Chapter 57.

 

Jared

 

 

Mimi's door was open and Evvie stood leaning against the door frame, talking quietly with Clyde, who was, despite the wheel chair, looking like himself. He waved at them as they approached, and Cara and Sofi went to hug him as the D'ubians and Terry filed quietly into Mimi's room.

"The fly?" said Issio, frowning at Evvie.

"I do not want to make a fuss," she said, glancing around at aides and visitors and the man programming a cleaner near the nurses' station. "Already the ambulance people are unhappy with us. The fly is in the bathroom. I hit her with the portable vid screen when she called me a name, and knocked her in there, and then I shut the door."

"Excellent," said Sofi, and gripping the butterfly net, she started into Mimi's room. Issio grabbed the net and she pulled it away from him.

"How are you feeling?" Jared asked Clyde, taking the grips on the back of the chair and starting it into the room after Sofi.

"Pretty good," said Clyde. "They say I can go home tomorrow, but they want to keep Mimi."

There was thumping and banging in the bathroom, behind the closed door, and Jared could make out a woman's voice talking in a low and vicious tone, unpleasantly familiar. An overturned glass dripped water onto the floor from the bedside table, and the vid screen Evvie had used as a fly swatter was balanced insecurely on the corner of a tiny nightstand, but there was no other sign of disruption.

Mimi was lying in the bed on her back, making a small lump under a blanket pulled up to her shoulders. There were monitors attached to her head, and wires and tubes attached to her body, just visible under the blanket. Her eyes were closed; she paid no attention to her visitors. Wheeling Clyde up to the bedside, Jared reached out his mind, but Mimi was far away, not aware, only a small spark at a great distance. He found this disturbing. Clyde put his hand on top of the blanket in a protective gesture.

The five D'ubians and Terry gathered around the bathroom door, listening to the sounds inside, murmuring and nodding to one another. Durata put down her drum and the six of them conferred. Sofi stood beside the closed door, arms folded, still gripping the net.

"So how do we do this?" said Jared, leaving Clyde and putting an arm around Cara, where it felt warm and good, a contrast to that voice in the bathroom and that terrible remoteness in the hospital bed. "We have to get in there without letting the fly out. How big is the room?"

"Not enough for all of us," said Evvie.

"Some remain outside," said Issio, "guarding so that the fly does not escape when we open the door. You guard," he told Sofi, grabbing the net, and she grabbed it back with a snarl. "You cannot jump. If she flies high, you cannot chase her," he pointed out, and she glared at him.

"Seventeen devils," she said, snapping her tail back and forth until the tail ring hit the bathroom door with a small bang.

Filthy mutant alley cats! yelled the voice inside the bathroom.

"I shall stomp you into the ground!" Sofi yelled back, and glared at Issio again, and then thrust the net at him and he took it with an air of relief. An aide carrying two pillows under his arm looked in the door and eyed the assembled company suspiciously.

"Everything all right in here?" he asked.

"Yes, everything is fine," said Evvie. "We had the vid volume up too high." Cara grabbed the precariously-balanced screen and made a show of fussing with the controls, and the aide nodded doubtfully and went on up the hall.

"Okay, you and me, Issio," said Jared, and he took the net out of Duran's hand and gestured to them, stationing them around the door. "Sweetheart, you and Sofi and Evvie get behind the D'ubians and drive the thing back toward us if it gets away."

Man whore! I hear you out there!

"And it's so nice to hear your sweet voice again," said Jared, unperturbed, and he and Issio looked at each other, lifted their nets, and charged into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind them.

The Mothervoice was dancing lightly over the light fixture in the center of the ceiling; she let out a raucous laugh and darted away as Jared swung his net at her. Issio tried to drive her toward the mirror over the little sink, and she screeched and ducked, leaving him looking around for her. "What?" he snarled.

"The shower curtain," said Jared, spotting a flutter of movement, and the Mothervoice said something vulgar in Bahtan. Jared smacked the shower curtain with the side of his net, hoping to drive the creature out of hiding, and she came zapping around the edge of the curtain and buzzed past his ear, close enough that he felt a line of heat. He spun and swung again but she was already out of reach, heading for the closed door. Issio leaped for the door, banging the net down on top of her, but she wasn't there; she spiraled toward the ceiling with an evil laugh.

She was out of Issio's range now, but she was still in Jared's range; he actually got the net over her but before he could close it she ducked back out, dodging abruptly to avoid Issio's oncoming swipe. Pack of fucking monsters! she yelled. There was a scream from the room outside, but it didn't sound like a familiar voice and Sofi did not reach to them; Jared made another swing, driving the fly toward the door, and the door flew open.

"What's going on in here?" demanded a nurse, holding the door, and the fly sailed over her head and out into the room.

Dumb ass mutant freaks! shrieked the Mothervoice, and she swooped down over the cluster of brown hoods and waving hatchets and nets and then made for the door. Issio charged after her, running into an aide who was balanced on one leg and rubbing the other knee; the aide went down, and Jared tripped over him. Issio leaped over both of them and headed down the hall, waving the butterfly net. The five D'ubians followed Issio, and Terry followed them, gripping his guitar.

Sofi sprang toward the hall and Jared, scrambling off the floor, got her, lifting her right off the floor as she kicked and shouted in Zamuaon. "No, you can't," he said. "You can't; I'm sorry, but you can't!"

"Let me go!" yelled Sofi, claws waving and tail lashing, and Jared held on, and the aide tried to stand up and howled and clutched his knee and sat down on the floor, and the nurse scrabbled across the floor to the door and out into the hall.

"I had hoped they would not notice," sighed Evvie, shaking her head.

Struggling with Sofi, Jared took a quick look out into the hall; the D'ubians, following Issio, were just going around the corner with Terry at the rear. Two aides and the nurse, clutching her phone, pursued. Visitors backed out of the way, and an elderly woman, waving her arm exuberantly, drove her wheelchair after the nurse.

Dr. Frank walked around the corner, looking backward at the parade that stormed past him, stepping out of the way of the aides and the nurse and the woman in the wheelchair; he spotted Jared, nodded as one confirming his worse suspicions, and strolled down to Mimi's door. Behind him, around the corner, there was a crash and a whoop from Terry.

"Good afternoon," said Dr. Frank to Jared. "I understand that congratulations are in order." He shook hands with Jared, holding Sofi with one arm, and then with Cara. He ignored the shriek from the nurse and a long string of Zamuaon curses in a female voice echoing down the hall. Cara ushered him into Mimi's room. Jared kept an arm around Sofi but she was a little calmer – by no means happy, but calmer. Clyde was back beside Mimi's bed, holding her limp hand, and Evvie was helping the aide with the damaged knee off the floor. Dr. Frank cast a professional eye upon Sofi, who glared at him. Then he turned to look at the aide, who was limping to the door with Evvie's assistance. "I believe he is only bruised," she assured him. "Clyde's wheelchair collided with him when he tried to open the bathroom door."

Jared put Sofi into one of the visitor's chairs by the bed; she lunged up and he grinned and put her back down. "It's too late anyway," he pointed out. "That thing is long gone; they aren't going to have any luck catching her. Stay there," he said, as she started out of the chair again, and she glowered and subsided.

"Could not even catch a fly," she muttered darkly.

"That's what they were after?" Dr. Frank asked, politely interested. "They were chasing a fly?"

"Issio," said Jared, not laughing, "says they carry disease; he doesn't like flies in a hospital."

"I see," said Dr. Frank. "So when he finds a fly in a hospital, he gets together an army of his friends with butterfly nets to catch it."

"Some people collect salt and pepper shakers," said Jared, "and some people build model space liners. Each person has his own hobby."

"Very true," said Dr. Frank, looking about the room. "I don't suppose anyone here would care to tell me what is really happening?" He eyed them each in turn; Cara busied herself wiping up the spilled water from the overturned glass, and Sofi shifted and muttered and sent a dark look toward Jared. He grinned at her and she sniffed and looked away.

"Didn't think so," said Dr. Frank with a sigh. They actually should, Jared thought, consider taking Dr. Frank into their confidence; it would save a lot of trouble and he didn't think it would create any more problems than they already had. But this had to be a group decision.

Issio, accompanied by a somewhat bedraggled nurse, trudged in the door, trailing Gina's butterfly net behind him. The net was empty.

"I understand your concern," the nurse was saying, in the tone of one who is determined to hold on to her temper. "We don't like bugs in here either. But the proper thing to do is to call Maintenance; we don't want to disturb our patients by chasing the bugs down the hall ourselves."

"We have lost her," said Issio, slumping against the wall a prudent distance from Sofi's claws.

"We also," said the nurse, "discourage the use of bad language, which tends to upset many of our patients and their visitors. And excessive noise; we don't like excessive noise."

"What I want to know," said Clyde, "is how that damned thing got in here."

"There are people in and out of the hospital all the time," said Jared. "She could have got in any time; no one would have noticed."

"Well, I don't like her here, with Mimi," said Clyde. "What was she was doing?"

"Mimi kept saying that it pushed you down the stairs," said Cara, and Dr. Frank frowned, puzzled.

"The fly?" he said.

"There were three of them," said Sofi. "We do not know which one she meant." She still lashed her tail under the arm rest of the chair, but she seemed to be calming down.

"Three flies?" said Dr. Frank.

"I don't remember," said Clyde, shaking his head. "I've tried to remember, but it's just a blank. The last thing I really remember is setting the sponge to rise overnight before we went to bed. You add flour in the morning," he explained, "and make your rolls or your loaves then. I suppose the sponge is flat by now." It was, Jared knew, having seen the big crockery bowl in the sink the following afternoon.

"Loss of memory," said Dr. Frank, taking Mimi's hand from Clyde, "is very common with head injuries." He found the pulse with his fingers and turned his wristwatch to time it, in the old-fashioned style. "It may come back," he added absently as he put the hand back down on the bed. He lifted Mimi's eyelid and shone his penlight into her eye.

"But I don't like that damned fly being in here," said Clyde. "If I go home tomorrow –"

"We will be here," said Evvie. "We will be sure that one of us is here at all times." She looked at the nurse. "Since they allow insects free access to the patients in here," she said, and the nurse drew herself up with an indignant expression.

"If you will just call Maintenance," she said coldly.

"I'd rather take Mimi home with me," said Clyde, and Dr. Frank snapped off his penlight and frowned at him.

"Not a good idea," he said. "You have the expertise, I'll admit." He nodded at Evvie. "But you don't have the equipment, if something goes wrong. And you're not fully recovered yourself, Clyde."

A cluster of brown-hooded persons with butterfly nets and a blond boy with a guitar trooped through the door and gathered around Mimi's bed. Two aides, both panting, one clutching her side against a cramp, leaned on the door frame. "Fly is lost," announced Dural. "She goes up into skylight area, not reached. We play for Mimi now."

The nurse opened her mouth and Dr. Frank took her by the arm and steered her out into the hall. "Close the door," he called over his shoulder, "and play all you want. It can't hurt," he said to the sputtering nurse, and Jared shut the door against the two aides and reached for Cara and pulled her down to sit with him on the floor. She settled against him, the familiar firm warmth of her body; her smile defied the fly. Evvie took the other visitor's chair, and Issio, moving with caution, sat down on the arm of Sofi's chair. After a moment she muttered something and then took his hand, the one without the butterfly net.

Clyde held Mimi's unmoving hand, and the D'ubians and Terry, setting their nets aside, began to play.