Forty minutes later he was home and back at work. He worked through the rest of the night, eating fruit and nuts, drinking plunger pot after pot of coffee. Around 4am he slept. He got up at eight, sent a message to Nolan to tell him he was sick and not coming in and went for a run, pounding the streets for an hour. Next thing he knew it was time to go back to St Ags. He seriously considered not going. One night, he could skip one night, but after the mucked up weekend he felt guilty.
Buster rolled her eyes when he walked in. He was still wearing the shorts and torn tee he’d run in that morning. He hadn’t shaved or showered, since—yeah well. The useful thing about wearing his hair cropped close was it always looked the same.
He gave her a show; putting his arms up and turning around like a fashion model. “You don’t like the look?” She’d been so scared he’d cover his body in tattoos and he might’ve except he respected her for making his life stable after the
drama that was his mother, after the bus.
She sneezed. They both laughed.
He helped her with the roast dinner and then massaged her feet and calves. She touched his hair. “Don’t come tomorrow.”
“I need to do your washing and bring it back.”
“I can manage.”
It was tempting. He kissed her forehead. “We’ll see.”
He drove home via the local pizza shop. He needed the carbs, calories and the speed. Waiting, he thought of Jacinta, how she’d been surprised he didn’t look like Nolan and the majority of the IT team who were all allergic to exercise and vegetables.
He demolished the pizza at his desk and worked through till 2am. Then he showered and tried to sleep, but he was wired: kept seeing code, seeing possibilities, second-guessing himself. He got up an hour later, made coffee and started work again.
He sent Dillon a progress report at lunchtime, then worked the bag hanging in the yard. If he didn’t see Buster he could catch some sleep and then work through the night again. He phoned her room and she answered. He could hear her TV and her soft whisper, urging him not to come. He slept instead, then repeated the pattern. Work, coffee, exercise, sleep. At the end of the three days he felt snookered and woolly-headed. But he was done. They’d meet Jay’s deadline.
He fell asleep in Buster’s big armchair in her room and the night nurse woke him. He’d forgotten to phone in sick for two days. Doctor Dark was going to need to come up with an illness that’d rendered him comatose. He’d forgotten Buster’s washing. He looked like a wild man, probably smelled like one too. She asked him to bring more of the eucalyptus tissues she liked and some Vick’s Vapour Rub. He wrote it on his arm like a tattoo so he wouldn’t forget.
He slunk into work the next day feeling guilty and oddly hung-over, but looking none the worse. It took five minutes for Nolan to appear at his desk.
“What happened to you?”
He hadn’t figured out his cover story.
“Never mind. The register locator server collapsed. It’s being attacked by spam bots or a virus I don’t know. I need you on that project now. You’re teaming with Indira and Ravi. None of you leave the building till it’s finished.”
Shit, he’d actually have to think about that, couldn’t simply operate on autopilot like he’d planned. It was 9pm before he looked up. Five messages from Dillon. The server was still crashing. He hadn’t done Buster’s washing or shopping. He rang her room and got no answer. She might be in the bathroom. He rang the desk, they said she was with the nurse, that she had a small cold and they’d pass on his message.
The tissues, the Vicks. He’d belt out at lunchtime tomorrow and get them. He fell into bed at 1am and slept like a corpse. An asteroid could’ve crashed into the earth and he’d have felt nothing.
The server stayed up for half the morning then crashed again. There was no lunchtime. Late afternoon Dillon called. Jay had appointed a director in his business to work with them. The guy’s name was Anderson Abbott. And he had more hurdles lined up to jump.
“Don’t even think about getting disappointed about that,” Dillon said.
Abbott wanted a technical paper on implications for the software platform. Mace didn’t have two remaining brain cells to rub together.
“When?”
“I stalled him till Monday morning.”
“That was a stall. “
“It’s a weekend, what do you want?”
A long soak in a warm bath with a beautiful woman. That’s what he wanted. And to sleep with her tucked against him. Didn’t seem like too much to ask. But it was a week and no call, no email, no text from her. “I’m on it.”
“Anderson makes Jay look like a piss-weak schoolgirl. I think he’s the man’s pit bull. This has to be right, Mace.”
He rang off, making plans for Dillon to join him Saturday night with food and fresh eyes.
An hour later, St Ags called. Buster had taken a turn, they said, quaint words; he had no idea what they meant, but his life had suddenly veered from the complicated to the impossible.