr. Veidt's apartment' might give the wrong impression, so she went with "I'm on my way there now."
"Go up to his penthouse, and tell him we have a press conference, which will be televised, at noon today at Ground Zero. Tell him to be prepared to give a speech. Make sure he's ready to answer in-depth questions about Dr. Manhattan. Think you can handle it?" he finished.
Just short of holding Adrian's hair back last night, she figured she'd handled worse. "Yes, I can do that."
"Good. See you at noon," Mr. Campbell said, and didn't wait to hear a goodbye before hanging up.
"Bye, nice talkin' to you too," she mocked as she pressed the off button on her cell.
"Who was that?" Adrian's voice said from behind her, and she yelped and jumped so bad that she dropped her phone on the floor.
Adrian picked it up for her, setting it on the table behind the couch. "My apologies. Didn't mean to frighten you."
"You didn't… I just…" she said, pushing her hair behind her ears as she noticed that he was now clothed in his usual suit. Except this one wasn't purple, it was mostly black. He must have known he would be on television today, talking about the attacks. Purple doesn't really say "sorry for your loss, New York."
"You just felt like throwing your phone at me?" he said.
"Ah, is that sarcasm I detect?" she said, inching around him since his proximity was making her warm… in more ways than one. She made her way to the kitchen, where, with much disappointment, she found that her cereal was soggy. "That was Mr. Campbell. He says there's a press conference today at noon," she began as she poured the cereal down the sink and washed the bowl. "He says be prepared to give a speech and answer questions about Dr. Manhattan."
"I'm assuming you're in charge of all this because my personal secretaries are…" he paused, and when she turned to face him, it seemed that he had gone pale trying finish that sentence.
"Let's just go with 'unavailable'," she said, putting the bowl on a drying rack. "And yes, you would be correct."
"Well then," he said, walking into the kitchen and reluctantly pulling down a bowl for himself. He obviously figured she would force him to eat if he didn't do it willingly. "Congratulations. You've just been promoted."