11.29 Falling in love... and Denise.

Like everything else she did, Jeanne was successful at committing suicide. She had passed away at three eleven on Saturday morning, after going through cardiac arrest four times. It was less than nine hours since Celeste found her on the bathroom floor.

Matt offered to drive everyone home. He dropped Scott and Jessica at their apartment, and Jeanne’s mother at a hotel. He pulled into a parking spot in front of Celeste’s apartment, and turned off the engine. “Do you want me to come up?” he asked. “I’m not trying to be insensitive, I was just thinking you might not want to be alone up there…”
“Please,” Celeste said, unable to think of anything else to say.
They unlocked the apartment door, and walked in. The smell of Jeanne’s vomit filled the apartment.
“Why don’t you make a cup of tea or hot chocolate or something,” Matt suggested, “and I can clean that up for you.” He gestured toward Jeanne’s room and bathroom with his chin.
Celeste was overwhelmed with gratitude. “Thank you, I didn’t even want to think about dealing with it right now. I really don’t feel like I can deal with much of anything.”
Matt grabbed a roll of paper towels and some cleaning spray, and walked into the bathroom. Celeste started puttering around the kitchen, putting water on to boil, pulling out some of her favorite “Tension Tamer” tea.
The water wasn’t yet boiling, and she didn’t feel like sitting down, so she walked into Jeanne’s room. She couldn’t bring herself to go into the bathroom where Matt was cleaning, but she sat on the edge of Jeanne’s bed, like she always used to, looked at the books that Jeanne used to read, the computer that she had for as long as Celeste had known her.
Celeste moved the mouse on Jeanne’s computer, clenching her teeth in anticipation of finding a suicide note left on Microsoft Word or something. It was just like Jeanne to leave her note on her computer for Celeste to find.
Dear Celeste, it read.
I know you’re trying to help, but you’re driving me crazy. No, that’s not true, you’re only doing what a good friend would do, but you don’t really understand. I really did ask for and deserve all of this – I was so worried about you the other night when you weren’t home until late, and I was so angry when you told me that you wished I wouldn’t be. I know we went out to dinner, and everything seemed better, but I was still so angry. So I decided to get revenge on Friday night while you were sick. I was going to go out, and be irresponsible, get drunk, pass out somewhere, go home with someone, whatever. Something dumb to make you worry about me instead, and understand how it feels.
I did something dumb all right; I talked to the wrong guy, I drank an open drink that was drugged, but all in all, when it comes down to it, I did ask for it. I can’t tell you any of this to your face because not only do I feel like a whore for going out and being stupid and getting raped, but I feel stupid because you weren’t worried about me. You assumed that I was and would be fine.
Maybe if I do something really stupid, you’ll understand what it feels like to worry…
Celeste made a choking sobbing sound, and Matt came running out of the bathroom to find her collapsed on Jeanne’s bedroom floor.
“She killed herself because I made her worry about me, but I didn’t worry enough about her. She killed herself to make a point. She didn’t even mean to kill herself; she just meant to make me worry!” The pitch of Celeste’s voice got higher with each word until she was shrieking.
Celeste buried her face in her knees. She couldn’t cry. She felt so sick she literally couldn’t cry. Matt left her for a minute, went into the kitchen, and came back momentarily with a cup of tea. He pressed it into her hands, and she took it automatically.
Matt picked Celeste up off the floor, carried her out of Jeanne’s bedroom, and set her down on the couch in the living room. “What does this change?” he asked.
“It changes everything,” Celeste said in a high pitched voice. “Why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth closed. If I hadn’t been so irritated about how worried she got, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have decided to try to worry me by attempting suicide. My god, this brings “suicide is a cry for help” to a whole new level.”
Matt shook Celeste slightly. “Celeste, stop. Think. Be reasonable. If you were worried about someone, and they told you to stop worrying, would you overdose on pills to make them know what it feels like to worrry? Does that make sense? Jeanne was sick. She had to be, to believe something like that was reasonable.”
Celeste started crying again, sobbing hsysterically into Matt’s chest. “Why did she do this? I thought she understood what I was saying. I never would have thought she’d do this.”
Matt held her tightly as she cried, rocked her back and forth gently, and made nonsensical sounds into her hair. When her crying had slowed to a small sob every now and then, he said, “This isn’t your fault. Any more than the rape was Jeanne’s fault. You couldn’t know what was going on in her mind, and you tried your hardest to work everything out with her.”
Celeste nodded. She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. Matt leaned back and grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table. He handed ti to her. Celeste wiped her face, then blew her nose. All of a sudden, she was completely exhausted. “Stay with me?” she asked, plaintively.
Matt nodded. “For as long as you want.”
They fell asleep on the couch, Celeste securely wrapped in Matt’s arms, their legs intertwined.
Matt woke at about three o’clock in the morning to his cell phone buzzing in his coat pocket across the room. He gently unentangled himself from Celeste, and walked across the darkened droom to see who it was.
He didn’t make it to his phone before it stopped ringing, so he checked the caller ID. It was Denise. Matt sighed, and dialed his voice mail to see what she wanted.
“Matt, honey, I’m worried that you’re not home yet. It’s like three o’clock in the morning, and Tom is being a jerk again, so I came over to see if you wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. If you’re still at the library, it’s time to come home, honey…”
Matt sighed again, but dialed her back because he didn’t want to be bothered with her constant phone calls for the remaineder of the morning. “Hi Denise,” Matt said.
“Hey, honey,” Denise said in her attempt at a sexy voice.
“I’m at a friend’s tonight, what do you need?”
“I was just hoping for some company… is this friend male or female?”
Matt ignored the question. “I’ll be home tomorrow night, but I’ve told you. Unless you’re planning on leaving Tom, I’m not interested anymore.”
“But honey,” Denise whined, “that never bothered you before.”
“No, it didn’t, when you said Tom didn’t love you, and didn’t care. But I’m not going to be one more in your string of lovers, I told you that.”
Denise huffed. “Fine, if you’re going to be like that, see if I call you again.”
Matt felt a slight pang, but he knew that no matter what happened, Denise would keep coming around. More, probably, because that was just what she did than out of any real attachment to him. He was just another attractive playboy to her. It might be that was all she could give, but Matt knew that wasn’t all he needed.
“I’m sorry, Denise. But we’ve been through this before. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, ok?”
“Fine, bye.” Denise hung up the phone before Matt had a chance to say good bye.

Matt turned back to the couch where Celeste was sleeping, laying on her side with her hands tucked neatly under her head, her hair frilled out , almost touching the lfoor. “So beautiful,” he thought. He gently kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her neck. He stroked her arms, very gently, and ran his fingers over the golden rain of her hair.
Celeste stirred a little, rolled over towards him, and stretched out her arms in welcome. Matt smiled, kissed her lips, first gently, then a little more passionately. Celeste responded to him, slowly and with greater intensity as she realized it wasn’t a dream.
Matt lay down next to Celeste, still kissing her. She wrapped her arms around him, one arm on his back rubbing up and down, pulling him against her. The other was tangled in his hair, leveraging his head ot make his mouth fit best with hers.
Celeste started pulling at Matt’s t-shirt. He obliged by sitting up and taking it off. Celeste also sat up, and quicky stripped out of her own shirt and bra.
Matt’s breath caught in his throat, but he managed to whisper, “You are so beautiful. Are you sure you want this? Tonight?”
“I want to feel alive,” Celeste answreed. “Make me feel alive, Matt.”
Matt was suddenly struck with amazement at being asked to do what he had been longing to do since he first met her. At the same time, he struggled to maintain control and composure, to make her enjoy it as much as he knew he was going to.
Celeste suddenly felt like she was suffocating under Matt’s weight. She started wiggling a little, trying to get him to shift off, then struggling more violently when it became apparent that he was literally asleep on top of her.
Matt woke with a start. “What – what’s wrong?” he said, as she sat up quickly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you like that, but you were hurting me with all your weight on top of me like that. You were making my ribs crack.”
Matt chuckled. “That’s a first, I don’t think anyone’s ever complained about me weighting too much, before.”
Celeste blushed, but because of the dark, Matt didn’t see it. “I didn’t mean it like that, but I get a little panicked if I can’t move freely, and my rib really was cracking whenever I breathed.”
“I’m just kidding,” Matt said. “I’m not offended. How about if I hold you next to me rather than laying underneath me?”
“That I can do,” Celeste said, enthusiastically. She climbed back onto the couch, and snuggled into Matt’s arms. She covered them both with a furry throw blanket that was on the back of the couch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t big enough to cover a person from head to toe, like a normal blanket. You could either be covered waist to toe, or neck to waist, but not both. Celeste chose the waist to toe option, and snuggled into Matt to keep the rest of her warm.
They slept like that until morning, when they woke up with the sun streaming through the living room windows and onto the couch. Celeste rubbed her eyes, sleepily. They felt funny, and there was much more sleep in them than usual. Oh no! she thought as she recalled all the crying that she had done the night before.
She got to her feet and ventured into her own bathroom. Oh god, she looked horrible. Her eyes were swollen like she had pink eye or some funky disease, and she had broken blood vessels across the lids and on her cheeks underneath her eyes. Celeste wet a washcloth with cold water, sat on the toilet and pressed it to her eyes gently, but she knew that it wouldn’t do anything but unsolidify her eyelashes.
She wasn’t sure what caused it, she thought she might have blocked tear ducts or something, but whenever she cried, even a little, her eyes swelled up to the point where she looked beaten.
“Ahem,” Matt said from the bathroom door. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but Celeste was definitely sitting with a – yes it was—a Barney washcloth over her eyes. “Are you ok?” he asked, gently touching her shoulder.
“Do you promise you won’t run or scream?” Celeste asked, still holding the cloth over her eyes.
“Um, I guess.” Matt answered somewhat hesitantly.
Celeste looked up at here he was speaking from, and removed the towel from her eyes.
“Shit, you look awful,” Matt said.
“Thanks a lot,” Celeste responded sarcastically. “You’re such a sweetheart. This always happens when I cry – that’s why I don’t do it often.”
[### INSERT MORE BUDDING RELATIONSHIP – THEY START GOING OUT PRETTY OFTEN. MATT PRESENTS DENISE AS A FRIEND, RATHER THAN AS A FORMER LOVER. DENISE AGREES TO MAINTAIN THIS FICTION. DENISE IS THE PROFESSOR’S (TOM’S) WIFE. TOM FOOLS AROUND ON HER WITH MUCH YOUNGER WOMEN, BUT GETS JEALOUS WHEN SHE HAS HER OWN LOVERS. THEY HAVE LOUD, VICIOUS, ARGUMENTS, AND EVEN AFTER CELESTE AND MATT START DATING, DENISE TENDS TO COME OVER TO MATT. MATT SAYS THAT IF CELESTE FINDS OUT THAT THEY WERE LOVERS, MATT WILL CHOOSE CELESTE OVER DENISE .###]

Two months later…
“Celeste,” Matt whispered after a long session of love making on the floor in his livign room.
“Mmm?” Celeste answered, sleepily.
“You’re not bothered about finding Denise here this morning, are you?”
“Not really,” Celeste answered, forcing herself to wake up a little. “I like you a lot, but it’s lot like we’ve made a declaration of monogousity (having only one lover). I don’t want to control you…”
“It’s not like that,” Matt hastened to assure her. “Denise lives a couple of floors up, and her husband has affairs pretty often. They fight a lot, and he gets awfully mean when they fight, so she comes down here to get away and for company.”
Celeste nodded. “I’m not pushing for anything, I’m just enjoying what we have right now.” She ran a fingernail up the inside of his thigh for effect. “If you want more, I’m ready whenever you are, but I can wait, also.”
Matt ran his hands through his hair, touseling it a little in frustration. “I’m sorry, Celeste. I know you deserve more, but I’m giving you more than I’ve ever given anyone else. I’ve never taken time away from work just to be with someone. Not really do anything, not really have any plans, just to be.”
“I know,” Celeste answered. “And I’m not asking you to give anything more than you’re ready for or able to. I want you, I don’t want a puppy dog who will trail along after my every whim.”
Matt smiled at her, deciding to lighten the conversation with some more lovemaking, now that he had assured himself that Celeste wasn’t secretly jealous of Denise. “How about if I give you some more of what I’m able to?” He raised and lowered his eyebrows in a mock-seductive manner, causing Celeste to giggle. From there, he moved on to tickle her, then to make love to her.

[insert more getting to know you, love story, randomness]

It was Matt’s twenty-seventh birthday. He has told Celeste that he didn’t want to do anything, just sit home and contemplate getting older.
“You’re not that old yet,” Celeste protested. “Besides, your birthday is the one day of the year that people give you gifts just because you’re around. It’s your day. I love my birthday!”
Matt protested that no one cared, and no one should care about his birthday, but Celeste managed to convince him to go out for a low-key evening anyway.
“Ok, fine,” Matt responded, “But don’t be surprised if I’m in a terrible mood.”
Celeste frowned in memory of the conversation. Her mother was in town, so she would be meeting up with Matt and Jessica and Scott later for drinks.
“What are you frowning about,” her mother asked her.
“Nothing much,” Celeste answered, “just ‘cause.”
Celeste’s mother shook her head, “It takes how many more muscles to frown than to smile?” she asked sarcastically.
“See,” Celeste responded glibly, “so I’m getting a work out, too.”

11.26 Hospital and Jeanne's dead

Celeste forced herself to take a few deep breaths, then she walked back inside the emergency room to wait for Scott and Jessica. Fortunately, the emergency room was only moderately busy, so Celeste took a seat next to a clean cut young man and woman. The young woman was wearing a pair of jeans, and a sweatshirt with a picture of “Belle” from “Beauty and the Beast” on the front. She had a handful of medical gauze pressed against the palm of her hand, and the hand itself cradled in her lap.
Celeste looked at her, a little curiously, as she sat down. The young woman noticed, smiled and shrugged self-depricatingly and said “I was feeding my cats; they only eat wet food. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention, and I slipped while I was opening the can, and sliced my hand open.”
The young man sitting next to her laughed, and added, “I was talking on the phone to my father at the time, and I heard her yell for me to come help. I didn’t know what had happened, so I sarcastically told my father “Lynn’s probably cut her hand off with the can of catfood.” Unfortunately, I was almost too close to the truth.”
Celeste shook her head at the irony of the situation, and said, “I hope you’ll be ok.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” the young woman answered cheerfully. “Especially if they manage to keep me from passing out when the doctor gives me stitches.”
Celeste smiled politely, but in a manner that discouraged further conversation. She wished for a novel, but wound up flipping through a well thumbed People magazine. Nothing like mindless celebrity gossip to keep the mind occupied, she thought sarcastically.
Sortly after she finished the magazine, and was idly looking around for something else to keep her busy, Scott and Jessica came into the emergency room. Celeste stood and waved them over.
Jessica had clearly been showering when Celeste called. Her hair was still drenched, and in tangles down her back. It looked like she had rubbed it briskly with a towel before she left, but that was about it.

“What happened?” she asked abruptly, without even a greeting.
“C’mon, let’s go to the family room, I’ve been waiting out here for you but it’s quieter in there, and we can talk.” Celeste led Scott and Jessica into the waiting room meant for the families and friends of those in critical condition, or in surgery. There was one other family in there, on the other side of the room. The other family was sitting in a circle, holding hands, apparently praying for their loved one.
They sat down in one of the groups of overstuffed chairs, and Jessica promptly said, “So we’re here, what happened? What’s wrong with Jeanne?”
Celeste swallowed hard. It was one thing to relay the awful news to Jeanne’s mother over the phone, but to Jessica, the third member of their little clique, it was almost impossible. She took a deep breath and started:
“Jeanne didn’t want anyone to know about this, I really couldn’t blame her, so I didn’t say anything the other day. When she met up with you guys the other night, and you all left her with Scott’s friends, afterward, she was talking to some old guy at a bar, and he slipped her a date rape drug. Whatever the drug was, it made her really easy to convince to do anything, so he apparently convinced her to bring him home. She did, and I was awake when they got there.
“She walked in with him, shrugged and smiled like she knew it was weird, but didn’t really care, and then pulled him into her bedroom with her. What was I suppoed to say? She’s brought guys home before – so have I, so has everyone. She wasn’t obviously out of it…”
Jessica patted Celeste on the back. Celeste stopped talking for a minute, visibly pulled herself together, and continued:
“Anyway, she woke up a little later than I did on Saturday, and she didn’t remember any of it. I wound up convincing her to to go the doctor’s – more for a morning after pill, and tests for STDs than anything else, but they also tested her urine for date rape drugs. We got home, and from then until tonight, Jeanne was insisting that it was all her fault – for being stupid, for being irresponsible, god knows, for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I did my best to convince her that she was wrong, that no matter who stupid or irresponsible or whatever, anyone might be, they don’t deserve to be raped. But she wouldn’t even consider it rape – she just kept saying that it was a suitable punishment.
“Tonight we found out for sure that it was a date rape drug, and Jeanne had actually agreed to go to the police tomorrow. She said she wasn’t feeling well, so I left her alone to take a nap, while I made dinner. By the time dinner was ready, I went in to get her, and she had already taken all the drugs in the medicine cabinet, all the xanax, the tylenol with codeine from when she broke her ankle last winter, and from when I got my wisdom teeth pulled. And god knows what else, she took, like, whatever was left in about ten bottles. And I know, at least the bottle of tylenol that was mine, I only took one pill from it.
“Anyway, I found her on the floor in the bathroom. She was literally choking on her own vomit, and her heart was giving out. I gave her CPR until the EMTs got there, then I called you guys while they were re-starting her heart… I called her mom, too, and she’s on her way from Chicago, she should be landing in a couple hours.”
“Have you heard anything since you’ve been here?” Scott asked.
“Not really. They managed to get her heart beating again in the ambulance, thank god, but she was on a – what’s it called? Aspirator? Respirator? The things that breathe for people who can’t.”
“Respirator,” Scott responded, automatically.
“Yeah, and one of the ER nurses has been over twice to tell me that nothing has changed. Which is actually really nice of her, because since I’m not related, they’re not technically supposed to tell me anything.”

Celeste, Jessica, and Scott sat in the family room, each engaged in their own thoughts. After Celeste had presented the entire story to them, they talked about it briefly, and then suddenly had nothing more to say.
Scott’s hand rested on Jessica’s leg, and his thumb was moving around in little circles. Jessica didn’t even appear to notice, but the contact seemed to give Scott a little comfort, and probably gave Jess some as well.
Finally, Celeste’s phone rang. It was Jeanne’s mother. “I’m just inside the emergency room, where are you?”
Celeste walked out into the emergency room, and flagged her down. “How is she?”
“Her heart’s beating on it’s own, she’s still not breathing, though. They really couldn’t tell me much since I’m not family.”
Jeanne’s mother was a petite woman, dressed in a tan business suit, and Keds. “Ok,” she said, walking briskly toward the ER nurse.
“I’m Mrs. XXX, Jeanne XXX’s mother. Could I please see her doctor as soon as possible? I’ve just gotten in from Chicago, and I’d like to know who’s taking care of her and what her status is.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll let him know. He should be out to speak with you shortly.”
Celeste suddenly felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic. She breathed slowly, trying to regain control of herself, trying to make the sensation subside. Mrs. XXX and Celeste walked back into the family room. Celeste felt like she needed air, needed a minute to herself to calm down.
“Guys, I’m going to go outside for just a minute. I just need a little fresh air. Call me on my phone if you hear anything?”
Celeste stepped outside the ER, and walked about halfway down the turn-around driveway. She crouched down, leaning her back against the stone wall separating the hosiptal grounds from the sidewalk.
She called Matt’s number, but there was no answer. She left a message on his machine, “Matt, my roommate’s in the hospital. She tried to commit suicide. I’m not going to be able to meet you for lunch tomorrow. Please give me a call back when you get this.”
Just as Celeste clicked the “hang up” button on her phone, it began to ring. It was Jessica. “The nurse just came out, she’s gone into cardiac arrest again. Come back in right now.”
Celeste felt a surge of panic grip her, she again started praying for Jeanne to make it. When she walked back into the family room, Jeanne’s mother was on her knees with her hands clasped, reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Jessica and Scott were both ashen, Scott’s arm around Jessica’s shoulders.
“The doctor was just out here,” Jessica whispered. “She doesn’t have any brain function left, as far as they can tell. And now her heart’s stopped again; they don’t know if she’s going to make it. And even if she does, they think she might be in a coma for the rest of her life.”
Celeste felt sick. Her best friend, just a happy, living, funny, vibrant person, wasn’t ever going to get better. “What are we going to do?” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
Jeanne’s mother rose slowly to her feet. She walked over to the ER nurse’s desk, and talked to her quietly. The nurse nodded, then nodded again.
Jeanne’s mother made the sign of the cross, and then walked back to where Celeste, Jessica, and Scott were sitting. “I just told them,” she said quietly, “that if they’re sure that Jeanne will never regain consiousness, that she’ll never regain any brain function…that she’ll never be really living again… I told them to stop resusitating. I don’t want my baby to be a vegetable.”
Celeste just sat there, trying to figure out what the words “stop resusitating” meant. It was at the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn’t quite make the connection. She was startled when she felt a tear drop down onto her hands resting in her lap.
She turned to look at Jessica and Scott, and was shocked to see that they, too, were crying. Jeanne’s mother was sitting in the overstuffed chair, stoical and grim. Maybe making the decision made it easier not to cry?
Celeste suddenly felt like she couldn’t take it anymore [###I have way too many “Celeste felt” and “Celeste suddenly felt”’s in here…###]. “I need to go,” she said, surprised to have vocalized her sudden need.
“What?” Jessica asked.
“I can’t stay…I feel sick, I need to get out of here.”
Jessica immediately got to her feet, and put an arm around Celeste’s waist. She looked back at Mrs. XXX as they were walking out of the family room, and said, “We’re going to step outside for a minute, please call Celeste’s phone if there’s a chance to go in and see how she’s doing, and maybe…say goodbye…”
Mrs. XXX nodded, and sort of collapsed into herself. Scott was helping her into a chair as Jessica walked outside with Celeste.
“Breathe,” Jessica repeated. Celeste obediently took a breath, but she still felt like she was going to explode inside. She was torn between crying and screaming, and she was ready to either kill Mrs. XXX for saying that the doctors should stop trying to save Jeanne, or to kill herself so that this would all stop hurting.
“Breathe,” Jessica said again.
“I can’t!” Celeste cried. “Just let me go home, just let me leave!”
“I would, Celeste, but you’d never forgive me for letting you go, or forgive yourself for not staying if there’s an opportunity to say goodbye.”
“Why would she do this?” Celeste started sobbing. “Why? It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t anyone but that guy’s fault. Why?”
Celeste’s phone rang. She opened it without looking at the number. “Wha-what?” she sniffled into it.
“Celeste? Are you ok? I got your message…” Matt said.
“Can – can you come here? I’m at Somerville Hospital, and…I need you.”
“Do they have a parking lot? Oh never mind, I’ll figure it out. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you.” Celeste whispered into the phone.
“Just stay there, I’ll be there soon.”
Celeste turned to Jessica, who was listening to Celeste’s half of the conversation, slightly confused. Like a good friend, though, when Celeste couldn’t think of words to explain, she didn’t press it. She and Celeste walked up and down the walk in front of the emergency room entrance, and Celeste struggled to pull it together.
“Jess,” she asked, “how can you be so calm?”
“What else am I going to do?” Jessica answered. “It won’t help anything for me to lose it, now, but I can at home with no one but Scott to hear. And he’ll understand.”
They walked quietly for a few minutes, Celeste rubbed the tear stains off her face with the cuff of her sleeve. Finally, Celeste broke the silence and said, “She’s not going to be okay, is she?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jessica answered.
“What are we going to do?” Celeste asked.
“What we always do… try to take over the world,” Jessica answered with a feeble smile. It was a running joke between she, Celeste, and Jeanne. Celeste didn’t quite know how to take that.
“No, really,” she insisted.
“What do you think we’re going to do, Celeste? We’ll do what we have to do, like we always do. It isn’t like there’s a whole lot of choice.”
“I know,” Celeste sniffled. “I just can’t imagine anything without Jeanne as a part of it, though.”
“I know,” Jessica agreed.

Matt did sixty five miled per hour all the way from his house to the entry way to the hospital. He pulled into the parking garage across the street, and sprinted to the emergency room entrance. Celeste and Jessica were still slowly ambling back and forth in front of the doorway when he arrived.
He swept Celeste up in a huge hug, and Jessica was surprised to see that Celeste literally collapsed into his arms. It was almost like she suddenly went completely boneless. Matt held her for a minute, and then carefully separated himself from her.
Celeste was having a time regaining her thoughts, but at least she felt more able to go back into the hospital. “Jessica, this is Matt, I’ve told you a little about him; he’s my boss for my new job.”
Turning to Matt, she said, “Matt, this is Jessica. She, Jeanne, and I, have been best friends since freshman year of school.”
Matt held out his hand to Jessica. “Sorry to meet you at this kind of time. I hope you’re doing as well as can be expected.”
Jessica nodded. “I’m fine,” she said curtly. She turned and led them back into the family room. Matt put his arm around Celeste’s waist and they followed.
Scott was alerted to the change at once when Jessica walked in looking as pissy as he had ever seen her. Celeste, on the other hand, was completely revived, and almost glowing. She was leaning into Matt’s shoulder, and she felt better with him just being nearby. It was almost like he was a well of strength that she was suddenly allowed to tap into.
Matt introduced himself to Mrs. XXX and Scott. He then took a seat just behind and to the right of Celeste’s chair. He rested his hand on her shoulder, and every now and again, she rubbed her cheek against it.
Fifteen minutes later, the doctor emerged. Mrs. XXX got up to talk to him, and let out a tremendous sob right in the middle of the conversation. Somehow, that noise was the impetus to let out all the tears that Celeste had been storing up, putting off. Celeste started crying again, but this time it wasn’t half-hearted, and she wasn’t trying to shut it off. She glanced at Jessica and found that both Jessica and Scott were crying as hard as she was. Jessica was cradled in Scott’s lap, and they were hugging one another frantically.
Celeste was comforted by Matt’s hand on her shoulder, and felt even more relieved when he walked over and knelt on the floor, wrapping his arms around her waist, and carefully stroking her back as she cried. He didn’t say much, just whispered, “It’ll be okay,” now and again into her hair.
Celeste sniffled, and pulled back a little. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, rubbed at them a little so that she could see. She had left a wet spot the size of her entire head in the chest of Matt’s sweatshirt.

11.21 Suicide

Matt’s mouth suddenly felt completely and painfully dry. He licked his lips, and tried to keep from obviously staring at Celeste’s chest. He cleared his throat nervously.
“Can I try?” Celeste said, leaning even harder against him, and reaching across him to use the trackpad on the laptop.
“Sure,” Matt replied hoarsley. He got to his feet, and moved out of the way. “You can have my chair.”
Celeste was getting stuck for ideas. She was hoping he’d lean over and kiss her or something, but he was just acting interested and embarrassed. She followed the steps he showed her in the software, typed a couple example keywords, and when she felt like she had some idea of what she was doing, she shut down the program.
Matt was still eyeing her cautiously, trying to decide what his next move should be. Celeste stretched, her arms up over her head, which caused her shirt to lift enough to reveal the strings of her thong underneath her pants. Matt nervously licked his lips again.
He couldn’t stop staring at her.
Celeste slowing turned and deliberately met his eyes. She held his stare for a minute, and then she slowly and deliberately closed the laptop. She picked it up off the top of the desk, opened one of the desk drawers, and carefully set it inside.
Then, trying to communicate self assurance and sheer blatant sexuality, she stood up from the chair she was sitting in, turned around, and sat on the desk, with one leg resting on the side of the seat of the chair she had been sitting in.
“Sit,” she said to him in a husky deep sort of voice.
“Uh,” he cleared his throat. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
Celeste shrugged, but keenly observed that the growing bulge in his slacks gave lie to his statement. Very deliberately, very slowly, she reached up and unbuttoned another button on her shirt.
Matt couldn’t breathe. His knees locked, and he wasn’t sure where to look or what to do.
Celeste surpressed a surge of annoyance at his inability to take the initiative; she was undressing for God’s sake. She undid another button, and then another, still staring at him.
Matt was in heaven. Celeste’s long blond hair flowed down her back, and her flesh was an appealing peach in contrast with the stark lacy whiteness of the corset and blouse. He took an unwilling step forward, then another, and suddenly he was kissing her, stroking her breasts over the top of the corset, rubbing impatient circles on her back, stroking her tiny waist.
Any degree of self consiousness or self doubt evaporated when Matt took Celeste into his arms. Celeste allowd herself to be swept up into the swirling passion surrounding them, and all of her senses both dissappeared and were hightened as they kissed. She could smell him, a faint soapy aftershavey smell, and a growing smell of heat and sex. She could taste the salty sweet of his lips and sweat. Mostly, though, she was overpowered by his hands, his tongue in her mouth, gently, strongly.
Matt’s fingers slipped underneath the string on her thong. He traced the curve of her hip underneath it, and his fingers strayed to the buttons on her slacks. With one hand, he fumbled with the button and zipper, and realeasing it, reached inside her pants to grab her behind and pull her closer to the edge of the table and against him. Celeste’s legs were one on each side of him, and suddenly they were angled so that his throbbing hardness touched her moist softness through their clothing. Celeste felt the contact like a shock, and it heightenered her already increased state of arousal and awareness. Each time he touched her, each place he kissed her, Celeste felt like her skin was on fire.
Matt slipped a hand inside her corset, and teased each of her nipples over the top of the corset. He then shifted the entire corset down her waist a little, so that all of her breasts popped out over the top. He buried his face in between he breasts, and kissed, licked sucked, sensuously.
Celeste lost it entirely. She pressed his head against her breasts as he suckled, moaning quietly. Her moaning increased when he pulled her pants down a little to reveal her thong. He traced a finger across the wet line in the crotch.
[###One thing to consider here… what if the conflict in the romance part of the story is that Matt feels taken advantage of and decieved by his professor. The professor convinced Matt in his freshman year that he was gay. He took Matt as his lover, and it was a few years before Matt realize that he loved this one man, not all men. Matt found the professor with a woman one night, and they had a loud and bitter argument during which Matt declared that he wasn’t gay, and that he felt like he had been deceived, molded into what the professor wanted as a lover, and betrayed. Since that argument shortly before Celeste and Matt meet in Starbucks, the professor hasn’t really been involved in the project. Sometimes he hangs about the fringes of the library, but he hasn’t really spoken to Matt since. Matt is completely attracted to Celeste, but he’s never been with a woman before really, and he’s having a really hard time trusting Celeste enough to let her close physically. [There’s an additional possibility of exploration of hetero/homosexual relationships that might be interesting, or it might work to make Matt’s professor a woman, cut out the date rape thing, and have it work that way?] This should be the scene where Matt finally lets himself succumb to the attraction, and Celeste should feel some sort of joy that he was willing and able to. ###]
[### Insert more sex scene here ###]
Matt shuddered long and had as he came inside her. When he had finished, he collapsed against Celeste, and she smiled a secret smile of joy. Trying to make him understand that he was definitely able to phyically please her, and take physical pleasure from her, rather than just make an emotional connection, was a huge stepping stone in their relationship, and he had just surpassed it.
Matt breathed deeply, and pulled himself out of her. Celeste frowned in diappointment at the loss of contact, but he had only turned to get the box of kleenex to help her clean up. Very gently, he wet a handful of tissues in the cup of water sitting on his desk, and he wiped his seed and stickiness away. When he was done, he very gently kissed her there, and then turned to clean himself.
Celeste was remarkably touched by the gesture, but rather than making a big deal out of it and embarrassing him, she turned and started to re-dress. He did the same, and in short order they were put back together as if nothing had happened.
Celeste lingered for a few minutes, enjoying the closeness that they now shared, before she said, “I’ve got to go home now. Jeanne will be home in an hour or so, and she still shouldn’t be home alone.”
Matt nodded, “I understand. Can we…meet up… sometime tomorrow?” he blushed. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that…” he stuttered and blushed even redder.
Celeste took pity on him. “How about lunch tomorrow? I can meet you here at… one?”
“I have class until two,” Matt said, looking crestfallen.
“Ok,” replied Celeste. “Two, then. No Cambodian, this time, though. How about just burgers?”
When Celeste got home, there was a message on the answering machine. “Jeanne, this is Doctor XXX, I’m calling at two-fifteen on Monday, please give me a call back as soon as you get this. I’ll be in the office until eight tonight.”
Celeste waited anxiously until Jeanne returned home, and then gently relayed the message. “We’ll go out for a quiet dinner somewhere after you return the call,” she coaxed.
Jeanne shook her head firmly. “Nothing happened that I didn’t ask for in my stupidity, Celeste. I was an idiot to bother with the rape kit thing, you can’t rape the willing and you yourself said I certainly seemed willing.” She shrugged, relenting a little. “You call him back if it’s so important to you. I’m going to bed.”
“But itt’s only six o’clock,” Celeste said. “And you haven’t even had dinner yet!”
“I don’t feel well, I’m going to take a nap. You go ahead and eat without me.”
Celeste protested, but Jeanne ignored her, walked into her room and shut her door.
Celeste dialed the doctor’s office. “Doctor XXX, please?”
She sat on hold for a few minutes, before the doctor finally came on the line. “This is Dr. XXX, how can I help you?”
“Doctor, this is Celeste, I’m calling on behalf of Jeanne. She’s acting like an idiot right now, she says its all her fault, and that she’s not feelign well, so she went to lay down in her room. She said she wouldn’t call you, but that I should if I felt it necessary.”
He made agreeing noises, then said, “We got the tests back on the three major date-rape drugs. It looks like she tested positive for GHB, and just between you and I, she’s really lucky. With the amount that she had in her bloodstream, I’m surprised she didn’t have an adverse reaction and die from it.”
“So what exactly is…GBH, you called it?”
“GHB,” Dr. XXX said. “It’s most common street names are Liquid Extasy, and EZ Lay. It interacts with the dopamine in the brain to make the person feel uninhibited and generally relaxed. People under it’s influence tend to be easy going, and more or less go along with anything anyone suggests, even something they wouldn’t normally consider. At higher doses, like what Jeanne was under, they eventually pass out like you would with alcohol, but it very quickly becomes deeper, literally in a coma until the drug wears itself out of the system. God knows how Jeanne got herself up and moving in time to get the my office in enough time for it to still be in her system.”
“Oh,” said Celeste. “So what now? Jeanne should be relieved that it really wasn’t her fault.”
“Well, she’ll have to start by giving a police report, you’ll have to also since you actually saw the guy. From there, it’s up to the police, we can only hope they’ll find the guy who did it.”
“Ok,” Celeste said, “I’ll talk to her. I’ll call back if she decides to go to the police today, otherwise, if she’s still feeling sick, we’ll probably go tomorrow.”
“Sure,” the doctor answered. “And Celeste, make sure to check on Jeanne every hour or two. She’s in a weird state of mind right now, and I’m sure she can use any support that you might be able to give her.”
Celeste agreed, then hung up the phone.
She did a quick google search on ‘GHB’ and found more than three million sites with references to GHB. She found out out a bunch more information about it – there was nothing like the world wide web for filling in the gaps of one’s drug knoweldge. Within five clicks, she found out how to manufacture, use, and recover from GHB, not to mention what it looks like, and the best substances to dissolve it in if you’re trying to give it to an unwitting victim.
She gave it a couple of minutes thought, then decided that Jeanne really ought to be told what the doctor had to say immediately. Celeste opened Jeanne’s bedroom door slowly, cautiously, not wanting to wake Jeanne if she was sleeping.
Jeanne was laying on the bed, her head propped up by a couple pillows, her shoes still on, her eyes wide open, and Celeste walked in.
“Good,” Celeste said, “I didn’t want to wake you.”
Jeanne sat up in bed a little. “What did the doctor say?”
“You were given a date-rape drug. He said it was called GHB, and that it made you really agreeable to anything anyone would want you to do, and eventually it would make you pass out into a coma. He said it was really surprising that you woke up as early as you did, much less didn’t die.”
“I wish I had,” Jeanne muttered.
“Don’t say that,” Celeste insisted. “He said that we need to go give a statement at the police station, but that we could do it tomorrow if you weren’t feeling well after your nap.”
Jeanne rolled over on her side, facing away from Celeste. “Fine, we’ll go tomorrow, then. I’m not feeling well right now, could you please just let me try to sleep?”
“I can do that,” Celeste said slowly, as she got to her feet, “But I need to make sure that you know this wasn’t your fault. I wouldn’t tell you that it it weren’t true. You didn’t do anything that I haven’t done, that Jessica hasn’t done, that the hundreds of thousands of girls in this city haven’t done. You should be able to go out and get drunk, if you want to, without worrying about some old guy giving you some drug to make you have sex with him. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. He did, and you need to make him pay for it, and keep him from doing it to someone else.”
“Uh huh,” Jeanne said in a dead sort of voice. “We’ll go to the police tomorrow, Celeste.”
Celeste shut Jeanne’s door behind her, and walked into the kitchen to fix herself some dinner. Maybe the smell of comfort food would make Jeanne feel better.
Celeste puttered around the kitchen for a little while, starting to fix her mother’s recipe for chicken and dumplings. She turned the radio on, and hummed along with some country music songs, and while the chicken was boiling, she decided to call her mother.
“Mom,” she said.
“Hi honey, how’re you doing?”
Celeste turned the faucet on high, hopefully the running water would mask what she was about to say, so there was no chance Jeanne would hear it. “Not so good, mom. Jeanne went out the other night, and some guy slipped her a date rape drug. She brought him home, but she seemed so normal that I didn’t think anything of it. It turns out she doesn’t remember any of it, and she’s insisting that it’s all her fault.”
“God,” her mother said. “Does her mother know?”
“I don’t think so,” Celeste said. “She told me not to tell anyone, even Jessica, and I don’t think she has. I’m only telling you because I need some advice about what to do. I’m really worried about her. She agreed to go to the police tomorrow to give a police report, but I don’t know if she really will or what. I know she considers herself more at fault for drinking and accepting a doctored drink, than she blames the guy that raped her.”
“First of all, Celeste. I know you, so I know you’re thinking this – it wasn’t your fault. You can’t very well give every guy Jeanne brings home the third degree, and as long as you thought she seemed normal, that was the limit of your responsibility. Now you’re being a good friend, and trying to take care of her and respect her privacy. No friend can do more.”
“I know,” Celeste said. “It doesn’t make me feel any less guilty, but I do know.”
“As for Jeanne,” her mother continued, “I think the only thing that you can keep doing is to be there for her when she needs you – as a shoulder to cry on, as protection, as a distraction, whatever. She’ll probably ask a lot from you, but if you’re the only one who knows, until she’s willing to open up to someone else, you’re it. Make her favorite meals, keep telling her it’s not her fault, go with her if she wants to go out but is scared to. Whatever. Push her into taking care of herself –doctors appointments, police reports, whatever’s necessary, as well. And most importantly, just keep remembering yourself that she’s the victim here. Some horrible person took advantage of her horribly, she had no means to stop it, and all she needs is help recovering.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I know you do, sweetie, but it’ll be easy to forget when she starts to get demanding of your time and attention. You might also want to consider, not right now, but after she starts feeling and acting a little more like herself, getting her and yourself involved in some project or activity – something to get her to focus on something outside of how she’s doing and how she’s feeling.”
Celeste hung up with her mother, and proceeded to pull the chicken, and make up the dough for the dumplings. She dumped the pulled chicken back into the broth, and put the dumplings in to cook. She had about twenty minutes before she had to do anything else for dinner, so she settled down with a relaxing book to try and take her mind off the last couple of days. This one was billed by Barnes and Nobel as a romance, but she had seen reviews on some newsgroups claiming it was anything but romance. More adventure than anything really. She had only just gotten into it, and already fallen in love with the male lead character with his Scottish accent, when the timer went off for the chicken and dumplings.
She finished preparing dinner, and then tapped lightly at Jeanne’s door. There was no answer, so she quietly opened the door, and poked her head inside. No Jeanne, but the bathroom door was shut, and the light and fan were on inside.
“Hey Jeanne,” she said in a loud voice.
No answer, but Celeste knew she herself hated to be bothered while on the toilet. Sometimes it felt like the only few moments of piece you could grab out of a day occurred while taking a dump.
Celeste knocked on the door. “Hey Jeanne, I’m sorry to bug you, but do you want me to set a place at the table for you? I made chicken and dumplings for dinner.”
Jeanne still didn’t answer.
Celeste knocked again. “Jeanne, please answer me, I’m not trying to bother you but you’re worrying me now.”
Again, Jeanne didn’t say anything. Celeste turned around to face the bed, just to double check that Jeanne wasn’t laying there curled up under the blankets or something. No such luck, so she gritted her teeth and tried the bathroom door.
The door was locked, but it was the kind that unlocked if you shoved something long and thin into the doorknob. Celeste found a cheap bic pen laying on a notepad on Jeanne’s desk, and she disassembled it, taking the ink out. She shoved the little plastic tube full of ink into the doorknob, wiggled it around a little, until she heard a click.
Celeste’s pulse was racing, and she was scared of what she might find. With all the noise that she had been makign trying to get the door open, Jeanne would have responded if she were in there and able to.
Celeste opened the door slowly, and as she had feared, Jeanne was lying on the bathroom floor, about ten empty prescription pill bottles surrounding her. She had thrown up in the toilet before she passed out, and her head was resting against the bottom of the toilet bowl. Celeste took her pulse at her wrist, and couldn’t find one. She felt around Jeanne’s neck trying to find one there, and felt one. Very faint and fluttery, but there. She held a hand in front of Jeanne’s mouth. Still breathing a little.
She propped Jeanne up, and tried to shake her to wake her up. “Jeanne, wake up. Jeanne, I can’t believe you did this! Oh my god, Jeanne, you’re not allowed to die.” Jeanne didn’t show any signs of stirring
Celeste left Jeanne on the floor and ran into the kitchen. She looked madly aorund for where she left the phone, and finally had to run over to the base station and press the “locator” button in order to find it under some papers on the coffee table.
She dialed nine one one. “Nine One One, what’s your emergency?” the nine one one dispatcher said in a brisk voice.
“I just found my roommate on the floor of her bathroom. She’s unconsious and there are about ten bottles of pills all around her, all empty.”
“What’s your name?”
“Celeste XXX,” she said impatiently.
“Where are you located, Celeste?”
“3863 Centre Street, Somerville Mass. It’s at the end of a one way street, purple house. Door on the left. She’s on the floor in the bathroom, and she had a faint pulse but I had to leave her to get the phone. I’m walking back in there now, and oh shit she doesn’t seem to be breathing any more. My number is 555-555-5555 if we get disconnected, I’m going to put you on speakerphone while I give Jeanne CPR and mouth to mouth”
“You do that, ma’am, the ambulance is on the way. Is the door downstairs locked or unlocked.”
“Not sure,” Celeste said, in between breaths. “Spare key under doormat.”
She continued doing mouth to mouth and chest compressions until the paramedics arrived. Every now and again, the nine one one dispatcher would ask for a status update, and Celeste would tell her, in between giving Jeanne breaths.
Jeanne’s lips were bluish, but her throat was clear, and air was getting into her lungs, so hopefully, if she survived, she wouldn’t be brain damaged. Please, let her survive, Celeste prayed.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, she heard the key in the door, and felt a huge surge of relief when they walked into the bathroom. One of them took over the mouth to mouth for Celeste.
Jeanne still wasn’t breathing by herself, and the paramedic also started CPR. Over and over again, he pressed on her chest to get her heart beating, breathed into her mouth to make up for the breathes she couldn’t take on her own. Over and over again, Celeste prayed, begged, cried for Jeanne to come back, not to go away, not to have this be the end of their friendship. Not for this. Not for something that really, honestly, truly, wasn’t her fault. Not for one night of stupidity.
Finally, finally! Jeanne’s heart started beating on it’s own again. The paramedics put a mask over her face, and were squeezing oxygen into her that way. Celeste breathed a sigh of relief at that much progress, any way.
As the paramedics were loading Jeanne onto a stretcher to carry her out to the ambulance at the foot of the stairs, Celeste gathered up her purse, cell phone, and all the empty medicine bottles that had been scattered around the floor. She followed the paramedics outside and into the ambulance, and as the ambulance took off at high speed, with sirens roarding, she handed the baggie of bottles to one of the EMT’s who were working on Jeanne.
“Two expired bottles of tylenol with codeine, two different kinds of muscle relaxants, xanax, prilosec, zantac, allegra, prescription strength bendryl. Great. This’d be enough to kill a moose, much less a girl as small as she is.”
Celeste nodded, that much she’d figured out on her own.
“Was she depressed?” he asked, gesturing with the xanax bottle.
“Not until very recently. She got the xanax because she had panic attacks every now and again.”
They were pumping Jeanne’s stomach now. Celeste could see the charcoal flowing down the tube, and being sucked back out with everything else in there. Again, she prayed that Jeanne would be all right.
Celeste leaned against one of the walls, bracing herself with her feet to keep from flying about. She dialed Jessica’s number on her cell phone.
“Hey,” Scott answered. He must have recognized her number from the caller ID.
“Scott,” she said briskly, “don’t ask any questions right now, there really isn’t time. Get Jess and come to…” she held the phone away from her mouth for a minute, and asked one of the EMTs “Which hospital are we going to?”
“Somerville Hospital, Miss,” he answered.
She held the phone back to her mouth. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Get Jess and come to Somerville Hospital. Jeanne tried to commit suicide, I’ll tell you all about it when you get there. She doesn’t seem to be doing well, so hurry.”
Scott didn’t even say goodbye, but as he hung up the phone she heard him screaming for Jessica. It was good to know they’d be there soon, she didn’t know if she’d be able to be strong for much longer.
Celeste’s next call was to Jessica’s mother in Chicago. “Mrs. XXX?” she said when a woman answered the phone.
“Who’s is this, please?’ Jeanne’s mother asked politely.
“This is Celeste, Jeanne’s roomate. You need to come up here immediately, Jeanne’s in the hospital. She’s been having some problems lately, and I found her on the floor of her bathroom tonight overdosing from some medicines that she took. We’re in the ambulance right now on the way to the hospital, but she needs you.”
“I’ll be on the next flight in. This is your cell phone number? I’ll give you a call from the airport to let you know the flight details.” Jeanne’s mother promised, before virtually slamming down the phone.
The ambulance slammed on the brakes in the hospital parking lot, and unloaded Jeanne. Celeste didn’t even get to hold her hand for a second as they unloaded her before they rushed her away, leaving her standing, alone, in the parking lot.
Celeste went inside and spoke to the nurse at the reception desk, and found out that they [### insert medical procedure…maybe more stomach pumping? ###]. Celeste’s only medical knowledge was what could directly apply to her own allergies and the few other minor medical mishaps that she’d had. Other than that, the only reason that she even had the slightest idea what went on in a hospital was thanks to medical dramas like “ER” and “House.”
Celeste stepped out into the breezeway of the hospital so that she could call her mother without bothering any of the other people waiting for treatment.
“Mama,” Celeste said as soon as her mother picked up the phone.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Jeanne tried to kill herself. She took ten bottles of prescription medicine – literally everything that was in her medicine cabinet or mine, short of including Advil. I had to give her mouth to mouth and CPR until the ambulance got there. I’m so scared for her, Mama.”
“Oh, baby,” Celeste’s mother consoled. “Poor Jeanne, to feel so overwhelmed and like everything was hopeless. Just hold it together a little longer, Celeste. Jeanne’s strong, she’ll pull through.”
“I hope so,” Celeste said. “I called Jessica and Scott and Jeanne’s mother, and they’re all on their way here. Jeanne’s mom should be calling soon from the airport to let me know when her flight will be getting in.”
“Do you want me to drive down? I can take the rest of the week off work, if you want me there.”
Celeste wanted to say yes, desparately wanted her mother there to organize everything and take care of everyone. Unfortunately, she also recognized that even her mother wouldn’t necessarily be able to make Jeanne better. “I don’t know, Mama. I wish you could come down and fix everything, like you always do, but I don’t think even you’d be able to fix this. Maybe I could call you to come down if I can’t take it anymore?”
“Of course, sweetheart. Give me a call, and I’ll be there in three hours. I’ll tell Marie that your calls have first priority at the office as well.”
“Oh Mama, what if she’s not ok?” Celeste suddenly wailed.
“Don’t think like that,” her mother ordered. “Positive thoughts. Stand up straight, paste that smile you’re so good at on your face, and pretend you’re at one of your father’s political dinners. If you pretend to be positive long enough, you’ll feel positive. And that’s about the only thing that you can do to help Jeanne right now – project all the positive thoughts you can her way. That, and pray for her.”
Celeste did as her mother directed, down to the fake smile. “Ok, Mama. I’ll be ok, and so will she.” Celeste’s phone beeped, it was Jeanne’s mother.
“Mama, I’m going to go, Mrs. XXX is on the other line. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
“Love you, darling. Don’t forget, stay positive for her.”
“I will. I love you too.”
Celeste pressed the call waiting button on her cell phone, to hear Jeanne’s mother’s voice. “How is she, have you heard anything? What happened?”
Celeste steeled herself, but she didn’t feel like it was fair to Jeanne’s mother to lie, when there may even be no point any more. “Jeanne went out with some friends on Friday night, and had a lot to drink. She wound up talking to an older man, a man who looked like he was in his fifties or so. He slipped something called GHB in Jeanne’s drink, which made her lose all inhibition, and be very very agreeable to anything anyone might suggest. He, as far as we can tell, suggested that they go back to her, I mean, our, place.”
Celeste’s voice was cold, emotionless, at the retelling. “I was awake when they arrived at the apartment, and I saw them come in. Jeanne smiled at me, shrugged like she knew it was weird but that she was ok with it, and pulled him into her bedroom. I went into my bedroom, shut the door, turned the volume of my tv up, and tried not to think about it. As far as we can tell, what happened is that once they were in Jeanne’s room, he must have dosed her a few more times with the GHB. He raped her, without using any protection. She was probably comatose during all of it.”
“Oh my god,” Jeanne’s mother said.
“Jeanne woke up the next morning, and didn’t remember anything. She’s never really gotten drunk all that often, but she’s never ever blacked out before, so I thought it was strange. I convinced her to go to my doctor, and he tested her blood and urine, but it was a couple days before the tests came back to conclusively prove that she had this drug in her system that literarlly made her do what anyone asked her to do.
“In the meantime, Jeanne convinced herself that it was all her fault. Her fault for going out alone, her fault for getting drunk, her fault for taking an open drink from someone, and her fault for bringing him home. I tried to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that she didn’t do anything wrong, and that the guy did something that was horrible and undeserved. And definitely unasked-for.
“The doctor called tonight, and said that he had definate proof that Jeanne had GHB in her system the next morning. He said that she had enough left in her urine and bloodstream that he was surprised she hadn’t died, or at least, wasn’t still comatose. He suggested that we go to the police station tomorrow, and file a police report. Jeanne agreed to go tomorrow, but said she wasn’t feeling well tonight and wanted to be left alone.
“I talked to her. I tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault. I made her favorite dinner so that she might think about coming out to eat, or at least sleep on the couch. I went in to call her for dinner, and I found her lying on the floor of the bathroom in her own vomit. I gave her mouth to mouth and CPR until the paramedics got there. Now, I’m just praying for her. I’m so so sorry.”
Jeanne’s mother was crying now, literally sobbing into the phone. Celeste felt terrible for throwing it all out there like that, but she didn’t know what to say, or what not to say. And once she started telling what happened, it all flowed out.
Jeanne’s mother hiccupped, took a deep catching breath, and said, “My flight leaves in ten minutes. Which hospital are you at?”
“Somerville Hospital, on Highland,” Celeste replied.
“My flight is three hours and ten minutes long, it leaves in ten minutes. I’ll catch a taxi at the airport to the hospital, and I’ll see you there. I’m leaving my cell phone on in the air, text message me if anything happens.”
“Ok,” Celeste said. She didn’t have text messaging on her phone, but she was pretty sure Jessica did, and even if she didn’t, Celeste would figure out some way to text message her.

11.20 Allergic Reaction and date rape?

The waitress spoke in a bland sort of voice with no real expression to it, and it was obvious that she had memorized all the specials and menu highlights as a spiel, and would be thrown off if interupted. Matt continued playing, and Celeste forced herself not to blush, not to move, not to do anything that might either reveal what he was doing or make him stop.
Suddenly, he pulled his hand away, and the world returned around her. Matt and the waitress were staring at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry, I think my head was completely in the clouds,” Celeste said. “Could I have just another minute?”
“Just drinks, Celeste,” Matt whispered.
“Oh, sorry,” she stammered. “Diet coke, please. With lemon.”
The waitress noted the beverage on her pad, and walked away. Matt picked up his menu, and started to flip through the pages.
“The Cambodian chicken soup here is amazing,” Matt commented. “I think I’m going to order the Lemongrass Chicken, though.”
“Hm…” Celeste said, focusing more on regaining her sense of mental balance than on what she was going to order.
“What are you going to get, Celeste?” Matt prompted.
“I think I’ll try the…” she cast about the menu, which was written half in french and half in Cambodian. There were what looked like brief descriptions under each item, unfortunately they were in French. Celeste struggled to remember some of the basic food items from her high school French vocabulary. How in God’s name did Matt know what was what? Finally she found something that looked familiar, even if she didn’t really know what it was. “Poulet Dhomrei,” she said. Poulet was chicken, she recalled vaguely. And what could you possibly to do chicken?
The waitress returned just after they put their menus down, and matt proceded to order for both of them. “We’d both like to start with bowls of the cambodian chicken soup. For my entrée, I’d like the Poulet a la Citronelle. Please hold the peanuts. Celeste would like the Poulet Dhomrei.” He looked at her questioningly, to make sure she didn’t have any “hold the’s” or “extras”.
“That’s it,” Celeste said. “And another diet coke, please, when you have a chance.”
The waitress nodded, made notes on her notebook, took Celeste’s glass and the menus and went off to the kitchen.
“I thought you were going to get the Lemongrass Chicken instead of the soup, not in addition?”
“Well, I couldn’t have you not try the soup… and besides, I’m done working for the day. I’m taking a relaxation day.”
“Ah, would that we were all so lucky… I have this slave driver for a boss…” she grinned, and raised an eyebrow teasingly.
He snorted. “I think you’ll do just fine, Miss I’m Two Weeks Ahead of Schedule.”
“Speaking of that,” she said, “Do you have any time this weekend or early next week to help me with that software? I’d like to have some idea of how to use it before I start needing it.”
“Maybe on Monday?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
Business once again out of the way, they concentrated on in depth getting to know you chit-chat. [###I need another date between this one and the kissing debacle at the end of the last one. They’ve just barely kissed, and now he’s playing with her hoo-hoo in the restaurant? WTF? ###] “So what have you been up to this week?” Matt asked.
“Well, I’ve been working on the boo a lot,” Celeste responded, “and I went out to the North End for dinner with my roommate last night.”
“Ooh, where?” Matt asked. The North End was Boston’s Little Italy, so generally mentioning it in conversation led to a discussion about the pros and cons of different restaurants, and different styles of Italian food.
Celeste told him, which led to the usual discussion about whether their vegetarian lasagna made the restaurant too American to really fit into the classic North End restaurant lineup. “Mike’s pastries, though,” Matt mused. “It’s not just Italian, but it definitely makes the best cannoli that I’ve ever had.”
“A friend of mine just got an apartment in the North End,” Celeste said, “and she told me that there’s a butcher shop just next to her apartment building. She went on vacation for a week, and didn’t think to mention it to the older guy that owns the butcher shop. When she got back, he actually lectured her about worrying him, he’d thought something happened, and actually had the landlord of the building open her apartmnent to make sure that she wasn’t hurt on the floor inside or something. That’s the type of neighborhood that you never really find around here.”
“That’s true,” Matt said. “I can’t even get my neighbor to feed my cat when I’m gone.”
“Ooh, you have a cat? What it look like? I’ve wanted a cat for a couple of years, but my roommate is allergic to them.”
“She’s completely white except for the tip of her nose and her ears, which are black. I found her a couple years ago, while I was on summer vacation during high school in Florida. If you can believe it, I was walking around with my parents at the Polynesian resort at Disney, and we saw what looked like a white bunny rolling around on the pavement near the arcade. I looked a little closer and it turns out that it was a kitten. I caught her, and checked with the hotel to make sure that no one was missing at cat, and my parents wound up buying a cat carrier and food and everything, and paying extra for my ticket home so I could get her home with me.”
He laughed, “I wasn’t really a cat person before that, but she was so cute, and it was just fate, I think.” He shrugged. “I named her ‘Polly’ because of the hotel where we found her. We thing she was probably a Hurricane Andrew refugee because we went on vacation literally the week after the storm.”
“Talk about good luck,” Celeste said.
Before she had a chance to say anything else, the horsey faced waitress appeared, accompanied by two empty bowls and a tea pot looking device. Celeste wrinkled her brow in confusion, but before she had a chance to ask, the waitress put the two bowls down on the table, and began to pour the soup out of the tea pot thing. It looked like normal chicken soup but with large chunks of (apparently) real chicken, and chili peppers and lemongrass instead of the normal Cambell’s noodles and carrots.
She took a cautious bite, but it was absolutely delicious. The broth itself was rich, the chicken was tender, and the chili peppers provided a nice spicy bite, but not too hot as to overwhelm the rest of the soup. She and Matt focused on eating, and very soon both bowls were completely empty. Celeste almost wished she hadn’t ordered an entrée so that she could rationalize ordering another bowl of soup.
“Mmm, that was good,” she said as she put her soup spoon down.
Matt smiled, “I told you that you needed to try it.”
“That’s the kind of I told you so that I enjoy,” Celeste joked.
The soup hadn’t even had a chance to settle before their meals were brought out. Matt’s looked delicious, a grilled cornish game hen on a bed of rice noodles with lemongrass, red peppers, and snow peas on the side.
Celeste’s was more a stew or stir fry, which she hadn’t expected. Her chicken was cut into pieces, with red pepper, peanuts, chili pepper, snow peas, and scallions. It was all served in a milky yellowish broth that tasted strongly of curry. It tasted pretty good, she thought, even if it was kind of nasty looking. She ate some more, savoring the broth, and eating some of the vegetables. She took a bite of something that she didn’t recognize along with a piece of chicken.
Suddenly, Celeste’s mouth was on fire. She looked vainly around the table for her diet coke, but the waitress had apparently forgotten to bring it back when she took it for refilling. Celeste’s eyes filled up with tears, and her mouth felt burning and numb at the same time. Finally, with no real respite available, she held her napkin up to her mouth and spit out whatever the incendiary substance that she put into her mouth with that bite was.
Matt looked at her, slightly concerned. Celeste had been slightly flailing her arms, and he was a little worried that she was choking but didn’t know the universal choking gesture. “What’s wrong?” he said.
Celeste cleared her throat, and tried to say “I bit into something hot,” but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. She cleared her throat again. This time, she managed to croak out, “I ate something a little too hot.”
Matt started laughing. “You must have eated one of the chili piquines that they put in for flavoring. You aren’t supposed to eat those.”
Celeste gave him the finger, and he laughed even harder, but he waved over the waitress. “Could she get her diet coke, and also a glass of milk and some bread?”
The waitress nodded, and walked away. She came back moments later with the items that Matt had mentioned. She also brought a glass of iced tea. “If the food is too spicy, iced tea is better to drink with it than diet coke. It’s on the house.”
Celeste looked up and gratefully nodded her thanks before downing the milk in a matter of about three seconds. Then she shoved a piece of bread into her mouth and chewed on that for a while before washing it down with the glass of iced tea.
Matt was cracking up on his side of the table while she was doing this. After Celeste put the iced tea down, she turned to him and once again, gave him the finger. Celeste noticed that Matt was looking concerned again, so she cleared her throat and managed to get out, “What’s wrong?”
“Uh…um…Celeste, are you allergic to anything?”
“I’m,” she cleared her throat again, her throat was feeling a little swollen, “I’m allergic to coconut.”
“Aw, shit,” he said, “didn’t you read the description on the menu? It’s a coconut milk broth!”
“It wasn’t in English,” Celeste managed to get out before she ran to the bathroom. Fortunately, she was carrying an epipen in her purse. She injected herself, and sat on the toilet with her head between her knees, waiting for some of the symptoms to subside. She could still breathe, but her throat was definitely clogged up, and if if prior experience was any indication, she also looked a fright.
When she felt a little steadier, she emerged from the bathroom carrying her purse. She approached Matt at the table, and said “I have to go to my doctor’s. Will you take me there?”
Matt stood quickly, and flung two twenties onto the table. He grabbed Celeste’s elbow, and helped her out the door. As soon as they stepped out onto Memorial Drive, he flung up his arm to flag a cabbie.
“It’s not that much of an emergency,” Celeste said. “How did you get here? Your car, or the T?”
“My car, but I parked a ways away.”
“I can walk, I just need to get to the doctor’s within an hour or so.”

On the way, Celeste dialed her general practitioner on her cell phone. She explained the situation, and the nurse receptionist assured her that yes, she did need to come in, and yes, of course the doctor would be able to fit her in.
The doctor’s office wasn’t particularly busy when they arrived, so Celeste was able to get right into the office. She sat on the examining table, and Matt took a seat in the chair by the door. He looked antsy, and Celeste really couldn’t blame him. If only she hadn’t been such an idiot, and had asked for a translation. He apprarently knew what the things on the menu were.
The doctor took her blood pressure, which was normal, and asked her what happened.
Celeste rolled her eyes, “You know I’m allergic to bees, so I always carry the epipen in my purse. Well…apparently, I’m allergic to coconut as well. It’s always made me a little itchy, but I’ve never really had a reaction to it. Well, I guess I’ve never had it as concentrated as it was in that soup!”
The doctor gave her albuterol, because she was still having trouble breathing, whether it was from the pepper or the coconut, she didn’t know. One way or the other, it helped to relieve her breathing, and she was able to talk easier.
The doctor left she and Matt in the room, and shut the door behind him, giving Celeste orders to rest for twenty minutes or so, and if she felt ok, she could go home.
Celeste laughed a little self conciously, scrubbed a hand through her hair, and said “I’m sorry, I know this completely wasn’t in the plan for today. You don’t have to wait with me if you don’t want to.”
Matt was swaying a little in his chair, and focusing desparately at a spot on the floor where the tiles crossed. He looked up at her, and she noticed that he was unusually pale. “I don’t mind, I just don’t do well around doctors and needles, and… Excuse me,” very quickly he bent over and put his head between his knees.
Celeste looked on worriedly. “Should I call the doctor? Or get you some water, or something?”
“No, no, just sit. I’ll be fine. Well, water would be good…”
Celeste jumped down from the table, and filled one of the small plastic cups with water from the sink. She also wet a paper towel with cold water. She applied the paper towel to Matt’s neck, idly rubbing his hair until he sat up. She handed him the water, and he sipped at it.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Sometimes I just can’t handle anything medically related. Even the thought of anything makes me feel really lightheaded. I’m fine now, though.”
Celeste still looked a little worried, but it was easier not to argue, and they were in a doctor’s office, after all. “This has been a great afternoon,” she commented.
‘So I get it now, though” he said. “I was thinking you were really weird for ordering something that you were allergic to, but you’ve never really been allergic to it before?”
“Well, sort of,” Celeste said. “It’s not something I would have ordered if I knew what it was – my menu was completely in Cambodian and French. But additionally, I’ve never really had a reaction to coconut products or coconut itself before – for example, I can eat Mounds candy bars with no problem. I guess real coconut is different, though. Or it could just be that I reacted to it for no real reason at all.”
“All I can say is, it’s a good thing that you had that needle thing with you.”
“Yeah, I always carry it. I’m deathly allergic to bee stings, and unlike food, bees pretty unpredictable.”
Matt suddenly put his head back between his knees. “Sorry, I was thinking about that needle of yours, and… ugh…”
“Here,” Celeste said, rummaging through her purse. She tossed him a Jolly Rancher. “Eat that, the sugar should help. It wouldn’t surprise me if the adrenaline from my reaction and getting me here is wearing off, and you’ve got low blood sugar.”
He unwrapped the candy, and put it in his mouth. He slowly sat back up again, looking pale and completely embarrassed.
“Don’t worry,” Celeste said. “If it makes you feel any better, I can’t handle pain at all. One thing that’s really funny –a few years ago, I needed a filling and I went to my father’s dentist up in New York. I had never been to the guy before, so I went in, and I got a cleaning, and he was all ready to do the filling. He goes through the whole novocaine procedure, and I’m doing ok, except that my mouth isn’t completely numb. So I tell the dentist that, and he tells me I’m crazy, and pulls out the dental drill. He starts drilling, and of course, it hurts, so I ask for more novocaine. Finally, the guy gives me more novocaine, and starts drilling again, and it’s still not completely numb. Finally it really starts to hurt, and then his hand slips and he nicks my gum. I hate pain, did I mention that? So I make a screeching sound, and jerk away.”
Matt was looking interested and less like a corpse, so she continued.
“The dentist tossed down the drill, said he can’t work on a patient like me, and told me never to come back. Finally, the hygeniest convinced him that he can’t just make me walk out of there with a half drilled tooth, so he finishes the filling, and then he re-interates that I’m never to return. My father’s never let me forget that one.”
Matt laughed, “I guess my medical fear isn’t so bad, then. At least it’s not as general as ‘pain’. What’ll happen when you have a baby?”
“Well, at that point, I keep telling myself that I won’t have any choice. Sortof like when you get on a roller coaster. By the time the car starts moving, you can’t get off, so you kind of have to grit your teeth and be a big girl about it.”
Twenty minutes passed before they realized it, with no further allergic reactions from Celeste, and no further lightheadedness from Matt. The doctor rejoined them, and tested Celeste’s blood pressure again.
“You seem good enough,” he said. “We can keep you here for the rest of the afternoon, if you feel like you need to have someone keep an eye out for other symptoms, or you can go home and rest there.”
“Home,” Celeste quickly said, cutting off the last few words of the doctor’s sentence.
“I don’t think you quite caught what I said,” the doctor said, amused. “Rest. At home. Nothing Else. Period.”
“No, I got it,” Celeste said. “I’ll go home, rest on the couch for the afternoon, wake up with a throbbing headache from the epinepherine, go back to sleep, and feel fine tomorrow. And if I don’t,” she added quickly, “I’ll call a taxi to take me here, or an ambulance to take me to the hospital.”
The doctor laughed. “I know, you’ve been through this a few times before. Just keep in mind that you’ve never done this with a food allergy before, so you’re more likely to have the reaction go a way you wouldn’t expect.”
Celeste nodded, she really did understand, it wasn’t that she was just rushing to get out of there.
The doctor scrawled a new prescription for an epipen for Celeste, gave her a sample that he had on hand, just in case her allergy acted up and she didn’t have an extra. Then he escorted them out into the waiting room.
“Don’t forget,” he said. “Rest. Nothing else. Just go home and take a nap.”
Celeste smiled. “I know, I know. I’m going directly home, and,” she looked at her watch, “it looks like I’ll get there just in time to catch Oprah.”
“I said rest, not rot your brain,” the doctor said. “I’m just joking, but please take it easy.”
They left the office, and Matt offered to drop Celeste off at home. When they arrived, he pulled up into a parking space in front of the apartment.
“You don’t have to go,” she said.
“The doctor told you to rest, though.” Matt responded. “I’d love to stay, but I defiantely feel like I should go. I’ve got to get some work done tomorrow, do you want to meet me at the library, mid afternoon? Bring the book, and I can show you on my laptop how to use that software?”
Celeste was a little disappointed, but she didn’t really show it. “Sure,” she said, “that sounds good.”
She got out of the car, and started walking to her apartment. Matt pulled out of the parking spot, and tapped on his horn as he drove off. Celeste waved, and then went inside.
It was kind of good, really, that Matt didn’t want to stay, because Celeste wasn’t really feeling up to doing anything. The epinephrine in the epipen made you feel up and perfectly fine for a couple of hours, but after that she just felt tired but twitchy. Almost like she had a lot mental energy, but no physical energy whatsoever. She made it far enough into her apartment to grab her blanket and pillow off her bed, drag it behind her to the couch, and cuddle up before falling fast asleep.
She woke up when Jeanne’s key rattled in the lock. “It’s open,” she yelled.
Jeanne walked in. “What’s wrong,” she said. “Are you sick?” Her tone of voice was almost accusatory.
“I’m allergic to coconut,” Celeste responded. “I had to use my epipen, and then go to the doctors.”
Jeanne had been nearby the last time Celeste was stung by a bee, and knew from experience that an allergic reaction wasn’t a pretty sight. “Are you ok?” she asked, sounding more sympathetic .
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just having a reaction headache, and I was really tired when I got home.”
“So was your graduate student there when this all happened?”
“Yeah,” Celeste cringed. “He was actually really good about it, though, he took me to the doctors and brought me home and all.”
“God, that sucks, Celeste,” Jeanne commisserated.
Celeste shrugged, “That’s ok, I didn’t really need a boyfriend anyway. And besides, don’t they say that you should always avoid having a relationship with someone that you work with?”
“Well, yeah,” Jeanne said. “But I think your circumstances might be a little far from the norm. Besides, he might think it’s cute or something. Did he tell you he’d call you or anything?”
“No, I’m supposed to meet him at the library tomorrow afternoon, and he will show me how to use that indexing software I was telling you about. It’s nothing I couldn’t figure out on my own, but it’ll give me an excuse to see him again, and be sure that he’s as revolted as he probably is.”
“I’m sure he’s not at all revolted,” Jeanne said, loyally.
Celeste shrugged, and went back to sleep. Jeanne puttered around the house for awhile, and then Celeste heard her leave, probably to visit Jessica and Scott.
Around two or so in the morning, she woke up again, feeling a lot better. The headache was gone, and she was hungry. From experience, though, she knew that no matter how hungery she felt, her stomach couldn’t pallete much. She fixed herself a couple slices of buttered toast, and a cup of peppermint tea.
Celeste turned on the television, and started randomly flipping through the channels looking for something other than an infomercial or soft-core pornography.
Finding nothing of interest, she had just turned the television off, when Celeste heard a key rattle in the lock. There was no way Jeanne would be out this late, would she?
That question was answered quickly, when Jeanne stumbled in, obviously drunk. An old man stumbled in behind her. He was tall, at least six and a half feet, and balding, with an obvious comb-over. Jeanne was giggling a little. She turned and looked at Celeste on the couch, shrugged, grabbed the old guy’s hand, and pulled him into her bedroom behind her.
Ugh, Celeste thought, disgusted. As far as she knew, Jeanne wasn’t seeing anyone, much less anyone old enough to be her father, so who was this guy?
Well, there wasn’t much that she could really do right then, so Celeste went into her bedroom, locked the door behind her, put in earplugs, and tried to sleep. The more she thought about it, though, the more the old guy seemed a little familiar. Where did she know him from? Why didn’t it come to her? It was just on the tip of her mental tongue, and she could not think of it.
Ugh, one way or the other, the mental image of that guy with Jeanne, how foul! Celeste flipped on the television in her room, and managed to get immersed in some old black and white television show on Nick at Nite. Not the most stimulating television, but at least it helped her not focus on what was happening in Jeanne’s room.
The next morning, Celeste debated emerging from her room. She was afraid that the old guy might still be there, probably padding around the kitchen in his boxers and a scraggly old white sleeveless tee shirt. Nasty, she thought, as she plopped back onto her bed and decided to watch one more hour of Saturday morning cartoons before risking the old guy’s presence.
After a perfectly splendidly mindless hour of anime style cartoons, Celeste finally braved the kitchen. Either Jeanne and her… ahem… weren’t up yet, or they had already gone. Celeste poured herself a bowl of cereal, and made a pot of coffee. As she was waiting for the coffee to brew, she finished loading the dishwasher, and started it running.
As she was pouring herself a cup of coffee, Jeanne emerged from the bedroom, looking completely disheveled and hung over. “Water,” she moaned. “And advil.”
Celeste handed her both. Jeanne actually looked more ill than hung over. “Are you ok,” Celeste asked.
Jeanne shook her head, and then grabbed the counter top to steady herself before she fell over. “I remember that I went out last night because I didn’t want to bother you while you weren’t feeling well. I met Jessica and Scott at the Burren. We started talking to some guy Scott knows, and that’s the last thing that I remember. I don’t even remember getting home…”
Celeste swallowed hard. “Let’s call Scott,” she suggested, “and figure out what they remember.”
“What happened, Celeste?” Jeanne asked, sounding more worried.
“I don’t know, Jeanne. Bu t you came home with a really old guy, like older than my dad.”
They dialed Scott’s number, and Celeste put him on speaker phone. “Hey Scott, this is Celeste, and I’ve actually got you on speaker phone, so Jeanne’s here as well.”
Scott laughed. “Is Jeanne hung over? She was crazy last night.”
“That’s actually what we’re calling about… can you tell her specifically what happened last night?”
“We were at the Burren. She was stressed from work, and with you being sick, so she had a beer. A friend of mine from school came over, and we started talking, and he brought some other friends over. Jeanne seemed to be having a good time, and Jessica and I left at about eleven.”
“Oh,” Jeanne said.
“Why, what happened?” Scott asked.
Jeanne made frantic ‘don’t tell him’ motions to Celeste.
“We’re not sure, Jeanne just wants to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Well, all I can say is that she had a lot more to drink that she usually does, and she was a lot more talkative, but nothing specific. Nothing embarrasing, definitely. Let me call my friend Eric, the guy that she was talking to when we left last night, and see if he remembers anything. I’ll give you guys a call back in a few minutes.”
Jeanne sat there in horror until the phone rang again. She put it on speakerphone. It was Scott.
“I just talked to Eric,” he said. “He says that when he and his friends left, they tried to bring Jeanne with them, but she was talking to and dancing with some old guy, and she insisted that she stay and they go ahead without her. He said that Jeanne didn’t do anything stupid, though, besides that the guy she was talking to was old enough to be her dad.”
Celeste’s eyes widened in horror, and Jeanne calmly said, “Ok, that’s good to know. Thanks, Scott.”
Jeanne put the phone back on its cradle, stood there for a minute, looking calmly horrified. “What did I do, Celeste?” she asked. “I know you saw something or I said something. You wouldn’t look so worried, otherwise. Please just tell me.”
Celeste took a deep breath and said, “Whoever that old guy was, you brought him home. I was sleeping off the headache and the epipen on the couch, and had just woken up. I was flipping around the channels in the living room when you got home. You walked in with an old guy, probably around fifty five or sixty. I didn’t do anything because when you walked in, you looked right at me, smiled and shrugged, as if you knew what you were doing and how it looked, and then you pulled him into your room with you. I was kind of grossed out, so I went into my room, put ear plugs in, and didn’t come out until just before you woke up this morning.”
A sudden thought hit her. “He’s not still in there, is he?”
Jeanne looked worried for a minute, and went into her room to check. “No, he must have left during the night. Who was he, do you know?”
“No, he looked familiar for some reason, but I can’t really place him.”
Jeanne shrugged. “Wouldn’t you know, the first time I go out to have a good time, this happens.”
Celeste had another thought. “Jeanne, if you were drunk, would you accept a drink that someone handed you?”
‘If I was sober, I wouldn’t. But drunk…” she shrugged.
“Come on,” Celeste said, pulling Jeanne out of the kitchen. “Throw some clothes on, grab the clothes you were wearing last night, and your sheets.”
Jeanne filled a plastic shopping bag with the clothes and sheets, and followed Celeste out the door.
“Your doctor’s in Chicago, right?” Celeste asked her.
“Yeah, I haven’t really needed one here since we graduated.”
“Ok, are you alright going to mine? He’s really nice.”
“Sure, whatever. Why are you taking me to the doctor, though? You said yourself that it was me who pulled the guy into the bedroom, not the other way around.”
Celeste looked at her like she was an idiot. “We’ve got a few reasons to choose from, here. First, did you find any used condoms in your room? Because if not, there’s a chance he used one and flushed it, but there’s also a chance he didn’t use one. So there’s AIDS, herpes, the clap, and god knows what else. Then there’s the pregancy issue. I don’t think you want any children from fathers that you don’t remember, do you? So we’ll have to get you a prescription for the morning-after pill. And then on top of all that, does sleeping with a random old guy seem like something that you’d do?” Celese didn’t even bother waiting for a response. “So on top of all the usual worries, there’s the chance that you were slipped something – extasy, a date-rape drug, I don’t know what. All I know is that if you remembered this all happening, I might think it was random weirdness or rebellion or something. But not remember anything when you don’t normally black out, plus acting strangely and irresponsibly with a strange guy that’s not really your type… it just doesn’t add up.”
Celeste and Jeanne walked into Celeste’s doctor’s office. “Not more coconut?” the nurse receptionist questioned when she saw Celeste.
“No, but we’re thinking that my friend, this is Jeanne by the way, was given some kind of date rape drug, and possibly had unprotected sex last night. Can you squeeze her in soon?”
“Right now, actually,” the nurse said. “His next patient isn’t for another forty-five minutes.”
She showed them into an examination room, and Celeste waited outside while Jeanne changed into a hospital gown. When Celeste finally entered the room, Jeanne was sitting on the exam table with the gown neatly tucked around her and under her legs.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Jeanne said. She was blushing a fierce shade of red, and she looked thoroughly humiliated.
“Look,” Celeste said firmly. “Getting so drunk you do something irresponsible is stupid, sure. But think about what all the feminists say – is stupidity punishible by rape? And worse comes to worst, it wasn’t rape and you were willing, you just don’t remember. Well, then now’s the time to take care of it. You’ll take the morning after pill so you know for sure you’re not pregnant, and I’m sure you’ll get a prescription for a heavy duty penicillan so that you’ll know you don’t have herpes or syphilis or the clap or anything like that. It’ll all be ok. Just don’t ever do it again.”
Jeanne looked a little bit better, at least someone was taking responsibility for the situation, since she didn’t feel capable of being in charge at all.
Finally, the doctor came in. “Celeste,” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Not more coconut, is it?”
“Jeeze, you’d think you medical people would me a little more sympathetic. No, it’s not more coconut. I’ve actually brought my roommate Jeanne in for an exam.” Celeste turned toward Jeanne, waiting for her to explain, but Jeanne just looked at her pleadingly. Finally, Celeste gave in and continued. “Jeanne went out last night for a few drinks, and wound up having more than a few. She doesn’t remember anything past eleven o’clock, and the last time we were able to get a report of what she was doing was around midnight. She showed up at home with a guy older than my father last night, which isn’t normal for her. She doesn’t remember anything that happened last night, and like I said, while she seemed willing last night, it’s not her usually behavior. We’re both concerned that she might have had unprotected sex last night, she doesn’t remember but can’t find a condom. Plus, is there any way to test for some kind of date-rape drug that might make her… more willing, and more able to forget the night?”
The doctor nodded. “Have you showered,” he asked Jeanne.
“No,” she responded quietly.
“We’re going to have to do a rape kit for you. Do you want Celeste to stay, or to wait outside?”
“Celeste, please don’t go.” Jeanne said. She had started to cry a little.
Celeste nodded, and walked over to sit next to Jeanne and hold her hand while the doctor collected the necessary evidence. She kept murmuring “it’s okay,” and “it’s not your fault,” both of which seemed to console Jeanne a little, and help her keep it together.
[###I wonder how this would work with Celeste being the one who was raped by the professor –why would the professor want to rape Jeanne? Or was it just a coincidence?###]
When all the tests were done and all the evidence was collected, the doctor wrong Jeanne some prescriptions for the morning-after pill. Fortunately, she was negative for all sexually transmitted diseases.
Celeste and Jeanne got Jeanne’s prescription filled, and by the time they returned home it was dinner time. Celeste fixed Jeanne a big bowl of chicken noodle soup that she whipped up quickly. Jeanne wasn’t quite “broken” but she wasn’t all there, either.
Celeste wasn’t ready to leave Jeanne there by herself, so she dropped quick email to Matt – “Hey Matt, sorry I couldn’t meet you today, a friend ran into some trouble that I had to help with. Give me a call tonight or tomorrow?” She felt bad for being so brief, but with the way Jeanne was acting, she was afraid to leave her alone in a house with multiple means of committing suicide.
Celeste hadn’t heard back from Matt by Monday, but Jeanne had pulled it together enough to go into work. Celeste figured the element of surprise might work in her favor, so she took a quick shower, and dressed a white corset done on the tightest setting so that her breasts were almost popping out the top. She put on the matching thong underwear and checked the effect in the mirror – to die for. She settled on a crisp but demure white blouse over the top, and a pair of grey dress slacks that rode low enough that you could see the thong strings over the top if her shirt was off.
She felt a little guilty to be plotting a seduction while Jeanne was recovering from a rape, but she foreced herself to think of them as separate and unrelated occurrences. It didn’t help Jeanne at all to let Matt slip away. And hopefully, dressing like this was help convince Matt that what he saw in the doctor’s office wasn’t all there was to her. She wasn’t some fragile piece of glass, waiting to break.
Matt was in his cage, again listening to unreconizeable classical music, and idly tapping his pencil along with the beat, as Celeste walked in. “Hey,” she greeted him. “I’m sorry I didn’t come on Saturday, but I was hoping that you could show me that software today.”
“Hi!” Matt said. “I um, uh, sorry I didn’t call you…”
“But you thought that I was sick and that I needed more time to heal up, or whatever?” Celeste finished for him.
“Yeah,” he looked relieved.
“I’m fine. I was fine on Saturday, even, but my roommate was raped on Friday night, and we spent all day Saturday at the doctor’s office, and I spent most of the day Sunday tryign to convince her that it wasn’t her fault.”
“Oh.” Matt looked vaguely guilty. “I thought that you might be doing something more fun. You weren’t very specific in your email…”
Celeste shrugged. “No problems, I just couldn’t leave her alone this weekend.” She dragged the extra chair around his desk, and put it next to his. “So do you have time to show me that software today?”
He nodded, and flipped on his laptop, and put the papers that he had been writing on in a neat pile in the back corner of the desk.
Celeste got back to her feet, and shut the door. “Let me just shut this,” she said, “so we don’t bother anyone else while you’re showing me.”
She sat back down, and as he started the program, she leaned against him a little, lightly brushing his arm with her left breast. He jerked away slightly, as if expecting her to yell at him for that brief touch. When she appeared not to have even noticed it, he leaned back.
Matt started to explain the steps to create a new index, trying hard to ignore Celeste’s breast pressing against him. ‘And, uh, “ he continued, “you go through and type each word you highlighted and how it’s used, with the page number in the next column. The program will automatically summarize and organize the information. It’s really simple.”
“It’s really hot in here with the door closed, isn’t it?” said Celeste. She unbuttoned two of the buttons at the top of her shirt, and fanned the shirt back and forth for a minute. The amount of shirt she unbuttoned and the fanning motion gave Matt the perfect view of her overflowing cleavage and the satin and lace corset underneath.