Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“I need some help,” Rusty called back.

He went up the stairs and through the clock-lined corridor. His daughter was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only panties. Rusty was struggling to tug a pair of blue jeans over her knees. “Don’t you have a dress she can wear?” Jamie said. “Something she can just pull over her head?”

“Well, yeah, but I thought...”

“We’ll be here all day with those fucking jeans,” he said.

Rusty looked at him, and then went swiftly to her dresser. She found a tent dress in the middle drawer and carried it back to the bed, where Lissie sat motionless, looking down at her feet. “Liss,” she said, “let’s slip this over your head, okay?”

“O-kay, Rust,” Lissie said.

Rusty dropped the dress over Lissie’s head, and then pulled first one arm and then the other through the armholes. “You want to put on her shoes?” she asked Jamie.

“Where are they?” he asked. “What shoes?”

“The ones she had on at the wedding.”

“Heels?”

“Yes.”

“No, she’ll... haven’t you got something low she can put on? Sandals or...?”

“I’ve got some clogs that should fit her.”

“Yes, good.” Rusty went to the closet. As she rummaged around for the clogs, Jamie said, “What’d she take?”

“I don’t know,” Rusty said.

“But she took something, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was there anything there she could have taken?”

Rusty came back with the clogs. As she stooped to put them on Lissie’s feet, she said, “Well, some of us were smoking, but...”

“I’m not talking about grass, Rusty.”

“Well, there was some other stuff, too, I guess.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. Croft. But I saw some pills going around.”

He went to his daughter.

“Liss,” he said, “let’s go now.”

“O-kay, Dad,” she said.

She rose unsteadily, wobbled, pushed out her arms for balance, and then clutched at his arm for support. He suddenly realized why it had taken her so long to get to the phone. Looping her left arm over his shoulder, putting his own right arm around her waist, he struggled down the corridor with her, their shoulders brushing against the ticking clocks, Rusty hurrying along behind them, straightening the clocks. As he went out the front door, all the clocks began chiming again, a sustained chiming this time, clock after clock going off and chiming the hour with deep rumbling bongs and high tinkly dings. It was 10:00 A.M. on the morning after Jamie’s wedding, and his daughter looked and sounded and moved like a fucking vegetable.

The Stamford neurologist to whom Harry Landau immediately sent them examined Lissie in private and then told Jamie that she had undoubtedly taken a massive dose of some kind of drug, most likely a barbiturate, which was causing the sluggishness and lethargy. There were laboratory tests that could isolate barbiturates, but he rather suspected the effects of the drug would wear off in a day or so, and that Lissie would most likely come through the episode relatively unaffected by it.

“What do you mean by ‘most likely’?” Jamie asked.

“Well, I don’t know how much of the drug she’s ingested,” the doctor said. “I’m fairly sure it wasn’t injected by syringe, I could find no puncture marks on her arms or legs. But she may have swallowed more than one tablet, perhaps even more than several tablets, in which case... does your daughter have a history of drug abuse?”

“No,” Jamie said, offended by the words “drug abuse.” His daughter was not a goddamn addict. She had, in fact, told him on many occasions that she would never stick a needle in her body.

“Perhaps she decided to experiment,” the doctor said, “like so many other kids these days. And...” He spread his hands wide, and shrugged. “She may just have been unlucky. Whatever she took, it’s had a serious effect on her. Just how serious remains to be seen.”

“What do we do now?” Jamie asked.

“Take her home and put her to bed. Sleep is the best possible thing for her right now. That shouldn’t be difficult, she’s almost out on her feet as it is. My guess is she’ll sleep all day today, and through the night, and part of the morning as well. When she wakes up, you’ll most likely be able to tell.”

“Tell what?” Jamie said.

“Why... how well she’s cerebrating.”

“And if she... if she still sounds the same and... and moves the same?”

“You’d better call me.”

He was embarrassed as he walked her out of the waiting room and down to the car, leading her like one of the handicapped children Connie worked with, Lissie mumbling over and over again “I’m sorr-ee, Dad, I’m sorr-ee, Dad” in that same moronic voice, helping her into the car where she sat still and silent, her hands folded in her lap, all the way back to the inn. He was further embarrassed when he led her into the lobby and asked the desk clerk if they could find a room for her, she was his daughter, and she wasn’t feeling too well, she needed a room for the night. The desk clerk, a pimply-faced kid in his early twenties, took one look at Lissie, and sized the situation up for exactly what it was: the chick was on some kind of bad trip. But he found a room for her, nonetheless, just across the hall from Jamie’s and Joanna’s. It was Joanna who undressed her and washed her hands and face, and then got her into bed, and pulled the covers to her throat.

“Good night, Mom,” Lissie said, and the words caused a new wave of despair in Jamie.

As the neurologist had promised, Lissie slept all that day, and through the night, and most of the next morning. She was stirring when he went into her room again at 11:00 A.M. He raised the shade. June sunlight spilled onto the shag rug. Lissie opened her eyes. He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it.

“Good morning,” he said. “How do you feel?”

He waited.

Lissie smiled.

“Are you feeling any better, darling?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Has, Sant-a, come, yet?” she asked, and his heart sank.

He was forced to call Connie in New York.

“Connie, it’s me,” he said. “Jamie.”

“What is it, Jamie?” she said curtly.

“Connie, please,” he said. “We’ve had enough yelling and screaming to last us a long time, don’t you think?”

“I wasn’t aware that anyone was yelling or screaming,” she said in her V.S. and D.M. voice. “What is it you want, Jamie?”

“Lissie is sick,” he said.

“Sick? What do you mean, sick?”

“She’s taken something,” he said. “Some drug. She’s not... not quite out of it yet.”

“Out of it? What do you mean, Jamie?”

“Well, she’s not behaving quite like herself, Connie. Her... her speech is... is... you know... hesitant and... and... she... she sounds retarded, Connie, that’s the way she sounds. She slept all day yesterday, and she’s sleeping again now, she sat up for a little while this morning, and had some orange juice, but her eyes are still glazed, Connie, and when I called the doctor, he... he said... it may... well, we’ll have to wait a bit longer, to... to see what happens.”

“What did he say may happen?”

“He didn’t know. He doubts if the damage will be permanent, but he simply can’t say yet.”

“Where is she?” Connie asked.

“Here at the inn.”

“What inn? The Rutledge Inn, do you mean?”

“Yes. We’ve taken a room for her. The doctor advised...”

“What doctor? Harry?”

“No, a neurologist Harry sent us to.”