Chapter 9
Travis was a mess of nerves. It felt like his blood was trying to vibrate through his skin. He’d started the day with coffee to make up for a sleepless night, which only caused his anxiety to ratchet up quicker than usual. And given the degree of his anxiety ever since the incident, that was no small thing.
He had made it through his first trivia night without making a complete mess of things, and Scot was going to see a doctor in a few days. In every way that mattered, his life was going well.
Everything except for the constantly looming threat of arrest and incarceration.
He was supposed to meet Rachel today. And to add one anxiety to another, today was also the Community Property Renovations fundraiser.
He had promised Nat that he would go, and a part of him wanted to make an appearance, to make believe that he still had the idyllic Pelican Point life that he once had.
Another part of him said that he had fulfilled his obligation by simply purchasing a ticket, and it would be better to steer clear. He didn’t want to ruin things for Keely or for their friends by bringing his weird, anxious energy into what was both a celebration and a concerted effort to attract new donors to a local charity.
More and more lately, he felt at risk of ruining anything and anyone that he interacted with. He worried constantly about how Keely would react if she found out that he had killed her ex-boyfriend, how Scot would cope if he were sent to jail, what his friends thought of this sudden shift in his personality…
Not that any of his so-called friends had asked him about this new omnipresent anxiety that tainted his every interaction. They were all busy with their own lives. They had jobs and charitable works and significant others.
He was a side character. An afterthought.
And it was better that way. That way, if his crimes did catch up with him, it wouldn’t create a terrible hole in anyone’s life. His friends would move on unscathed, Scot would hire someone (or several someones) to replace him, and Pelican Point would be fundamentally unchanged.
Sometimes he considered drastic measures to put an end to his constant worry.
He could turn himself in, putting his trust in the justice system, and plead self-defense. But even if it worked, he’d be putting himself at the mercy of the man who’d met up with Adam that night.
Better to fly to Thailand, get a job bartending at a hostel in paradise somewhere, start over.
He shook his head and re-focused. The combination of exhaustion and caffeine was scrambling his thoughts. He was working on yet another new task that Scot had transferred into his care, overseeing the hours and paychecks for each employee, and he kept doing each bit of math three times over to make sure that he didn’t make a mistake.
Lunchtime came and went without Scot arriving, which was bizarre. Usually he came in well before the bar opened to the public. Travis called him, and he cursed as it went to voicemail.
Not coming in was one thing. That was part of the reason he was handing more tasks off to Travis, so that he could rest more and see if decreasing his workload alleviated the strange symptoms that he was experiencing. Maybe they were just the effect of working too hard too late in life.
But not answering his phone, that was something else. Travis finished up the last of his work, then locked up the office before heading out to drive by Scot’s house on the way out of town.
In all of the years that Travis had lived in Pelican Point, he had only been to Scot’s house twice. Once to help him haul out an ancient sofa and carry a new one up the steps, and once to bring Scot some groceries when he was sick, the only time in well over a decade that he had been sick enough to ask for help of any kind.
Travis felt a sense of foreboding as he parked in front of Scot’s house and walked up the pathway. He hoped to find Scot kicked back watching Jeopardy!, imagined how he would scold Scot for failing to answer his phone and Scot would call him a nattering old woman for worrying over him like a grandmother. He pictured the scene in his mind as he walked up the front steps, as if hoping hard enough might make it so.
He knocked on the door, waited a minute, and knocked again. When no one answered, he tested the handle. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in.
”Scot?” he called out.
No answer.
”Anyone here?”
Nothing.
”Scot?” Travis could hear his voice becoming more panicked, and he took a deep breath to try to control his fear. The living room was empty, as was the bathroom in the hallway.
He found him in the kitchen.
Scot was on the floor with blood pooled around his head.
For a second, Travis nearly blacked out. Panic turned the edges of his vision black, and he felt certain that Scot was dead. But a moment later, his logical mind kicked in.
He hurried to take Scot’s pulse and found it, good and strong. The amount of blood was upsetting, but not enough to be fatal. He quickly found the source, a small head wound.
He guessed that Scot had tripped, cracked his head on the counter, and passed out.
Scot was unresponsive. God only knew how long he had been there on the cold kitchen tiles.
Travis grabbed a heavy quilt off of the couch in the other room as he dialed 911 on his cell phone.
”911, what’s your emergency?”
”Head wound,” Travis said tersely. He laid the quilt over his employer and then examined his head as he rattled off the address. There was crusted blood in his hair, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped on its own.
Travis was grateful for that, because he was afraid to apply pressure in case the skull was damaged, but it made him sick to his stomach to think how long Scot must have been there alone and bleeding.
He answered a rote list of questions from the dispatcher, then disconnected the call and sat on the kitchen floor with Scot until the paramedics arrived.
When the ambulance pulled up out front, he jumped to his feet and opened the front door, then watched helplessly as they loaded Scot onto the gurney.
He wanted to climb into the ambulance with them, as if he could possibly be of any use to Scot on the short ride to the hospital. Instead, he settled for confirming the destination with the ambulance driver and saying that he would meet them there.
Again, he wanted to jump into his car and rush to the hospital, but he knew it was useless. He wasn’t Scot’s family, not technically, and all that he would be able to do would be to sit in the waiting room, jittery with nerves.
Instead, he went back into the house and cleaned the pool of congealed blood off the kitchen floor. It had gotten onto the blanket as well, so he threw that in the washing machine. Then he packed a bag for Scot: clothes, toothpaste, toothbrush, and the stack of books that rested on the nightstand next to Scot’s bed. Once he had done every helpful thing that he could think of, he walked outside and locked the front door behind him. He knew that there was a spare key in Scot’s desk at work.
Before he drove to the hospital, he called Nick.
”Hey, man, what’s up? I can’t really talk right now, we’re loading the car up with food for the fundraiser tonight.”
”I just wanted to let you know that Scot’s in the hospital.” Travis’s voice came out flat and disaffected. He felt as if he had gone into shock.
”He what?” Nick exclaimed.
”He fell and hit his head. I don’t know how long he had been there before I found him. He was alive but unresponsive. An ambulance took him to the hospital, and I’m headed there now.”
Nick let out a breath. ”Thank God you found him.”
”Yeah.” Again, his voice came out hollow and detached.
”Is there anything I can do?”
”No,” Travis said, suddenly exhausted. ”Just thought you should know.”
He disconnected the call and pocketed his phone, then climbed into his car and drove to the nearest hospital.
It wasn’t until he was on the road and passed a sign for Half Moon Bay that he realized he was going to miss his meeting with Rachel. He didn’t even have her phone number to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to make it.
He felt a jolt of remorse followed by a stab of fear at the thought of what might happen if he didn’t make contact with her again, but he didn’t even consider driving to the restaurant to meet her while Scot lay unconscious in the hospital. Scot had no one else. Travis was going to show up for him, come what may.
The hospital was inland from the tiny peninsula that held the town of Pelican Point. It was a small hospital, and quiet today. It didn’t take too long for a nurse to tell him which room Scot was in.
Travis made his way up the stairs and down the white hallway. (Why were prisons always so similar to jails? Or asylums?) When he peeked in the door and saw that Scot’s eyes were open, he felt a full-body wave of relief.
”I figured it was you that found me,” Scot grumbled as Travis sank into a chair next to the hospital bed.
”What happened?”
”I tripped,” Scot said irritably. Travis knew that his gruff responses masked his shame at needing anything from anyone and a deep fear regarding how his body seemed to be failing him at such a young age.
”And you’re okay? You don’t have like a fractured skull or anything? Or a concussion?”
Scot laughed darkly. ”I definitely have a concussion. And I twisted my leg pretty good when I fell.”
”Right.”
Of course he had a concussion. He had been unconscious and unresponsive when Travis got there. Travis shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He desperately needed some sleep.
Scot’s ankle was bandaged and elevated on a pile of pillows. How long until he would be able to get around on his own?
“Do you know what time you fell? You must’ve been down there a long time.”
He waved off the concern. “Only a short while before you got there. I wasn’t at the bar because I was already feeling a bit off before it happened.”
”How long will you be here?” Travis asked.
”They want to keep me overnight for some tests. With luck, I can leave tomorrow.”
”Is there anything that you need from me?”
”I need you to go man the ship.”
”Okay,” Travis said reluctantly. He had called Nick for no real reason, but hadn’t thought to call the bar. He would do that from his car before he started driving again.
No need to tell Scot, but he thought that he might ask some of the other bartenders to cover for him so that he could try to catch up on his sleep and be thinking straight the next day.
Maybe he could still catch Rachel. He pulled out his phone to glance at the time and saw that it was much later than he had realized. A parking lot street light shone brightly outside the window, but beyond that, the sky was dim. She’d be long gone by the time he could get there. Waiting with Scot, cleaning up and packing, driving to the hospital, it had all taken longer than he had realized.
”I brought you a bag,” he said. ”I forgot it in the car. I’ll run and grab it.”
”What kind of bag?” Scot asked as Travis walked to the door. ”Did you touch my stuff?”
Travis laughed weakly and shook his head as he walked out of the room. He jogged out to his car, grabbed the bag that he had packed for Scot, and came back. As he neared the door to Scot’s hospital room, he heard his boss saying, ”What are you doing here?”
He walked into the room to see Nick looming over Scot’s hospital bed.
”I just wanted to see if you were all right.”
”I’m fine,” Scot said irritably. ”And you have better places to be.” He looked over at Travis. ”You both do.”
”Hey, man,” Nick said when he saw Travis.
”Hey.” Travis turned to Scot and set the bag down where he could reach it. ”I packed some clothes, a toothbrush, your books.”
”My books?” Scot brightened. He smiled when he unzipped the bag and saw his books inside, and Travis‘s heart lightened a bit. Scot was going to be okay. This was a minor injury, an incident that would soon be forgotten. And it had the added benefit of giving Scot the attention of a whole team of medical staff; maybe they could finally address the other symptoms that had been growing steadily worse for months.
”Is there anything I can do?” Nick asked.
”You can both get out of here.” Scot shooed them toward the door with a flick of his wrists. It occurred to Travis that being seen in this state might be worse for Scot than simply being left in peace with his books.
”We’ll let you rest,” Travis agreed. ”I’ll be back in the morning.”
”Thank God you found him,” Nick said again as they walked down the hospital hallway together.
”Yeah.” Travis’s mind was a mess of fear and fatigue. He needed to go home and sleep.
”Where are you going?” Nick asked. Travis looked over his shoulder. Nick had paused to press the elevator button.
”Stairs.” He kept walking. Nick jogged to catch up.
”What’s going on with you, man? Are you coming to the fundraiser tonight?”
”No,” he said, deeply tired. ”I’m not going to the fundraiser tonight.”
He walked out the hospital doors and climbed into his car without saying goodbye.