The end of the ride. Thank you to everyone who's been with me - Analeptic and Malum wouldn't be here without you.
It was surprising when Sarah didn't bang out the door after dinner, didn't bump her car down the bottom of the driveway one last time. After all, Meg said she should go if she didn't feel safe, and Meg couldn't blame her for it if she did. When it came down to it, Meg was asking Sarah to trust her hunch that there would be no more break-ins, that there would be no more attacks, that there would be no more hallucinations, that she wouldn't ever put Randy in a position to lose his job again, and that everything in her mind had suddenly settled perfectly back into place. Which, strangely, was an idea Sarah seemed to believe – or was at least an idea she was drunk enough to tolerate for the night.
At the same time, Meg knew that simply saying it to Sarah – or Randy – wasn't enough. She had to show them. It was time to make flight plans and phone calls, to force Dave's hand and tell Randy just enough of what happened that they could all live with the results. She almost expected Jackson's hiss to fill the room as she reached for her phone, but there was only silence. Grateful, Meg felt she'd understood what peace the universe was giving her, and rubbed her rose pendant between her fingertips while she waited for Dave to answer.
Calling Dave first, Meg told him she'd be in town the next day, she'd take care of her own rental, and to please not tell Randy – she wanted to surprise him with her arrival, though she and Dave argued fiercely about whether she should meet him at the arena or wait and see him at the hotel. He didn't want Meg to be a distraction for him backstage; she didn't want to wait through an entire day in a hotel room without seeing him. Dave grumbled enough to talk her into the hotel option, and then pressed his luck further by asking her to talk to Randy that night and try to work a better mood out of him. He'd been in a foul frame of mind through the entire show, having watched Joe's wife throw herself both at and on Joe backstage through the entire show, no matter how hard he worked to rebuff her affections. Add to that, Randy's back was tight and his head was pounding. It culminated in him personally going to Talent Relations after the show and informing them that his relations with the company were about to enter a glacial age if Meg didn't come back. Dave had dragged Randy out of the raggedy office mid-tirade, trying to save him from making a comment or threat he would regret later, but truth be told, there wasn't anything left that Randy wasn't willing to walk away from.
Joe's wife pounced on her phone when it rang, squealing with glee when she was told her photograph was ready for pickup. All she had to do was meet her hired hand at the airport the next day with the cash in hand – she'd already sent him his plane tickets – and she would have the only remaining tie between Joe and Meg back in her possession, free to lord it over him as she pleased. She'd already planned to store it securely in a safe deposit box, the penultimate trump card the next time Joe decided to misbehave. 'Too much fucking work. I don't want you getting arrested – I need your bank account – but believe you-me, I'm gonna make sure you know that I can wreck you at a moment's notice.'Making sure she understood the process for obtaining a company car for the next day, she nearly drowned Joe in kisses backstage, and then slipped into the best sleep she'd had in a long time at the hotel, leaving Joe to wonder what he'd done to earn a reprieve from being her rocking horse for the evening.
Different airlines, different baggage claims, and only one of the two interested parties actually knowing that they had a guest coming to town – none of that prevented Meg or Joe's wife from both bounding into their borrowed vehicles; Meg's from a rental agency at the airport and Joe's wife at the car checkout at the arena. Meg didn't see the faux lawn technician at the airport; he'd arrived on a small airline and was waiting patiently inside the terminal he'd landed at, having been instructed several times not to move a muscle or risk losing his payout. Joe's wife was speeding toward the airport with her phone either glued to her head or held up directly in front of it for the purpose of texting; Meg was driving at a much more reasonable rate of speed away from the airport and opted to leave her phone in the center console, though it killed her not to tip off Randy that she was in town. She was much more interested in seeing the look on his face when he walked in on her in his hotel room, followed by the look on his face when she gave him the news that she'd solved the problem of Jackson. Now...as to how she planned on solving Jackson, she had limited time to come up with a spin on that. But no matter. She'd get there. Meg hadn't seen, heard, smelled, even felt the man since the fiasco in the locker room – and she was determined to keep it that way. Idling at a red light, she glanced around the intersection, and began to fiddle with the radio. At a nearby gas station, a car horn sounded, alerting one girl to another's presence. The two teens bounded out of their battered and rusted starter-cars toward each other and in to overzealous hugs, drawing a smile from Meg. 'Heh – like me and Sarah. Why just yell hello when you can blare a horn and run?' Her light changed and she began to move along with traffic, hitting cruising speed after just a few seconds.
Perpendicular to Meg's car, first in line in the left turn lane, waiting impatiently, sat Joe's wife. She was still texting, paying half-attention to the cars around her. Nearby, a horn sounded, and she stomped the gas pedal, throwing up a perfectly manicured middle finger as she flew into an aggressive turn. "Jesus fucking – the light probably just changed, asshole!"
It hadn't occurred to her that not only did she not bother to look up, but the horn hadn't been for her, or her lane. Or ever her direction.
Joe's wife, in her infinite wisdom and complete distraction, had managed to floor her car directly into cross-traffic, which included Meg's vehicle. Hoping that she'd be driving Randy around later, Meg had opted to rent an oversized SUV to give him some much-needed leg room, but given the chain of events about to occur, leg room was the least of her immediate concerns.
Cross traffic, which suddenly included a towncar occupied by one distracted, aggressive driver who had completely botched a left turn, turned into a sea of swerving, blaring vehicles all braking madly and trying desperately to avoid slamming into the four-wheeled interloper. Meg was among those playing dodge-and-weave, her eyes moving as fast as time was moving slow. Despite all that, Meg still ended up parallel to – and then tangled against – Joe's wife, both of them staring at each other through their side windows.
If that was the worst of it, Meg wouldn't have minded, all things considered. She would have limped off to a waiting ambulance, let Randy fuss and fret over her stiff neck and bruises, and used the accident to prove the point that Jackson was gone from her head. Even as their vehicles spun, somehow snagged on each other – Meg suspected it was the height difference, a fender or a bumper must have gotten lodged somewhere – there was no feeling of swampwater or rotting flesh, no whisper or hush of death in her back seat. Just her, staring at Joe's wife, alone.
They crossed the intersection in that grouping, a spinning, screeching-rubber ballet that ended only when a refrigerated box truck slammed into the passenger side of Meg's SUV, simultaneously slamming her head and Joe's wife's head through their respective driver's side windows. Not content with injuring the side of Meg's head not affected by the accident in Louisiana, the box truck continued pushing, compressing Joe's wife's towncar against an electrical pole, then further compressing Meg's SUV between what was left of the towncar and the nose of the truck. Theirs weren't the only vehicles wrecked; how far that wreck would spread remained to be seen.
"Fuck, Dave, what got in to you?"
Cagy, edgy, Dave paced triage like a lion in search of its last meal. Randy usually was the one on edge, searching out something to hurl invectives at, or simply something to hurl, but tonight it was Dave's turn. He knew Meg should have called him by now to say she'd settled in at the hotel, or failing that, called him from within the arena to say she had changed her mind, ignored his directions entirely, and was safely within Randy's locker room and to hurry and send him to her so they could talk. The complete lack of a phone call was unnerving. 'Maybe she just went to the hotel, didn't want to be spotted here and have the surprise ruined, so she's up in my room. That's got to be it.' "Nah, everything's fine. Come on. We should go. Er, not go. You should go get cleaned up, and I'll go work a list out for triage at the hotel. Then go. You've been standing around in your gear for the past 45 minutes, it's not like it's gonna start magically smelling better."
"Dave, seriously. What's going on? Since when do you give a shit about how sweaty we all are after a match? You're not acting...normal." Randy shifted in the triage doorway, then closed it behind him. "I'm not going anywhere til you tell me what's...wait." He leaned forward, over the edge of the exam table, his glare causing Dave to back up several steps. "Cut the bullshit, what's going on with Meg? You only get like this when something's wrong with her. No, fuck it, never mind, I'm gonna call her." Throwing the door open, Randy flew down the hallway toward his locker room, banging the door open and nearly diving into his gym bag, digging for his phone, his fingers stumbling over Meg's number as though he already knew something had happened.
From the footwell, Meg's phone rang, though she didn't move to pick it up. The man driving the box truck had been kind enough to reverse it away from the tangle that the sedan and SUV had become, though its elevated refrigeration unit had flown loose and was solidly on the roof of Meg's SUV.
Joe, freshly showered and fully packed, trudged to the shuttle bus, acutely aware that his wife hadn't come back. She'd asked question after question earlier in the day, about how to get a company car on her own, rather than taking one with a driver. He assumed she wanted to meet up with a group of her girlfriends for trouble that required a lack of an audience. She left well before the show started, didn't come back during the show, and now that the show was done, was still out with the towncar. Joe had to dodge several questions about her whereabouts, and she wasn't answering her phone. Even when Joe begged some of the women on the roster to call his wife, she hadn't answered. It nagged at him, but at the same time, he was glad for the peace. 'Maybe she took the towncar to the hotel. She probably doesn't know she was supposed to bring it back here for check-in. I'll figure it out when I get to the room.' Sighing, Joe tucked his phone back into his pocket.
"Pull her out. She's done. I mean, fuck. That's not even worth calling Life Flight, that's just...bag it. Did we call the coroner?"
"Yeah, the ghost bus is en-route. It would've been nice if they hadn't hit the one light pole we needed to work under, y'know? How the fuck do you even fall out your window and then get just your head pinned?"
"You think having this giant freezer on wheels get involved helped anyone's sense of direction?"
"Man, still doesn't answer my question. Like...there isn't even a head. There's a body, and there's the rest of her neck, and that's it. I don't even wanna be the one to explain this shit to the family. I mean, 'Sorry guys, this one really needs to be closed-casket,' doesn't exactly sound good."
"What do you think we have the coroner for, dumbass? Just start lifting. Let's get as much of her out and under a sheet as we can."
At the airport, edgy, cagey, body aching for a high that wasn't coming unless he shot up in a public bathroom, the break-in artist cum lawn-technician placed yet another phone call to Joe's wife. It, too, went unanswered. 'If she doesn't fuckin' pick up, I'm done. I'm gonna call two – no, three – more times, and then that's it. The photo is gonna go down a toilet in a bunch of tiny little pieces, and then I'm gonna get the fuck outta here. She reserved a round trip ticket. I'm gettin' the fuck outta here, I'm holdin' the other half. Somethin' ain't right.'
"Meg! Pick up your fucking phone! God! I don't even know why I'm fucking yelling, I'm sorry I'm yelling, it's just...just..." Randy tried to calm down, pulled his free hand down his face, and sighed heavily into the phone. "It's just, Dave's been acting like someone slipped him an Adderall. Spastic. Nervous. And now you're not picking up. I know your battery is probably just dead, but it's all just fucking with me. Please, pick up. Call me. I love you." Ending the call, Randy whipped his phone into the pillows, earning a small cloud of dust motes for his effort. "Meg," he whispered, though nobody was present to hear him, "Something went wrong, didn't it?"
"Babygirl, I'm not trying to be pushy, but Corporate is getting a little anxious about their car. If you're not gonna bring it back right now I'll smooth things out, but I need to be able to tell them where the car...uh...is? Please, just give me a call, I'm not trying to shit on your evening. Whatever you need, okay?" Joe ended the call without telling her he loved her, and silently cursed at himself once he realized the slip-up. 'Well...I'll be sure to kiss her ass double-time when she calls back. That'll be fine. She's probably so shitfaced she won't even notice.'
"Meg! Meg." Dave was hissing, trying not to be heard though his room was empty around him. "Where the fuck are you? I thought you were supposed to meet me here? I know you didn't go to Randy's room, I already called him. I know your plane landed. What happened? Did something happen? Fucking hell, just...call me back!" Dave continued pacing, the circles getting tighter and tighter, until the triage phone rang, the blaring sound jolting him off his path and nearly causing him to trip over his own feet. Sighing, Dave grabbed the phone, checked the room number, and hefted his bag to his shoulder. "Time to go to work, Dave. Figure it out."
"Hey, got phones in here! Looks like there's missed calls, too. What should I-"
"You don't do shit, unless you wanna explain how that smear down the pole happened. Hand 'em to the coroner, and help me lift the bag."
"Fuck you. It's a light bag, anyway."
"Missing pieces don't count against gross weight, now get over here and do your fuckin' job. We lift on three."
Rolling his eyes, the younger of the two first-responders scooped the phones from both vehicles and passed them to the coroner, who himself was marveling at the complete absence of a head – in any recognizable form – on one of the two womens' bodies. The other woman was under a sheet on a lowered gurney, still for the moment, blood soaking through a thick set of white sheets that had been pulled over her face.
Shrugging, the coroner turned his attention to the phones. One was locked, and none of the smears on the screen made it clear what pattern to swipe in order to unlock it. The other didn't have a lock code, but was flooded with calls. With no way to determine which incoming caller was more important than another, he decided to wait and see who called back. 'Patience, my good man. This telephone looks promising.'
Dave, settling his drunk-as-fuck triage call for the night, tried Meg's phone one more time. The man who answered it and introduced himself as the county coroner brought Dave to the floor in the middle of the hotel's fifth floor hallway, with some echo-chamber in his brain telling him it was good he was alone and Randy wasn't with him. After a few minutes of conversation, a few clarifications, Dave flew to his room, grabbed his keys, and then froze, not knowing if Randy needed to know at that moment. Needed to come with him. Or whether that would lead to an entirely new disaster. Suddenly, from a lower floor in the hotel, a wail started that became a scream, then something animalistic, and all thoughts of Randy were out of Dave's head – now it was a race to beat Joe to the scene of the accident, to save what could be saved – if that was anything at all.
It took Joe some time to come up with a company driver who was willing to take him to what was literally only being described as an intersection of two roads, not a building or physical place. The coroner hadn't been particularly clear about who, exactly, had died – all he knew was that two vehicles were mangled and could he please hurry himself along to the scene to identify who was who so that they could begin to clear the roadway. The sick full-circle of the incident wasn't lost on him, though the police officer who could be heard yelling in the background had made it perfectly clear it was his wife's doing – a quick review of the traffic cameras showed that she'd spontaneously run through a red arrow on a left turn, directly into cross-traffic, causing chaos and wrecking several cars and trucks along the way. His stomach churned as he was chauffeured to the scene, but he couldn't pin down the reason – was it that Meg could be gone? His wife? Was it the potential for freedom from his ball and chain that left him nauseous, or the potential for being chained to Meg's demise? In the distance, swirling red and blue lights came into view, and Joe ducked his head behind the driver's seat, taking every possible second he could to compose himself.
"Just open the bag. I've worked every medical position you can think of, I can handle it."
"Suit yourself. It's a fuckin' mess in ther-"
"You're new, aren't you? You should learn when to shut up."
Dave's tone, thickly cold, backed the young first responder down into silence, the zipper's sound ripping through the night air like machine-gun-fire. There, on the gurney, was Joe's wife. Or at least, her torso, arms, and legs, her head a flattened disc of skin and bone, most of it missing from her neck. Dave's upper lip twitched into half a snarl of revulsion before he re-zipped the bag.
"Great. The other woman?"
"On the other gurney." He gestured loosely behind him, toward a cluster of police officers, and Dave felt some tension come off his shoulders as he walked, crouching and shaking Meg by the shin of her good leg when he reached her.
'She wouldn't be by the cops unless she was alive. Maybe in trouble, but-' Then, it registered with Dave that there was a pile of white sheets on the gurney, blood soaking through where Meg's head would have been, and the gurney was low to the ground, not raised as though she was about to be transported to a hospital. He had to catch himself on its edge as his knees finally gave way.
"Uh, you know her?" One of the officers spoke, flatly. "Because, uh, we'd really like to get her out of here without charging her for assaulting an officer, so if you could get her ass out of here, you'd be doing us a favor. She refused medical care, and I want my cuffs back. I know she's out of it, but she's getting a little too wild for her own good." He tossed Meg's phone at Dave, but managed instead to hit him in the arm.
"You what?"
"I asked, do you know her?" The officer, having completely lost patience with Meg, was rapidly losing patience with Dave. He reached up and snapped the sheets away from Meg's face, drawing a scream out of her. She tried futilely to swing her arms, but they were – as the officer said – cuffed firmly behind her.
'Meg's alive! Meg's alive. Her arms – that's too far back. That's got to be killing her ribs. Her collarbone. Her head's a mess. Her face. She just re-bruised everything. Meg lived. Let's go. Figure it out.' "Yeah. Yeah, I know her. That's Magdalena Nechayev. Her bag was probably in the-"
"Yep, thats her name. Here's her bag. Lady, sit up. This guy just saved your ass a whole lot of trouble." Without giving Meg a chance to cooperate, the officer grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, lifted her up and threw her forward, and dug the cuffs into her wrists as he struggled to remove them from her. Giving up on any semblance of delicacy, he pressed his elbow firmly into her spine and lifted her arms back and away from her, earning a dry screech. Chuckling, he managed to get the handcuffs off of Meg, who winced and lunged at Dave.
"Meg, calm down. It's okay. I'm here. We're gonna go now. I'm gonna take care of you once we get back to your room and then you can see-"
"Jackson took her. He's not gonna-" Meg paused to start a hacking cough, letting Dave ease her down off the gurney and onto her knees in the grassy median before turning her in the direction of his car, "He's not gonna come after me anymore."
"Okay, Meg." Dave shook his head, knowing Meg's head had gone through yet another car window. "Okay. You can tell me all about it when we get to the hotel."'Great. You needed to be more fucked up, right? Here we go again with the Jackson shit. You're gonna stay in my room when we get there. I need to talk to Randy before he sees you, because this is not going to play well.'
"Make sure she's available for the next few days, in case we need her for questioning or accident reconstruction." A different police officer had wandered over – to Dave's eyes, a detective – and patted a business card into Dave's jacket pocket while he was lifting Meg to her feet. "You're a medic or a doctor or something, right? She refused care, but...she needs some help." The detective's voice was calm, almost kind, and was a relief to Dave's ears after the frustration of the other officers.
"Yeah. I'm an NP. She's in good hands, don't worry. She was in a bad car wreck before, and her reaction...it's PTSD. Nothing personal. I'm sorry she was-"
"Nah. That guy's a dick. I'll talk to our captain. No worries. She's in a bad way right now."
Smiling, Dave half-carried, half-dragged Meg to his car, opening the front passenger door and sliding her off his shoulder and onto the seat. Groggy, caked in blood and with glass still in her hair, Meg looked up at him, wringing her hands in her lap like a small child.
"She's dead, Dave. She had that man take the picture and then Jackson took her."
"Meggie, hon, swing your feet up. All the way, now. In the car. We need to leave, okay?" The company car that circled the perimeter of the intersection hadn't gone unnoticed by Dave, and he wanted to be far, far away from whatever scene Joe created when he saw his wife. 'Meg knows something. Something about his wife, something she did. Whatever happened with...the picture in the locker room? And he's about to find out his wife caused the accident, and died.'
They did manage to leave before too much havoc started; hearing Joe's screams start again was unavoidable. People in the next county could probably hear him scream – they were the sounds of heartbreak, loss, rage, joy, terror, confusion, and so much more. Neither Dave nor Meg turned to look behind them; living through the scene once was enough.
The drive was quiet and confusing. Dave had left the intersection in a direction completely inconvenient for returning to the hotel, and Meg's phone lit up again and again with Randy's number. Meg, forcing herself to focus, hovered her fingers over the screen and then paused, thinking.
"Should I...should I talk to him?"
"Yeah, Meggie, but at the hotel. If you talk to him now, he's gonna have time to sit and panic. Here, let me talk to him, instead." Dave pulled Meg's phone from her hands, ignoring the smears of blood on it, and connected the call.
"Meg? Meg! Jesus fuckin' Christ, where are you? What's going on? Are you okay? I called you, like, twenty fucking times! Did someth-"
"Randy, it's Dave."
"Oh no...no, no, no...Dave, no...what...Dave..." Randy's mind whirled, and Dave winced. He'd gone about it all wrong, and it crashed home in that moment.
"No, Randy. Hang on. She's here." Nudging Meg, he passed her the phone.
"Ran? It's me. I'm...okay. I'm okay. I'm coming home."
"Meg, what the fuck is going on?" Roaring into the phone, trying to balance it under his chin and exchange sleepwear for streetwear, Randy fumbled back and forth in his suite, preparing to go out into the city and tear from building to building, car to car, in order to find Meg.
"Ran, listen. I have a headache, I don't wanna be on the phone long." 'Fucking understatement of the century, right there.' "Dave picked me up and I'm coming to the hotel. It was supposed to be a surprise. I just got sidetracked." Meg winced. 'Classy. That's how you're gonna explain Joe's wife dying? And that whole thing with Jackson? As a sidetrack?' "I'm gonna be there soon, Ran. I love you."
"I love you too, Meg. But fucking Christ, answer your phone. I still don't get what happened. You made me so-"
"I know. I'll explain what happened, okay? Trust me and stay at the hotel. I love you." Meg ended the call, leaving Randy wearing a decent shirt, pajama pants, and one sock, all while staring blankly at his phone.
"Meg, I swear to God. I swear to God. Everything better be okay." Randy shook his head, and tossed his phone on the table next to the bed, toeing off his sock before walking out to the balcony.
"Dave, promise me something?"
"What, Meg?" He eased the car into a parking spot at the hotel and draped his jacket over Meg, pulling the hood up over her head, glad for the extra coverage. She hadn't been cleaned up on the scene; there was no way she'd be able to walk through the hotel lobby looking like an extra from a horror film.
"You promise?"
"No. Not til you tell me. You just slammed your head through a window, I'm not doing shit about shit until I know it's a good – and legal – idea."
"You told me I had to tell Randy the truth, and that's what I came out here to do. Now...the truth changed a little. Yeah, I did all that shit in the locker room. My mind turned around on me. But...in the accident..." Meg trailed off, then shook her head, small bits of glass shivering out of her hair. "No. In this accident," she continued, firmly, "Jackson was there again, but so was Joe's wife. We were all outside the cars. Looking in."
"Oh for fuck's sake, Meg, you really, really need to get help. This is insane. Not you, I mean, but this. You can't-"
"No, listen." Meg reached for Dave's hand, and her grasp was terrifying in both its strength and its coldness. "Jackson told me, all us bitches are the same. He said I was so much work for him, such a pain for him, always fought him...so he took her. He said he'd take her, she was dead, and he'd leave me. Alone. Done."
"Meg, you hit your head. You're not hearing yourself. You need to-"
"Dave, that's what I'm gonna tell him. Not the locker stuff. The accident stuff. Jackson just wanted someone to be with him. She's more evil than me, Dave. Now he's got her, so he's happy. Happy and gone."
"You want me to tell you that you don't need therapy, or doctors, or help, because you hallucinated your dead ex outside of a second major car accident, and he promised you he'd evaporate because he found a better dead girl to replace you?"
"Well...yeah." Meg sounded sheepish, but squeezed Dave's hand all the same. 'Trust me? Please?' "But that's not all of it. Someone came to the house to steal he photo that was in the police reports. The guy kept saying 'the bitch' sent him. Who else could it be?"
Dave jolted in his seat, twisting his hands to grip Meg's. "You're fucking kidding. Please, Meg, tell me you're fucking kidding. You said something earlier and I thought you were kidding, but...you meant it?"
"No. I mean yeah, I meant it. Not kidding. But you...Dave, you can't say anything. I'll tell him. I'll tell him about Jackson, the photo, all of it. Just let me do it this way. Please? This time, I'm really ready for it to be over. I'm ready to be done with all of it."
"If Randy can tolerate this bullshit, I'll leave it alone. If not, no. Then you need to tell him the rest, too."
Dave phoned up to Randy's room from the lobby, Meg clinging to him like a barnacle afloat in a sea of fleece jacket. Randy, for his part, had to pin himself to the bed in order not to fly down to the lobby and carry Meg up to his room, regardless of the functionality of the elevators. Quietly, she entered Dave's room, with Dave angling her toward the bed, sliding his jacket from her shoulders, warning her to stay still and upright on the bed while he was gone.
"I'm just gonna go up to talk to Randy for a minute. Just to let him know...fuck, I don't know what. Do you think you should just go up with me?"
Meg was off in the ether, dazed from the impact of the accident and trying to dredge up remnants of her conversation with Jackson outside of their crushed cars, so she could explain things to Randy, even try to clarify a bit for Dave – but finding herself unable to do so. 'That's...that's good. I can't remember it right. I can't bring him back up, even if I'm telling myself to do it. I don't need to remember him fucking around in my head. All that craziness really is gone. He wanted to drag me down with him, make me like him – broken, angry, make me hate...something. Myself? – but I wouldn't do it. He took her because she was all that shit already. She was angry at Joe, at me...she hated me...she was as crazy as he was, just in different ways. But I don't remember it all that clear. That's...nice. It's quiet.'
"Meg? Meg, either tell me you're okay, tell me you're talking to Jackson, or tell me you need to go to the hospital."
"No...I'm actually...really good. I was trying to make myself think about Jackson. So I could explain it better to you, and then talk to Randy. But...I can't make him show up."
"Yeah, because you drove your fucking head through a window and then had a freezer land on you. Fuck it, I'm gonna call him and tell him we're here, clean you up, and then we're going upstairs. He can tell you that you're going to the hospital, and we're getting you a psych evaluation, too."
"No. I mean, yeah, I want to go see Randy. I want to get cleaned up – here, lemme see a washcloth." Meg dabbed at her face, not wanting to shake too much glass out of her hair until she was standing over a bedsheet and had a safe place to let the shards land. "But no...this is what I was trying to tell you. I can't bring Jackson up. He's not up there anymore." Meg gestured to her head.
Dave sighed heavily and dialed Randy, barely getting a word in edgewise before giving up and putting the receiver back on the phone's base and turning from the bedside table. "C'mon, Meg. Before he has a panic attack and I'm dealing with both of you."
Slowly, they made their way to the elevators, Meg's range of motion becoming more and more limited as her body slowly recognized the trauma it had experienced and soreness took over her muscles. It occurred to Dave that she smelled more like gasoline and exhaust fumes than rose oil, but there was little he could do about it – Randy would help her shower, he reasoned, and demand that Dave stay in the suite's spare bedroom in case anything went wrong with Meg. 'Guess I'm off triage duty tonight, and on Meg duty instead. I wonder how he's gonna spin this to Talent Relations to get her back in the door?'
Meg knocked on the door, and was both amused and shocked at the speed with which Randy was on top of it, throwing it open and lifting her from the floor up into his arms, barking both orders and questions at Dave in equal numbers. He headed directly toward the bed, but felt Meg pushing herself away from his chest, trying to look up at him and slow him down.
"Ran, stop. Pull the sheet off the bed and put it on the floor. I'm covered in glass again. There was an accident...I have to clean off."
"Where...what...Meg..." He set her on her feet, steadied her, and reached for her face, then her necklaces, then the tape he fully expected to find on her finger, then back to her face, not knowing where to let his hands settle first. Dave, annoyed with Randy's complete inability to follow even a simple direction, trailed after them both and pulled the quilt back, tugging out the sheet and spreading it on the floor next to the bed. Before Meg could even try to settle to the floor or shake the glass from her hair, Randy had scooped her up a second time and dropped to his knees on the floor, both of them leaning against the bed.
"Hey, you two. Listen. Especially you, Randy." Dave's voice took on a harsh edge, and both Randy and Meg looked up at him. "She obviously hit her head. Bad. Her neck is probably a mess. Collarbone, ribs, you name it. Bruising. She's going to be stiff. Can you take care of her – I mean, really take care of her – or do you want me to come back out here and watch her once you two have a chance to talk?"
Almost in a state of shock, Meg had to reach up and brush the side of Randy's face before he could manage a response. "How about...we talk for a while, and I'll come get you...later. Just later, Dave."
Grunting an assent, and knowing Randy would be coming to get him – but that it would be to talk through his own issues and fears, rather than to watch Meg – Dave retreated to the spare bedroom of the suite.
Slowly, with much help, Meg took her shirt off and laid it to her side – it was drying to her skin, anyway – trying to brush as much glass out of her hair and onto the sheet as she could while carefully, cautiously recounting the convoluted tale of the picture and pool deck, the lawn-tech-who-wasn't, and finally, the car accident. It was there she stuttered, not sure how to tell him Joe's wife was dead, and even less sure how to tell him that she'd seen Jackson for the last time.
Struggling for words, she started even further back, with her near-argument with Sarah before the gala and realizing her importance to Randy, then moved to her promise to herself at the gala – that she'd never again do to either one of them what so often happened where Jackson was involved, and what had happened in the locker room, where she'd fought both someone and something. Granted, Meg left out the details that the 'someone' was herself, and the 'something' was her mind, but she plowed ahead around those missing pieces. Randy quirked an eyebrow, but waited, knowing there was more. Meg took a deep breath, and explained that simply because it involved New Orleans, she felt Jackson in the room with her. That was why she wanted to badly to go back there with Randy, to clean the city for both of them and show him her home. He seemed to accept her explanation, and so Meg persevered.
It brought her to this night, the accident Joe's wife had caused, Meg's near-death and then the actual death Joe was dealing with, where Meg had seen Jackson yet again, and Randy sighed.
"Meg...how do we stop th-"
"He took Joe's wife. Not me. He said a bitch was a bitch."
"He wh-? You mean sh-? Meg, start over."
"Joe's wife died, Ran. And it was like we were all standing outside of the accident. Most of her head was just...gone, and she was still screaming at me about how I was worthless, I was always fucking things up for her and for Joe. He shoved me toward the cars, but held on to her. Said one bitch was as good as another, and he had what he wanted. That he was done. I explained it to Dave once already...it's hard for me to remember how it went. I can't make Jackson come back up in my mind. Even just about tonight."
"And you really believe that? That he's...just...gone? I mean, fuck, forget Joe for a minute-"
"Forget Joe permanently. Leave that alone. And, it's my mind, Ran. I've reacted to everything else it's given me, so far. It's been real enough, in real life. If my mind just told me it's over, then I – we – are gonna live like it's over. Like we don't have to-"
Exhausted, elated, Randy threaded his hand through Meg's bloody hair, ignoring the glass cutting at his fingers, pulling her deeply into his arms. "We don't have to, Meg. We're home."