Saddled, chapter 11 (Patreon)

After asking a couple of people, John found the security office. He wasn’t sure how much they would tell him, but he had to do something to protect their mother. If Kevin was sniffing around, John would be willing to bet he was looking for money. He saw that she was set up in an expensive hospital, and he was trying to figure out how to tap into the money stream.

John wished he could believe better of his brother, but he’d seen Kevin in action too many times. He would blow into town, charm a few women, land in a few beds, spin a story of some grand future and then vanish. At their father’s funeral, he’d told their mother how he’d been accepted as an electrician’s apprentice and all he’d needed was the money to buy the tools.

Their mother had written a check for fifteen hundred dollars. John had found out the day after the funeral when his mother had asked him how to get the insurance money faster because she had bills to pay. Kevin had taken her mortgage, and John had never been so homicidally angry. He had driven to every hotel within a hundred miles and finally found Kevin holed up in an old hotel perched on a hill over the freeway. He’d been too drunk or high to do much other than giggle as John tossed his room. John had taken back eight hundred dollars and made up the rest out of his own money.

He should have told their mother the truth then—he should have said that Kevin was a no-good addict who would sell them out for his next hit. Instead John had let their mother think Kevin had given the money back. And then, for two years Kevin had made noises about how different his life would have been if he’d finished that apprenticeship. Of course, John hadn’t known about his brother’s complaints. His mother had fixed John salt cod and smiled and never shared any of her anger on behalf of her poor little Kevin.

One of these days, John was going to kill his brother, and he’d argue it was justifiable homicide. Any juror with siblings would acquit him.

After John knocked at the security door, he leaned against the hallway and waited. It took several seconds before a tall man with a gray mustache opened the door.

“Can I help you, sir?”

John definitely wasn’t used to anyone calling him a ‘sir.’ It made him want to look around for someone wearing a suit. John’s mind slipped to Davidson who likely had hordes of assistants who sirred him all day long. However, John forced himself to focus on the task at hand.  “I need some information about a visitor that was in my mother’s room.”

“Did something happen?” Immediately, the man was on alert.

“I’m not sure. I understand my brother, Keven Michaud visited yesterday.”

The professional concern vanished and the security man looked at John as if he had just crawled out of a pile of shit. And this was the other reason why John hated his brother. When people had given him shit for having a gay brother, John happily defended family honor by pointing out all the gay role models in the world. He and his father had visited a gay library in New York just to gather ammunition against the assholes. John’s father might have been intensely uncomfortable with Logan’s sexuality and he’d tried to talk Logan into exploring the glories of celibacy and even the priesthood, but their father would have turned the world upside down to protect any of them.

However, how could John defend family honor when a certain percentage of his family had none? He nodded at the security guy. “That’s the face I make any time someone brings Kevin up.”

The man’s face went blank. “I can’t discuss security issues with the public.”

“I want to know if I need to fill out any sort of paperwork to keep Kevin out. He’s taken our mother’s bill money in the past, and I’m afraid she might give him access to the hospital.”

A mask of professional indifference hid the man’s emotions. “You should discuss that with the hospital administrator.”

John’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it. “That’s fine. Tell me which administrator I should talk to. I want to make sure my mother can’t put Kevin back on the visitor’s list. She has cancer and she’s not thinking clearly.” John’s mother was going to gut him and use his entrails for bait if she heard him say that, but he’d deal with that when it happened. “I need to make sure she’s protected,” he finished.

The man’s expression softened. “I don’t know how much you know.”

John snorted. “Almost nothing. My mother wouldn’t have told me Kevin had visited if I hadn’t asked, and I only knew to ask because the security around here turned into Fort Knox. The fact that she’s still trying to cover for him worries me.”

The man took a step away from the security office door as though seeking privacy from someone inside. “We can’t discuss security issues with patients or families.” John heard a ‘but’ in there. He was definitely leaving himself space to say something else, so John just waited. The man sighed. “You don’t have to worry. He’s been banned from the hospital, and no one is going to reverse that decision. Front desk staff have his picture as do the security offices.”

John frowned. That sounded more serious than just pissing off some nurse. However, if Kevin had been high or if he’d harassed someone other than their mother, that would explain why the hospital didn’t want to talk about it. “Are there legal charges?”

“I can’t discuss that, sir.”

John nodded. “Okay, I suppose that’s none of my business as long as he doesn’t get near my mother again. Can I give you my cell phone number in case he does try to come back?”

“He won’t try, and if he does, that won’t be anything you need to get involved with,” the man said firmly.

John nodded. Given the level of security around his mother, he would have to trust the hospital to put her protection first. They certainly seemed to so far. “Well, thank you for your time, and I apologize if my idiot brother made your life more difficult.”

“You’re not responsible for your family.”

John turned and started down the hallway, but then the security guard called out, “Sir?” John turned, and the man gave the security office door a furtive look before he took another step closer to John. “Make sure your mother is okay… emotionally. Okay?”

John’s stomach dropped, and acid pressed against the base of his throat. What the hell had happened? Before he could ask, the guard turned and hurried back to his office, swiping his card through the security lock before John could open his mouth. 

His mother had appeared perfectly normal when they’d talked, but then again, his mother had covert skills the CIA should envy. The woman could know where Jimmy Hoffa was buried and never say a word, and she could lie to a person’s face without batting an eye or losing track of where she was in her cross stitch. However, there was more than one way to find information. If someone had told Kevin about their mother’s cancer, it would have been Fawn. She always had a soft spot for him—lying to their parents and unlocking the door so he could sneak in after curfew. In return, he’d confessed more sins to her than to anyone else in the world. And she had inherited exactly none of their mother’s talent with deception.

John knew where to find weak links in his family, and Beverly Michaud was not one. Fawn was. John pulled out his phone, and Elena had called twice. She knew he was coming to see his mother, so she could damn well wait, and if she was calling because Davidson wanted another session, he could stick the horse tail up his own ass. John had more important business to tend.

He found one of the small private family rooms and turned the lock so the occupied sign would show outside, and then he dialed his sister’s number.

After six rings, she answered with, “Is Mom okay?”

“Physically she’s the same,” John answered. Then he let silence communicate some of his aggravation.

It took a good two or three minutes before Fawn asked, “What happened? Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Kevin was down here annoying the staff and bothering Mom. What the hell are you thinking—telling him where to find her?” John hoped to hear indignant denial or shock and confusion. Instead he heard only silence, so she really had told him. What a bitch.

She let the silence continue so long that he might have assumed she hung up on him only he could hear the television playing some kid show in the background. Finally she said, “He had a right to talk to her.”

“Talk to her? You mean try to talk her out of money? Again? Do you really think she needs to deal with Kevin and his fucked up life?”

“Don’t you swear at me Johnathan Alan Michaud. Mom raised all of us, and all of us have a right to talk to her about what’s going on.”

“Do you think he actually cares?”

“Of course he does!” She sounded angry now. Most of the time, John had a lot more patience with Fawn than Logan did. She’d been the baby of the family, ten years younger than John and five younger than Logan. Being the baby and the only girl meant that she had gotten away with more and she’d never had to curb her tongue to avoid their father’s belt. However, right now he was all team-Logan. Fawn was acting like a spoiled princess brat. 

“He might care for Mom, but he cares about chasing his next high a whole hell of a lot more.”

“And that judgmental attitude of yours is the cure, right? If you just call him a loser often enough, if you just assume the worst and blame him and leave him out of every family conversation, then he’ll be magically cured of all additions, right?”

“Cure? Cure is what Mom needs. Kevin needs a swift kick in the ass.”

“Dad tried that. It didn’t work.”

“I’d be happy to try it again,” John shot back. Even as the words came out his mouth, he regretted them. Their father had been hard on Kevin—maybe too hard—but that didn’t justify stealing their mom’s mortgage money. Nothing could justify that. But nothing could justify how angry their father had been when he’d come home and found out Kevin used some second-hand haul parlor traps to create a fort out back and had broken the wire and bent the cages out of shape crawling on them. John took a deep breath. “He got himself kicked out of the hospital,” he said in an artificially calm voice.

“What?”

“You heard me, and I am not repeating myself.” John heard a door close on her end.

When she spoke, she was speaking softly, and he background noise had vanished. “Someone is overreacting because he just wanted to talk to Mom about the treatment.”

Alarm bells went off in John’s head. “What about her treatment? Everything is settled.”

“Exactly! Why did we get to talk to her about how to handle the cancer, but Kevin doesn’t?” Fawn had that little-girl whine in her voice that made John want to punch her. At least he never followed through on the thought, unlike Logan.

“What exactly did he want to say to Mom?”

“I don’t know,” Fawn said. “I don’t demand he justify himself, unlike you. You never give him an ounce of trust.

“Because he forfeited it when he traded us in on a fucking needle. And what is there to talk about?”

“He was worried out of his mind and he wanted to talk to her.”

“Well, congratulations,” John said in his most sarcastic voice. “The hospital not only kicked him out, but they’ve banned him from the grounds and they’ve told me this is a police issue.” That was stretching it a little, but considering that Fawn would repeat every word to Kevin, John was more than willing to stretch the truth. “So now if he gets stupid, Mom will be at ground zero when the police slam him to the ground and handcuff him. Good job, Fawn.” John disconnected the call before he said more than she would forgive him for. 

Stupid. Monumental layers of stupid. John threw a chair pillow across the room and then took several deep breaths. As he stood in the small, bland room with a bible saying painted on the wall, John’s phone rang again. He looked down, expecting it to be Fawn or possibly even Kevin. Instead the caller ID told him that Elena was trying to reach him for a third time.

Since John couldn’t afford to lose the job, he answered the call.

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-18786045 

Chapter 13 and 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapters-18974026 

Chapter 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19132781 

Chapter 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19490176 

Chapter 17: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19634666