Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(7)

“Who is this Magda to you?” she repeated. “Tell me more.”

Howard shook his head, but he kept talking, as if some desperate part of him was breaking loose of the cage of his fear. “Magda keeps coming to me,” he moaned. “She says, find her son, and tell him. But I can’t. You could find him, Lil.”

“Who? Me? Who’s Magda’s son? Tell him what?”

“Shhh!” he hissed, dragging her hand closer so that her butt slid from the hard chair. She perched on his bed instead, bending to hear his croaking whisper. “You could tell him. He has to lock it. With the key. It’s the key to everything. Her son will know when he sees it.”

His eyes rolled. He was losing steam, getting spooked. She hurried to keep him talking. “When he sees what, Howard?” she prompted.

“He’ll know,” Howard muttered. “Magda told me he’d understand as soon as he saw it, and he can—”

“What on earth is going on in here?”

Lily and Howard practically levitated, they were so startled.

Miriam stood in the open door, her large eyes flashing in outrage. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, her voice razor sharp.

Lily’s mouth worked, struggling for something, anything to say in the face of the woman’s inexplicable anger. “Ah, we were just talking—”

“Talking?” Miriam’s voice slashed over hers. “Just look at him! You’re deliberately upsetting him!”

Lily looked. Howard had jerked his hand away and wrapped his arms around his knees, eyes squeezed shut, streaming with tears.

Shit. That brief, rare moment of opening up was closing down again, all because of that stupid nurse’s wretched crap timing. Shit!

“No,” Lily said, through clenched teeth. “He was perfectly fine! You were the one who agitated him when you burst in on us like that! Howard, just finish what you were telling me about Magda and her—”

“No!” He jerked away as if she’d struck him. “I never said anything! It’s just stupid, bullshit raving! I’m a crazy old man, a paranoid junkie! Get away from me, before I bring you down, too! You shouldn’t come to see me at all! I’ve told you that! Please, go!”

True. But he never told her to stop writing the checks. Though, to be fair, it may never have occurred to him that she poured out her heart’s blood to pay for this place. She’d never rubbed his nose in it. “Just go. Don’t come back. Forget all this. Forget about me. Please.” Howard began to rock again, shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Well?” Miriam prodded. “You heard the man! Go! Right now!”

Lily shot to her feet, shocked and affronted. “No, I will not! I am here to talk to my father, and I demand privacy.”

“Demand all you want,” Miriam retorted. “This is my shift, and he is my responsibility, and I’m standing by it! You need to go! Right now!”

Lily turned to Howard, put her hand on his shoulder. “Howard—”

“No! Don’t!” He shook her hand off, moaning and twitching.

Miriam marched over, her steps full of grim purpose. Before Lily quite knew what was happening, the needle was in Howard’s arm, the plunger going in. Howard went rigid . . . and sagged, suddenly limp.

“There,” Miriam said, in obvious triumph. “Now he can rest.”

Lily was appalled. “How dare you?” Her voice shook. “I open my veins every month to pay for this place!”

“That is not my concern,” Miriam said. “You can complain to my boss if you want, but I’m going to be filing a statement today, too, about how I witnessed you abusing him! Deliberately agitating him!”

Lily’s jaw dropped. “Abusing him? I was just talking to—”

“Leave! Now!” Miriam’s voice rang with command. “Or I’ll have you forcibly escorted out! And don’t think for one second that I’m bluffing!”

Lily stared at the woman, her cheeks hot. She looked at Howard, slumped on his side. Air wheezed into his half-open mouth. Eyes half closed, blurred with drugs, like they’d been most of her life. He’d run off to his safe place and left her out in the cold, alone. Just like old times.

She could have strangled that bitch for killing what amounted to the only real moment she’d had with Howard in years. But it would serve no purpose. Howard had retreated. He wouldn’t be back today. What was the point? She might as well go through official channels to make her complaint. It would be more dignified. She’d move Howard to some other facility if she didn’t get an appropriate outcome.

Miriam frog-marched her to the door of the ward and shut the door in Lily’s face, hard, once she was outside it.

Lily just stood there, at a loss. The guard was giving her a strange look. To the elevator. One foot in front of the other. She wanted to lodge her complaint immediately, but she was so angry and rattled, she’d flub it and come across as a hysterical idiot. Better to wait. Keep it together.

So she powered through the lobby and out onto the grounds without speaking to anyone. The late summer sunshine felt incongruous. All those bugs and birds tweeting and chirring, wind rustling, boughs waving. The cheerfulness was unseemly. Her body felt as tight as piano wire.

As if having her father be a suicidal drug addict weren’t enough for her nerves to handle. Now ghosts, eerie warnings, cryptic requests. Buckets of blood. Murderous bad guys out to get him, and Lily, too. Brrr.