[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

Colm’s head appeared over the partition as he stood up, so slowly that he looked like an old man with arthritis. “I’m going back to the hotel. I feel awful.”

  “Oh yeah. A likely excuse. You’re off to doss around in a casino for the afternoon, no doubt.”

  He grabbed a crumpled tissue from his desk and daubed at a trickle that was leaking from his nose. “Yeah, that’s it. And then I’m going on the pull.”

  I felt a bit guilty for assuming he was sulking last night. He did look terrible. And he hadn’t even eaten his morning biscuits – today’s ones were Iced Gems.

  “Will you be able to come to the ball tonight, do you think?”

  “Only if they’ve changed the venue to the hospital.” He turned towards the window and launched into a fit of sneezes. I stopped counting after the first ten.

  “Oh, well, eight sneezes is the equivalent of an orgasm, they say. Every cloud and all that.”

  He turned his bloodshot eyes back to me, and looked at me as if I had gone mad. Then – and I wasn’t sure if this was because of what I said, or the strain of all the sneezes – he started to blush furiously. Not one of those healthy-looking reddening-of-the-cheeks efforts, but one that crept up from wherever they started all the way up to the hairline. He looked away and started fussing with his paraphernalia, gathering it up into his arms furiously.

  “See you tomorrow. Enjoy tonight.”

  He left in a blur of long strides and sniffles, leaving me wondering what the hell all of that had been about. Why would someone as confident as Colm feel so threatened by the O word?

  I was too excited at the thought of the ball to ponder the question for too long. That very night I’d be rubbing shoulders with George Clooney!

  Chapter Sixteen

  I felt a bit sorry for Colm, being stuck in bed all evening sick while the rest of us would be out boozing. I looked at my watch – I had an hour to get ready. I wouldn’t need more than fifteen minutes, so I slipped on my pumps and made my way to the convenience store beside the hotel to buy Colm a few lads’ magazines to pass the night for him.

  While I was in there, I decided I might as well buy a whole get-well kit while I was at it. I filled a basket with paracetamol, throat-soothers, balsam tissues, energy drinks, chocolate bars and about ten packets of various biscuits that he’d probably turn his nose up at for being too new, then went to the men’s magazine section of the store. I picked up one called Axiom and flicked through it – cars, check, gadgets, check, girls in bikinis, check. A music magazine called Deafen also looked like it would fit Colm’s bill, plus I would have bought it for the name alone anyway. Finally, I threw a magazine about horses into my basket, purely for the randomocity of it. It was going to be a long night for Colm, and he might as well learn something new from it.

  I walked briskly back to the hotel, and went up to Colm’s room with my bag of tricks. I knocked until my knuckles were sore, but there was no answer. I looked at my watch – half an hour until it was time to meet Lindy. I went down the corridor to my room, wrote my daily diary entry in five minutes, then had a quick shower and got myself ready for the ball. Fifteen minutes later, my dress was on, my hair was brushed, and I’d even put a tiny bit of eye make-up and lipstick on. It suited me so much more than the trowel-loads I used to wear back in the modelling days. I twirled around to get a look at the back of my dress, and decided I was satisfied with how it looked. It was an unfussy dress – red, sleeveless, V-necked and to the knee – nothing special, but it looked a lot more expensive than it was, due to its classic design. I’d picked it up in a sale in some boutique in Paris a few years before, and I’d worn it at least eight times. It always made me feel comfortable in my own skin, and looked great with the red high heels I’d matched it with. I threw the few bits and bobs I’d need for the night into a small red handbag I’d also bought – it didn’t exactly match, but nobody would notice – picked up the recovery-aid bag, and made my way back down to Colm’s again.

  I put my ear up against the door before I put my knuckles through another boxing match. The TV was definitely on, as it had been the last time. Colm was probably in another one of his antisocial moods and was just ignoring me. I’d soon sort that out. I took off one shoe and rapped it against the door. When there was no answer, I graduated from rapping to thumping at the risk of ending up in George’s company wearing another heelless shoe. I was rewarded with the sound of shuffling at the other side of the door.

  When he opened the door, I felt even more awful than he looked. His tousled hair and slitty eyes made it obvious that he’d been fast asleep.

  “What’s going on?” His voice came out as a croak.

  “I just called to try to make you feel better,” I said.

  “I think sleep might help me,” he said, frowning, but he held the door open to let me in. The room smelled musty and unhealthy.

  “No, I mean . . . I brought you some stuff that might help you.” I held up the bag. “I’m sorry, I should have realised you’d be trying to sleep . . .”

  “Ah, it’s fine. That was nice of you. Thanks.”

  I held out the bag for him to take, but just as he reached out for it, he seemed to lose his balance. He held his arms out to the wall for support, then crawled his arms down the wall and bent his knees until he was sitting on the carpet.

  “Colm, what is it?”

  He put his head between his knees and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m fine. Just dizzy and my neck’s a bit sore.”

  I knelt down beside him, and noticed beads of sweat in his hairline. Within seconds, I noticed them plopping from his forehead onto the carpet, where they were instantly sucked up.

  “Did you go to the doctor after work?”

  He shook his head. I put my hand on his forehead. It felt like a hob in a kitchen. It was then that I noticed a purple rash on the back of his neck. I put my hands on his neck and pulled the skin apart to see if the rash would blanch, having lots of practice at this from years of baby-sitting. It didn’t fade at all. Colm didn’t even react at my rough skin-pulling, and that, even more than the rash, told me that he was in trouble here.

  “Colm, you need to go now! You’re running a temperature and you’re developing a rash on the back of your neck!”

  “Not well enough to go. Can’t move.” His voice was more breathless now than it had been when he answered the door. He eased himself to one side and flopped onto the carpet, lying face down on it.

  I let him lie there while I ran to the phone and rang Reception.

  “’Allo? Reception.”

  “Philippe, we need a doctor. Colm is sick. Do you know of one that will call to Colm’s hotel room?”

  “What is wrong with ’im?”

  “He’s got a fever and a rash. He’s in a bad way. Do you have the doctor’s contact details to hand there?”

  “What kind of a rash is it?”

  “Just get me the contact details, please.”

  He continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Because it could just be ’eat rash, you know. You Irish are not equeeped to ’andle the ’eat –”

  “Philippe! Just give me the goddamned phone number!”

  There was a long pause. “You prove my point. The ’eat drives you people crazee. You cannot find your tempair when it is ’ot. Wait a second and I will get you the numbair.” He crashed the phone onto the desk.

  It took him a good six minutes to find the number, during which time Colm had moulded his body into the carpet and fallen into a fitful doze. His breathing was jagged and harsh.

  “’Ere it ees.” He called out the number. “You should ask the doctor to give you something too for your bad mood.” He hung up.

  I immediately rang the doctor’s surgery. His receptionist informed me that the doctor wouldn’t be available to do house calls for another five hours, but as their surgery was located only around the corner from the MGM, she suggested that we come in. The surgery was quiet at the moment, and the doctor would be able to see Colm st
raight away. I told her to expect us soon.

  I walked over to Colm and shook him gently. “Right, mister. Up you get.”

  He rolled onto his back and looked up at me with wild eyes.

  “You need to go to the doctor.”

  “No way . . . I’ll be fine after a sleep . . .”

  “You need medication. I’m bringing you to the doctor now, and that’s that.”

  “I don’t have the energy to go . . .”

  The doctor is just around the corner. So, come on – get up and let’s go right now.”

  “But what about your ball?”

  “Ah, I’ll go later than planned. This won’t take long.”

  “No. You go. I can go to the doctor’s on my own.”

  “No way – if I leave here, you’ll go straight back to bed. Then you’ll be a million times worse tomorrow.”

  “I never knew you cared.”

  I shrugged. “We only have each other out here, so we have to look out for each other.”

  He looked a bit surprised when I said that. I meant it, though. He was a pain in the hole most of the time, but I was hardly going to leave him there to rot when he had nobody else to help him. There was an awkward silence, so I reverted back to the territory we knew how to handle. “Besides, it’s not entirely selfless – I can’t bear the thought of listening to Isolde going on and on if Éire TV contact her to say there’s been a delay with the filming of the show. So, go on – get yourself cleaned up. I’ll ring Lindy to tell her I’ll see her later on.”

  While Colm went to the bathroom, I made a quick call to Lindy. I held the phone out from my ear as she ranted on about being there on her own, then I used Colm as an excuse to hang up as he came back out of the bathroom. He stumbled his way to the bed and lay down.

  “No, you don’t. Up up up!”

  “Ah, Andie, I’m in bits here . . .”

  “And you’ll be a million times worse tomorrow if you don’t get up. Not because you’ll be even more sick, but because you’ll have me to answer to. Now, shift!”

  He sighed and gave me an evil look, but got himself into a vertical position. As I stood up to jolly him out the door, I realised that I’d have to lose the heels. I scanned the room and spotted Colm’s flip-flops. I flicked my shoes off one by one, then crossed the room and slotted my feet into the flip-flops.

  “They’re too big for you!”

  I waved his objections away. “Nah, they’re fine.”

  “Why don’t you go down to your room and get your own shoes?”

  “Because if I leave you for so much as one second, you’ll be wrapped up in that bed by the time I get back. We’re going right now while I have you upright.”

  To my horror, the dreaded blush invaded his face again. I decided to put it down to his illness – it must have been causing hot flushes.

  “And what about your dress? Do you want to get out of it?”

  Once he realised what he’d said, the blush grew even deeper than the colour of the aforementioned dress. God, this hole was getting deeper and deeper – I was going to start blushing myself if he didn’t shut up.

  “Nah, it’ll save me time to just stay in it. Let’s just go.” I hurried him out the door.

  We shuffled our way to the doctor’s surgery, the three-minute walk taking at least twice that, between Colm’s inability to walk fast and my feet wearing flip-flops that kept flopping off. I’d never noticed how big Colm’s feet were before. We got a few strange looks along the way, but I wasn’t sure if it was because Colm was stumbling along and leaning on me like a drunken old man after the pubs had closed, or if it was the combination of my choice of footwear and my cocktail dress. I hoped it was the latter. Colm’s sickness was starting to scare me . . . I had an awful feeling that this wasn’t just some flu.

  “Good evening, how can I help you?” The receptionist was alert and in bring-it-on mode, something that I was happy about under the current circumstances.

  “It looks like he has the flu, and needs to get some medication for it. Colm, why don’t you sit down, and I’ll do the paperwork bit for you?”

  Colm looked only too happy to acquiesce – he was barely able to stand. Once he’d taken one of the few available seats at the back of the waiting area, I turned back to the receptionist. “Look, he has this weird purple rash,” I said quietly. “I’m really worried it might be indicative of something a lot more serious than flu. Can you make sure we see the doctor immediately?”

  “Yes, he’s free now. Sit down, and I’ll let him know what you’ve told me.”

  Within seconds, Colm was called in to the doctor.

  “I’ll go in with you,” I said, feeling like his mother.

  “What can I do for you?” the doctor asked.

  “I think I have the flu,” Colm muttered. His voice was so low that it was barely audible.

  “What symptoms are you experiencing?”

  “Just coughing, sneezing, high temperature. Bit of a fainting feeling too. And a headache.”

  “And what about the sore neck and the rash? Tell him about them!” I turned to the doctor. “He was complaining that his neck was sore earlier. Then, I noticed a gigantic purple rash on the back of his neck . . .”

  “You never mentioned it was gigantic!” Colm suddenly sounded alive again, in an I’m-now-quite-scared kind of way.

  “You didn’t ask how big it was – it’s not that big really. You know me, prone to exaggeration.”

  As the doctor got up from his desk to examine Colm, I moved my hands outwards and mouthed the word “huge” when Colm was looking the other way. The doctor put his hands on the back of Colm’s neck, and pulled the skin apart with his thumbs. A frown flickered across the doctor’s face – it barely registered, and he tucked it away immediately and resumed his inscrutable doctor’s pose, but not before I had seen it. He then placed a thermometer in Colm’s ear, but his face gave nothing away this time as he took the reading.

  He picked up a doctor’s torch, and shone it into Colm’s eyes. Colm immediately recoiled.

  As the doctor took Colm’s blood pressure, Colm started to shake uncontrollably. The doctor hovered in front of him. “Colm, tell me how you’re feeling right now.”

  “Freezing. It’s so cold.” Rivers of sweat ran down his forehead as he hugged himself.

  I felt a chill run down my own back. This was not good.

  Ten minutes later, we were in an ambulance on the way to the Desert Springs Hospital. According to the doctor, Colm was showing all the signs of meningitis. I trembled all the way to the hospital. Colm had made several attempts to fall asleep as soon as he got into the ambulance, and didn’t seem to care what was wrong with him as long as he was allowed to sleep, but the staff used every means at their disposal to keep him awake and kept asking him questions.

  When we arrived at the hospital, Colm was whisked away to ER. I was shown to a waiting area, and told that I’d be informed about what was going on as soon as tests had been performed.

  It was only when I was left on my own that I had the headspace to turn my thoughts to Lindy. I pulled out my mobile to ring her, and saw that I had several text messages from her, and three missed calls.

  I read the texts in order. First one: ‘OMG! I’ve just spotted George!! Get here fast!’

  The second: ‘Where are you?’

  The third: ‘I just spoke to George! Oh my God! I can’t believe you missed it!’

  My heart raced on the third one. Oh God! Lindy was chatting up my George! I rang her immediately.

  “Andie!” Lindy already sounded pissed when she answered the phone. “Are you on the way?” she shouted, competing with a cacophony of voices, clinking glasses and general merriment in the background.

  For a split second, I was tempted to say yes, to run out of this hospital in Colm’s flip-flops and get a taxi to the ball – but there was no way in the world that I would do that to Colm. Even if I hated the grumpy old sod, he was still a sick man in a strange countr
y with nobody else but me to help him.

  “No.” I explained the situation to Lindy.

  “That is just terrible news. I really hope he’s going to be okay. Can you let me know later how he is?”

  “Yeah, I’ll try to call if I can.”

  “Well, if you can’t call, make sure you text me.”

  “Sure.” Huh, if she really fancied him, she’d leave the party and come over to the hospital, I thought.

  “Okay, well, I’ll tell George you said hello when I bump into him again later!”

  I tried to keep my disappointment and envy out of my voice. “I love how you said ‘when’ and not ‘if’ there, Lindy –”

  “Oh, there’s no chance of an ‘if’. It’s a ‘when’. I’ll make sure of that.”

  She would, too. “Enjoy the night.” I hung up before my jealousy suffocated me. I couldn’t believe that my opportunity to meet George was passing me by like this!

  I focused my attention back on the hospital. I stared around the room, taking in the details of everything and anything to distract my thoughts from what I was missing. An elderly lady sitting across from me was knitting, her elbows resting on her round belly as her fingers worked furiously. I couldn’t work out why anyone would need anything knitted in a place like Vegas where the dry heat would suffocate you, but I decided not to ask. Despite her innocent-grandma demeanour, she had the air of someone looking for a fight as her eyes darted from her needles to everyone else in the room. Hospitals never brought out the best in people. After that, I decided to just buy a few magazines and keep my head down. Besides, worrying about Colm would pass the time . . . the poor guy had looked in such a bad way.

  An indeterminable amount of time later – I had somehow nodded off, in a narcoleptic manner, and only woke when I heard my name being yelled out – a doctor led me outside to a corridor for an update on Colm.

  “Good news,” he said. “It’s looking like a viral infection but not meningitis. We did a CT scan upon Colm’s admission, which showed no abnormalities or inflammation. We’ve also done some blood tests, and the results of those also indicate that he doesn’t have meningitis. To be on the safe side, we just did a lumbar puncture, which is a very effective test in diagnosing meningitis. We’re awaiting the results of that, but in the meantime please don’t worry too much. We’re quite confident at this stage that it’s just a common viral infection.”