The Morning After
by L. Inman
Elisabeth woke
when the book she had been holding slid off her stomach and hit the rug with a
loud whap. She jerked her head up and blinked blurrily,
then threw the down blanket off her legs and dragged herself off the couch. The blinds were still drawn, but she could
tell it was broad morning; faint lines of daylight had crept into the dim
room.
She padded quietly into her bedroom
to check on Rupert. He was snoring
heavily and looking, if anything, worse than he had the night before. But at least he was asleep. Tentatively she laid the back of her hand
against his forehead; yes, he was still feverish. He was certainly not going anywhere today, or
tomorrow even. Did he say he had a plane
ticket out of Heathrow in two days?—Make that one day, now. “As if!” Elisabeth murmured.
They’d be expecting him back in
Elisabeth stood cogitating in the
doorway for an embarrassingly long time before the answer came to her. She went and found Rupert’s burberry, and
went through all the pockets. She found
his airline return ticket, a few train-ticket stubs, some change, both American
and British, a penknife, a pencil stub, a rental-car key, and a cluster of
credit card receipts; but no address book.
Wouldn’t Rupert have Buffy’s number memorized anyway? But maybe there was something in his
luggage. Surely he had luggage. Elisabeth
picked up the rental-car key and stared at it thoughtfully.
Outside, the light was dazzling and
the city was alive with activity.
Elisabeth shook her head and blinked hard, adjusting her glasses and
tightening the belt on her robe, which she had thrown on over her leggings and
T-shirt. No one looked askance at
her: you would have thought that
Before going back inside she paused
to look in the passenger window once more, and saw something she had missed the
first time: a little sheaf of papers in the passenger-seat floor area, on top
of which sat a flimsy little notebook with gold lettering: Addresses. “Aha!” Elisabeth said. She unlocked the door and stepped between the
curb and the car (almost losing one of her carpet slippers in the process) to
scoop up the papers and address book.
She curled them neatly into a roll, stuffed the lot into her robe
pocket, worked her carpet slippers more firmly under her toes, and locked up
the car.
It was as she was wrangling the
suitcase onto the pavement that she noticed the occupied car a few slots up the
row: a nondescript black sedan with a
young sullen-faced man smoking in the driver’s seat, and another next to him,
whose face was obscured as he struggled with a shiny new map of
Her heart beat faster. So the Council had succeeded in following
Rupert after all. They were watching her
flat like cats outside a mousehole. She
reached shakily down for the handle of the suitcase and began to pull it after
her toward her front door.
She had only gone a few steps when
her fear flipped suddenly over into anger.
Except for her little prank with Brian, she had taken extra care to stay
out of the Council’s way: it didn’t seem at all wise to alert them to her
existence, as it would doubtless wind up placing her in their power; but on the
other hand, Rupert was expected to network his own friends, and if he preferred
their ministrations to those of the Council of Watchers, who were they to
interfere?
Elisabeth executed an about face, a
remnant of her marching-band days, and began to drag the suitcase the other
way. It bumbled and growled its way
behind her until she stopped directly in front of the passenger window of the
Watchers’ car. She rapped sharply on the
glass: the man with the
The
“That’s all for you,” Elisabeth
said. “You can push off now.”
The young one bristled. “And who the fuck are you?” Elisabeth ignored him.
“I beg your pardon?” the older one
said.
For a fleeting moment Elisabeth had
a giddy moment of mixed hilarity and fear: had she been wrong? But looking at the older man’s face (a
perfect study in innocent confusion), her confidence returned as his familiar
features clicked into place in her mind.
“It’s Mr. Robson, isn’t it?” she
said pleasantly.
The young one sneered. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, tart,”
he said, “but you’d better piss off sharpish.”
Instead of looking at him, Elisabeth
gave her disparaging glare to Mr. Robson, bracing her hands on the windowsill
of the car. “You’re superfluous,” she
told him. “There’s no need to keep a
watch on this flat. Rupert’s too sick to
go anywhere, and when he does it’ll likely be straight onto the plane and to
that address at which you usually keep him under surveillance. So if there’s any pissing off to be done,
it’ll be by you.”
“And who the fuck do you think
you’re cheeking—” the young turk blustered, but Mr. Robson held up his hand,
stemming the flow.
“I have my orders,” he said stolidly
to Elisabeth.
“And I’m telling you your orders are
a waste of time and resources,” Elisabeth said flatly. “Rupert’s in safe hands, if his safety is in
fact what you care about.”
“Safe hands,” snorted the young
driver. “Oh, I’ll bet he’s safe—safe in the hands of his little tart.”
Elisabeth did not spare him the
dignity of a glance, but she did notice in her peripheral vision that he had a
lovely little shiner under his right eye.
She felt a glimmer of satisfaction:
Chalk one up to the old man….
Before she could tell Robson that
she was accustomed to being addressed with respect, Robson said to his
companion: “Shut up.” He did not remove his eyes from
Elisabeth’s. “It’s a complicated
matter,” he said to her.
Oh, it was complicated all
right: Elisabeth could see it suddenly,
as if it were all laid out before her.
Buffy Summers was dead: but the Council couldn’t just pick up where
Buffy had left off, because the Slayer line didn’t pass through her anymore—it
passed through Faith, the rogue Slayer who was more or less permanently
incarcerated in some
“I suppose I should be grateful
you’re not camped out here with the wetworks squad,” she said bitterly.
“Damn right,” the young turk said,
but both Elisabeth and Robson were thoroughly ignoring him now.
“We’re at a bit of a crossroads,”
Robson admitted, making the young man stare at him in horror.
“And you expect to find me
sympathetic.” Elisabeth pushed off from
the car and found the handle of Rupert’s suitcase again. “In all frankness,” she said, bringing her
Midwestern drawl for emphasis, “I don’t have much use for Watchers—” Robson
convulsively glanced around to check no one was listening, as Elisabeth wasn’t
really troubling to lower her voice— “but Rupert Giles is a friend. He’ll be safe with me, and he won’t get into
any trouble. That’s as much as you can
hope for from him right now, so you may as well leave.”
“You can’t make us leave,” sneered
the young turk. Robson rolled his
eyes. Elisabeth had the distinct
impression that this fellow was on his way out.
She thought about making a crack about Council nepotism, but decided on
balance to stick to her plan of ignoring him altogether.
In the end she merely shrugged. “Play it however you like,” she said to
Robson. “Your call.” She lugged and tilted the suitcase till it
was pointed the other direction and prepared to head back down the pavement to
her door.
“Wait,” Robson said.
Elisabeth turned.
“Who are you?”
Elisabeth smiled dryly. “I would have thought there’d be a dossier on
me in the Council’s files by now. I’m
disappointed. Well, at least there’s
probably a file somewhere on the person or persons unknown who loaded up
Quentin Travers’s Lexus SUV with garden snakes.” Elisabeth shook her head, smiling. “I’d’a loved to have seen his face.”
She went her way, undeterred; but
had the satisfaction as she turned away of seeing the young turk’s mouth wide
open and a faint, very Watchery smile in Robson’s face.
*
Back in the
house, she rifled Rupert’s luggage on the couch and removed the dirty clothing
to put in the wash. There was nothing of
much significance in the suitcase besides clothes for a week’s journey, the
nicer articles packed (and then more messily repacked) in tissue paper to prevent
wrinkling. She pulled the sheaf of
papers and the address book out of her robe pocket, laid them on her desk atop
the piles of open books and papers that represented her work on her essay; took
up the address book and flipped to the ‘S’ section. The number of the house was there, in
Rupert’s small, neat handwriting.
Elisabeth drew a breath and put down the address book. It would be too early to call Sunnydale as
yet; she would wait a few hours till the afternoon. She let out the breath she’d drawn, and tried
to ignore the small shake in her fingers.
The rest of the papers were mostly
unenlightening, car rental agreements and a flight itinerary—until she came to
the last, a stapled packet titled “Slayer Guardian Termination Materials.” Below the header was a table of
contents: “Guardian Watcher’s Duties”
followed by the subheads Report of Final Combat, Release of Watcher’s Diaries,
Sealing Vows (whatever those were); then “Reassignment”, “Stipendiary Alterations”,
“Retirement and Pension”, and “Honorariums and Privileges.”
A knot forming in her stomach,
Elisabeth flipped slowly through the packet.
It had clearly been prepared by the Council’s secretaries; Rupert would
never have used a computer with a high-quality laser printer to prepare this. She read carefully through Rupert’s sober
account of the “Final Combat”; it was pretty much as she knew it: Dagonsphere,
troll hammer, Buffybot—Glory dead in combat, with a deceptive level of detail
that obscured Rupert’s role (“I wouldn’t give that to them either,” Elisabeth
whispered); the ritual bloodletting of the Key, clearly named as Buffy’s
sister—no harm in letting that fall now, as Dawn no longer opened
anything—Buffy’s willing sacrifice. A
coda in which Rupert outlined plans being set in motion for protecting the
Hellmouth in Buffy’s absence.
Despite the bloodless austerity with
which Rupert had written his report, Elisabeth had a sudden choking sense of
his nakedness before the Council. She
swallowed the dry ache in her throat and flipped on to the next section. Release of the Watcher’s Diaries; well, of
course—a Guardian Watcher knew his diaries were more important than those of a
Watcher at an ordinary post, and liable to release once his Slayer was dead. The Sealing Vows turned out to be a mutual
agreement between the Council’s representatives and the Watcher that the
Slayer’s secrets would not be revealed to any other being. “Well,” Elisabeth said, her eyes on Rupert’s
photocopied signature (small and sober, like all his writing, but with a
savage, graceful flourish on his T-cross), “at least they have some
decency.” Though, she remembered, Rupert
assumed they were following him to make sure he didn’t break this vow; and how
exactly could Rupert bring any recriminations if they broke it? Elisabeth sighed and turned to the final
pages: a list of posts currently open for Rupert to choose among—easy posts, by
the look of them—a rundown of the manner in which his salary would increase
(increase, Elisabeth noticed, not decrease)—instructions for early
retirement—free run of all libraries—speaking engagements, if he chose, to
Watcher conclaves around the world—
Elisabeth flipped the packet shut
with a slap. “Talk about your thirty
silver pieces,” she murmured. Her
stomach roiled.
From her bedroom she heard a creak
of the mattress, then a moan. She put
down the packet and hurried in to him.
He was lying on his back breathing
fast, and his eyes darted around him, wincing at the sunlight, searching for
something he could recognize. He was near
panic. She moved quickly into his
sightline but did not offer to touch him, instead relying on her voice to get
his attention. “Rupert,” she said
quietly. “It’s all right. You’re in a safe place. It’s okay.”
Not that it was, but it was something one said.
Rupert’s eyes fixed on her, but no
meaning seemed to come into his face.
“You know me,” she said.
“Elisabeth Bowen. You recognize
me?”
He let his head fall back. “Of course I recognize you. I’m not that delirious.”
She let out her breath in a full
sigh. “Good.” She moved closer to the bedside, looking down
at him. “You look pretty awful. How do you feel?”
Rupert had shut his eyes, and he
left them shut. “Like warm shit.”
She snorted a laugh. “Fairly commensurate, then. Want some tea?”
“I don’t want any bloody tea.”
“Okay,” she said. He opened his eyes to her, clearly surprised
that she did not argue, but she was already moving away, around the bed to the
window, where she moved aside the curtain to look outside as she opened the window
wider to the air. The sedan was gone.
“What are you looking for?” he
asked.
She turned. She had not been expecting him to be so
perspicacious. She gave him a grimacing
shrug. “Dunno really,” she said, moving
again to conceal the mistake. She came
back to his side and sat down on the edge of the bed, gingerly so as not to
disturb him. He looked really awful at
this close range: there were puffed
bruises under his eyes, his stubble was a dirty silver coating his sunken skin,
and as he moved to accommodate her, a sour, sick smell rose from his
T-shirt. His hair was half-flattened,
half tortured into fantastic shapes.
Elisabeth was unable to stop the sigh.
He opened his eyes, pale hazel in
the daylight, and zeroed his gaze on her face.
“What were you looking for?” he asked again, in a tone that, however
weak, would brook no dissimulation.
She lowered her shoulders and sighed
deeply. “Your Mr. Robson was out
there. I told him to go away. Looks like he did.”
“You spoke to him?”
Elisabeth sighed again. “Yes,” she said. “I figured if he’s here, there’s no point
pretending he isn’t.”
Rupert groaned. “I didn’t mean to do this to you. I thought I’d lost them, damn it. Now they know about you—probably planning to
ambush you right now—”
“Maybe,” Elisabeth said, amused,
“but probably not today. Anyway, I think
Robson likes me. He’s a Watcher, unlike
his stoaty little companion. Where does
the Council dig up twats like that?”
Rupert answered only with feverish
eyeroll.
“I noticed you gave him a pretty
little shiner. Good for you.”
“I thought you disapproved of my
antics last night.”
“I do. I just happen to be glad they resulted in
pain for that guy.”
He snorted a laugh, then groaned
again. “My head’s killing me.”
“That’s not surprising,” Elisabeth
said. “You haven’t eaten anything
recently, have you?”
This raised a more urgent groan from
him, and he turned his head. “Please
don’t—mention—”
“Sorry,” she said. “We are going to have to get something down
you soon, though. You’re still in a bad
way, if you haven’t already guessed.”
Her words sounded harsh in her own
ears, but she couldn’t help it; she had always let other people do the nursing
and the handling of emergencies, and felt at a loss now watching Rupert blink
and resist the urge to writhe.
“Rupert….” She tried to frame the
question delicately. “Do you…have a
regular doctor in
“No,” he muttered, gritting his
teeth. “No doctor.”
“Does that mean, No, I don’t have a
doctor—or No, I don’t want a doctor?”
Elisabeth said.
“Don’t want one,” he said.
“Out of your hands,” she said. “Do you have one?”
“No,” he said: a single-syllabled
masterpiece of triumphant misery.
Elisabeth pursed her lips and let
out a sigh. This was the sort of thing
that made her doubt her basic humanity:
simultaneous with her concern for him was an urge to hurt him, to make
him sorry—for what, she wasn’t sure; frustration at his stubbornness didn’t
seem to cover it. But all she said was,
“If your fever hasn’t come down by the afternoon I’m calling a doctor.”
She got up and moved toward the
door, but his next words stopped her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Remorse hit her in the solar plexus,
and she turned around. “No,” she said
huskily, “I am. I’m very bad at
this.” She drew close to his bedside
again, more words on her lips, but they died unspoken; she moved a hand to
stroke his where it lay on top of the covers.
After a moment, she blurted: “Why
did you come to me?”
He blinked up at her face, his
feverish gaze searching and slightly pained.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Elisabeth said quickly, recovering
herself. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you did. Don’t worry about it. Just…we’ll get you well, and on your way back
home.”
Rupert shut his eyes. “Home,” he murmured bitterly. Then he opened them again. “I need to—could you—?” He stirred, trying to sit up, and she pulled
back the covers and put out a hand ready to support him when he got his feet to
the floor. He drew a heroic breath and
tried to stand up on his own, but his knees shook under him and he sat down
again sharply, the mattress creaking in mild protest. “I think,” he said mildly, “I may need
help.” New sweat shone on his forehead.
Unbidden, Elisabeth broke into a
smile. “You think?” She swallowed the rest of her laughter to get
her arm under his and lever him to his feet.
They proceeded slowly out of her room, one step at a time. “God,” Elisabeth said, struggling under the
awkward weight of his arm and shoulder, “you’re burning up.”
He said nothing; she craned her head
up to get a look at his face. It seemed
that it wasn’t just a literary convention to say that people looked green when
sick: interesting, she thought. He clung
to her shoulders, keeping his eyes on the bathroom door as they staggered
slowly along.
In the bathroom she let him down
onto the toilet seat as gently as she could, where he planted his elbows on his
knees and dropped his forehead into his hands.
She decided to leave him with the last scraps of dignity and let him
take care of his business himself; she, meanwhile, intended to do what she
could about that damned fever. She
bustled out to the utility alcove to get some washcloths from the top of the
dryer, and on her way back nicked the plastic dishpan from under the kitchen
sink.
Back in the bathroom she turned on
the cold tap and ran it over her fingers a moment preparatory to filling the
dishpan, keeping an eye on him in the meantime.
He had not raised his head from his hands, and she wasn’t sure if he’d
already done what he needed. “Rupert,”
she said uneasily, “when you’re ready, let’s get you back to bed.”
He raised his head, to answer, she
thought—but then she saw the urgent inward look and his vague outstretched
hand, and plucked the dishpan off the counter and held it ready for him, just
in time.
He didn’t have much to bring up, but
it didn’t stop him heaving for a long time; he was shaking too hard to hold the
plastic tub, so she held it with one hand and used the other to hold his head
braced up from the crown. Her mind used
the time to rant at him: Rupert, you idiot bastard, why did you let
it get to this point? You should have
gone back to the hospital, instead of—damn and blast it to hell, the Council
could have bloody well waited for their goddamned report—damn Robson and the
rest of them, stoats all of them—why’d you give them yourself in this
condition?—If you can’t keep anything down you’re going to the hospital for
sure, I don’t care if you don’t forgive me—Don’t need a doctor, my fucking
foot—Why didn’t you let yourself collapse before now, it’s not like a little
extra work would hurt Willow and the others—Dammit, you don’t owe anybody
anything, what the hell were you thinking?
And if the point was to kill yourself filling in all the blanks, why
come to me? You should have known I was
going to—
It looked as though he was
finished. Elisabeth put down the tub at
his feet and went to wet a washcloth at the still-running tap. She saw him reach down shakily and pick up
the tub to spit in it, once, with the faintest air of sardonic comment.
She went to him and lifted his chin,
to swab his face with the wet washcloth.
“You,” she said tartly, unable to help herself, “are an idiot.”
As the cloth passed below his eyes
he opened them to her with a look that as good as said Thank you very much. Aren’t I
suffering enough without being dressed down as well?
“I don’t care,” Elisabeth answered
him. “Look what you’ve done to
yourself. It’s criminal.” There was a rawness in her voice she couldn’t
control, and his eyes dropped.
She rinsed the washcloth and washed
his face again. “Give me your hands,”
she said, and washed them too, one by one.
She put the dishpan in the bathtub, to rinse later, noting with relief
that he hadn’t brought up any blood, and she was spared that worry.
The trek back to her bedroom was
punctuated with lengthy pauses for Rupert to fight his nausea (Elisabeth had
thoughtfully grabbed a hand towel for this journey); and he sank back into her
bed paler than ever, his breathing shallow.
She covered his shaking body and, after making sure he wasn’t going to
spasm into nausea again, went back into the bathroom to rinse out the plastic
basin in the tub.
He was too sick for her to take care
of. That much was becoming painfully
clear. She turned her subconscious rant
upon herself. She should have called
Brian last night, she should have called the hospital the minute he arrived,
she should have got a doctor here at the very least—
She returned to his bedside with the
dishpan and a large bowlful of cold water.
“Brought this back in case the nausea makes a curtain call,” she said,
placing the dishpan next to his pillow and sitting down gingerly at his
side. “You’re nowhere near getting down
any aspirin, are you?”
He shook his head, eyes closed. His lips, she saw, were pale and clamped
thin. He opened them briefly to utter,
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” she said. “I’m done with the scolding. Don’t worry about it any more. Let’s just tackle this fever.”
He shivered hard as she brushed his
face and arms with the cold wet washcloth.
She kept at it silently for about ten minutes, then wet the cloth
thoroughly and arranged it over his broad forehead. His eyes remained closed.
“Could you take some water?” she
asked. He gave his head a small shake. “Okay,” she said.
She put a thermometer in his mouth;
waited, then read it. “Your fever’s over
102,” she told him. “If it doesn’t come
down to 100 within an hour, I have to
call a doctor.”
“Nnngh,” was Rupert’s only response.
“Good, I’m glad you read me.” But her voice was gentler than it had been.
“Loud and clear,” he answered,
almost inaudibly.
She smiled again, and bent to kiss
his face, just below his closed eye.
“I’m going to have some tea,” she said, getting up. “Call if you need me.”
She turned briefly in the doorway,
almost just missing the glint of his opened eyes under the washcloth, before he
closed them again and sighed deeply.
*
Elisabeth took
her tea, but only managed to consume half of it with any comfort before getting
up to pace the livingroom nervously. She
was wracked with a continual urge to go in to him and see if his fever had
abated any, but she knew that disturbing him was unlikely to help him
convalesce. She also had very dim hopes
of being able to avoid calling for a doctor.
She glanced over at her desk, where the phone book was buried under a
pile of notes and papers; she had never shut down her laptop, and she could
hear it humming wearily, waiting for her to wake it up and start typing again.
She was contemplating the
unlikelihood of getting back to work today when she heard a bad sound from her
bedroom, and hurried in to help.
He was retching again. His washcloth had slipped off, and he was
partially upright, curled over the basin at his side; but Elisabeth saw that he
now had nothing at all to bring up, and his heaves were practically
bone-dry. It no longer comforted her
that he wasn’t bringing up blood; straightforward infection or no, he was
completely dehydrated and—she felt vaguely at his face—no less feverish than
before.
His paroxysm abated, and he fell
back against the pillows with a soft groan.
She took up the fallen washcloth, wet it again, and mopped gently at his
hands and face.
“I think it’s time to call a
doctor,” she told him as she rearranged the cloth on his head.
He nodded acquiescently, shivering.
“Are you all right for the moment?”
He nodded again, though he clearly
wasn’t.
“I’ll be right back.”
She went shaking to her desk and
unearthed the phone book from the clutter.
Coins, tokens, and index cards slid and tinkled down like scree from a
blasted slope. Elisabeth opened the book
and started wiping through the pages.
How the hell did one call for a doctor in
It was then that the doorbell rang.
Elisabeth strode to the door and
rose on tiptoe to the peephole. A woman
she didn’t know, with iron-gray hair.
“I’m not going to mess around with time-wasters,” Elisabeth muttered as
she yanked the door open.
The woman wore a grey tweed
dress-suit and carried an awkwardly-bulging satchel crossed over her thin
shoulders and sternum. She peered
incisively at Elisabeth’s bathrobed dishevelment through thick glasses. “Good day,” she said. “My name is Dr. Kettering-Carter. I’m a friend of Mr. Robson. He gave me to understand there is a sick
person at this residence.”
Elisabeth rolled her whole body as
well as her eyes. “Do you people never
give up?” she growled, bracing
herself wearily in the doorway. “What
makes you think I’m letting a Council doctor in here?”
“I’m not Council,” the doctor said
equably. “I’m a friend of Mr.
Robson. Watchers do,” and here her thin
lips moved in a dry smile, “find their non-Council-affiliated friends invaluable
at times.”
Elisabeth snorted to avoid a
laugh. After a moment of reaching
stalemate with the other woman’s gaze, she stepped back so that the doctor
could come in. “Not that I’m trusting
you, mind,” she said, as the doctor brushed gently past her into the flat. “He’s in my bedroom. Through there.”
The doctor strode briskly into the
bedroom, with Elisabeth trailing anxiously, and put her heavy satchel over her
head to set down on the foot of the bed.
“And you must be the patient,” she said to Rupert, who was looking, if
possible, even more seedy than he had a minute ago. “I’m Dr. Kettering-Carter. And your name is?”
Rupert blinked up from under his
damp cloth. “Rupert Giles,” he
said. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Mr. Robson,” she
answered, plucking away the cloth and lifting his wrist. She shook her watch free of her tweed sleeve
and set her incisive gaze upon it.
“Council?” Rupert murmured.
“Indeed not, or your admirable
friend would not have admitted me to her home.
Mr. Robson and I,” she said, “take turns owing each other favors.” She put down his wrist with a small cluck,
flipped open her satchel, and drew out a digital thermometer.
“Who owes now?” Rupert inquired
faintly, as she sought his ear with the device.
“Robson,” the doctor said,
succinctly.
“Ah.”
The thermometer beeped, and the
doctor removed it to read. “102.9. Not propitious.”
“Damn,” Rupert said. He moved his head so that the doctor could
look at his eyes with her penlight.
“I understand you have been
injured.”
Rupert’s hand drifted down to his
ribs in response. Gently she pulled down
the covers and lifted his limp T-shirt.
As Elisabeth watched, the doctor peeled away the dressing she had put on
his wound the night before and examined the stitches through her thick glasses. “Hmm,” the doctor said softly.
“He hasn’t thrown up any blood,”
Elisabeth piped up. Her voice caught in
her throat halfway through the sentence, and she cleared it.
“Thank goodness for small
mercies.” The doctor refastened the
adhesive tape. “I’ll change this
later.” She reached into her satchel
again and came out with two hypodermics.
Elisabeth shifted back a step, so that she was leaning against the
doorframe, and put her hands behind her.
But it wasn’t till the doctor bid Rupert turn over that she lost her
nerve and went out into the hall, so as not to see what she did to him from
behind. Her gaze drifted over the stasis
of mess in her flat: the phonebook she’d unearthed from her desk, the litter of
paper and notes that had fallen to the floor, the untouched books, the empty
cups and glasses, Rupert’s luggage, rifled and spilling out onto the ratty
couch. Deep breaths, she told herself.
He’ll be all right.
But of all the things to
happen! Elisabeth didn’t trust
serendipity, in this dimension or any other, and she was suspicious of the
doctor’s appearance—what was her name again?
Why on earth had she let the woman in instead of calling the hospital
like a person with brains would
do? And what business had she getting
squeamish and hanging out in the hall while that doctor did God-knew-what to Rupert?
Screwing up her courage, Elisabeth
made an about-face and went back into her bedroom, in time to see the doctor
stowing her empty hypodermics in a disposal box. “Well?” she croaked. “What’s the story?”
The doctor (Elisabeth still couldn’t
remember her name) looked up. “I’ve
given him an anti-emetic and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. He’s badly dehydrated; as soon as the
anti-emetic takes effect we’ll have to rehydrate him. Do you have any electrolyte fluid in the
house?”
Elisabeth shook her head.
“We’ll need to get some. The local chemist stocks it, I believe. In fact, if you go now, we can have it when
he’s ready for it.” The doctor named two
brands and where to look for them. But
Elisabeth shook her head again.
“I can’t leave him,” she said.
The doctor lowered her chin and
regarded her gravely. “He needs the
fluid,” she said. “Otherwise he’ll have
to be hospitalized.”
“I understand that,” Elisabeth said,
her voice growing reedy as she firmed it.
“But I’m not leaving him.”
The doctor looked her in the eye for
a long moment; it appeared that she was nobody’s fool, for she said after a
pause: “Very well then. I’ll go and get the necessary items. It shouldn’t take long. Here.”
She reached into her jacket pocket for a card and pen, and scribbled a
number on the back. “If there are any
distressing developments, ring this number.”
She checked her pockets swiftly and without another word strode out of
the room. A moment later there was the
quiet, efficient click of the front door; and then silence.
Elisabeth wandered to the window and
looked out. Robson had not returned, and
she could just see the doctor’s sensible skirt whipping out of sight down the
road. She sighed heavily.
“You could have gone, you know,”
Rupert said quietly from the bed. “She’s
all right; she wouldn’t have hurt me.”
Elisabeth’s throat ached, and she
cleared it. “I know.” She moved round to his side of the bed and
sat down carefully at his side.
His eyes were closed. Elisabeth studied his face: the strained,
drawn look had eased somewhat, and his color was the tiniest bit better. She smoothed the covers over his chest, in a
brief, idle movement.
“I came to you,” he said softly,
“because I knew you wouldn’t need to ask questions. And because you felt safe.”
She barked out a small laugh at
that, but her throat ached worse than ever.
“Safe, you call me,” she said.
“If I were a competent friend I’d have called the hospital last night.”
He opened his eyes, which though
still feverish were clear. “You did what
I asked you,” he said. “You did more
than that. I seem to recall being very
stupid about a cup of tea.”
She laughed, and the sting in her
eyes abated a little. “You really were.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, for
the umpteenth time; but he was smiling faintly, and in relief she reached to
smooth his wayward hair. “I don’t
remember much,” he added. “Please
forgive anything else I did—that was—”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You didn’t have the wherewithal to do
anything much other than be stubborn.”
He shut his eyes again.
“And now all you have to do is
rest.”
“I’m never going to make my flight
at this rate,” he murmured.
“No.
I’ll call Sunnydale and let them know you’ll be delayed.”
“All right,” he said. He sighed, and relaxed into a peaceful limbo
that Elisabeth could tell was not quite sleep, not quite waking. She smoothed his hair once more, then stood,
aching.
She had a phone call to make.
*
“Hello?”
To Elisabeth’s immense relief, it
was
“Y-es,”
“This is Elisabeth Bowen. You may not remember me; I was in Sunnydale
for a short time last year, and Rupert sent me to
“Oh...oh! Yes, I remember....Oh.” Elisabeth listened apprehensively to her
pensive pause. “Is...is something
wrong?”
“Well,” Elisabeth said, “I guess
that depends. Rupert is here.”
“Oh, thank God.
“I think he will be,” Elisabeth
said, controlling a deep shiver. “He’s
too sick to go anywhere at present. He’s
at my flat, with a doctor attending to him, and he’ll probably be here a few
days at least.”
“Well—that’s—that’s good. He needs to rest. Is there anything…anything we can do?”
Elisabeth tried to think, but her
mind turned over helplessly on her. “I—I
don’t think so. I’ll give you my
telephone number so you can call if you need to, but really the only thing
seems to be resting and waiting.”
“Let me get a pen.”
Elisabeth gave
“You’ve found Giles? Is he okay?
Let me talk to him.” There was a
rattle, and the voice came clear over the line.
“Giles?”
Elisabeth cleared her throat. “No, it’s—”
“Who’s this? Where’s Giles? Is he okay?”
“Dawnie,” Elisabeth heard
“Is Giles okay?” Dawn insisted.
Elisabeth forced her voice to work
before the tearful strain in the girl’s voice could get any worse. “He’s all right. He’s worn himself to exhaustion, but he’s
resting now, and he’s going to be all right.
He’s at my apartment, where it’s safe.”
These were half-truths, but they weren’t outright lies, and Elisabeth
had no intention of lying to Dawn of all people.
“He’s all right,” Dawn repeated, not
making it a question.
“He’s got a doctor attending him and
everything.”
“They make…house calls in
“Some do,” Elisabeth said wryly.
“So who are you?” This with the cool
aggression of the very young.
“His friend Elisabeth,” she heard
“No,” Elisabeth said feebly. “I’ll call if there are any urgent
developments.”
“Okay,”
“It’s no problem,” Elisabeth
said. She sat down in her desk chair,
feeling faint; and sat there a long moment even after the call had ended.
She felt as if she had been spun a
hundred and eighty degrees and left to look backward as if it were
forward. Yesterday at this time, her flat
had carried only the faintest vestiges of her origins in Sunnydale. Now, Sunnydale had come to her, crowding the
air with its approaching thunder—a fate not nearly as metaphorical as she had
hoped.
Elisabeth got up and went into the
bathroom to wash her hands. As she
reached for the towel, she stopped to give herself a long look in the
mirror. It’s no problem, she had told
Nonsense, she tried to tell
herself. If Rupert hadn’t come to her,
Robson would have caught up with him and put him in hospital, by hook or by
crook. And it wasn’t as if she’d lost
the link with Robson: that doctor friend of his was probably on her way back
with medicines for Rupert right now.
Elisabeth breathed a little easier, but the tremor in her nerves did not
quite go away. She sighed, watching the
rise and fall of her own bathrobed chest in the mirror.
“Looks like we’re back,” she
murmured.
The doorbell rang; and Elisabeth
went, to go and let in the doctor, and the Council, and Sunnydale.
*