Waiting for Patrick (31 page)

Elliot unconsciously brought his hand to the place on his chest where the pacemaker now sat.

“The battery pack is still just under the skin and will work the same way as the pacemaker you had. It’ll just help with actual defib too.”

When Elliot only nodded his understanding because he was losing his battle with the morphine, the doctor quickly added, “We want to keep you in here for a while to make sure you don’t have any more episodes and to make sure the ICD is doing what it’s supposed to do.”

Elliot had no idea what Dr. Sowder may have said after that; he was pulled completely into dreamless slumber.

THE FIRST
thing he asked Sheri when he woke up was what she had found out in reference to Ben.

She dropped her head dramatically in a way that said
I give up
. “You have a one-track mind. And not the best track, let me tell you. If you have to have a one-track mind, sex is a much better track to—”

“You’re stalling.” Elliot drummed his fingers on the rough hospital sheets, awaiting her answer.

“Only a little.” She grinned. “Malcolm is out of town on business, but Daniel said to give him a call when you woke up, and he would go out and talk to Ben with you on the phone. He said he wanted witnesses, if only via cell phone, in case he’s killed by a flying lamp.”

Elliot rolled his eyes at Daniel’s attempt at levity. He knew the guy wasn’t really afraid of Ben anymore. Elliot turned his head toward the bedside table, and seeing only a pitcher of water and a cup, said, “I don’t know where my phone is.”

“Well, you could use mine, but you don’t have to. One of Terry’s men picked yours up and put it in your jacket pocket. I hung your coat over here.” She went to the coat hook behind the door and retrieved his jacket, then laid it on Elliot’s lap.

He fished out the phone, brushed off a tiny piece of dried leaf from the screen, and called Daniel. Sheri mouthed
coffee
and hitched her finger toward the door. He knew she meant she was going to get coffee, not asking if Elliot wanted one because the doctor had limited his caffeine for the foreseeable future, and unfortunately Sheri had been there when he said it. When Elliot nodded his acknowledgment, she left the room.

“Elliot?” Daniel’s excited voice answered on the other end. “Man, it’s great to hear your voice. I thought Sheri’d be the one to call back.”

Elliot chuckled. “Nope. You’re stuck with me, Darrell.”

Daniel laughed at the return of the nickname, then sobered and asked, “How you feeling, Elle?”

“I’m doing okay for someone who looks like he’s lived through an autopsy.” He scratched at the hospital gown just above his heart. “You ought to see the scar on my chest.”

“Ooooh, inviting me to see your scars. What would Ben say?”

“You know, if I could reach you, I’d smack you.” He readjusted the phone to his ear, rolling his head around on the pillow to help hold it in place.

“Why do you think I say these kinds of things on the phone?”

Elliot appreciated the humor, but he had called for a specific reason and didn’t want any more delay. “Can you head out to the plantation house sometime soon and call me back when you get there or something? I want to talk to Ben.”

“Already on my way.”

“You’re driving while you’re on the phone?” He jerked his head up in sudden concern, but then had to scrabble for the phone as it slipped down the pillow.

“Do I look stupid to you?” Daniel stopped abruptly. “No, wait. Don’t answer that. But of course not. Well, sort of, because I’m driving, and I’m conversing with someone through a cellular device, but it’s routed through my car. Completely hands-free.”

Elliot chuckled as he tried to find the semicomfortable position he’d had before dislodging the phone. “Okay. As long as you’re being safe.”

“Safety is always my number one concern.” There was a leer in Daniel’s voice.

“Ummm,” Elliot stuttered and glanced nervously toward the phone, but he knew Daniel was teasing. He wasn’t propositioning him. He was simply being Daniel. That was his sense of humor. “How long before you get there?”

“Not long. Maybe five minutes?” Daniel answered. “You caught me on this side of town anyway.”

“Okay.” With his head rolled to the side to hold the phone again, Elliot could put his right hand down. He circled his shoulder and elbow in turn, working out the kinks they’d developed.

“So,” Daniel was saying into Elliot’s ear. “I won’t lay into you about all the ways being up there by yourself with a barely managed heart condition was always a bad idea. I’ve told you that before and you didn’t listen to me, so I’m assuming you’re too hardheaded to listen to me now as well.”

“I don’t know.” Elliot picked at a thread on the sheet. “I’m feeling kind of stupid too, actually. If I die here, I can’t get to Ben.”

“You don’t have to die at all.” Daniel’s was voice loud in his ears as Elliot pulled on the thread and watched the fabric bunch up in response. “Not anytime soon, anyway.” Elliot tangled his finger around the thread and pulled harder. “I’ve researched congestive heart failure too.”

“Stage D, Daniel.” Elliot yanked the thread hard enough to break it and the sheet pulled away from where it had gathered together.

“Even Stage D doesn’t mean you’re going to die tomorrow.”

“It means all that’s left are intrusive treatments. Even more intrusive than cutting open my heart and rearranging the highway of my arteries, not to mention jamming something in there that will literally shock me when my heart can’t be bothered to get with the program.” Elliot worried the newly developing hole in the sheet with the pad of his index finger and quieted his voice, hating to admit this part, but needing to say it anyway. “So, I should probably stay closer to home than Pennsylvania.”

Elliot heard the mirth in Daniel’s voice. “So, you’re saying we were right and you shouldn’t have gone that far away.”

Elliot smirked joylessly. “I’m saying I’m ready to come back home as soon as they release me. I’ll get someone else to do the work on the house.”

“Really? You can’t just say we’re right?”

Elliot refused to answer Daniel, and silence stretched out between them for long moments. He tried to make himself stop fidgeting but only succeeded in changing the object of his attention. He started playing with the tape around the IV on his left hand and succeeded in peeling up a tiny corner.

Daniel finally broke the silence when he said, “I’m pulling up to the house now. I swear, Elliot, if I get killed, I’m going to haunt you.”

Elliot chuckled. “Join the club. That seems to be the thing to do these days.”

He could almost hear Daniel shake his head at that.

“Okay. Phone on speaker. Laptop at the ready. Going in.”

Elliot waited while Daniel entered the house, and it occurred to him that he’d have to ask Sheri where Daniel got a key. He heard Daniel’s voice over the phone.

“Ben?” There was a long pause. “Ben, I know you have to be here. Where else would you go? It’s not like you stepped out for a bite to eat.” Elliot heard something crash and found himself picking at the tape even more diligently. “Hey, watch it! If you don’t stop throwing things at me, I won’t let you talk to Elliot.”

“Hi, Ben,” Elliot said over the phone and felt kind of silly. He knew Ben couldn’t answer him. Not in the conventional way, anyway. But he heard the clack of the laptop keys.

“Casper says, ‘What the hell is going on? You’ve been gone forever and no one is telling me what’s happening.’ Kinda pushy for a transparent squatter, isn’t he?”

Elliot felt like a kid on Christmas. Even this tenuous connection to Ben made him feel better. He was interrupted from his euphoria when he heard another crash. “You’re bringing that on yourself, Daniel. Stop messing with him.”

“Hey, how many times can you insult a ghost and get away with it? If he runs me off, I take the phone, and you, with me, so….”

“Well, stop it anyway. It’s not nice.” He pulled up enough of the tape off his hand that it was starting to hurt, so he went back to worrying the hole in the sheet.

“Maybe not, but it’s fun.”

Crash.

“Ben,” Elliot intervened. “At the very least, just spare the knickknacks, would you?”

“LOL? What the hell? Your ghost typed LOL.”

“Yep.” Elliot chuckled. “He does that. Wait till he starts with the emoticons.”

There was a pause. “Elliot, he stuck out his tongue at me.”

“I would too, if I could. Stop screwing around and let me tell Ben what happened.” Elliot gave Ben the short version of events and suddenly heard bangs and crashes almost exclusively. Then suddenly they stopped.

“Jesus, Elliot. He’s having a temper tantrum. I had to come back outside and shut the door.”

“Wait him out. Go back in when it’s quiet.” Elliot realized he’d made an irreparable hole in sheets that didn’t belong to him and wondered if they’d charge him for it. If hospitals billed seventy dollars for an aspirin, what was a sheet likely to cost?

It didn’t take long for it to get quiet, as reported by Daniel. Ben probably wanted to talk to Elliot more than he wanted to throw items around the house.

“Can a front door open itself sheepishly?” Daniel asked. “Because I swear this one just did.”

“Calmed down now, Ben?” Elliot decided to just pull the blanket up over the hole in the sheet and hope the nurses didn’t notice. At least there was no one in the other bed to have witnessed his crime. But he was still restless, so he went back to picking at the tape.

Daniel answered, “He says, ‘Only because I like the rest of the breakables too much.’”

“You have every right to be mad, Ben. I know I would be angry if the situation were reversed. And Ben, I thought of something I hadn’t thought of before I left SC. And if I remember correctly, you even tried to tell me about it, but I didn’t catch what you meant. When I was in that tree house, dying, or so I thought, the only thing that went through my mind was that I wouldn’t be able to get to you. I’d be stuck here because I wouldn’t want to cross over without you and you’re still waiting for Patrick. And I think Patrick’s stuck here too and I don’t know how to get you together.” He used the back of his right hand to wipe away the tears he felt welling up in his eyes. “It’s all so screwed up, Ben. I don’t have any answers. The best thing for both of you to do would be to cross over, then you’d be together on the other side. Wouldn’t you?”

Daniel took a long while to answer. “He says Patrick isn’t able to cross over yet, and he isn’t going to leave without him.”

Elliot sniffed again. “I get that, Ben. I do. I admire that kind of love. The problem is that I feel that for you. But you and Patrick belong together, so where does that leave me?”

Daniel’s voice answered long before Ben could have had time to type anything. “Shit, Elliot. Are you sure you want to have this conversation with me here? Wait until you get back to talk about this.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m sorry, Darrell. Did Ben answer?”

“No. Nothing. I think he agrees with me that you should wait and talk about it in private.” Daniel paused, then said in mock horror. “Holy shit. He agrees with me about something.” Another pause, then, “Oh wait, he’s typing.”

“Elliot, he typed nine lines of what appeared to be random symbols until he was finished. Your ghost just flipped me off.”

Elliot started to laugh, but pain exploded in his incision and he found himself gasping for breath instead. He said good-bye to Ben, told Daniel he could call again later, and pushed the button for more morphine.

ELLIOT WANTED
to put the phone on the bedside table so he could get to it more easily if he needed it later, but he knew the pain in his chest wouldn’t let him, so he simply laid it down beside him on the blanket. He’d long ago been cautioned against keeping his electronics too near the pacemaker, so no putting it in his shirt pocket, but he figured he’d been getting away with keeping it in his pants pocket all this time, so laying it on the bed near his hip should work too. He picked up the coat to lay it over the rail out of the way, knowing he’d eventually go to sleep or get very drowsy now that he’d dosed himself with pain meds. One side of the coat was considerably heavier than the other. He laid it back across his lap and unzipped the pocket.

“It’s the journal.”

“What journal?” Sheri asked as she entered the room carrying a coffee.

“This is why I was in the tree house. Patrick gave me dreams of where he had hidden the journal he’d kept throughout his teen years. Up until he and Ben went off to war.” Elliot patted the cover of the battered old journal. “Before they left, he wrote one last entry, then put it back in the lunch pail, sealed the top, and hid it back under the floorboard in the corner near the tree.” Elliot spared only a passing thought as to how he knew about that last entry. “Since it was in a corner, it was supported better on two sides, as well as on the bottom by the tree branch, so that part of the tree house managed to stay pretty solid, and the pail was still there.” Elliot ran a reverent fingertip across the surface of the book. “So I got the journal out and put it in my pocket right before… well, right before.”

Elliot opened it respectfully and started reading before he could tell himself to wait until later.

“You’re going to read it now?” Sheri teased as she placed her hand over his where it rested on the first page. “Just ignore your visitors and read a two-hundred-year-old diary?”

“Not quite two hundred years, Cher.” He covered her hand with his free one, not sure if he was trying to reassure her or simply move it so he could start reading again.

“Well, I was never any good in history.”

Elliot smiled, but addressed the question. “It’s important somehow. I’m not sure how or why, but Patrick wants me to know this. And somehow I know it has to do with Ben’s happiness.”

“Ellie—” She turned her hand over in his and gripped his top hand.

“Don’t, Cher,” Elliot interrupted and looked at their joined hands. “You know I love you, but I’m in love with Ben… in a way I can’t even describe. We fit together, like puzzle pieces, like I’m not complete without him. I know that’s how he felt about Patrick, so I’m not sure how all this is going to work. We’ve got the world’s weirdest love triangle going on here.” He paused, trying to think of all the angles. He patted her hand and, taking the hint, she moved it back into her own lap. “I don’t know if Patrick wants me to read his journal so I’ll know how to make Ben happy, or so I’ll know that only Patrick can. But either way, I love Ben enough to give him to Patrick if that’s what I need to do to make him happy, to bring him some peace, to help him cross over. I’m just not sure how to do that. I can’t talk to Patrick like I can to Ben, so I can’t simply tell them both to cross over and meet on the other side. Or rather, I can tell him, but I have no way of knowing what his response would be. And I’m not even certain it works like that. I don’t know anything for sure. I’m winging it and hoping everything turns out.” Elliot felt the morphine starting to affect him. He was getting sleepy, but even more importantly he was getting chatty. Most likely he would not have said half of that to Sheri without the drug’s influence.