Authors: Elle Lothlorien
I stand on tip-toe, training my eyes just over the bow, hoping like hell that I don’t hit something in the fog, or get caught without running lights by the Coast Guard. My fingers are already itching to give the fog horn a quick blast.
After ten nerve-wracking minutes, I get the engine going, flip on the lights, and cruise west at the slowest speed the boat’s capable of. I poke along for another twenty minutes, and then suddenly, just like that, I’m clear of the fog, the way ahead open. I open the throttle, and the boat flies over the water like a flat rock skimming over a pond.
*****
Rev paddles to where I’m sitting on my board, bobbing just past the break. When he’s about ten feet away, he shoves against his board like he’s doing a push-up, then grabs the rails and pulls the board between his legs, straddling it.
“Not bad, wahine,” he says.
We’d been trading off, taking turns catching the waves, for the better part of an hour. Rev was up next, but at the last second the wave turned into a full-on peak–parting down the middle into two waves–so I dropped in and rode the right side.
“Happy days.” I wipe my wrist across my nose. “Balance is off.”
He shrugs. “Expected, right? You said yourself it’s been awhile.” He grins. “Gotta come out more often if you want to claw your way back from troderville, betty.”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically. “You know, you have a real talent for kicking someone when they’re down.” Strands of my hair were pulled free of the elastic band on the last ride and are hanging in my face. It’s no easy feat, but I balance hands-free over the rolls, working quickly to tie it all back into a tight knot.
He studies me with such intensity that I look away, feeling guilty for reasons I can’t pinpoint. “You’ve got something to tell me, dally, I know it. But we’ll get to that soon enough, won’t we?”
I set my jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He cocks his head, a sly smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Or maybe you don’t plan to get to it at all. Interesting. That’s okay. I’ve got a few secrets I’m keeping myself.” He stops smiling. “So: I was thinking it over.”
Finally
, I think. I didn’t figure Rev for the kind of guy so hurting for female companionship that he had to resort to taking an emotionally distraught client to one of the remotest surfing spots in California, but when he didn’t offer an explanation right after I anchored, I wasn’t sure how to ask him why I was here.
And, honestly, it’d been nice to think about something else for a couple of hours.
“Something’s definitely jed,” he says.
I sniff the air. “I don’t smell anything.”
He gives me one of those looks that remind me of Davin, like I was on the cusp of being considered “one of the guys,” only to wipe-out and get pounded on the rocks of uncoolness.
“Kidding,” I say weakly. It doesn’t seem like it has any affect on his opinion.
“I looked it all over,” he says finally. “The indictment, the warrants, the footage...”
At the merest mention of the video from the sleep lab, I blush and look away.
He doesn’t seem to notice, just keeps talking. “…and I thought, ‘Nah, nah, nah, this don’t look right at all.’” He shakes the water out of his hair before smoothing it away from his face with his fingers.
I break the silence that follows with: “‘This don’t look right?’ Is this going to be your legal strategy from here on out?”
“They haven’t added it as one of the charges, but they’re implying that Brendan drugged you,” says Rev. “In the sleep lab, and then repeatedly at your house while you were out of it for seven weeks.
I blink in surprise. This is the first I’ve heard of this. “He–they…what?”
“The liquid in the plastic white bottles?” he says. “You took it at night. It was a sedative, right?”
I nod my head, understanding now. “What about it?”
“Lucinda Gaelic…she told me to google sodium oxybate yesterday, remember?”
“Classy farewell. Hard to forget.”
“The video shows you bringing it to the sleep lab. You handed it to Brendan when you got there. A few minutes later you zonk out, and when you wake up he gives you a glass of clear liquid. Right after that your episode starts…”
“But…why? Why would he do that? Why would he drug me?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Are you kidding me?”
“Well, I mean–I just mean that, you know, we were dating and I was–was…” I trail off, unsure how to make a proper legal argument out of the saying “
Why drug the cow when you’re getting the milk for free
?”
“You weren’t dating in that sleep lab, dally. Got anything you want to say about that?”
“That, you know, what I did…grabbing him,” I look down and blush. “It always happens before an episode. I don’t remember it. I never remember it. Everything after I fainted is a big blank.”
“Brendan ever tell you about it? You know, afterwards…when you were dating?”
I frown, trying to remember what Davin told me after I woke up from the episode.
Something about him apologizing to me? Or was it me apologizing to him?
“I don’t remember,” I say. “Maybe. I’d have to ask Davin.”
“Your medical record says that Dr. Pickering told your brother to discontinue the sodium oxybate during your episode, so you should have had enough doses left in the bottles for another month. According to the DA, your sodium oxybate bottle was empty. Brendan’s fingerprints were all over it. Same thing for the other sedatives: all empty when they shouldn’t have been.”
I feel dizzy, not sure what to do with all this information.
“What did you see?” he says. “On that video?”
“What do you mean?”
“You think he drugged you? Raped you?”
I don’t say a word, just keep staring at the water droplets beading on the board wax.
“Not sure, right?” He cups his hands and scoops water over the top of his board. “Yeah, I don’t think they’re sure either.”
“Who?”
“The DA. I mean, sexual battery? Why not charge him with rape?” He shrugs. “That’s what they’re implying anyway, so why go for the ankle buster when you could ride a maverick?”
He slides further forward on his board, closer to me. “Then I wonder how they found that footage anyway. And why now, five months after the fact? Not like some hospital janitor is dusting off the file cabinet, and just runs across a DVD, ‘cause it’s all stored on the hospital server, right? So I did a little digging around, and guess what?”
“What?”
“Someone broke the glass.”
“They what?”
“Your medical records, they’re electronic, right? That’s cool, makes them easy to get to, but that’s the same thing that makes it not so cool. They don’t want every butt crumb working at the hospital having a peek, so they put everything that’s not basic info ‘behind the glass.’ You want to ‘break the glass’ and get to the good stuff, you gotta have the right password, you know, like be a doc or a nurse or whatever.”
“Okay…”
“So I looked over the audit trail from the hospital, the report that shows who’s accessed which records and when they did it.”
“And?”
“Whoever had a look at the footage did it the same day you did that interview, the one where they asked you who you were dating.”
“The one Lucinda Gaelic read to us?”
“Yup.”
“So what? It wasn’t a secret that I was dating. I just refuse to answer questions about my love life in interviews, so they’re always ‘speculating.’” I snort. “I mean, Brendan was in the
Hollywood Reporter
picture with me back in May, having lunch with Andy Gordon for godsakes.”
“Right, but had there ever been anything in print before about him possibly being your doctor? Of him seeing you as a patient at that particular hospital?”
I think about it. “No.”
He nods. “I think some freddie at the hospital saw Brendan’s name in that article and thought, ‘Hey! I know that dude!’ He searches for your name in the records, and when he finds it he just can’t help himself. He’s got the right password, he’s a little star-struck.” He shrugs. “So he starts snooping.”
“But if they were looking at something they weren’t supposed to access, why tell anyone about it?”
“That’s where things start getting crumbly. Lucinda Gaelic says some employee turned the footage over to the hospital compliance office.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t buy it.”
“Then how?”
“I think Mr. Employee with a Conscience saw that footage and thought ‘ka-ching!’ I think he shopped it around, sold it to the highest bidder. Just imagine the tabloid guys, rubbing their greedy little hands together like a bunch of kids at Christmas, thinking they just scored something sick, something that’s going to sell papers, blow up the internet.” He chuckles. “They finally watch the video, and then they’re all bleak when they realize that a flaming bag of dog shit’s landed on their porch instead.”
He juts his chin at the incoming waves. “We’d better paddle before we get caught inside.”
The current has pushed us closer to spot where the waves start to curl, definitely not where you want to be if you’re impersonating a buoy and shooting the breeze. Once you get pulled in past the break, you run the risk of being whiffled: spun like a sock in a washing machine with a half ton of sand, and enough force to rip your swimsuit from your body.
I follow his lead, paddling further out. Once we’re clear I say, “But wouldn’t Brendan’s attorney…”
“Ben McCarthy. Good guy.”
“Wouldn’t he already know everything that you’re telling me?”
“He knows. He’s waiting to see if we’re going to pull the pin on the grenade.”
I think about it for a second, trying to understand what he’s telling me. “But it’s not like it’s on the internet or something. The footage, I mean. I haven’t heard it mentioned anywhere.”
“I know, because once the folks from whatever tabloid or trashy website bought it actually sat their asses down and
watched
it, they knew they were seeing something possibly illegal and they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. So they throw a lateral pass to the DA, she pulls the clowns from the hospital back into the circle jerk, and now we’re at where we’re at.”
I’m still working out what he’s saying in my head, but he’s looking at me like he’s made the big reveal, and I’ve failed to be properly wowed. “Which is…where?”
“Where I ask you if you want him found innocent or guilty.” He leans forward. “Not
be
innocent or guilty.
Found
.” He looks away towards the shore. “I don’t need to hear your reasons, and I sure as hell won’t judge you, ‘cause that’s not my job.” He turns back to me. “It’s up to you, dally. You call the left or the right side of this peak, and I’ll make sure Brendan Charmant rides it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Davin’s head jerks up. He stares at me, his eyes narrowed. “You’re going to do
what
?”
I take a deep breath, preparing myself mentally for the ugly conversation that’s about to take place. “I’m going to talk with Brendan later today,” I say. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Are you kidding me? Tell me you’re kidding me.” When I don’t answer, he snorts. “You
know
what happened. I sure as hell know what happened. What’s he going to do…narrate the video for you while you watch it?”
I clear my throat, steeling myself. I know full well that Davin’s reaction is just the taste of things to come. “My episodes always start off like that. You should know that better than anyone else.”
He stares at me, incredulous. “Are you telling me that just because you have a disorder that causes you to make inappropriate sexual advances on any human male in a five-foot radius…” He stops and shakes his head. “You’re telling me that’s a good reason for your doctor to take advantage of you and
rape
you in a shower?”
“They didn’t charge him with rape,” I say, forcing the last word out even as I twist my lips in disgust.
“I don’t need to know the bullshit legal details to know that something really bad happened in that sleep lab.”
I straighten my back. “Well, while we’re on the topic of kissing cousins, keep in mind that according to West, I got a deep, wet, French kiss and a tit grope out of you during my last episode, about thirty seconds of it before you came to your senses. Pretty hetero for twink, don’t you think?”
He turns white, holding his breath until he’s red.“I’m not–I wasn’t–”
“My doctor? Right, because getting felt up by my brother’s boyfriend while I’m medically incapacitated has a much classier ring to it.”
He seems struck dumb, by anger or embarrassment, or a little bit of both. All I know is that if this is his reaction to me talking to Brendan, I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about my next announcement. I sigh and get it over with. “Just so you know, I’m meeting with the assistant DA first to let her know that I’ll be testifying for the defense.”
“You’re–” He starts pacing back and forth across the bedroom, rubbing his hands together. “No way,” he mutters to himself a few times. He stops at the glass door leading to the balcony and stares out at the ocean. “Are you out of your goddam mind, Claire?”
“Not as far as I know.” I reach out and touch his arm. “C’mon, Davin, just listen to me...”
He jerks away. “That DA said you’d try to protect him,” he says. In the reflection of the glass his face is a mask of revulsion. “I heard her say that, and I thought: ‘This fat bitch doesn’t know Claire.’ The girl I know will cut the bawling, frost up, and make it her personal, hourly goal to make sure this guy ends up on the receiving end of a prison gang-rape.”
I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm so our back-and-forth won’t be overheard by Evan or anyone else who might be lurking in the hallway. “You told me after I woke up from my episode that
I
was the one who apologized to
him
about what happened. Do you think I would’ve done that if I thought he’d hurt me? Or drugged me?”
He looks confused. “Drugged you? With what?”