A Year Less a Day (10 page)

“Yes, but ...”

“Did you bring something to work with?”

“Tom didn't say ...”

Mort waves her to stop with the stump and calls to Dave. “Get out a couple of dildos for the lady, Dave.”

Sweat's running off her brow as Ruth starts to rise. “Tom only mentioned breasts.”

Mort throws up his arms. “Lady, please. Listen to me. This ain't a debating contest. Do you need the money or not?”

“Yes, but ...”

“Good girl. Now take 'em off, jump up on the bed and give Dave some smiley wide shots for your portfolio—know what I mean?”

Two hours later Ruth is still trembling as she climbs the stairs to an empty apartment. Jordan will be back tomorrow and, while she would almost prefer to die than ask, she has no choice—he will have to get the money back from Los Angeles.

Tom crashes through the door at seven the following morning and heads straight for the kitchen.

“You screwed up, you silly bitch,” he hisses at Ruth, “Mort's f'kin furious you wasted his time. All you had to do was take your f‘kin clothes off. What's so hard about that?”

Ruth still has a carving knife in her hand, but figures he's not worth the effort; anyway, she has made up her mind. “Don't worry, I'm getting the money back—well, ten thousand, anyway.”

“My people don't like being messed around, Ruth.”

“Your people?” laughs Ruth as she peers into the weaselly little man's eyes and sees right through him. “You don't have people, Tom,” she spits. “You don't even have a pot to crap in; that's why you use ours every morning. And somebody's been stealing the toilet paper. Is that you?”

“No ...”

Something snaps, and Ruth suddenly finds all her
suffering, fears, and worries enveloped in a roll of toilet paper. “I said, ‘Is that you,' Tom?” she shouts and backs him against a fridge with the knife. “Is that you?” she screams into his face.

“Ruth,” he pleads as the knife presses at his throat.

“I said, ‘Is that you' taking the toilet paper?” she hisses as the knife starts to cut.

“Ruth, please.”

A bead of blood oozes from Tom's neck. “Have you been stealing the toilet paper?” she demands.

“You don't know what they're like,” Tom bleats, and Ruth realizes that his head is on the block alongside hers.

“The toilet paper, Tom. What about the toilet paper?” she yells as the crimson welt begins a slow leak.

“Yes ... Alright, alright. I took a roll of toilet paper.” “Rolls,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “Rolls of toilet paper.”

“Yes. OK. Rolls of toilet paper.”

“Thank you,” she says calmly, and slowly withdraws the knife. Tom's hand goes to his throat and he takes a breath of relief and starts to say, “Sorry,” when she slams her knee into his groin with enough force to lift him off the ground, and he drops to the floor with eyes full of tears.

“That's for the toilet paper, Tom. Now tell your people to wait a few days, OK?”

“Oh, my balls!” Tom cries, writhing in agony on the kitchen floor, but she sneers, “You're lucky I didn't cut them off after what you set me up for. Now get up and get out.”

Ruth is still pumped as she waits in the apartment to confront Jordan. She has disconnected the phone line to his computer and mentally practices her tactics for
over an hour before she hears his footsteps up the back stairs.

“I'm tired,” he says, his voice dragging the ground as he slumps into the room.

“The computer's not working at the moment,” she tells him firmly as he heads to bed. “I need to talk to you first.”

He drops into a chair, asking, “What is it, Ruth?”

Ruth brings out the box of pills and carefully places it on the table between them, like an exhibit. “Why haven't you been taking your pills?” she inquires.

“They're expensive ...” he starts, but she's ahead of him.

“If you needed more money you could have asked, but that doesn't answer the question. Why didn't you take these? You'd paid for them.”

“They upset me, so I got something else.”

An alarm bell is ringing in the depths of Ruth's mind, but she forges on. “I spoke to the support counsellor. She says that Los Angeles thing is probably a scam.”

“What does she know? My doctor really thinks it will work.”

Ruth brightens momentarily at the news, then folds as she sees her plan to repay the money coming apart. “Is he sure?”

“Pretty sure. He wants me to go as soon as possible.”

“Just before Christmas?”

“Probably.”

Ruth sits back, her future full of open-crotch photo shoots, and she hits on an idea. “Who's your doctor?”

“Benson ... Why?”

“I'm going to talk to him tomorrow.”

“I don't think you can,” says Jordan. “I don't think they're allowed to discuss my case with anyone else.”

“They can if you give me permission,” she says, then grumbles, “I always feel like such an idiot at the support group when I don't even know the type of cancer, or what you're taking. I am going to see Dr. Benson tomorrow to get some answers. And I'll find out more about Los Angeles while I'm at it, all right?”

Jordan starts, “I'm not sure ...” but she shushes him.

“No arguments, Jordan. I'll reconnect your computer, but first I want your signed consent ... Deal?”

Ruth's plans start unravelling in the early hours of the morning when Jordan begins a prolonged bout of sickness. “I must be getting worse,” he explains weakly, his voice hoarse from retching. “Will you stay with me, Ruth? I'm frightened,” he adds, and she spends most of the night sitting at his bedside listening to the reassuring sound of his snores. She creeps away before dawn and has most of the lunch menu prepared before Cindy and the new girl, Marilyn, arrive at seven.

Jordan wakes early, and his thumps on the floor above the kitchen send Ruth scurrying upstairs.

“Don't leave me, Ruth. I'm really scared.”

“You'd better come with me back to the hospital,” she suggests, but he shakes his head. “I'll be OK in a day or so. It might be the chemo.”

With her mission on hold, Ruth has the coffees made by seven when the staff and Mike Phillips arrive. Ruth smiles as Tom U-turns on the threshold and heads to Donut Delight with his head down.

“Thought I'd pick up a coffee on my way to the city,” Phillips tells Ruth. “But I'm not in a rush.”

“I was going this morning, but Jordan's not well,” says Ruth as Trina turns up.

“Pity. I could've given you a ride,” says Phillips.

Trina catches on and quickly jumps in. “I'll look after Jordan, Ruth. That's my job. You go—everything will be fine” Then she drops her voice. “Another date already?”

“Trina ...” warns Ruth with a trace of amusement.

“I hope your husband doesn't mind me taking you,” says Phillips as he opens the car door for Ruth.

“Not at all,” she replies, failing to mention that Jordan doesn't know. She would have told him, but feared he would freak out when he discovered that she'd taken Trina into her confidence. In any case, as she'd told Trina, he'll probably sleep all day. “Just put your ear to the door every so often,” she had said. “Don't go in unless he calls.”

It's more than an hour's drive, and Ruth's tenseness comes through as she fiddles with her purse and stares stolidly ahead.

“You OK, Ruth?” Phillips asks. “You look as though you're going to snap something.”

“Going to the doctor,” she tells him truthfully, though he gets the wrong impression and looks concerned.

“Nothing too serious, I hope.”

“Oh, no,” she says, thinking that it will be if Dr. Benson insists Jordan should go to Los Angeles.

“So what do you actually do, Mike?” she asks to change the subject.

Phillips gives her a sideways glance. “You're not in league with the Hell's Angels are you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Just joking, Ruth,” he laughs. “I'm on the anti-gang squad: money laundering, drugs, pornography, gambling, prostitution—you name it.”

It actually had taken them an hour-and-a-half, battling the morning traffic, but Mike Phillips had dropped Ruth at the front door of Vancouver General.

“I'll be fine,” she'd assured him when he'd wished her luck, but she had quickly found that she was in the wrong building. “The oncology department is way over on West 10th,” a helpful nurse had told her, and she ended up two blocks away after walking a maze of corridors with scary signs and frightening smells.

An hour later, Ruth sits in the soothingly decorated waiting room of the Cancer Agency surrounded by a dozen equally anguished relatives and wipes tears from her eyes.

“Mrs. Jackson ...” calls the receptionist, and Ruth leaps to her feet.

“Yes?”

“The administrator will see you now.”

Martin Dingwall has had years of experience delivering devastating news and has switched off his computer, blocked incoming calls, and turned down his smile. “Come in, please,” he greets Ruth at the door, and solicitously guides her to a chair.

Ruth sits with the anxiety of a convict waiting for the switch to be thrown as Dingwall deliberately settles himself behind his desk and picks up a single sheet.

“I really don't know what to tell you, Mrs. Jackson,” he begins solemnly, looking deeply into her eyes. “We simply have no record of anybody named Jordan Jackson fitting your husband's profile.”

“I know that,” she cries. “The receptionist told me that ages ago. But there has to be a mistake. He's been coming here for months.”

“Not according to our records.”

“But what about Dr. Benson? He'd know surely.”

“Mrs. Jackson ... May I call you Ruth?”

She nods.

“Ruth. We have no Dr. Benson registered here.”

“I might have got it wrong. Jenson—What about Jenson?”

“Ruth. We've checked all of our records; we've even had someone phone all the other hospitals in the region. Nobody has any record of your husband whatsoever.”

“Wait,” says Ruth, with an idea. “He's probably using a different name. He didn‘t want anyone knowing he had cancer.”

The administrator's face lights up in hope. “OK. What name? We'll check.”

Ruth's face falls. “I don't know ...” Then she brightens, “But Dr. Benson will know.”

“Ruth. There is no Dr. Benson,” says the administrator with more than a hint of exasperation.

“I could give you a description of Jordan,” enthuses Ruth.

“We have thousands of patients,” says Dingwall shaking his head. “Though a photograph might help,” he adds doubtfully.

Ruth bites her lip and doesn't bother to look in her purse. She has no photographs. The ones she had taken with the new camera had vanished into cyberspace.

“Sorry Ruth. The computer crashed,” Jordan had sheepishly explained a few days after his birthday when she was anxious to view them. “It seems to have mucked up the camera as well,” he'd claimed, though insisted that he'd be able to fix it when he was better.

“Do you have any other information?” continues the administrator. “What type of cancer? What treatment he was receiving? Are you sure he has cancer?”

“Of course I'm sure. I've been going to the support group. They would have known.”

Dingwall shakes his head again as he puts down the single sheet bearing only Jordan's name, address and date of birth. “I can only suggest that you go home and ask your husband,” he says with a tone of finality. “But I have to warn you, this isn't the first case like this that I've dealt with.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes people have delusions about illnesses, Ruth. They may even believe something is seriously wrong with them ...”

Ruth's mind has been racing out of control from the moment she arrived, but suddenly everything is clear. “I know what you're doing. You're lying to protect Jordan's privacy, aren't you?”

“No ...” he tries, but Ruth angrily flourishes Jordan's authority.

“I've got permission ... Here—that's his signature. You can check.”

“I know. You've already shown it to me. Believe me, Ruth, that is not the problem. I'm trying to help. Even if I couldn't give you specifics, I could certainly confirm that he was a patient. Why don't you just phone him? You're welcome to use my phone.”

Ruth can't explain her reluctance to phone Jordan, even to herself, but decides to take action. “I'm going to the other hospitals,” she declares. “Your computers must be wrong. I know he's been treated somewhere. He had pills ...”

“OK. What was the name of the drug?” asks Dingwall with a final ray of hope. “We might be able to track the prescription.”

“Zofran,” says Ruth remembering the name Trina had found on the pack.

Dingwall sits back, shaking his head again. “I was afraid of that.”

“What?”

“It's too common. Most of our cancer patients take it to quell nausea. We'd never trace an individual dose.”

Three hours and nearly two hundred dollars in cab fares later, Ruth is back at Vancouver General, admitting defeat. There is no record of her husband, or a Dr. Benson, in any of the Vancouver area hospitals, and if Jordan has used an alias there is no way of tracing him. Bewildered, and destitute of ideas, she finally seeks a payphone.

Trina picks up on the first ring, and sighs in relief. “Ruth. Thank God it's you. Jordan's gone missing—he's not with you, is he?”

“No, of course ... What do you mean, ‘missing'?”

“I couldn't hear anything from his room, so I had a quick look in to make sure he was all right ...”

“I told you not to.”