by CJ Lyons
She reached a hand toward my shoulder. Toddler that I was at times, I pushed hard with my feet, propelling the stool out of range of Louise’s comfort so fast I ricocheted off the exam table and knocked over the empty metal waste can with a clatter. It rolled across the floor, landing at Louise’s feet. She looked at me. At the can. Then she tilted her face toward me, a quirky half smile creasing her eyes. She gave me a quick nod as if agreeing to an unspoken conspiracy and kicked it soccer-style.
Her aim was perfection, careening it against the corner and back to me. I raised my foot and stomped down so hard the empty metal can caved in with a satisfying crunch. The perfect explosion of petulant, childish rage.
It felt good. Damn good. If not for the fact that the stupid, cheap tin can crumpled around my foot and I had to balance against the exam bed to shake free of it. Flushed, I turned to Louise. She waited for my response as I wavered between tears and laughter. Laughter won out.
I sat again on the stool, wheeled my way around the crushed can, and rejoined her at the desk. “Put that on my bill.”
“You know they’ll mark up that piece of essential medical equipment until the insurance company thinks you destroyed an MRI machine.”
“Not like I’ll be around to pay for it,” I shot back. That sobered us both. But it was the truth, no sense in avoiding it. I released my breath, my stomach caving in. “So…Tahiti it is.”
“Tahiti?” she asked, confused. I let it hang. Louise was smart enough to figure it out for herself. It only took a beat, and her expression turned fierce. “Angela Rossi. Are you that selfish? To abandon your friends, your family—”
“I’m trying to spare them, and you damn well know it.”
“You’re a control freak. Brassed off that finally there is something beyond your control,” she retorted.
“What do you want me to do? Lie there, helpless, awake and aware of everything, while the people I love wipe my ass for me? How’s that for a final memory to haunt them the rest of their lives?”
Louise crossed her arms, hugging the chart to her chest. Inhaled and blew out her breath, lipstick feathering into the creases around her mouth. “It doesn’t have to come to that. I can help.”
I stared at her, surprised. She’d lose her job, her license, maybe even go to jail. “I can’t ask you—”
“You didn’t.” She released the chart from her grip and set it between us. “I’m offering. It can be here or…Tahiti. But promise me, whatever you decide, you’ll say good-bye first. Your friends and family deserve that at least.”
Images of the band filled me. Of Jimmy’s bar, music soaring, spinning out of control, as laughter filled the air and people danced: Mom, Evie, Uncle Jimmy, my two obnoxious cousins, Jacob—my ex—Louise and her family, my colleagues from the Advocacy Center and ER. And Ryder. It was the last that made me nod my agreement. The way Ryder looked at me when I played my fiddle, as if I were the only woman in the entire universe. Who could resist the chance to see that one last time?
Except…I looked away. “Ryder. It’s not fair. He never signed up for this.”
“Don’t you think that’s his choice?” Louise’s infamous you’re screwing up again glare said it all. It was the one she gave me every time I hooked up with Jacob for one of our on-again, off-again flings. Of course, she needn’t worry. Jacob and I were never going to happen again. Not after Ryder. He’d be my last. And, in so many ways, my first. First time I ever needed, ever wanted a man in my life—no, that was wrong—first time I ever wanted to be part of a man’s life, instead of solely living my own.
“Ryder deserves to know,” she said.
“He deserves a lot more than that. Which is why I can’t drag him into this.” My words hung between us. Then I dared to ask the question I’d been avoiding. “How long?”
“There’s been speculation that some alternative therapies may—”
“Do I have time for speculation?”
“Maybe.” She hesitated, her mind scouring a hundred checklists of variables.
There are four stages to FFI. Stage one, your episodes of insomnia last a few days, resulting in muscle tremors, confusion, mood swings, anxiety, and irritability. All of which I had in spades. Which was why I’d finally quit the ER last month. I could no longer hide the muscle spasms that increased with stress. Plus, I’d experienced a few symptoms that weren’t listed in any textbook—things that might have put patients at risk. So, good-bye, career. Hello to the sheer hell of the absolute boredom of the unemployable.
Most people with FFI die within nine months of exhibiting symptoms. My symptoms began five months ago. We’d already wasted three weeks waiting on the lab results. But I’d found a case report of a patient who had lived twenty-seven months by using a combination of stimulants, antioxidant supplements, sensory deprivation, and intense aerobic exercise.
A single case, one man. But it was enough to give me hope. Silly me. You’d think anyone who’d spent her adult life working on the front lines of the ER would know better.
“Angela?” Louise tapped my shoulder. I’d zoned out. I was doing that a lot lately. “Are you okay?” Frown lines born of concern crossed her brow.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Last month I’d told Louise about my hallucinations—the echoes of color, the strange movements no one else saw, coupled with music so intense and soulful it would have made Mozart weep. They were a prelude to my fugue states, catatonic episodes in which my senses became hyperacute, while my body remained frozen and unresponsive. I’d even mentioned the symptom not found in any journal article or textbook: my newfound ability to communicate with patients who were in a certain type of coma.
“Any more seizures?” Louise and her multitude of tests had decided my symptoms were variations of the unique seizures patients with fatal insomnia were prone to. Nothing to worry about because they weren’t real, merely hallucinations born of a brain riddled with holes. Especially that last, the talking with not-quite-dead people.
All the science said she was right. That what was happening to me was impossible. I couldn’t bring myself to burst her cozy bubble of medical certainty and reveal the true extent of my symptoms. From a scientific standpoint, we’d already gone way past stage one right into the Twilight Zone.
“No,” I lied. “The meds seem to be helping.”
Louise scribbled refills for my prescriptions. Powerful stimulants. They were enough to make an elephant tap-dance, but they barely managed to keep me functional as my body burned through dosages designed for someone three times my size.
“Do you want me to tell your sister, arrange for her to be tested?”
Oh God. Evie. My stomach clenched so hard I felt my belly button slam against my spine. I never should have sniped at her this morning. I fought to keep my voice steady. “No. I’ll do it.”
She tapped her pen against the prescription pad. “There is something else we could try. Totally experimental, but after what you told me happened last month—”
“You mean PXA. No.” I pushed the stool back, putting distance between myself and the thought of using the drug the street had nicknamed Death Head. Paramethoxamine destabilized the chemical process the brain used to create pain. A fact that sadistic serial killer Leo Kingston had taken advantage of, using the tunnels beneath the city as a lair for torturing his victims with PXA. His unique formulation of the drug created pain so intense and unrelenting his victims would do anything to stop it. Anything he commanded of them.
He’d used it on me before I killed him. I’d felt that pain. It was as if I was burning alive from the inside out. A pain that made you beg for death.
Louise was busy continuing down her checklist on her tablet, stylus in hand. “There’s a research facility in Italy that specializes in Fatal Familial Insomnia. Tommaso knows the people there. I’m going to have them review your case, see if there are any treatment options. In the meantime, I want to see you in a week, after Christmas.”
The air felt heavy, dragging do
wn my lungs, as it if were already too late. I had a sudden vision: myself, lying on a remote beach, breathing my last, wide awake, feeling everything. Alone. It was as tempting as it was terrifying.
I slid the tablet from her, glanced at her checklist. It covered the entire screen, but highlighted at the top was Have Tommaso double-check Angie’s results.
No way in hell Louise hadn’t already checked and rechecked a dozen times over before coming in here. She didn’t need some neurofellow to tell her what she knew was true. Yet she refused to give up hope.
If someone as smart as Louise still had hope, how could I not?
Ryder’s face filled my mind. The Death Head, horrible as it had been, had tempered some of my symptoms, including my bizarre fugues. In a weird way, it was the combination of the Death Head and my fatal insomnia that had allowed me to save Ryder from Leo Kingston.
Could I really say no to what might be our final hope?
Pulling one of the ubiquitous drug-company notepads and pens across the table, I sketched a small box with sharp, bold strokes. Gold and blue flames flared from the edges of the paper, invisible except to me, and I studiously ignored them. In three weeks, I’d learned to tell the difference between hallucinations brought on by my Swiss-cheesed brain and reality.
“What are you doing?” she asked, leaning forward to look down on my handiwork.
“Making you a new list.” In block letters, I wrote Tell Angie she’s dying.
Louise made a guttural noise, filled with dismay, as I drew a large X in the box beside the words.
“I’m not done yet,” I muttered as the flames grew, morphing into a deep purple and ruby. No music, so I had time before the fugue hit.
Another box scratched into the paper, one corner tearing at the page. Then I printed: Help Angie find a way to FIGHT back.
I pushed the paper, flames and all, across the table to her. As soon as she took it into her hand, the fire vanished. Her frown tightened her round face into a narrow heart shape. “There’s nothing—not with prions—”
“Not yet.” I pushed back my stool and stood. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be the first.”
She glanced up at me, her mouth twisted in a strange combination of a smile and a sad grimace. “Does that mean you’re staying?”
I couldn’t make that promise. “It means I’m not giving up.” I held out my hand, gesturing at her prescription pad. “Go ahead. Give me the PXA.”
Chapter Four
Devon Price sat in a Louis XIV chair beside his biological father’s handcrafted, black walnut bed and read the Financial Times aloud. The soft pulsating of a heart monitor kept pace with Devon’s words as a feeding tube dripped sustenance into his father.
He and his father, Daniel Kingston, had nothing in common. Devon’s skin was as dark as the coffee he sipped, while Daniel was paler than milk. Devon had been raised by his mother in Kingston Tower, the low-income housing complex that was a crucible of blood and violence. Daniel had lived all his life here in the Kingston family mansion, affectionately known as “the brownstone.” Daniel hadn’t even christened his bastard son with the family name; he’d reserved that honor for his “real” son, Leo.
Yet, it wasn’t Leo here at his comatose father’s bedside. It wasn’t Leo taking control of the multinational family company. No, Leo, dear Leo, was dead. And Devon had played a large role in ending the sadistic son of a bitch.
As he tormented his dear, not-quite-departed father with news of impending economic doom—Devon shared only bad news with Daniel—his gaze glided over the Kingston family crest carved into the headboard: Omnes nominis defendere. “Above all, defend the family name.”
Too bad his half-brother hadn’t taken those words to heart. Leo had poisoned Daniel with a dangerous designer drug, PXA, leaving him in a coma after Daniel discovered that Leo, the brilliant scientist, the good son, had been abducting girls. Leo had imprisoned them in a secret lab built in the tunnels beneath the city, injected them with his chemical cocktails, and then raped, tortured, and killed them.
So much for Kingston family values.
Devon turned the page. The prognostications all sounded so certain, as if money was what ruled the world. Idiots. He glanced at Daniel, being fed by a tube, eyes staring, unseeing, at the only son he had left.
Devon was only twenty-eight, but he’d seen a lot in this world. He had studied philosophers who lived above it in ivory towers as well as street poets who ran in gutters flowing with blood, racing to their own tragic deaths. Despite what the classicists said, the world did not revolve around logic, nor was your fate predetermined. The romantics had it all wrong as well: Passion and love weren’t the answer.
No. What this world ran on was irony. Embodied by karma, kismet, payback…whatever you called it, it was a bitch.
His phone rang. Flynn.
“What did the doctor say?” he asked. Flynn was with Devon’s daughter, Esme, at her new school up in Vermont. Esme was having a hard time adjusting. No surprise: it’d been less than a month since she’d seen her mother, Jess, killed.
“Same as the others,” she answered. “Post-traumatic stress, normal for a girl her age who has been through what she has. This one wanted to give her medicine, but I looked it up. It’s an anti-psychotic and has side effects.”
Sometimes talking to her, he forgot Flynn was still a teenager. She had the uncanny ability to morph into whomever the situation called for—from protective nanny of a traumatized ten-year-old to stone-cold killer.
“Send me the info. I’ll decide.” He almost felt her flinch with his reminder that not only was he Flynn’s boss, he was also Esme’s father. Some father. First abandoning Jess, the love of his life, eleven years ago, and leaving the only home he’d known. He’d done it to protect her and their unborn child. And then last month, he’d returned home to find Jess murdered, but had reunited with the daughter he’d never known and the father he’d never cared to know.
Except now, he, the bastard son exiled and returned, the son who held his father’s life and fortune in his hands, couldn’t keep his own daughter safe. He’d been forced to send her far away, out of the line of fire from both his and Daniel’s enemies. Relying on Flynn to protect the only person in this world Devon truly cared about.
Flynn was still on the line. Silent. Forcing Devon to ask. She didn’t mean to be cruel; it simply was not in her nature to volunteer.
“How is she?” He tried and failed to keep the longing from his voice.
“Having a rough time of it. Not just the nightmares. The kids at school—”
“I pay that school enough they should elect her prom queen. Get me names, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Send me to take care of them? That’s what Daniel would do.” Her tone was flat, and he wondered if Daniel had ever actually used Flynn as an assassin. He wouldn’t put it past his father.
“No. Of course not.” He sighed, cut it short, but too late. Flynn already knew his weakness. “I just wish—”
“Give it time. That’s what all the doctors and counselors are saying. Of course,” her tone ticked up, and he knew he was not going to like what came next, “it might help if she came home for Christmas. Instead of spending it up here alone with a stranger.”
“I’m just as much a stranger to Esme as you are. Besides, it’s not safe here. People wouldn’t think twice about using Esme against me to try to gain control of Kingston Enterprises.”
There was silence on the line, and for a moment, he thought they’d been disconnected. Then Flynn’s voice returned. “Guess that’s the price you pay for having people you love.”
She hung up before he could respond.
All Devon had ever dreamed of was a family: him, Jess, Esme.
Jess was dead, Esme gone, and he was alone. Except for his bastard of a father. If that wasn’t the definition of irony, he didn’t know what was.
Daniel gurgled, a stream of saliva escaping his lax lips. Not for the first time, Devon imagin
ed how easy it would be to wrap his hands around Daniel’s scrawny neck and squeeze the life from him, to finish what Leo had started.
Instead, he slid the newspaper aside, leaned forward, and gently wiped the spittle away with one of the Egyptian cotton washcloths stacked on the nightstand.
“Not yet, you son of a bitch,” he said in a cheerful tone. He tossed the cloth into the hamper and stood, shaking the wrinkles from his Armani slacks. “You don’t get off that easy.”
Chapter Five
After I left Louise, I refilled my meds, gulping down a double dose of methylphenidate. As I was leaving the pharmacy and walking through the hospital’s main lobby, I heard my name called.
“Angela, Angela.” It was Tommaso, Louise’s new neurofellow, jogging across the lobby, waving a hand at me. “I’m so glad I caught you, Angela.” His Italian accent turned my name into something magical, filled with promise. “Good, good, you got your medications. Including the PXA, yes?”
I nodded, and he rushed on before I could say anything. “Since the PXA is experimental, you should take your first dose under supervision.” He gestured back to the elevator bank, the white sleeve of his coat billowing. “I have time now to take care of you.”
As charming as his offer was, I wasn’t going to allow a total stranger dose me with a drug affectionately known as Death Head. For the first time in three weeks, I could honestly say, “Thanks, but we’ll have to reschedule. I have somewhere I need to be.”
Damn, such a little thing, but it felt so good. So normal. I wasn’t the unemployed invalid who’d just spent three weeks trying to learn how to do nothing and failing spectacularly. No. I was a busy woman with important places to go, people to see. “I’m on my way to escort a victim from the Advocacy Center to court.”
