Rota Fortunae (11/?)
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Reid cast his eyes up to the roof of the elevator cab and heaved a dramatic sigh. “If you’ve come here to apologize for doubting me, why don’t you save it till tomorrow? Right now, I’m too tired to enjoy this the way I should.”
“You think I’m here to apologize?” Luke bellowed, his voice far too loud for such a small space. “Ha!”
Reid hit the button for the eighth floor and the elevator lurched into motion, the movement causing Luke Snyder to stumble a few steps closer to Reid. As he did so, Reid caught the strong scent of alcohol that surrounded the younger man, and this time Reid’s sigh was genuine. “You’re drunk, Mr. Snyder,” he said wearily, “and I’m in no mood. Why don’t you just take this elevator back to the lobby and have somebody call you a cab.”
“I’m not nearly as drunk as I want to be,” Luke shot back, pointing a finger in Reid’s direction, “and that’s another thing to blame you for. Only thing Reid ever asked was for me to take care of my kidney, and now I’ve broken that promise ‘cause of you.” Luke’s face fell. “Course he just meant so we could be together forever, and then he went off and died anyway, so what difference does it make now? Should’ve made him promise me too.”
“Take care of your….?” Reid’s gaze narrowed sharply. “Have you had a kidney transplant? You must be out of your damned mind, drinking like this!” It was all Reid could do not to reach out and shake the already unsteady young man till he fell down. “Do you have any idea how many drug reactions, how great a risk of infection you’re taking…?”
“Oh, like you didn’t already know about my drinking!” Luke said, with a huff of disgust. “All the time you must’ve spent following Reid, studying his face, the way he talked, learning everything about his job and his past and his life. And then when the time was ripe, you were right there to step….” Luke’s breath caught on a shocked inhalation. “Did you kill him?”
The pain of the ridiculous accusation was like a stab in the chest. Reid's face tightened with anger. “And now you’ve gone from amusing to just offensive,” he snapped. “Goodbye, Mr. Snyder.” Reid reached out to hit the elevator button for the next floor, happy to take the staircase from whatever floor if it meant getting away from Luke Snyder.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Luke cried, slamming his hand against the red button marked Emergency Stop. A harsh buzzing sound split the air, and the elevator shuddered to a stop.
“What are you… what the hell are you doing?” Reid yelled, hitting the Emergency Stop button again.
The elevator remained stubbornly motionless.
“Sorry,” Luke sang merrily, “won’t do you any good. Emergency stop freezes the controls, won’t start again until someone in maintenance resets the elevator.” He let out a malicious-sounding snicker. “Course, it’s almost the middle of the night and we don’t have 24 hour service. It could be hours till somebody lets us out.”
“You’re insane,” Reid hissed, hitting the button again, then a third time, and then once again, harder. “C’mon. C’mon!”
This time Luke’s laugh was an all-out cackle. “If you were the real Reid Oliver, I bet you’d be pretty panicked by now,” he noted. “Reid had a bad case of cluster…claustrophobia; worst I ever saw. This one time we got stuck in this elevator, he nearly tore his hands off trying to claw through these doors.”
Reid could feel the heat building in the tiny elevator car. “I bet you’d like to see me do that, wouldn’t you?” he snapped, reaching up with the sleeve of his sweater to mop the sweat from his brow.
“If that’s what it takes to make you go away,” Luke said smugly.
Reid turned back to the elevator controls, hitting buttons at random, frantically hoping that something, anything would get the elevator back underway. When that failed, he leaned up against the wall, tugging against the thick fabric constricting on his throat like a noose. “Haven’t you given up on this crusade by now?” he panted. “You’re not getting anywhere.”
“Looks like you’re not getting anywhere either,” Luke said with a tipsy laugh.
Reid moved to the elevator doors and cupped his hands against the metal. “Hello!” he called out. “Hello, can anyone hear me! We’re trapped in here! HELLO?!”
“No one’s going to hear you,” Luke said, the slight slur in his voice not disguising his tone of contempt.
“Mr. Snyder,” Reid snapped, “as usual, your opinion means less than nothing to me. HELLO?! HELP!” He pounded his fist against the doors; then, darting a venomous glance at Luke, he turned and gave the door one last hit with his elbow.
“Satisfied?” Luke mocked.
Sweat was now dripping from Reid’s forehead and down his back, and a strange tingling sensation was creeping through his fingertips. Had the ceiling gotten closer? He was sure the air was being slowly squeezed out of the tiny compartment.
“I won’t be satisfied until I have my license back and you and this whole demented town are just a speck in my rearview mirror,” Reid hissed. “Did you see how many people believe me now? It’s only a matter of time.”
With a sudden movement, Luke reached out to grab Reid’s arm and pull him away from the doors. “You think you’ve won,” he snarled into Reid’s face, “but you forget how much money I have. Lots and lots of money. And my family has even more money than that. So if you’re smart about it, you can name your price, and I’ll make sure you never have to work another con in your life. But if you keep this up, I’ll use every cent I have doing making every moment of your life a new hell.”
“You’ve already tried that, Mr. Snyder,” Reid growled. “Why should it make any difference to me now?
Tearing his arm from Luke’s grasp, Reid tried to return to the doors-but before he could brush past the younger man, Luke caught both hands in the fabric of Reid’s sweater him and forcefully slammed him against the wall.
“Let me go, Mr. Snyder!” Reid bellowed. “You…”
“I won’t let you be him,” Luke cried, “do you understand me? I won’t let you! Maybe John and Bob and Katie think one Reid’s just as good as another, but they didn’t know him like I did, they didn’t love him like I did! Reid was brilliant and vibrant and he mattered, damn you. I won’t let you just… just erase him from this town!”
The heat in the small space and the thickness of the air was making Reid’s head spin, the pain and tightness in his chest making it impossible for Reid to think, much less argue the point. He shook his head, trying to shake some of the haze from his mind-but only managed to connect solidly with the wall behind him, causing more sparks to appear behind his eyes.
“I’m not trying to erase him, dammit!” Reid protested, struggling against Luke’s clasp. “I just…”
“You are, you are!” Luke’s hands slammed him back even tighter against the wall. “You come here with his face, and his mouth, and his genius, and you fit so well in the cracks he left that people are starting to forget that he’s gone. Well, I won’t let them, do you hear me? I won’t let them to forget what we’ve lost!”
The pain in his chest was even worse now; was he having a heart attack? He was going to die in a little metal box hanging high off the ground, and his last sight would be the vision of Luke Snyder’s handsome features twisted in hate.
“Okay, okay, I don’t care anymore,” Reid said desperately, “just... just let me go! Let me… I can’t…” He tugged weakly at the hands holding him fast against the wall, taking huge gasping breaths in a fruitless attempt to force air into his starving lungs. “I can’t…” he choked out, as darkness ate at the corners of his vision and his knees went weak beneath him.
The hands dropped away from Reid’s shirt, and Reid pitched forward to land bonelessly on the elevator floor. He felt a tug of movement as the floor beneath him shifted, then a whisk of doors opening and a rush of cool, fresh air. As consciousness fled, the last sound he heard was a frantic voice crying, “Call an ambulance! Call a… No, wait! Wait! Help me get him out of here first. Oh, God!”
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Reid had never considered himself as having a tendency to wallow in self-pity, but sitting in Memorial’s ER studying the saline drip in his arm, Reid felt sorrier for himself than he’d felt since the night he’d made an evening snack of alcohol and sleeping pills, several weeks and one whole universe ago. Despite the potent combination of exhaustion and panic that had kept him out through most of the ambulance ride from Lakeview to Memorial, Reid was more tired than ever-too tired even to do the sensible thing and go back to his room, where he could sleep for a few hours without being bothered by officious nurses or the constant buzz of a busy hospital.
The slide of a curtain announced the presence of a visitor, and Reid looked up to meet the fathomless brown eyes of the absolute last person on this earth he wanted to see.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…” he protested wearily. “Nurse? Nurse!”
Luke Snyder held out his hands in a placating manner. “Wait, p-please! I’m not going to... Please, I-I just wanted to...”
“To finish what you started in that elevator?” Reid snapped. “Well, sorry if I have a small problem with that. Nurse!” Sitting up in his hospital bed with a burst of energy, Reid threw off the cover and then tore at the tape holding the IV needle in place.
“Oh, no… no, please, don’t do that! Please, I’m just tr-…”
“You’re just a goddamn lunatic, that’s what!” Reid cut him off, struggling to his feet and grabbing the set of folded clothes on the nearby bedstand. “In any other town,” he said, as he hastily pulled his jeans on beneath his hospital gown, “you’d be in jail right now with a half dozen restraining orders sworn out against you-but I already know your family runs the police force, so I’m betting you own the courts, the mayor, and the local news media too!”
“If I could just explain…”
“Explain?” Reid threw the gown to the floor and pulled his shirt over his head, then cast a look of sheer venom in the other man’s direction. “Sure, I’d love to hear you explain. Explain what exactly it is about Reid Oliver’s life you think is worth going through so much trouble to take it! I have no home, no money, no possessions-not even a goddamned winter coat to keep out this miserable wind! My career is literally in ashes, except in this microscopic little town, where I’m being held hostage by some… some bureaucratic Machiavelli who thinks he can keep me here till I learn to sit up and bark like the rest of his trained seals! And on top of that,” Reid added, “on top of all that, I’m being hounded by an obsessed violent psychopath who thinks my very existence taints the memory of his sainted boyfriend.”
Reid slid into his sneakers and then stood tall, a hand braced against the bed to keep him steady. “The only thing that’s mine in this world-the only thing-are these hands and this brain, and if I can’t use them to practice medicine, then I have nothing at all. So if you think, Mr. Snyder, that you can blackmail or threaten or attack me and I’ll just turn tail and crawl away,” Reid continued, his voice shaking with intensity, “then let me make this so clear even you can get it through your piggishly thick head. If you want me to stop fighting for my license, then you will damned well have to kill me first, because I assure you, they are one and the same thing to me.”
Reid folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head, taking deep breaths as he fought to calm the hysteria that even he could hear in his voice. As he stood there, eyes closed against the embarrassing urge to form tears, silence stretched between them. A long moment passed, until finally he heard a quiet step and the gentle slide of a curtain.
When Reid looked up again, he was alone.
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Eighteen hours later, Reid was feeling considerably more tranquil about life in general-a feeling that had a little to do with finally managing to catch twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, and a lot more to do with the stack of files he was currently reviewing in his new office. Returning to his hotel room after his escape from the hospital ER, Reid had awoken to find a flashing message light on the hotel phone; it was John Dixon, asking Reid to meet him in his office at his earliest convenience. While not exactly eager to return to Memorial, Reid had quickly dressed and complied-where he found the Chief of Staff and the hospital’s general counsel assembling the paperwork needed to restore Reid officially to life.
With Reid’s medical license soon to be restored, Dixon was quick to point out that Memorial had still not found a replacement to serve as head of the new neurosurgical wing-and he had prepared a written offer letter with a compensation package that made even Reid’s eyes budge at the sight. But if there had ever been a time where Reid might have considered living in some Podunk town with nothing more than a few restaurants and one truly stupendous neurowing to its credit, the past day had seen the end of that delusion. Reid was just too damned tired of living in the shadow of a dead man, and there was no way he could step away from that shadow in Oakdale, Illinois.
With a perceptiveness and guile that Reid could only admire, Dixon had changed tracks as soon as he realized Reid was refusing the offer. Instead, Dixon suggested that Reid stay on as a temporary consultant, supervising the grand opening and covering the position until the hospital could recruit a permanent Chief of Neurosurgery. Though Reid knew the offer was a transparent attempt to buy Dixon more time to change Reid’s mind about the job, Reid was nothing if not pragmatic. The temporary assignment would give Reid time to conduct his own job search, and the larger paycheck would provide a much-needed cushion when it came time for Reid to get set up in a new city.
Ultimately, Reid had agreed to stay on for no longer than a month, and as he stood flipping through the filing cabinet in search of cases that were worthy of his attention, Reid felt reasonably good about his decision. He was a doctor again, and after so many months of turmoil and doubt-both here and back in that other life-having the right to step in the operating room again meant everything to him. And if Luciano Whatever Whatever Snyder was sure to object, well… he’d only committed to staying here for four short weeks, and surely Reid could manage to avoid one man for that long?
Almost as if the Fates had stepped in to show the fallacies of that argument, the handle of his office door turned with a click, and Luke Snyder stepped through. Reid glared at him for a moment with a mixture of anger and wariness, then returned his attention to his files.
“Stay away from me, Mr. Snyder,” he gritted. “I mean it.”
“D-Dr. Oliver…”
The sound of his name, his actual name, from Luke Snyder’s lips was enough to startle Reid’s attention away from his files. He lifted his head again and for the first time took note of the thick brown coat resting in Luke’s outstretched arms.
“Rei… My Reid was holding this the day we met,” Luke said, shifting the coat in his grasp to lay one hand gently on the fabric. He gave a sad laugh. “I reached out to shake his hand, and he looked at me like I was something he’d scraped off the sidewalk. He told me all he could see was the big, fat silver spoon in my mouth and he hoped I choked on it.” Luke stepped closer, motioning at Reid with the coat. “Here,” he said, with a painful smile. “I think it’s safe to say it’ll fit you.”
Reid hesitated, feeling more than a little taken aback at the offer. “I…”
Luke pushed the coat into Reid’s chest and turned away, leaving Reid no choice but to catch it before it fell to the floor. As Reid watched, Luke opened the office door again and reached down for something on the floor nearby. When he straightened, he was juggling a large cardboard box.
“Katie gave me all of Reid’s things from her apartment,” he explained; “said I could sift through and see if there was anything I wanted. But of course I couldn’t bear to part with any of it, even though I know I…. Anyway, I brought you some stuff. Not-not everything,” he added quickly, looking panicked at the very idea, “just some jeans and stuff I thought you could use.”
“Mr. Snyder…” Reid began.
“I know, I know,” Luke cut in, “the last thing you want to do is wear his clothes, right? But you’re just starting out again, and maybe this will help a little until you can buy some of your own things.” He set the box on the corner of the desk and began pulling the contents out. “Look," he added, displaying the clothes on the desk, “there’s nothing special about them, just everyday…. Oh.”
Luke paused for a long moment, peering deep into the box. Then he reached down and pulled out a small drawstring bag. He loosened the cord of the drawstring and turned the bag to tip a large cloudy blue marble into his hand.
Reid gave a surprised chuckle at the sight.
“You recognize this?” Luke asked, his eyes meeting Reid’s curiously. “I thought… Reid didn’t keep many mementos, and most of what he had was pretty obvious-his AOA pin, a gold watch from a research award, some pictures of patients he’d lost. But this didn’t seem like something of Reid’s, and Angus didn’t know anything about it. I thought maybe it was just something he’d picked up somewhere and never had a chance to get rid of.”
Reid scoffed. “No, of course Angus wouldn’t have recognized it,” he said dryly, “even though I’ve had it since I was a little kid. Angus didn’t have time for anything he considered foolish sentiment.”
Reid watched as Luke examined the marble closely, clearly itching to learn more but also just as clearly uncertain whether he dared to ask. Almost unconsciously, Reid found himself saving Luke from his indecision.
“I was a pretty serious kid,” Reid explained, “even at a very young age-always wanting to be the best at everything, to prove how smart I was. My parents were a factor in that; they had big plans for their little genius, wanted to make sure I lived up to my potential, didn’t get lazy or careless like other kids. Anyway, I must have been about seven or eight, when I started having a bit of trouble in class; something wasn’t clicking with me-long division, I think-test scores weren’t what I was used to seeing. I was spending every hour in my room, doing problems, trying to figure out what I kept getting wrong. I was sure my parents would find out somehow, and they’d… I don’t know, hate me, or at least realize I wasn’t as smart as they’d hoped.”
He glanced up and found Luke watching him closely, his eyes liquid with empathy. The look on the younger man’s face was strangely disconcerting to Reid; he tore his gaze away and focused back on the tiny glass orb. “One morning,” he continued, “I got called down to the school office, and I thought, uh-oh, here we go. Turns out my grandmother had come to take me out of school for the day; family emergency, she said. But she told me I’d been working too hard, and she thought I needed a break.”
Reid grinned fondly at the memory. “We spent the whole day together, just goofing off-went to the movies, the arcade, had lunch in a deli that made the best hero sandwiches in all of Massachusetts. I got the marble from a gumball machine at the theater. Afterward, she dropped me off at home and said today would be our little secret, but that even with all the other stuff I was doing, she hoped I’d still take time to have fun once in a while.
“She died later that year… and of course, I never took her advice about having fun”-Reid’s smile flashed again-“not with so much work to be done. But I kept the marble to remind me of her, and how she gave me one of the happiest days of my life.”
Luke held the marble tightly in his hand for a moment, then his shoulders stiffened and he extended it toward Reid with only the faintest hint of reluctance. “Do you want--“ he began.
“No,” Reid said quickly. “It’s not mine. If anyone, it belongs to you.”
Luke studied him for a long moment, then he returned the marble to its felt bag and clutched it to his chest like a precious memory. “Thank you.” He shifted uncomfortably, then gestured at the pile of files on Reid’s desk. “Well, I’ll uh… I’ll leave you to your work, then.” With that, he turned to leave the office.
“Mr. Snyder,” Reid called, halting the man at the door. When Luke looked back, Reid gave him a grateful nod. “Thank you. This…” he waved at the pile of clothes on the desk and in the box, “couldn’t have been easy for you.”
A wistful smile touched Luke’s lips as he opened the door to leave. “No,” he agreed quietly. “It wasn’t.”
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