Chapter 5: International Murphy´s Law Week Part Two
Murphy´s Law states clearly and concisely: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
Friday (Present day)
"Alright, what the fuck happened?" Eric Cartman asked his 'friend' Kyle Broflovski over the phone as he sped out of the disclosed location on the outskirts of South Park in the direction of City Hall
"I don´t know. She just passed out in the middle of a meeting. Kevin called an ambulance" Kyle answered
"Alright. I´m going straight to Hell´s Pass." Cartman said. "If the ambulance takes too long, take her in your car. I should be getting there in 15 minu"
Kyle heard a loud noise, similar to a balloon popping, which cut Cartman mid-sentence
"FUUUUUCK" Was all Cartman could say before the call went completely silent
"Cartman? Cartman?" Kyle asked into the phone
But Eric Cartman couldn´t respond. As soon as his tire got pierced, he lost control of the car and hit a road sign. He blacked out almost immediately.
"What the fuck!" Was all Kyle Broflovski could say to the other people in the room
Wednesday
"Evil cannot create. It can only pervert that which good forces have created" Once said Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien.
When God, answering the prayers of mankind asking for the cures of several diseases sent to earth brilliant men and women to develop medicine, Satan responded by inspiring sinners to pervert that into health insurance companies.
Or, at the very least, is what Wendy and Cartman currently believed as they were stuck in traffic at the entrance of Denver because the health insurance company wouldn´t cover having her cat-scan at Hell´s Pass. Only at a hospital in Denver.
"87.9! The 80´s nostalgia radio, coming to you at full force with Agadoo, by Black Lace!"
"aaaaaaaagaaaa" Cartman switched the radio station, making a demonic grunt in the process.
"Come on, honey, it´s not that bad" Wendy tried pleading with him
"I currently have a guy naked and tied to a ceiling listening to this song on repeat as a form of torture. Works every time" Cartman answered
"Well, I guess the song is that bad, but come on! We can go to dinner at Casa Bonita after this!" Wendy stated
"I guess" Cartman answered. "Still, the insurance company fucking sucks"
"Yes, it does" She agreed with him.
It was another hour driving before they could get to the hospital on top of the 4 hour drive from South Park. They both went together to Denver because Wendy´s car was in the shop, so she couldn´t drive and she also couldn´t drop Eric off at the undisclosed location in the outskirts of town because it was classified. Since it was a relatively long drive, they shared the wheel. Wendy drove the first half, Eric the second.
As they got into the hospital, they saw a very familiar man walking in crutches
"Wh what wh what the ffff fuck do you mmmmean, insurance doesn´t cover it?" Jimmy Valmer asked
"I´m sorry sir, but they are not clearing the payment" The lady at the desk answered.
"Well fine, I´m p-p-paying out of pocket, b-b-but you´ll hear from my l-l-laaaaaaaa….." He trailed off "But you´ll hear from my laaa laaaaaaw…."
"But you´ll hear from my la.. la…" Eric Cartman gave him a slight slap on his upper back "But you´ll hear from my lawyer. Thanks" Jimmy said to the man next to him, before recognizing it was…
"Eric c-c-Cartman! How long has it been?" Jimmy asked "Hey Wendy, good to see you!"
"Hey Jimmy. How´s it going?" Wendy said
"Alright, I g-g-guess." He said, signing the check to pay "I´m just taking Timmy´s kids for some exams"
"Wow. How long has it been, six years?" Cartman asked.
Timmy Burch had an interesting life. After graduating, he became a very respectable nuclear physicist, years later winning the Nobel prize at age 32 for discovering the theoretical side of faster-than-light travel. A while before that, he married a British actress and supermodel named Jane Dawson, with whom he had two children. A boy and a girl. Sadly, his laundry list of health problems caught up to him and he passed away at age 39. One year before his team proved his theory by teleporting a bag of Cheetos from the International Space Station to the Mars settlement.
"Yeah. Seven, next February. I m-m-miss him" Jimmy said. "I´m just here to t-t-take his kids for a few exams because J-J-Jane is shooting a movie in Bulgaria."
As expected, Jimmy was the godfather to both Jimmy´s kids and has been acting as their surrogate dad since Timmy passed away. Jimmy himself, as opposed to most of his friends, has been living the glorious bachelor life only being famous(SNL cast member and writer) and single at the age of 45 can provide.
"Look, there they are"
"JOHNNY!" Screamed a 15-year-old boy as he strolled his wheelchair out of the doctor´s office
"LILA!" Yelled a 9-old-girl beside him
"LIVE-A-LIE!" Johnny added
They all spoke in slightly British accents
"B-b-by the w-w-way, why are you guys here?" Jimmy asked
"Oh. I have breast cancer" Wendy answered
"Oh m-m-my God" Jimmy said
"No, it´s okay. We don´t know how serious it is yet, so we´re doing a few exams to figure it out. Fingers crossed, we caught it early" Wendy said
"Well, hope it all w-w-w-works out. I g-g-gotta go. I have to catch a flight at m-m-midnight back to New York." Jimmy said
"What for? Your SNL sketches suck" Cartman said, joking
"S-s-suck my balls, Cartman" Jimmy answered, flipping him off.
"We´re getting dinner at Casa Bonita after this. Wanna join us?" Wendy asked
"Well, as l-l-lovely as t-t-that sounds, it´s 3 o´clock already. I don´t know if you guys can get out of here before I go to the airport" Jimmy said
"Why the fuck not? It´s just a cat-scan. We should be out of here in one-hour tops" Cartman said
"Oh, you p-p-p-pooor bast….." Jimmy stumbled
"You poor baaaaaaaaast… you poor baaaaaaaaaaaaaa…" Cartman slapped him on the back again
"Oh, you poor bastards" Jimmy finished as he walked out
"What the hell did he mean by that?" Cartman asked
Seven Hours Later
"What the hell did he mean by that?" Wendy imitated her husband´s voice as they FINALLY got to their car.
"Oh, shut up, how could I have known?" Cartman said
"BECAUSE HE TOLD YOU! BECAUSE HE FUCKING TOLD YOU!" Wendy answered.
Considering it was 10 o´clock already, Casa Bonita was closing. And since neither of them wanted to drive 4 hours in the dark back to South Park, they both decided to get a hotel room and order room service burgers. The only silver lining of the day was that the room service burgers were actually good
Friday (Present Day)
As a kid, Stan Marsh hated his father´s Weed farm with a burning passion. As he grew older, however, he saw how much money it made and decided to skip college to learn the family business.
Nowadays, Randy Marsh was retired and Stan took care of the farm with his wife Henrietta. And considering Stan wasn´t a complete jackass, he actually managed to make Tegriddy Farms a respectable and lucrative business. No more deals with China, no more harassing competitors, just good old fashioned hard work and ACTUAL integrity.
Part of the daily routine of taking care of a weed farm was making deliveries into town and to the distributers. In was in that daily route that Stan found Eric Cartman´s car crashed against a road sign that read
Tegriddy Weed Farms
Made with Tegriddy
This way
"OH MY GOD!" Stan stopped the car immediately to help.
The car was completely trashed. Cartman himself, however, seemed to be in mostly one piece, if not for a few cuts on his face and the fact that he was unconscious. He seemed to be still breathing, though
"Come on, dude. Wake up" Stan slapped Cartman´s face trying to get Cartman to wake up
"Come on!" He tried again
"COME ON!" He tried shaking Cartman
"I fucked your mom!" Stan yelled.
"I´LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" Eric Cartman awoke in an angry scream. "uh, what? Where am I?"
Turns out, the "secluded location on the outskirts of town" was a bunker directly below Tegriddy Farms
"Tegriddy farms. Come on dude, let´s get you out of the car. I´m calling an ambulance" Stan said, opening the door.
"FUCK THAT! Take me straight to Hell´s Pass on your truck!" Cartman answered
"Dude, you need an ambulance. I can´t just take you in my truck, you need to get checked" Stan tried reasoning with Cartman. Or, as most people who know Cartman would call it, "Basic Mistake N.1"
"Wendy is being rushed to Hell´s Pass, you fag! Either drive me there right now or I´m kicking your ass and taking the truck!"
Stan needed no further encouragement to start the truck back up and speeding to Hell´s Pass that very instant. Cartman might be unable to kick his ass in his current state, but clearly, he had priorities other than his own well-being at the moment.
"Call Kyle, he took her there" Cartman said, remembering the details of what happened, as Stan obliged
"Dude, not now, I´m in the middle of an emergency here!" Kyle stated as he answered the phone
"Cartman filled me in. I´m going to Hell´s Pass with him right now" Stan said
"What happened? Why is Cartman with you?"
"He crashed his car. I found him…"
"Cheesy poofs!" Cartman said, interrupting Stan from saying the location of his car.
"…on Jamaica. He´s hurt, but we´re going there right now" Stan said
"Holy shit, dude!" Kyle said
As they drove, a very clueless Kenny McCormick crossed the street with a few groceries on his hand and Stan ran him over, but just kept driving
"Oh my God! I killed Kenny!" Stan said
"You bastard!" Kyle screamed
Thursday
The whole reason behind wanting to be mayor of South Park was the press that came with it. Having the dubious honor of being "the most controversial town in America" gave South Park a lot of nationwide media coverage, usually resulting in whoever gets to be mayor becoming a national political figure. Wendy wanted that so she could, a few years from now, move up the ladder and maybe go into the state legislature, maybe even to Washington DC.
It worked like a charm. It only took two years and 3 nationwide controversies surrounding South Park before Mayor Wendy Testaburger was referred to by democrats as "the voice of change" and by republicans as "a fucking libtard moron".
It did have it´s drawbacks, however. Chief amongst them, the army of news reporters waiting at South Park City Hall to interview Wendy as she and Cartman FINALLY made their way back to South Park from Denver.
"Mayor Testaburger! Mayor Testaburger! When did you discover the breast cancer?" One reporter asked
"Mayor Testaburger! How will your cancer treatment affect your duties as mayor?"
"No comment. No comment." She kept repeating as she desperately tried to make her way inside.
As soon as she managed, her first sight was Kyle exiting the male restroom
"YOU!" She pointed at him "You did this! This whole mess outside is your fault"
"Wendy, I´m sorry, I didn´t think someone would leak it to the press" Kyle said
"I´ve got half a mind to tie you up and let my husband mark a swastika on your balls!" Wendy said "It was bad enough explaining myself to Emily, now this?"
"Look, I´ll take care of this, alright? I´m gonna go outside and release a statement for them to go away" Kyle said
"REPEAT. AFTER. ME!: Mayor Testaburger isn´t offering any comments to the press at this moment and would like her medical privacy to be respected" Wendy recited
"Mayor Testaburger isn´t offering any comments to the press at this moment and would like her medical privacy to be respected" Kyle repeated, to reassure Wendy he understood.
"Good. You deal with the lions, I´ll deal with the budget."
It was brutal. Kyle spent half an hour repeating that statement like a parrot while attempting to talk about literally anything else. 'Thank God I only come to City Hall in the mornings' he thought to himself.
Making matters worse, a few reporters in the back decided to go after Cartman instead, trying to get literally any comment on Wendy´s cancer. And he couldn´t go to work followed by reporters because the location was classified.
In the end, he ditched his car next to the movie theater after he lost the reporters and walked a few blocks until Tweak Bros. Coffee, where he got in to wait out the mob.
"Cheesy Poofs" The voice on the other end answered Cartman.
"Snacky Smores. Look, I can´t get there right now. Do the agadoo routine until I can be sure they´re not following me anymore" Cartman said.
Thing is, he said that next to the cashier: Tweek himself.
"They´re following you? ACK! Who´s following you! Craig, they´re following him, they´re gonna get me and turn me into a military experiment. ACK!" Tweek said, calling his husband from the coffee machine, in the middle of a panic attack.
"Tweak, babe, no one´s following you, they´re following Cartman, not you. Have some cocoa." Craig said to his husband, giving him cocoa. "What the fuck is wrong with you dude? Who the fuck is following you? Why would you barge into here of all places and during a situation like this?"
"Look, it´s just some reporters, but I can´t let them follow me to work, okay? I´m outta here, Tweek is making too much of a scene anyway." Cartman said, exiting the store
"DON´T LET THEM GET YOU CARTMAN! ACK!" Tweek screamed as Cartman exited the store
Loud enough for all reporters to hear him
"Mr. Cartman, any comments on your wife´s condition?" The reporters asked.
If it was just him, Cartman would have simply told everyone to go fuck themselves. That, however, would have been a major blow to Wendy´s political aspirations. So he just ran, while trying to memorize some of their faces so they could "mysteriously disappear" in the future.
Friday (Present Day)
A truck full of weed and remains of a human skull on the bumper shield arrives at a hospital with a fat man who suffered a car crash. Sounds like the beginning of really bad joke, but it´s simply what happened as Stan and Cartman arrived at Hell´s Pass in a truck full of weed, with some of Kenny´s cranium stuck to the bumper shield.
"Dude, I really have to deliver this at the distributer, but I´ll be back here in 20 minutes" Stan said, looking at Cartman
"No. Don´t come back right away. If you really wanna help, hide my car. Go back to the farm and tow it into the barn or something." Cartman said "Also, tell absolutely NO ONE where you found me. Got that?"
"Fine, I´ll help with that. Just go in, dude." Stan said, as Cartman tried and failed to open the door.
"AAAAAAH!" Cartman screamed in pain
"What is it, dude?" Stan asked
"My left arm is broken."
"Holy shit, dude." Stan said
"Never mind that" He said, finally getting out of the truck and walking in the direction of the hospital
He had to physically fight his way inside, because every hospital worker around trying to get him into treatment.
He, on the other hand… "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! Where´s my wife?!" He screamed at anyone who would listen
Inside, a Jewish man could hear the commotion outside and went to find his friend.
"Dude! What the fuck happened?" Kyle asked as he saw the state of the man before him.
"Car crash, fuck that, that´s not important right now. Where´s Wendy?" Cartman asked
"Observation, dude. Her vitals are stable, she´s basically just sleeping right now. Stop fighting the staff and let them take care of you." Kyle answered
"THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU USE CODE CHICKEN POT PIE?" Cartman asked, furious at the fact his hellish ordeal on the way to hell´s pass could have been avoided entirely
"I DIDN´T KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING ANYMORE THAN YOU DID WHEN I CALLED YOU, ASSHOLE!" Kyle screamed back at him, as Cartman finally let the orderlies take him inside in a wheelchair.
3 hours later
"Well, alright fellers. Both of you gave everyone quite a scare today, huh?" Butters said to Cartman and Wendy sitting next to each other.
"What the fuck are you doing here, I thought you were a pussy doctor" Cartman asked him
"Well, uh, when the hospital´s full and they don´t need a gynecologist, I help out with stuff like this" Butters answered
"What happened to me?" Wendy asked, still somewhat groggy.
"Well, from what I can tell by the exams, it was nothing but stress. You got yourself all stressed out and your body decided to get you some rest" Butters said
"Now, you on the other hand" He pointed at Cartman "are the luckiest guy in South Park. By all means, you should be dead in the ground, mister! That fracture on your left arm? That force should have cracked your spine and I have no gosh darn idea how it didn´t. Broken arm, two cracked ribs, minor concussion and assorted lacerations on the body." Butters said
"Yeah" Cartman said, in somewhat of a monotone "I guess I am very lucky"
He looked at his wife, lovingly
"Now, you best drive safer from now on, mister. Don´t you be coming back here anytime soon" Butter´s said "Now, your problems might be different, but my prescription is the same for both o´ ya. Bed rest. A week of bed rest before you two try anything more."
"Alright Butters. We will do that." Cartman said "Thanks bruh."
Wendy was somewhat worried. Cartman was being uncharacteristically quiet during all of this. Being silent, talking quietly and only if talked to…
It was weird seeing her husband like this.
"Hey Kyle. Me and Wendy are getting out of Hell´s Pass right now, can you pick us up?" Cartman asked on the phone
"Sure. Be there in five"
The drive back home was mostly quiet. Kyle offered to stop somewhere for take-out, but Cartman decided to order when they got home.
Almost as silent as a tomb, right up until the moment when Cartman said
"Kyle"
"What?" Kyle asked
"Thanks, bro. For everything today" Cartman said
Kyle noticed this was the first time in years that Cartman spoke with any sort of endearment to him. They didn´t need to do stuff like this to remain close as brothers. It only made the moments when they did let this stuff happen more special
"No problem, dude. You would have done the same" Kyle answered, two minutes before dropping them off at home
As soon as the door to their house was closed, Cartman engulfed Wendy in a very tight hug and did something she had rarely see him do.
In fact, even after nearing 30 years of relationship, she couldn´t remember him doing this for the life of her
"I´m sorry! I´m an idiot! I thought I was losing you and I just drove as fast as the car would take me. I thought you were… Oh God…"
For what perhaps was the first time in all of his adult life, Eric Cartman was crying.
Wendy could only hold him and cry too.
Author´s note: I´ve loved writing those two chapters and I hope you love them too. Review, please.