Chapter 2 - The Second Patient
I was back in the taxi before the clip finished buffering.
"Take me home," I told the driver.
He looked at my suitcase. "You miss something?"
"My daughter."
The answer came out so fast he stopped asking questions.
I called Evelyn from the back seat.
Hannah's mother answered on the second ring.
"Marcus? Aren't you flying?"
"I need you to pick Lily up in forty-five minutes. Tell Sarah you're taking her Christmas shopping. Do not tell her I called first."
Silence.
Then Evelyn said, "What happened?"
I watched bare branches streak past the window.
"Something I should've seen sooner."
"Marcus."
"Please. Just get Lily out of the house."
Evelyn inhaled slowly.
"Forty-five minutes."
I ended the call and texted Sarah.
WEATHER DELAY. MAY BE HEADING BACK.
No reply.
I opened the old camera app again.
The kitchen feed had gone dark.
My thumb stopped.
I refreshed.
Nothing.
Another camera loaded.
Sarah was standing beneath the old nursery unit, looking directly at it.
Then the picture went black.
She had found it.
I called my assistant again.
"Do you still have Dr. Chen's private number?"
"From the hospital fundraiser?"
"Send it."
"Are you sick?"
"Not yet."
When I reached the house, I left my suitcase in the taxi and walked to the front door carrying only my briefcase.
Sarah opened before I used the key.
Her smile came quickly.
Too quickly.
"What happened?"
"Ground stop. Crew issue. Whole trip collapsed."
She kissed my cheek.
I smelled citrus hand soap.
"That's terrible," she said.
"I can survive missing Chicago."
I stepped inside.
Lily sat at the table.
The orange juice was still in front of her.
Half full.
I forced myself not to look at it.
Sarah followed my eyes anyway.
"She barely touched breakfast."
"Maybe she's excited for Evelyn."
Sarah's shoulders moved almost imperceptibly.
"Evelyn?"
Right on cue, the doorbell rang.
I smiled.
"Christmas shopping. You forgot?"
Sarah stared at me for half a second.
Then her face rearranged itself.
"Of course."
Evelyn stepped in wearing a red wool coat and no expression at all.
Lily ran to her.
Sarah reached for the juice glass.
I moved first.
I picked it up and took it toward the sink.
"I'll clean up. You get her coat."
Sarah's fingers stopped in midair.
"I'll do it."
"I've got a free day now. Let me pretend I'm useful."
I turned my back to her, poured clean juice from the carton into a different glass, then slipped Lily's original glass into the pantry while the faucet ran.
I had already pulled an unused sample vial from an old home testing kit in the garage.
My hands stayed steady because I gave them one job at a time.
Seal the glass.
Bag it.
Pocket it.
Smile.
Evelyn left with Lily seven minutes later.
Lily hugged me at the door.
Her whisper barely touched my ear.
"Don't drink the blue cup."
I tightened my arms around her.
Sarah stood behind us.
"What did she say?"
I straightened.
"She wants me to buy her a pony."
Lily stared at me.
Then she understood and gave a tiny nod.
After they left, Sarah started wiping the counter.
Twice across the same spot.
"You sure you can't catch a later flight?"
"You trying to get rid of me?"
She laughed.
"Always."
I laughed too.
It hurt my face.
Twenty minutes later, I told her I was going to the office to salvage the presentation remotely.
Instead, I drove straight to Dr. Ethan Chen's private clinic in Stamford.
He met me in a side entrance wearing blue scrubs and a winter coat thrown over them.
"You sounded strange on the phone."
I handed him the sealed vial.
"I need this tested quietly."
"For what?"
"Sedatives. Antihistamines. Anything that shouldn't be in a six-year-old's breakfast."
His eyes lifted to mine.
"Whose drink is this?"
"Lily's."
He stopped moving.
"Marcus, if you think she's being poisoned, we call the police."
"If I'm wrong, I blow up my daughter's life and hand my wife evidence that I'm paranoid. If I'm right, I need something stronger than my word."
Ethan's jaw flexed.
"You're asking me to sit on possible child abuse."
"I'm asking you for twenty minutes."
He looked at the vial again.
"I can run a rapid tox panel and send a full lab."
"Do it."
While we waited, I paced between two chairs.
My phone buzzed four times.
Sarah.
First: Miss you already.
Then: Is your office call long?
Then: Evelyn says Lily is cranky. Did she nap badly?
Then: Marcus?
I typed: In meeting. Call soon.
Ethan came back holding a printed sheet.
He did not sit.
"The sample contains a sedating antihistamine at a concentration I would not expect in juice. The full panel will tell us more."
My knees softened.
I caught the back of a chair.
"Could it make a child confused?"
"Yes. Drowsy. Disinhibited. Unsteady. Depending on dose, agitated."
I swallowed.
"Could someone film that and make it look behavioral?"
Ethan looked at me for a long time.
"Yes."
I rubbed my palms against my trousers.
He turned to his computer.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"When you collapsed at the Boston conference six months ago, they sent your labs to us for follow-up because your primary was out."
I remembered the hotel bathroom floor. Cold tile. Sweat pouring down my neck. No idea how I had gotten there.
"They said dehydration."
"Mostly. But there was an unexplained compound in your blood. The hospital listed it as probable over-the-counter medication exposure."
"I don't take sleep aids."
"I know."
He opened an old report.
"The metabolite isn't identical to what's in Lily's sample, but it's consistent with the same general class of sedating medication."
My fingers curled around the chair until the wood creaked.
Ethan lowered his voice.
"Marcus, has Sarah ever suggested you're having memory problems?"
I looked at him.
He saw the answer before I spoke.
"Every time I travel."
That night, I waited until Sarah's breathing slowed beside me.
Then I got out of bed.
Barefoot.
No lights.
Her locked desk drawer had a cheap barrel lock. I used a flat screwdriver from the garage.
The first drawer held receipts.
The second held insurance papers.
The third clicked open.
Inside lay a flash drive taped under the lip.
I carried it to the downstairs office and inserted it into an old laptop that had never touched our home network.
Three folders appeared.
LILY - EPISODES.
MARCUS - INCIDENTS.
FINAL EVALUATION - JANUARY 14.
I stared at the date.
Nineteen days.
A floorboard creaked above me.
I froze.
The bedroom door opened.
Sarah called softly into the dark.
"Marcus?"
I unplugged the drive and closed my fist around it.
May you like
Her footsteps started down the stairs.
