by JD Nixon
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nobody can see this,” she said.
“Wanda, the paramedics need to know what she’s taken. Put those containers back.”
She was defiant. “No. And we have to clean her up and dress her too.”
“Leave everything as we found it,” I ordered.
“We’ll tell them she has a stomach bug.”
“No! You might be endangering her life. I’m telling them she’s taken an overdose.”
“I’m not having her fodder for cheap gossip again. I won’t allow it!”
“Well, I won’t allow you to interfere with this bedroom. Drop the containers.”
She stormed past me, tightly clutching the bottle and containers. I grabbed her arm and swung her back around again. She shook me off angrily and made another attempt towards the door. I hauled her backwards with my arm around her neck and with my other arm, wrestled the containers from her hands. She wasn’t willing to release them though and we struggled, dancing around the room together grappling for control of those containers.
“Let them go,” I hissed in her ear.
“Let me go.”
My height and greater strength were on my side, and I finally managed to wrench them from her hands. She collapsed onto the bed, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. I let her sob for a few minutes before laying my hand on her back.
Wanda turned her tear-streaked face to me. “Everyone’s going to make fun of her again. It’s not her fault. She can’t stop. She has an illness.”
“She needs help.”
“She refuses to go to rehab. God knows, I’ve tried.” She rolled off the bed to crouch down on the floor next to Yoni, checking on her breathing. She gently brushed the hair off Yoni’s forehead and shifted pain-laden eyes back to me.
“You’re very loyal, Wanda. I can see this is really upsetting you.”
“Of course I’m upset. She’s my sister!” She looked down at Yoni’s face. “My beautiful, talented, stupid, selfish older sister. I love her as much as I hate her.”
Whoa! I was gobsmacked. “But you seem so hostile to each other.”
She shrugged. “That’s just how we are. Look Tilly, nobody knows about our relationship and we’d like to keep it that way. Okay?”
“Sure,” I promised, my head spinning.
A banging on the suite door distracted the both of us and I sprinted over to let in the paramedics and the three Heller’s men and two burly hotel security men who’d accompanied them. We handed Yoni over to the paramedics and I ushered everyone from her bedroom except Wanda, not wanting any more people than necessary seeing her in her indignity. Despite Wanda’s sullen face, I pointed out the pharmaceuticals and the vodka bottle to the paramedics.
I don’t know how they found out – I can only assume they used radio scanners on emergency calls – but there were members of the paparazzi spilling out of the lift as the paramedics pushed Yoni on the gurney down the hall. They snapped photos as fast as the Heller’s men and hotel security snatched their cameras from them and erased them.
One of the hotel security men shouted into his radio ordering every available man to mobilise to secure all entrances to the hotel. Wanda had draped a thin sheet over Yoni’s face so that nobody could identify her, but that only led to an instant internet rumour that she’d died.
The men were forced to manhandle a couple of photographers out of the way so that the poor paramedics could wheel the gurney. Rumbles made a snap decision to take Yoni out the back entrance to the hotel and the hotel security men guided us to the service lift.
But if we thought that would guarantee us an easy exit, we were wrong. The entire Heller’s team, including me, as well as every hotel security officer was needed to push away the paparazzi and lift Yoni into the ambulance. I climbed into the ambulance with her and one of the paramedics, while Wanda, tears pouring down her face, caught a lift in one of the Heller’s vehicles. The ambulance accelerated speedily, both Heller’s vehicles following behind, happy to allow the siren to work its traffic magic. Paparazzi cars and motorbikes swamped us, the ambulance forced to slow to a crawl in an attempt to avoid running over one of the drivers who weaved back and forth in front. It took thirty minutes to make it to the smaller inner-city hospital, what should have normally been a five-minute drive from the hotel.
It was mayhem at the hospital, cars and motorbikes blocking the driveway to the emergency ambulance zone. They easily overwhelmed both the hospital security team and the Heller’s team, the head of security at the hospital left with no choice but to call the police. But even with three patrol cars and six uniformed police officers assisting us, we struggled to force the paparazzi out of the way to allow the ambulance to pull up in front of the emergency department.
I simply could not understand the mindset of anyone who’d deliberately obstruct an ambulance taking someone to hospital just to make a few bucks.
It turned into a battlefield. It was brutal and violent, almost a riot. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life. Swallowed up by all the big men around me, I was shoved and trampled, elbowed and kicked, sometimes by my own side.
I found myself trapped in the middle of the maelstrom, being roughly manhandled by a particularly hungry shark of a photographer, crazed at the thought of snapping an exclusive shot of Yoni on a stretcher. I grasped him around the throat with one hand and dug my nails into him viciously, all the time pushing him back, back, back, my elbow up ramming into his chest. He wasn’t a massive man, but was immensely strong, driven by the thought of adding to his retirement fund. And we all knew how much of a motivator money could be for bad behaviour. The man and I tussled back and forth, until I redoubled my efforts and pushed against him as hard as I could, forcing him away from the ambulance.
The cops conferred and regrouped, becoming a well-organised team. They formed a protective barricade around the front of the ambulance, their batons out. They used them freely, driving everyone backwards, good guys and all. The ambulance crept forward, centimetre by centimetre, towards the entrance.
I caught a hard whack on the back for being tardy in moving on and spun around, protesting about the unnecessary use of force on those of us on the same side.
“Move it along. Now!” ordered a brute of a cop, raising his baton to me again. When I told him that I was on Yoni’s security team, he didn’t care.
“Move it!” he shouted and brought his baton down again, this time on my shoulder. I was about to lose my temper when one of the Heller’s men grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to the side of the affray, out of the ambulance’s path. It was Farrell.
“Do what he tells you, Chalmers,” he snapped, maintaining a prudently tight grip on me. “He’s a cop. Get out of his way or he’ll arrest you.”
“He hit me!” I fumed, struggling against him. “Twice! The arsehole. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“Just stay out of their way,” he repeated.
I shook him free and stalked to the back of the crowd, waiting for the ambulance to come to a halt. Finally the cops triumphed and the ambulance was able to make it to the entry. I lingered near the back with the other Heller’s men so that when Yoni was brought out on the stretcher, we were able to form a barrier around her, the cops on the outside, batons at the ready again.
It was a battle to wheel the stretcher inside. The paparazzi seemed almost liquid. They oozed into any gap, any space, no matter how tiny, to pop up and take a photo. They shot their cameras over our heads, between our bodies, from the ground, standing on top of anything – anything to take a photo. In the Heller’s team, we concentrated solely on assisting the gurney travel the small distance through the doors of emergency, leaving the head-cracking and butt-whooping to the cops. They seemed to enjoy it, after all, I thought nastily.
We finally made it through the doors into the hospital. The cops formed a fresh cordon in front of the entrance to stop any of the paparazzi from entering. The Hel
ler’s men would be on duty on the inside wherever Yoni was taken.
We’d just wasted another thirty minutes trying to move Yoni from the ambulance to the emergency ward. Wanda’s face was wan and pinched with anxiety.
“It’ll be okay,” I consoled, patting her hand, not sure if it would or not.
We killed time silently together in the waiting room. I rang Heller to update him on the situation, even though I was sure he’d probably heard all about it from his men. I wished I hadn’t when, without even a hello, he launched into a lecture about the importance of following police directives and not drawing attention to yourself. The Heller’s grapevine had been busy again. Bored, I only half-listened and hung up as soon as possible. Didn’t anyone appreciate the fact that the cop had hit me! That’s not right!
It was very early in the morning before we heard from the doctor.
“We had to undertake a gastric lavage,” he told us. We squinted at him in ignorance. “We pumped her stomach.” Aah! “She’ll be all right, but she’s a little weak at the moment. We’d like to keep her in for observation for the rest of the night and most of the morning, but she should be ready to leave at lunchtime. I suggest you go home and get some rest yourself and come back then.”
Barely controlling another jaw-cracking yawn, it sounded like good advice to me. A couple of fresh Heller’s men arrived to relieve the current men and guard Yoni’s private room while the rest of us went home.
Wanda and I hitched a ride back to the hotel in one of the Heller’s vehicles. On our return, I poked my head into Yoni’s room, glad to see that the hotel management had sent in a cleaning team. The carpet was freshly shampooed and the bed remade with crisp clean sheets, the scent of air-freshener not quite masking the stench of vomit and shit. Before I collapsed onto my rollaway, I rang Heller again to let him know that Yoni would be okay and we’d pick her up the next morning. I couldn’t stop yawning throughout the phone call and he finally ordered me to go to sleep because he couldn’t understand a word I was saying.
Geez, he was so grumpy lately, I muttered to myself as I tried to find a comfortable position in the lumpy, creaky bed.
Chapter 24
The next morning, over what should have been a peaceful breakfast, I perused the paper. To my dismay, the photo that had been on the news the previous night filled the entire front page, complete with a garish heading: Guardian angel or granny grappler? A summary of the incident took up prime space on page three, a number of commentators weighing into both sides of the debate about the power and authority of private security officers. I pushed my breakfast away, hunger gone.
I spent the next hour fielding calls from friends and family, all either disappointedly sympathetic at the negative publicity for me (Mum and my grandmothers), or chortling over it (everybody else).
By the time I joined the fresh Heller’s team in the foyer, I never wanted to hear about that granny again. But of course, that was only my wish.
As I approached, one comedian amongst the men called out, “Lock up your old ladies. Here comes the Granny Groper!” They all laughed.
“It was the granny grappler, not the granny groper, you tool! I’m not a pervert,” I protested.
They only laughed harder.
“I am so not hanging around with you people,” I steamed, tired from my lack of sleep and just not in the mood to be teased. I decided I’d wait in the suite until it was time to leave.
I spun to catch the lift back up in a huff, startling an elderly lady coming in the other direction. She reared back in fright, her walking stick clattering to the marble floor as she recognised me from the newspaper.
The men shouted with laughter in the background.
“Watch out, Granny!” one yelled as I stooped to pick up her stick, handing it back and smiling gently at her. She snatched it from me and doddered away as fast as her varicose-veined legs would let her, looking back over her shoulder in fear.
“I’m not a monster!” I shouted after her with a sudden flare of temper. “I’m not going to hurt you. I have grandmothers!”
She did that weird kind of run-hop that people who can’t, or shouldn’t, run do in fright. The men continued to piss themselves laughing. In comparison, I was the master of cool professionalism, gathering my dignity and taking myself upstairs. I waited alone in that quiet haven until one of them rang to inform me it was time to leave for the hospital.
I sat silently in the front passenger seat of the first Heller’s vehicle, arms crossed. Wanda elected to travel apart from me, so she was in the second 4WD, hopefully enjoying the uninterrupted attention and teasing banter of the men. Usually I enjoyed it too, but today I decided that she could have them all to herself.
“What about her?” asked the driver, a man I didn’t know with thick black hair and overpowering cologne. We’d stopped at a red light, and he pointed to a very elderly lady shuffling along the footpath, her back bent over with scoliosis, arthritic hands shakily clutching her walker, sparse white hair blowing gently in the breeze. “Would you go nuclear on her arse?” The three of them sniggered.
“She had a gun, you know,” I reminded them.
“And a hip replacement.” More sniggers.
“She could have killed someone,” I muttered to myself, staring resolutely out the window until we reached the hospital.
I was the first out of the vehicle and not bothering to wait for my oh-so-supportive colleagues, strode through the corridors to Yoni’s room. She was showered, dressed and ready to leave, gorgeous, relaxed and happy. I didn’t know how she managed to spring back so well from the terrible damage she inflicted on her body. She thanked the doctors and nursing staff graciously, but I found her lack of embarrassment disturbing. If I’d had to have my stomach pumped out by strangers because of my own over-indulgence, I would have been mortified to say the least.
Her spirits were so high that she even responded to some of the questions that the ever-present paparazzi pack yelled out to her, advising them that, yes thank you, she was now perfectly recovered from the tummy bug that had suddenly afflicted her yesterday. I bundled her into the back seat of the first 4WD, climbing in after her. The third man who’d travelled to the hospital with us, now had to catch a lift with the second vehicle, Wanda squeezed between two particularly large men in the back seat, excited smile on her face.
“Where’s my limo?” whined Yoni.
“We didn’t want to attract attention by bringing it,” I explained curtly. Not that the strategy had been effective judging from the paparazzi vehicles buzzing around us again.
Yoni spent the rest of the day quietly recuperating, but was back on the publicity trail the following day. The remainder of the week passed with no further incidents, although I had to endure an avalanche of granny jokes from each different security team on duty. By the end of the week, I was seriously considering a career change to some kind of job that precluded the hiring of smartarse men.
Yoni and Wanda continued to bicker constantly and no matter how much I listened, I couldn’t detect any undercurrent of warmth or mutual affection. They had a strange relationship. Now that I knew they were sisters, on studying Wanda’s face, I noticed that Yoni and her shared the same chin line, cheekbones and face shape, but otherwise there was little resemblance between them. I wondered if they were half-sisters or stepsisters, but Wanda hadn’t volunteered any more information and I didn’t want to pry.
The premiere to Yoni’s new movie went off without a hitch. She dazzled in a long, figure-hugging emerald evening gown, her hair shining and loose around her shoulders. She was poised and perfect, every inch the movie star. On the red carpet she primped and preened, smiled charmingly to fans, signed a few autographs, posed carefully for photos and gave a couple of modest and amusing interviews, lapping up the attention.
But the reviews the next day completely panned the movie as unbelievable tripe, Yoni’s acting as frozen as her Botoxed facial muscles. One critic declared that there was more chemistr
y between him and his mother-in-law than there was between the two lead characters. One scathed that it was a spectacular failure as a rom com movie, being neither romantic nor comedic. Another stated that halfway through the movie, she’d thought about gouging out her own eyes so she didn’t have to watch any more, realising that was futile because she’d still be able to hear the clunky dialogue and over-emoting of the terrible acting. And a fourth wrote that the movie was so excruciatingly painful to watch that he’d afterwards contemplated having a root canal without anaesthetic for some light relief.
Ouch!
Yoni brushed off the reviews as jealous tall-poppy syndrome, only becoming genuinely incensed by someone who suggested that perhaps she was now a little too ‘mature’ to still be playing sweet, ingenue roles. While she ranted about that, Wanda and I exchanged glances. We’d both watched the movie during the premiere and we’d quietly agreed that it reeked.
At long last Friday evening arrived. I was bursting with excitement, eagerly awaiting Heller’s arrival so I could escape (and so I could see him again too, if I was honest with myself). Will finally rang me back, but disappointingly wasn’t available though he didn’t tell me why. So instead I decided I’d hang with Daniel and Niq, looking forward to going home and catching up with them.
I recognised the confident knock on the door and flew over to throw it open in welcome. Mr Sexy himself leaned on the doorway, tall and gorgeous, smiling down at me. God, he looked good. I almost wished I was going to receive the Heller treatment tonight. And I know it wasn’t very professional of me, but I launched myself on him in a big hug.
We squeezed each other tightly.
“This is nice! You look so happy to see me for once, my sweet,” he exclaimed, leaning down to kiss me on the forehead.