Geek Actually Season 1 Omnibus
Page 37
She landed on Ruby’s doorstep a few minutes after nine, pulling out her key. She didn’t bother knocking, as she didn’t want to disturb her boss’s morning routine. But when Elli reached out to touch the knob, she realized the door was ever-so-slightly ajar, as though someone had tried to close it but hadn’t made sure the lock latched.
Concerned, Elli pushed into the entrance. “Ruby?” she called. The house was silent. “Ruby, are you here?” Still, there was no sound but her own voice.
Then Elli noticed a couple of odd things. Two lines mashed into the carpet, leading from Ruby’s office to the front door. She didn’t know what to make of that. Stepping farther inside, Elli saw that several pieces of furniture were shoved out of the way, some just an inch or two, others into corners. In the office, all the lights were on, despite the sun coming in from outside. And there sat Ruby’s wheelchair, empty.
It was the wheelchair that truly panicked Elli. Yes, Ruby could walk a little bit, but she’d never leave the room without the chair. It was too dangerous. Elli could feel her heartbeat ramping up, thumping inside her chest.
“Ruby?” she called again, louder this time. Elli sped through the apartment, checking the shower and the kitchen—any place she could think of. Maybe Ruby had fallen and couldn’t get up on her own? But the house wasn’t that big. Elli had to accept that her boss wasn’t here.
Maybe that was good, she thought. Maybe someone had come and taken Ruby somewhere? Though why she would go without her wheelchair was a mystery. Elli pulled out her phone and dialed Ruby. The line connected but went straight to voicemail.
Elli saw that she herself had a voicemail, but that wasn’t unusual. Telemarketers called all the time. She didn’t really use the phone for calls, and she never answered numbers she didn’t recognize. This one had come in sometime after midnight and was probably just some drunken misdial. Elli opened the window to delete, but the transcription caught her eye before she could. It read, “Um… hi, this is Jessica from Mount Sinai Hospital.” Shocked into action, Elli pressed playback.
“Um… hi. This is Jessica from Mount Sinai Hospital. We admitted a patient an hour ago, Ruby Chaudary, and you are listed as a contact number. We’ve spoken to her sister, but she can’t make it into the city until tomorrow. Please give us a call back as soon as you get this. The nurse’s line here is 4-1-6…”
Which meant Ruby had been in the hospital all night long, probably by herself. Elli was sure her boss was putting on a brave face, but a sterile room and a terrible hospital breakfast were too much. Elli wouldn’t just call—she’d head on over and bring Ruby some things to make her more comfortable.
Still, Elli didn’t really like hospitals. They made her feel a little claustrophobic. There was something about that overly antiseptic smell that constantly reminded her of the bad things that could happen there. Sure, there were plenty of good things. Rehabilitation, new babies… also plenty of dark. But Bella was afraid of the dark (not vampires, though, weirdly). Hermione never really even considered the dark, she merely pulled out her wand and cast a spell.
Lumos, Elli thought to herself.
It took nearly an hour to assemble everything required for a proper hospital visit. Slippers. Important insurance documents. Chargers and Ruby’s tablet and Kindle. Good coffee cake. Hot chocolate, in case caffeine was against the doctor’s orders. A lively arrangement of spring flowers in vibrant colors. She even made sure to bring extra cake for the nurses.
At the hospital, the woman at the information desk was less than helpful. Elli detailed the message and Ruby’s name, and after typing something into a computer, the woman looked away and cleared her throat.
“Cardiology is upstairs on the fourth floor,” the woman told her. “They can better assist you.”
“Thanks!” Elli replied.
Elli took the first elevator that opened and considered the nurse’s response. Cardiac. So something was wrong with Ruby’s heart. It was sad and scary, but Elli knew Ruby had chronic health problems associated with her accident. Her heart must be one of those problems.
Stepping out of the elevator, Elli made her way to the nurses’ station. When she asked after Ruby, the nurse looked shocked to see Elli standing in front of her. “Oh. No one returned our call. And Ruby’s next of kin is still traveling here.”
“I’m sorry,” Elli replied. “I just wanted to see Ruby in person. There’s nothing less personal than a phone call, especially when you’re not feeling well.”
The nurse looked frozen. A pang of panic shot through Elli and she realized Ruby must be really sick. She had said it, hadn’t she? Straight out. But Elli had assumed she’d meant she was getting over a small illness or something chronic but not that serious.
“Ms.—”
“Kelman,” Elli replied. “Elli Kelman. I’m Ruby’s assistant.”
“Ms. Kelman,” the nurse began again. “Let me get the doctor on call to speak with you. She’ll be better able to discuss things.”
Elli didn’t like the sound of that. But she tried to stay positive—maybe it was just regulations and all that. “All right.”
The nurse hurried away and disappeared around a corner. As the minutes passed, Elli noticed that the other two nurses working at the station eyed her nervously several times. This did nothing to calm her worry.
A very tall woman in her forties came around the corner, clad in a white doctor’s coat. Her thick black hair was twisted up in a chignon, not a strand out of place. She looked confident and kind, and for the first time in several minutes, Elli exhaled.
“I’m Doctor Batra. I understand you’re Ms. Chaudary’s assistant?”
“Yes,” Elli replied. “I’ve brought her some things to help with her time in the hospital.”
Unlike the nurse, Doctor Batra displayed no change in facial expression. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Kelman. Unfortunately, we were not able to revive your friend. She managed to call the paramedics while in the early stages of heart failure, but by the time they reached her, she was unresponsive. We did everything we could.”
Elli’s brain felt scrambled. She heard the words coming out of the doctor’s mouth, but they didn’t sound right. They didn’t seem like they could be strung together to mean anything at all. “You’re supposed to help people.” She could barely hear her own voice.
“Ms. Kelman,” Doctor Batra began again, speaking slower. “We tried to help her. We did everything possible.”
Elli didn’t immediately reply. She couldn’t. To engage in this conversation meant the words were true, and she refused to believe them. Ruby was magical, just like her name. And her heart was so strong and true—of all the things to take that mighty woman down, it wouldn’t have been her heart. These people were out of their minds.
Elli’s lack of a response appeared to confuse the doctor. “You do understand… that your friend has died?”
“I know she’s dead! I’m not stupid.” Elli felt she’d let her boss—her friend—down. Logically, she knew that answering the call at midnight wouldn’t have made any difference. But it felt like she’d failed Ruby when the woman needed her most. Well, she wouldn’t fail her again. She didn’t have a time-turner or a wand, but she had her own heart, and her mind.
“I’m sorry,” Elli added. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. Ruby was an amazing woman and I don’t know what the world will do without her.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “But she needs me now. What can I do to help? Paperwork? Insurance? I can handle anything you need.”
CHRISTINA
The production office had been slammed all day. Tomorrow’s call sheet had already been changed three times. An actor was refusing to come in at five thirty for makeup because “you can just slap that shit on.” Christina hadn’t seen the sun in hours, since she’d escaped at lunchtime to smoke a blunt in Vivi’s trailer. At which point, her gorgeous girlfriend complained about not seeing Christina enough that day. It took all the THC in her system not to fire back tha
t the lack of free time was entirely Vivi’s fault.
Except that Christina really was weirdly touched that Vivi thought enough of her to go to bat for her. It spurred a strange new feeling that Christina wasn’t used to—a need to please. She wanted to be good at this job, not for herself, but for Vivi. If that wasn’t the damnedest thing.
One of the caterers, Javier, came into the office and handed her a slip of paper. “This is tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch inventory.”
Christina took the piece of paper but stared at it blankly. It was a list of foods with costs next to it. She wasn’t sure what to do with this information—if she was merely being made aware or if it required some sort of action on her part. “Um… okay?” she said. “What do you need from me?”
Javier, who’d been one of her favorite people since the start of Youngbloods, gave her a truly annoyed look. “I need you to sign off on the menu and budget.”
“Oh,” Christina replied. She glanced down at the sheet of paper, scanning as quickly as she could. Really, this was part of her job? Feeding nearly two hundred people was bound to be expensive, but she hadn’t expected that it would be more than five thousand dollars a day. But surely Javier knew what he was doing? He’d been their liaison with the catering company since the show’s pilot shoot. “Just sign here?”
“Yes.” Javier waited, without making eye contact, until the page was signed and passed back to him. Then he threw her another annoyed look and left the office.
It was exactly as Christina had feared. Everyone knew she didn’t deserve this job and that she didn’t have the first fucking clue how to actually do it. She knew what imposter syndrome was, knew that it was common, but she’d never understood it until this moment, when she right and truly became an imposter. It was an unsettling feeling.
Things got no better when, twenty minutes later, the douchetastic Josh appeared in the doorway, furious. “You told Javier to buy organic chicken?”
Christina looked up from the schedule, confused. “I didn’t tell Javier to do anything. He just handed me the menu.”
“And it listed organic chicken, which is something Atticus and Miranda ask him to slip in every time. And every time we say no, because it costs twice as much.”
“What’s the total cost difference?” Christina asked.
“Four hundred dollars,” Josh retorted. “So unless you’d like to take it out of your Molly budget—”
“No, of course I didn’t mean to make that mistake,” Christina replied, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I’m sorry. I’ll go to Javier and correct it. What kind of chicken do we want?”
“The kind that’s barely food-safe. I don’t care if it comes from a dilapidated shed in Escondido and turns orange when exposed to sunlight.”
“Got it.” Christina stood up, feeling her muscles groan against the movement after hours of inertia. “I’ll take care of it.”
To Christina’s surprise, when Josh spoke again, his tone was softer. “We’re on the Abby Singer shot, so when you’re done, go ahead and call the last few actors and head home.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
She’d now both apologized and said thank you to one of her mortal enemies. Christina wasn’t sure who she was becoming, but she damn sure didn’t like it.
MICHELLE
Michelle was perplexed. After the morning’s call with Aditi, she’d been expecting a great day. She thought Aditi had finally gotten over her stubborn writer’s block and was ready to dive headlong into the sequel. But the pages that showed up in Michelle’s inbox were something else entirely. A story about a prison planet and young women kidnapped into servitude and forced birth. The heroine was an overweight teenage girl considered undesirable by her captors and therefore expendable. Certainly, it was timely, given the upheaval in the world of reproductive rights, but it had also been done. And by one of the sci-fi masters. Given Aditi’s love of Margaret Atwood, Michelle was surprised her friend would stray so close to a classic. She was less shocked by the fact that it wasn’t what Aditi was supposed to be working on.
Between this and Michelle pulling back on her praise of the Jezebel post, she worried that Aditi was finally going to blow a gasket. Despite Michelle’s irritation with everything that had been going on with the two of them (and the sticky friend/editor line), no one understood overwhelming pressure better than Michelle. Aditi had Tinder, and now Michelle was exploring Fetlife. This should have brought them closer than ever.
But that wasn’t to be, sadly. She figured she should get the next unpleasant conversation over with. Michelle picked up her phone and clicked into Slack chat, pulling up her DM thread with Aditi.
Michelle: Hey, I’ve read your pages. Do you have time for a chat?
She kept the app open, but the space below her words remained agonizingly blank. She’d told Aditi to stay off Slack, told her to stay focused on her work. Here she was doing exactly what Michelle had asked of her (attention-wise, anyway) and now it was creating its own headaches.
Her intercom buzzed. “Hey, Michelle, sorry to bother you.”
Michelle pressed the button to respond. “No problem, Jamie. What’s up?”
“Gwen wants to know the status of Aditi’s Buzzfeed listicle? She’d like to read it before it goes out.”
Ouch. That was the state of things after the Jezebel debacle. Aditi now needed her publisher to okay a goddamned listicle. Next Gwen would be approving Aditi’s Starbucks order.
“Tell her I’m on it and I’ll have a more definitive update by the end of the day,” Michelle responded.
“Great.” There was a pause and then Jamie added, “I can’t wait to hear what Aditi has to say next! Her last post was so good!”
Jamie—and presumably thousands of other women—were about to be disappointed. The next several posts were likely to be bland encouragements for aspiring writers and mild praise for the current state of sci-fi. Things that would neither cause further discord nor attract Aditi any much-needed attention.
At that moment, Michelle’s lock screen lit up with a text from Aditi: Heya. Free in five. Call me?
Michelle sighed out loud and began to type. Sounds good.
It really didn’t.
ADITI
Aditi sat at her desk, the phone on speaker in front of her. Her mouth had been open in surprise for the last two minutes. She’d anticipated any number of reactions from Michelle, from a pat on the back to a good-natured admonishment about lacking focus to a grudging “this is great but not what we need.” What she wasn’t prepared for was being stabbed in the back.
“You’re basically calling me a plagiarist. And of one of my favorite authors, besides.”
There was a long pause before Michelle finally responded, “I’m not. I get why you’re attracted to the subject, given the state of the political world.”
“Then why are you acting like I handed you a nuclear bomb?” Aditi needed to stop and take a breath. She was dangerously close to screeching into the phone.
“That’s a little overly dramatic, don’t you think?” Michelle replied. Aditi could hear the annoyance in her friend’s voice. “I am saying it’s derivative. Especially with the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale on everyone’s must-see list this year.”
“It’s not the same story,” Aditi shot back. She stood up and began pacing. “And even if it does share similarities, how is this so different from the way I crafted my first book? It was a feminist take on an existing story!”
“Handmaid’s Tale is already feminist,” Michelle replied. “And the original is only thirty years old. Draupadi is from a Hindu epic that predates Christianity. It’s not at all the same thing.”
Aditi’s head was reeling. This was her Next Big Thing. This was the source of her excitement and momentum—and Michelle had just dumped a metric ton of ice water right on top of it.
“My execution will be completely different than Atwood’s,” Aditi said finally. After everything she’d put into this over the last f
ew days, she wasn’t willing to just throw in the towel. “You know how great I am at world-building. This isn’t Gilead, it’s a prison planet.”
“How is Gilead not a de facto prison?” Michelle asked.
“The same way Panem isn’t one in Hunger Games.”
“People don’t care about minutiae,” Michelle replied. “They’re going to see the big similarities, not the small differences.”
This was about something else entirely, Aditi just knew it. This wasn’t about a comparison, it was about the Jezebel post. “You just think it’s too political.”
“What?” Michelle actually had the audacity to laugh.
“Faraday is mad that I pissed off Sterling Knight, and now I’m being put on a leash. I won’t have that.”
“Yes, Gwen is pissed at you, but I’m not. I liked the Jez post. And that’s not why I don’t like your latest pages,” Michelle said, her tone sharper. “It is why Gwen wants to approve your Buzzfeed article, though.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” It wasn’t even an article. It was twenty bullshit things people wouldn’t guess about book authors. It was such a stupid fucking pitch, Aditi had only come up with nine so far, and one of those was that she liked to work in sweats. Didn’t everyone prefer to work in sweats? The way she was feeling now, number ten was about to be “Book publishers are all cowards, driven by the almighty dollar.”
“This is serious, Aditi. I mean it.” Michelle’s tone now bent toward pleading. “Gwen is concerned. This is your career. You sold this book on the promise of a trilogy and you haven’t even delivered a detailed outline for the second book. And yes, the Jezebel thing wasn’t particularly well-timed. You’re starting to look like more trouble than you’re worth, which puts even your current deal in jeopardy.”