THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Five - Part Three

When Mike pulled his now battered van into the hospital car park he knew it was a huge mistake. Unfortunately he also knew he had no choice.

If it had been just him who had a seizure then he would probably have overlooked it. Apart from a little muscular stiffness he felt entirely normal. But Rosalie was far too precious to be risked. She was his perfect little girl and if there was the slightest chance that she could be in danger then he had to put everything else aside. He knew the risks. He knew this could very much lead to bad things for him. But fuck it. When had he ever cared about the consequences? Less than five years from forty it was too late to change now, right?

And if it wasn’t, it was impossible to change too many things at once. Putting somebody else first was a new one for Mike and he kind of liked it – letting go of that perpetual verruca-ache of guilt. Even if it was replaced by a gaping-eye terror of the police and what they might do to him. Because there was only so much trouble a person could get into over the years before they took the proverbial key and tossed it into the closest wheelie bin. And Mike had been in enough trouble that something like this could be the end of him. No community work. No minimum sentence. This time it would be less a slap round the wrist and more a bludgeon upside his face and a vicious kicking when he was down for good measure.

He switched off the engine. He’d let it idle long enough; given his mind too long to try to persuade him this was a mistake.

“Stay right there baby,” he said. He ran round the front of the van and opened the passenger door.

Rosalie was exhausted – she’d been on the go now for a couple of days with very little sleep. Add to that the seizure and the car crash, it was a wonder she was able to give him one of her sparkling little smiles, but she did. “Are we home now daddy?”

 “No babe.” Saying that broke his heart. “We’re at the hospital. The nice doctor’s going to take a look at you, just to make sure you’re okay.”

“But I feel fine. I’m just tired. Please can we come tomorrow instead?”

That almost swayed him; almost made him clip her seatbelt back into place and climb in beside her; but he could still see her perfect arms convulsing; the foaming spittle dribbling over her lips. “No. Come on sweetheart. We won’t be long, I promise; and you can take a nap on my lap while we’re waiting.” He picked her up, her hands linking at the nape of his neck, and hurried across the car park.

He didn’t look into the waiting area as he entered Accident & Emergency; he went straight to the nurse’s counter. He should have thought this through at greater length, he knew that. Inventing half-truths on the fly was a skill he’d developed at an early age, but it wasn’t something he fully trusted – he’d been known to fuck it up from time to time. Whether to tell her about his own seizure was question number two. It drew more attention onto him than he was comfortable with. Question one was what name to give.

“Can I help you?”

“Hi. I’m here for my daughter.” He placed her down beside him. “Her name’s Rosalie.”

“What’s her full name?” The receptionist’s hands were poised over her keyboard.

Mike glanced down at Rosalie. She was staring at the box of toys in the corner of the waiting area, oblivious. He hadn’t considered the fact they’d want to look things up on the computer. The false name he’d been planning to give was obviously not going to work. All he could do was give the real one and hope for the best. “Rosalie Benson.”

“What’s the name of her doctor?”

“... I’m not sure.”

“Which surgery does she go to?”

This was feeling more and more like a bad idea. “I don’t know the name of it. My... wife normally deals with that kind of thing.”

“What’s your address?”

Things was going south fast but he did know that at least. Of course he did. He’d camped outside in his van long enough. It flashed in his mind whether giving his own last address would be a better but decided to go with Rosalie’s. “Westbourne Park Road.”

“House number?”

“... Forty Four.”

“And what’s the postcode?”

“Look we just moved in there recently and I don’t know it yet.”

Rosalie’s little voice piped up from by his leg. “It’s BH4 8HQ daddy.”

He almost laughed out loud. “You get that?”

The receptionist typed it in. “And what seems to be the problem?”

“She’s fine now – we both are – but earlier this evening, both of us...” How to describe it? “We both had a turn. She went all weird. And then I did.” He wasn’t describing it very well. “We’re okay now but I was hoping somebody could check Rosalie out to make sure it isn’t going to happen again.”

The receptionist had looked bored and indifferent when they came in but something had changed in her expression. Now she looked... perplexed? “This... turn that came over you... It happened to you both?”

“Yeah.”

“But you felt fine afterwards?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you feel perfectly normal now?”

“Yes.” Rosalie was the same: tired but normal.  “Why? You sound like you think I’m messing with you.”

“Take a seat in the waiting room,” she said. “The triage nurse will call for you in a short while.”

“Okay.” He started to turn to go then paused and lent back over the counter. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She clearly wasn’t sure how to respond. “It’s just that we had a man and a woman in earlier who reported very much the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’re sitting over there.”

Mike looked round into the waiting area, furtive eyes flicking from one face to another. Then he saw where the receptionist was pointing – the hulking Neanderthal in the grey hoody and the pretty blond sitting next to him, her legs crossed, a magazine on her lap. And then the woman’s face clicked into place, perhaps more rapidly than it might otherwise have done because he’d seen that face on Facebook earlier in the day: the owner of Beltane Boarding House and the one girl he’d thought about more than any other over the years as his life lurched from one quagmire of disaster to the next... the one girl that shouldn’t have got away but inevitably had. The woman he had dreaded seeing again while hoping for it too with all his heart.