Chapter 14 #2
Thirty nail-chewing, knuckle-grinding minutes later, we were finally ensconced on the generous square of big couches in the big living room of Ethan’s house, armed with fresh coffee and staring down at the little box of vials and IV bags that had been in the fridge in Reggie’s clinic room.
The object upon which all our hopes were pinned.
Reggie herself came in and sat down on the edge of the couch next to me with a businesslike air, folding her hands, eyes expectant. Everyone looked at her, and then looked at me. Amos coughed. “Ah… are we sure we want to talk about all this, ah…”
“With me here?” Reggie asked. “Of course. This is all mostly about me, right? Who knows more than me about what happened in that place?”
“She’s not wrong,” Remy observed wryly.
Everyone exchanged eyebrow twitches, but they talked to Reggie with careful respect as we hashed through it all, again and again.
Reggie was patient about repeating herself.
“I knew they were dirty somehow pretty early on,” she told us.
“As soon as I started feeling better. I saw how the nurses and doctors treated Mom when she had Varen’s Disease.
These people didn’t treat me that way at all.
They were really mean. They all ignored me when I tried to talk to them. ”
“I was struck by the way the staff behaved when we stormed into the place,” Kat said.
“They didn’t act like busy professionals who resented being interrupted from the important job they were doing.
They acted like assholes who’d gotten caught doing something nasty.
They scattered like rats. I had to chase down one of the doctors to question him, if he was a doctor at all. Probably just a shill.”
“Well, the people there were definitely assholes,” Reggie said solemnly.
The rest of them chuckled, but I couldn’t afford to, being the only quasi-authority figure in Reggie’s life. “Hey,” I said. “Watch that language, babe.”
She gave me a look. “Really, Cass? From you? With your mouth?”
I had to laugh, along with the others, but it made me sad, that my sweet little sister seemed more like a jaded adult than the cheerful little girl she had been.
“I sent people over there this morning,” Ethan said. “The place is deserted. Doors unlocked. Papers scattered everywhere. Property records show it’s rented by ABC Properties, a shell company located in Delaware which no longer exists as of today. These people know how to cover their tracks.”
I stared down at the medicine, my stomach clenching around the food I had eaten. “So if they weren’t doctors, what is this stuff?” I gestured at the box.
“It seems like it hadn’t hurt her yet,” Ethan offered. “Maybe the drug is for real, even if the clinic isn’t. We don’t know.”
Rose angled herself toward me and Reggie. “Tell me about the symptoms,” she urged.
I racked my brains to remember. “It was about three and a half months ago that it started,” I said.
“Maybe a little more. It came on slow. Fatigue, a nose bleed, another nose bleed, a rash, then a fever. All this over about twenty days or so. Oh, except for that episode about a week before it started. You fainted on the steps leading down to the track field, remember?”
“I told you,” Reggie said impatiently. “I didn’t faint. I was pushed. Probably the mean girls from my class.”
I turned back to Rose. “The school told me she was found at the bottom of the steps, out cold, and with a bump on her head.”
“The mean girls pushed me,” Reggie repeated stubbornly. “Probably Kylie.”
I shrugged. “Maybe so. Anyway. If fainting could be thought of as a first symptom, it came on about a week before the fatigue, the nosebleeds, etc.”
“How soon did the symptoms improve once you were at the clinic?” Rose asked.
Reggie frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe four, five days? It got better right away, but it was about five days later that I felt well enough to get up and see what was outside the door. That was when I found out I was locked in.”
Kat winced. “Bastards,” she murmured. “I’m glad I put the fear of God into at least one of those pieces of sh… ah. Sorry.” She coughed. “Garbage, I mean.”
“What did the garbage tell you?” Rose asked.
“He said that her medicine was in the fridge in her room. One injection, morning and evening, and the IV bags had vitamins, minerals and various other supplements.”
“Which I don’t want to do anymore.” Reggie held out her arm, and everyone in the room flinched at her pale, scrawny arm, the bluish color of skim milk, completely covered with needle scars and hematomas of every color.
Rose made a horrified sound. “God! Whoever did that was a total hack!”
“Yep,” Reggie said solemnly. “Not gonna argue with that.”
“I’m going to take one of each to test,” Rose told me. “One vial, one IV bag. Until we know what’s in it, my instinct would be not to give her any more of it.”
“Good,” Reggie said, with quiet satisfaction. “I hate those damn needles.”
It made sense, weighing dangers against possible advantages, but it ratcheted up my tension still more, reminding me how naked in the dark I was, with such a limited ability to help and protect my sister. Nothing but questions, uncertainties, doubts. Fears.
“I’ll get back to my lab right away and get to work on this,” Rose assured me.
Rose was invited to lunch, but she insisted that she needed to get to work, a sentiment I appreciated with my whole heart. I gave her a grateful hug before she even got her coat on. “Thanks for caring,” I whispered.
“Oh, God, yes.” She hugged me back hard. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, I promise. This will be my number one priority. Actually, my only priority.”
The phones began to ding-ding-ding again. Everyone grabbed them and checked.
Ethan looked up at Shane. “They’re here,” he said quietly. “Jed, Freya and Holly are back from the airport. Get ready, bro. You’re on.”