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Part 6 - Heartfelt (cont.)

My thoughts and emotions were in a whirl. I had the fragments of my dream still rattling around. Greg remembered being Lina and he hated me. But Lina was in front of me right now. I cleared my raspy throat and moved aside to invite her in. 

As I went for water, I finally spoke, "Sorry. I literally just got up."

Lina grimaced. "I'm sorry. Guess I didn't time that right."

I assured her it was fine. God, had I even set an alarm? Fortunately, yes. It immediately went off in my bedroom. 

Still getting my bearings. Lina asked, "Need help with anything? I was gonna set up breakfast."

"I'm fine. Just gotta do my morning prep."

I was not fine. On some level, I realized Greg would remember being Lina. It was how bets like this worked, back to that first horseman bet. But I didn't put too much thought into it. This was Lina now. Greg was gone till later. 

As I picked apart the logic of the dream, I realized it didn't make sense. Greg knew my thoughts. He responded with anger and fury when he never did that. It wasn't Greg in my dream. It was me. 

Maybe I was afraid that Lina's ending would break Greg. He might lose a deep connection with the shy cousin he cared for like a surrogate parent. But he also would know her gratitude and all the stuff she never told him. And I didn't lie to Lina. I just told her she would be alright. We just didn't really talk about where Greg might've gone.

The cloud of the dream lifted as the sun trickled through the window and my time in the bathroom cast out any lingering, mental shadows. 

Lina fanned her hands over the table as I emerged in my work clothes. She still had the golden clip in her hair. The meal was set in my returned plasticware with paper plates covering them. Dramatically, she pulled back the plate to reveal....an omelet with a full sausage on the side.

Grinning, Lina announced, "The Babs Special Omelet! It comes with a side of bright red ketchup like your pretty hair and a full, meaty sausage because...you know." 

She suppressed a giggle and continued, "In the omelet are mushrooms and pieces of chicken because...same reasons. But there is also ham, which is grilled up nice and pink. It represents the pink scrubs you bought for me and my work at the OWL. There's melted cheddar out of thanks for this. It's a new thank you but it meant a lot to me." She put a hand to her golden hairpin. 

She finished, "At that point though, the symbols get difficult. These olives are a bit like the ones we've had together in meals and the peppers kinda have the same color as your car. But the point is thank you, Babs. Thank you so much for helping me through the last couple of crazy days. Thank you for what I'm sure is going to be a butt-kicking good gaming time tonight. And thank you for all the good times ahead!" She clasped her dainty hands in front of her and looked me in the eye warmly.

The omelets looked really tasty. Nice color. Not burnt or runny. Everything cooked in with the egg. Greg taught her well. "Thank you, Lina. This looks beautiful. And smells lovely too." 

I sat down with my omelet and let her serve it out onto the paper plate. I could've noted some flaws in her fold or the lack of seasoning, but I smiled and told her, "Great work, Lina. I love it and I'm touched you personalized it so much. It's awesome."

The sausage was great too. But then I would take any sort of sausage. Oh, so juicy...

Lina did more watching me eat than eating herself. Hers was an uneven lump but still looked decent. After a bit, she confessed, "I screwed up soo many of my practices. But I'm so glad these turned out okay. You don't want to see the abominations that were my first tries. Greg always did the omelets for me because I had trouble, but I got them this time." She breathed a faint sigh of relief and actually ate her meal too. 

Finishing up, I asked her, "So you took a cab? Why didn't you take the ALPH? It's a dollar and half per trip to anywhere in the county."

Her response was to frown a moment before her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh...I forgot. That was actually advertised at the library too. Whoops...and this is my second trip."

"And the first?"

She raised a finger and noted, "It was late last night. Almost before the local game shop closed and definitely after buses stop running. I just bought a few more little things. For game loaning."

The little things were another "surprisingly-cheap" system like she gave away to Lily, a handful of "really neat" games, and a "steal" on another older system with "a game or two". Well, she's a collector. That explained the extra bags with her, but I still had one question.

I picked up my handset and checked the caller logs. Right when I woke up, yes. Lina nodded. But she didn't have her phone, the other Lina did. She fished around in her bag and came out with a brand-new phone. I squeezed my forehead. 

"I got it in the same area as the game shop. It's a cheapie you just put minutes on. I hate being stuck to a landline and this has some interesting internals I can tinker with." The price she cited was decent but, bless her, she was burning through cash faster than she was earning it. Not that it mattered in the long run, I guess.

With a sigh, I returned to the point, "It's fine. Thank you again for this lovely breakfast but remember...a gift is not a debt. Nothing I've done for you is a debt that needs to be evened out, okay? I deeply appreciate all of this, but you don't owe me. Ever."

She set her bags in her lap and nodded gently. "I know. But I wanna do whatever I can. I could only take help from Greg and not give it and it made me feel useless. I can do so much more now and I want to. I want to do all I can."

I urged her, "Within reason. Like a team. Sharing the load so one single person doesn't need to exhaust themselves." God, I sounded like a fucking management meeting from my last job. But here, it was sincere. 

Lina got it and that was good because what extra time we had from the early start was melting away and we needed to get going. 

Of course, heading to the main road, we had probably the longest red light in town. As I waited, a tan SUV pulled alongside with the window rolled down. A gray Labrador sat in the passenger's seat with its head half out the window. It stared right at me.

I smiled back. It stared, stoic and still. The car ebbed forward and it turned to follow me. I crept up a little too. Still the same, unwavering gaze. I laughed to myself, drawing the attention of Lina, who looked over and declared, "Aww, cute pupper."

Then, it kept staring. I looked back several times. It wasn't mad. It was calm. Its face started to feel strange. Like it wasn't even a dog's shape anymore. It was like a rearranged human face looking at me, like someone I knew. Freaky shit.

I pushed through the intersection first when the light turned green. I could still feel its eyes on me, but I didn't look back. 

Rationally, I told myself it was a dog thing. He smelled the faint traces of breakfast on us even a lane over and with our window closed. But I'd put it aside by the time we pulled into OWL. 

Now, sensibly, one would expect Wednesday would be our hardest workday. No shoreline of the weekend. Plenty of orders coming in, right? Not quite. 

Wednesday tended to be the day most physicians in the area just took off. Golfing, conferences, whatever. Still, lots of nurse practitioners filling in. But it did mean the regular load was down.

Yet, our longest lunch break was Thursdays from 11:30 AM to 2PM. A remnant from Archie's era no one wished to change. Once my hair was up and my glasses were on, I cracked open a new tube of cream and got to work.

No Lilys up front but the occasional game-loaner. For me, a slow day typically meant more calls from people who got our bills and were trying to argue them. Yes, that is from us. Yes, that is the price after it went through your insurance. You clearly do have a co-pay and/or deductible. I don't know, I'm not your insurance. Seriously, they are literally the people making you pay this, not me. Sure, you could not pay it, but you agreed to pay whether your insurance did or not by signing our forms. Yeah yeah, go post it on Twitter. I'm sure the Internet will solve it for you.

Then, on the other side were the insurance companies. They enjoyed communicating in cold, analytical faxes and other written messages. But sometimes they liked to call. Yes, I found the file and we processed that as this. Because the doctor asked for it. Because he's trying to make his patient well. Yeah, testing can be done pretty often, especially with some patients. You obviously know better than me what the average is. But I am not his doctor. And we don't have a contract with you anyway. Yeah yeah, go post it on Facebook. I'm sure whoever is there will get on with shitposting it to all their grandchildren.

Mostly, it was a day for avoiding minor emergencies, like that a stool sample sitting around at room temperature is a ticking time-bomb. And a day for reordering all the stuff we needed from the web of suppliers Archie arranged deals with. Some preferred to talk to Greg, especially one in particular. They always chatted about wrestling.

I offered the phone to Lina. She clearly was not a watcher of wrestling, but she had picked up a few fragments from Greg. The end result was about the same, only the supplier clearly had a different sort of wrestling in mind by the end of the call as he mentioned getting a pair of tickets to a show and asked for her personal number. It didn't hit Lina till after she told me.

She reflected, "I'm bad with those sorts of clues. I've never really thought of myself as someone others might desire or want to be with...But I'm working on it." She chuckled and crossed her legs.

I desired her, just not exactly like this. 

Lunch was definitely the laziest of the week: a half veggie, half meat lover's small pizza delivered.

And we just talked. One topic leading to the next...