13. Jinx
Jinx
I've been scrubbing for the last two hours so I don't lose my fucking mind.
Ellie. Sweet, perfect, pastel pink fucking Ellie has a drug problem. A benzo problem at that. And alcohol. Can't forget the booze she's apparently been washing that shit down with for God only knows how long.
Out of all of us, she was the most likely to escape the clusterfuck of addiction and generalized bullshit our parents left all of us as our birthright. She's the one who got out of the trailer park first. She's a college girl who lives in a gated mansion, for fuck's sake.
The one thing that made her abandonment slightly less torturous was the knowledge that she was supposed to be better off without us.
She was supposed to be safe.
Tank has walked the same loop no fewer than a dozen times. He roams from the kitchen to the hallway to the base of the stairs, where he stops to listen for any movement from her room on the second floor, and then he turns around and restarts the whole route all over again.
None of us have slept.
Cyrus never sleeps, so that's nothing new.
He's at the kitchen table, surrounded by a fortress of paper and three empty energy drink cans, wearing a red-rimmed stare that means he's sailed right through burnout and kept going.
There's a binder in front of him, the same brand we used to use in school, which I'm not surprised by.
Cyrus will use any excuse to make a motherfucking binder and this is a pretty good one.
"How many is that?" I ask, when he reaches for a fourth can of that toxic sludge he drinks like water.
"How many what?"
"How many of those have you had since I came downstairs?"
He looks at the can in his hand and sets it back down without opening it.
"Chill out on the battery acid, Cy. The last thing we need is hosting an energy drink intervention for you while we're dealing with all this with Elie."
He rolls his eyes at me, pulling a pen from behind his ear, and writes something in the binder. "Stop fucking hovering, Jinx."
"Someone has to clean this place, asshole."
"That counter is spotless and you dragging a dry cloth over it for the thousandth time isn't helping. So sit the fuck down, you're stressing me out."
I don't sit down, and I lean against the counter instead because he's not the boss of me outside the bedroom. Besides, pissing him off outside the bedroom makes him more fun when we're inside.
Upstairs, the door to Ellie's room is still locked. Cyrus did something to the smart lock at three this morning that means it only opens from the outside, with one of our fingerprints, which I'm sure violates approximately every consumer-protection statute in the state, and I don't give a shit.
Kade is right. The time for doing things the easy way is over.
She screamed at us for the first hour and a half. There was threatening and bargaining and cursing, which tells me the stages of withdrawal and the stages of grief go hand in hand. She told Kade she'd kill him in his sleep at one point, which she probably meant.
Then she went quiet.
The quiet is worse than the screaming because at least the screaming meant she still had fight in her. The quiet means she's curled up on her pink bed just staring at the photos on the wall. The ones she hasn't ripped down yet and torn up, at any rate.
I know exactly what she's doing because Cyrus has a tablet running the feed from the camera in the corner of her room, and she flips it off occasionally. Even that can't make me smile right now. At least, not as much as it usually would.
Kade walks in through the side door with his phone still pressed to his ear. He doesn't acknowledge me, doesn't look at Cyrus.
"Yeah," he says into the phone. "Yeah. The address you have is current. No, I don't give a fuck about your other appointments. Cancel them." He pauses. "I'm aware of what your usual fee is. You'll get triple if you can be here within the hour."
He hangs up and slides the phone into his back pocket before he finally looks at us.
"Dr. Price is on his way."
"About fucking time."
Kade gives me the flat look that means stop talking, which I'd love to comply with but can't, because keeping my mouth running right now is the only thing keeping the rest of me from coming apart at the seams.
Cyrus pulls out a laminated page from the binder and holds it up to the light.
"When the fuck did you have time to laminate that?" I ask, horrified and impressed in equal measure.
He shoots me a filthy look. "I have the protocol drafted. I'd like Price to look it over before we start anything."
"Okay, sure, but you laminated a rehab plan."
"Would you fucking move on?" he snaps. "Some of these pages are reference cards we'll need to consult repeatedly. It just makes sense to laminate it."
Tank comes back through the kitchen on his loop and stops, looking at Kade, and signs. Doctor coming?
"On his way," Kade mutters.
At least they're speaking again. That's something to come out of this clusterfuck, I guess.
She's quiet up there. Hasn't really moved in two hours.
"She's awake," I say. "And I'm sure she's plotting, so don't worry about it."
Tank's eyes find mine over the mask. He doesn't sign anything, but he doesn't have to because I've gotten pretty good at reading him.
He's worried.
We all are, even if Kade's version of worrying is being even more of a dick than usual.
The car that pulls up forty minutes later is a black, understated Mercedes. The man who climbs out of it is equally understated, in his sixties, gray, and wearing a windbreaker over what looks like surgical scrubs as if he just came off a shift.
Most of the people who work for us don't do so in any official capacity, so that makes sense. And it means he still has his license, which is a great sign.
My standards could use some work.
He stops at the bottom of the porch steps and looks up at the house like he's not sure he wants to go inside.
I open the door before he has the chance to reconsider.
"Dr. Price! Thanks for coming."
He gives a brusque nod and climbs the steps. There are dark circles around his wrinkled eyes, so I guess we're not the only ones who haven't been sleeping.
Price doesn't smile or offer his hand, he just steps inside. Kade greets him just as enthusiastically in the foyer and gestures at the kitchen. "Through here. Cyrus can fill you in on the situation."
Cyrus is on his feet before Price even clears the doorway.
"Thank you for coming on short notice," Cyrus says, extending his hand like this is a normal consultation and not us paying for off-the-books medical care for our hostage.
"Of course," Dr. Price says with a nervous glance at Kade.
I'm not sure if he owes Kade a life debt, or if our dear leader has one of his family members locked in a basement somewhere.
Could be either, and it's probably better not to ask at the moment.
"You mentioned a patient needing a supervised benzodiazepine taper. Alprazolam?"
"Primarily. Though we can't confirm the composition of everything she's taken recently." Cyrus pushes up his glasses. "Some of it was sourced from... unofficial channels."
"Unofficial channels," Price repeats carefully, looking like he definitely regrets coming into the house. A great sign for his professionalism, actually. We are not people I'd want to do business with if I were a remotely reputable member of society.
"A drug dealer," I supply cheerfully from the kitchen doorway. "We don't actually know what was in the pills. Could've been pressed with fentanyl, could've been baby aspirin with food coloring. That's part of the problem."
Price swallows. His eyes slide to Kade. Kade is presently leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his lighter doing its metronome thing that drives me up a fucking wall. But now's not the time to worry about, um, lesser bad habits.
"I'll need to examine her," Price says. "Take vitals, assess her current state. How long has it been since her last dose?"
"About eight hours," Kade answers, tapping the side of his nose. "Administered unconventionally, if you catch my drift."
The doctor sighs.
Kade pushes off the wall. "She's upstairs. I'll take you to her."
"I'll take him," I correct, stepping forward, because Kade's in a stabby mood. Stabbier than usual, at any rate, and we don't need to risk him killing our doctor.
I lead Price up the stairs. He walks close to the railing, maintaining maximum possible distance from every wall and surface, as if the house itself might reach out and grab him.
Behind us, I hear Tank's heavy footsteps, hovering like he always does when it comes to Ellie.
The way a planet orbits a sun, except in this case the sun is a pissed-off five-foot-four blonde menace sitting behind a locked door and plotting our downfall.
"She's not in a great mood," I warn Price as we reach the hallway. "Fair warning."
"Most patients approaching the withdrawal threshold aren't," Price says flatly.
"Sure, but most of your patients aren't Ellie." I flash him my best smile. "She's feisty under normal circumstances. Right now she's somewhere between rattlesnake and cornered wolverine."
Price does not look comforted by this.
I knock on Ellie's door in our usual pattern.
"Go away, Jinx."
"Can't do that, Princess. But I brought you a present."
"If it's Kade's severed head, you can come in. Otherwise, fuck off."
I glance at Price. "See? Charming."
I press my finger to the screen on the keypad and open the door. She's sitting cross-legged on the bed, wrapped in the pink throw blanket like a very angry, very adorable burrito.
Her mascara's been scrubbed off but the remnants of last night's tears still stain the skin under her eyes in those faint violet crescents.
Her hair is hopelessly tangled, the pink streaks knotted into the blonde.
She's wearing one of Tank's t-shirts, which hangs off her like a giant tent, and her fingers move against each other in her lap.
Counting, because of course.
She sees Price and her eyes narrow venomously.