Heller's Girlfriend (33 page)

“Matilda. Talk to me now.”

“I didn’t hurt her! That photo’s
very misleading. It was all resolved peacefully. She had a
real
gun, Heller. She could have killed one of us.”

“I’m not at all happy about this
negative publicity.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you
with that. You’d better get on the phone to the press then and sort
it out. I didn’t do anything wrong! Ask the police. When they took
that woman away she was perfectly fine. I even bought her a packet
of chips!”

The conversation continued for
another minute, but the conclusion was the same – I was in trouble
with him yet again. That Employee of the Day award was looking less
likely with every assignment I had.

Of course the current affairs
programs went ballistic about it. Luckily for me though, others
came forward to refute the brutality claims, including Granny
herself.

To the envy of his competitors,
Trent Dawson scooped everyone, managing to corner an exclusive
interview with the Granny’s nervous and embarrassed son. Stammering
with stage fright, he apologised for the incident, telling Trent
that his mother had slipped the confines of her nursing home (and
not for the first time) to make her way to Yoni’s hotel. But he
wasn’t able to even guess at how she’d laid her hands on a real
gun, though admitting that she’d always been a crafty and
resourceful person. He further confessed that she’d been obsessed
with Yoni since her first movie about being an adoptee. His mother
had been forced to give up her first baby as an unmarried teenager
and the character in Yoni’s movie bore the same name that she gave
her lost baby. And all that addled in her mind to Yoni being her
daughter. But what her son could say decisively was that his mother
had spoken of how kind both the police and I had been to her and
had certainly not been injured by anybody. She’d even told him how
I’d bought her favourite flavour of chips for her to eat.

One of Trent Dawson’s reporters
also scored an impromptu interview with the police sergeant,
waylaying her as she made her way into the station. She strenuously
denied that Granny had been injured in any way by either the police
or by Ms Lemere’s security team. He followed that with a recorded
phone interview with Heller where he emphasised that his staff
always adhered to the highest levels of professional behaviour,
pointing out that his security team had efficiently disarmed the
woman and protected Yoni as they’d been hired to do. But his coup
was a phone interview with Yoni praising our quick actions and
firmly stating how satisfied she was with the
Heller’s
team
and how much she would recommend us to others. And
wow
,
wasn’t that a complete surprise?

Trent Dawson wrapped up by
addressing his audience gravely. “I’ve actually met the young lady
at the centre of this media beat-up. I can assure viewers that she
is a polite and respectful professional who has been ensuring that
Ms Lemere stays safe from the paparazzi during her visit. And as
for myself, I would be more than willing to have her looking after
me at any time.”

I laughed at the cheek of the
man, but couldn’t stop thinking about how decent that was of him.
He was a big star and didn’t have to take the time to stick up for
a nobody like me, especially on national television. And especially
when I hadn’t been all that polite to him.

Of course, my phone rang
immediately – Heller wanting to know what
that
was all
about. I assured him it was nothing and confirmed that it was Mr
Dawson’s tackle I’d had the misfortune to see. He was mollified
that the story had matched my own version of events, sighed over
how much trouble I was and rang off, leaving me reasonably
confident that today wasn’t going to be the day he’d give me my
marching orders.

I checked my watch. It was time
to get Yoni moving again. Wanda braved up to the task, rapping on
her door as she entered Yoni’s bedroom.

A scream had me on my feet,
flying into the room.

Wanda stood at the foot of the
bed, her face pale and one hand clamped across her mouth. Her eyes
were full of panic and shiny with unshed tears. “Oh God, Yoni. Not
again.”

Yoni lay face-down, naked, and
sprawled across her bed, a pool of vomit trickling from her mouth,
the sheets stained with urine and shit. There were pill containers
scattered on the bedside cabinet and a bottle of vodka had fallen
to the floor nearby, its contents leaking onto the woollen
carpet.

“Call an ambulance! Now!” I
ordered a motionless Wanda. She was transfixed with fear, tears
running down her face. “Wanda? Call an ambulance!”

“She wouldn’t want –”

“I don’t give a shit what she’d
want. Call an ambulance. Now!”

I carefully dragged Yoni off the
bed onto the floor to give me a firmer surface on which to work in
case I needed to perform CPR. She was still breathing, but her
pulse was faint. I used a clean part of the sheet to wipe the vomit
off her mouth and rolled her into the recovery position, so that
she wouldn’t choke on any more vomit.

She didn’t look very good, her
skin gray and clammy. There wasn’t much I could do for her except
monitor her breathing and heartbeat while we waited for the
paramedics. I rang Clive to explain the situation, wanting to make
sure that there would be some men to accompany the paramedics in
and out of the building.

After Wanda rang the ambulance,
she hovered near us and I was surprised by how distraught she
seemed. But her usual efficiency kicked in and she soon had her
phone out cancelling the TV interview planned for the evening,
lying convincingly about Yoni’s sudden tummy bug. Then she moved
around the room, picking up the pill containers and the vodka
bottle.

“What are you doing?” I
asked.

“Nobody can see this,” she
said.

“Wanda, the paramedics need to
know what she’s taken. Put those containers back.”

She was defiant. “No. And we
have to clean her up and dress her too.”

“Leave everything as we found
it,” I ordered.

“We’ll tell them she has a
stomach bug.”

“No! You might be endangering
her life. I’m telling them she’s taken an overdose.”

“I’m not having her fodder for
cheap gossip again. I won’t allow it!”

“Well, I won’t allow you to
interfere with this bedroom. Drop the containers.”

She stormed past me, tightly
clutching the bottle and containers. I grabbed her arm and swung
her back around again. She shook me off angrily and made another
attempt towards the door. I hauled her backwards with my arm around
her neck and with my other arm, wrestled the containers from her
hands. She wasn’t willing to release them though and we struggled,
dancing around the room together grappling for control of those
containers.

“Let them go,” I hissed in her
ear.

“Let
me
go.”

My height and greater strength
were on my side, and I finally managed to wrench them from her
hands. She collapsed onto the bed, her face in her hands, her
shoulders shaking. I let her sob for a few minutes before laying my
hand on her back.

Wanda turned her tear-streaked
face to me. “Everyone’s going to make fun of her again. It’s not
her fault. She can’t stop. She has an illness.”

“She needs help.”

“She refuses to go to rehab. God
knows, I’ve tried.” She rolled off the bed to crouch down on the
floor next to Yoni, checking on her breathing. She gently brushed
the hair off Yoni’s forehead and shifted pain-laden eyes back to
me.

“You’re very loyal, Wanda. I can
see this is really upsetting you.”

“Of course I’m upset. She’s my
sister
!” She looked down at Yoni’s face. “My beautiful,
talented, stupid, selfish older sister. I love her as much as I
hate her.”

Whoa!
I was gobsmacked.
“But you seem so hostile to each other.”

She shrugged. “That’s just how
we are. Look Tilly, nobody knows about our relationship and we’d
like to keep it that way. Okay?”

“Sure,” I promised, my head
spinning.

A banging on the suite door
distracted the both of us and I sprinted over to let in the
paramedics and the three
Heller’s
men and two burly hotel
security men who’d accompanied them. We handed Yoni over to the
paramedics and I ushered everyone from her bedroom except Wanda,
not wanting any more people than necessary seeing her in her
indignity. Despite Wanda’s sullen face, I pointed out the
pharmaceuticals and the vodka bottle to the paramedics.

I don’t know how they found out
– I can only assume they used radio scanners on emergency calls –
but there were members of the paparazzi spilling out of the lift as
the paramedics pushed Yoni on the gurney down the hall. They
snapped photos as fast as the
Heller’s
men and hotel
security snatched their cameras from them and erased them.

One of the hotel security men
shouted into his radio ordering every available man to mobilise to
secure all entrances to the hotel. Wanda had draped a thin sheet
over Yoni’s face so that nobody could identify her, but that only
led to an instant internet rumour that she’d died.

The men were forced to manhandle
a couple of photographers out of the way so that the poor
paramedics could wheel the gurney. Rumbles made a snap decision to
take Yoni out the back entrance to the hotel and the hotel security
men guided us to the service lift.

But if we thought that would
guarantee us an easy exit, we were wrong. The entire
Heller’s
team, including me, as well as every hotel security
officer was needed to push away the paparazzi and lift Yoni into
the ambulance. I climbed into the ambulance with her and one of the
paramedics, while Wanda, tears pouring down her face, caught a lift
in one of the
Heller’s
vehicles. The ambulance accelerated
speedily, both
Heller’s
vehicles following behind, happy to
allow the siren to work its traffic magic. Paparazzi cars and
motorbikes swamped us, the ambulance forced to slow to a crawl in
an attempt to avoid running over one of the drivers who weaved back
and forth in front. It took thirty minutes to make it to the
smaller inner-city hospital, what should have normally been a
five-minute drive from the hotel.

It was mayhem at the hospital,
cars and motorbikes blocking the driveway to the emergency
ambulance zone. They easily overwhelmed both the hospital security
team and the
Heller’s
team, the head of security at the
hospital left with no choice but to call the police. But even with
three patrol cars and six uniformed police officers assisting us,
we struggled to force the paparazzi out of the way to allow the
ambulance to pull up in front of the emergency department.

I simply could not understand
the mindset of anyone who’d deliberately obstruct an ambulance
taking someone to hospital just to make a few bucks.

It turned into a battlefield. It
was brutal and violent, almost a riot. I’d never experienced
anything like it in my life. Swallowed up by all the big men around
me, I was shoved and trampled, elbowed and kicked, sometimes by my
own side.

I found myself trapped in the
middle of the maelstrom, being roughly manhandled by a particularly
hungry shark of a photographer, crazed at the thought of snapping
an exclusive shot of Yoni on a stretcher. I grasped him around the
throat with one hand and dug my nails into him viciously, all the
time pushing him back, back, back, my elbow up ramming into his
chest. He wasn’t a massive man, but was immensely strong, driven by
the thought of adding to his retirement fund. And we all knew how
much of a motivator money could be for bad behaviour. The man and I
tussled back and forth, until I redoubled my efforts and pushed
against him as hard as I could, forcing him away from the
ambulance.

The cops conferred and
regrouped, becoming a well-organised team. They formed a protective
barricade around the front of the ambulance, their batons out. They
used them freely, driving everyone backwards, good guys and all.
The ambulance crept forward, centimetre by centimetre, towards the
entrance.

I caught a hard whack on the
back for being tardy in moving on and spun around, protesting about
the unnecessary use of force on those of us
on the same
side
.

“Move it along. Now!” ordered a
brute of a cop, raising his baton to me again. When I told him that
I was on Yoni’s security team, he didn’t care.

“
Move it!
” he shouted and
brought his baton down again, this time on my shoulder. I was about
to lose my temper when one of the
Heller’s
men grabbed me
around the waist and pulled me to the side of the affray, out of
the ambulance’s path. It was Farrell.

“Do what he tells you,
Chalmers,” he snapped, maintaining a prudently tight grip on me.
“He’s a cop. Get out of his way or he’ll arrest you.”

“He hit me!” I fumed, struggling
against him. “Twice! The arsehole. I wasn’t doing anything
wrong.”

“Just stay out of their way,” he
repeated.

I shook him free and stalked to
the back of the crowd, waiting for the ambulance to come to a halt.
Finally the cops triumphed and the ambulance was able to make it to
the entry. I lingered near the back with the other
Heller’s
men so that when Yoni was brought out on the stretcher, we were
able to form a barrier around her, the cops on the outside, batons
at the ready again.

It was a battle to wheel the
stretcher inside. The paparazzi seemed almost liquid. They oozed
into any gap, any space, no matter how tiny, to pop up and take a
photo. They shot their cameras over our heads, between our bodies,
from the ground, standing on top of anything –
anything
to
take a photo. In the
Heller’s
team, we concentrated solely
on assisting the gurney travel the small distance through the doors
of emergency, leaving the head-cracking and butt-whooping to the
cops.
They seemed to enjoy it, after all
, I thought
nastily.