by L E Fraser
From behind her, Ophelia said, “Looks like you have your hands full. Want me to pour your coffee?”
Sam nodded and wiped crumbs off the front of her blouse. “Milk no sugar. Thanks.”
Ophelia handed her a white china mug. “That cheese pastry looks yummy. Breakfast is the only good thing about these staff meetings,” she said glumly. “My shift is over and we had a heck of a night, let me tell you. No time for breaks. I’m exhausted and starved.”
Sam followed her to the deserted sideboard, popped the last of her croissant into her mouth, and grabbed a bagel, surprised that no one else in the room was eating other than her and Ophelia.
“Something happen last night?” she asked.
Ophelia examined the pastries. “One of the rehab patients left. A girl called Serena. Didn’t bother telling anyone, even the girl she was close friends with.”
Sam remembered Emily telling her that another girl had left a few days earlier. “Any idea why they’re running?”
Ophelia shrugged. “A lot of them are here because of interventions. You can’t help someone who doesn’t believe she has a problem. But she was enjoying the sculpting therapy. It was helping her develop a sense of self.” She frowned. “And her friend, a girl called Bethany, was doing great, but last night she was ranting about foxes in the withdrawal unit. Delirium tremens, again. Her urine sample was positive for drugs. I’ve no idea who brought them to her.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Sam asked.
Ophelia studied her over the rim of her coffee mug. “Yeah. Can you pop in and speak with her? Doug Sullivan is her therapist, but she dislikes him. Maybe she’ll relate better to a woman.”
Before she could answer, Sam sensed a presence behind her. She moved aside to allow the person access to the food, and turned to see Mathias Beauregard scowling at her. He strolled purposefully to the head of the board table.
“If you gluttonous piglets are through gobbling the free food, perhaps we could get to work,” he said to the gathered staff, who shifted uneasily.
Ophelia’s hand froze a centimetre from a strawberry Danish.
“Can you pull yourself away from the trough and join us, Ophelia?” He spoke the nurse’s name with contempt. “We have a responsibility to set a good example to our patients by exhibiting healthy life choices. Now is as good a time as ever to start making wise decisions”
Sam’s eyebrows rose in amazement. Calling attention to a person’s weight was an unforgivable personal attack, and it solidified her negative impression of the insufferable man. Ophelia was a tall, large-boned woman, but she wasn’t over-weight. If anything, she was muscular.
Ophelia retracted her empty hand, picked up her mug of black coffee, and walked stiffly to an open seat at the table. Either rage or humiliation—Sam couldn’t tell which—seeped from the woman like a black aura.
As soon as she sat down, people around the table subtly distanced themselves by turning away from her. The man beside her scooted his chair closer to the person on his right, creating physical space between himself and Ophelia.
Herd mentality, Sam thought.
No one wanted to associate with the weak link that the boss was targeting. Well, Mathias Beauregard didn’t intimidate her. Sam grabbed the strawberry Danish and marched to the vacant seat on the other side of Ophelia. She placed the pastry on a napkin, slid it in front of Ophelia, and bit into her own bagel, her expression daring Mathias to try to find a derogatory comment about her own physical fitness.
Emily flew into the room, causing heads to turn to the door. A stack of folders slipped from her hands and she stooped to pick them up. “I apologize for being late,” she said. “I hope you started without me.”
“We were discussing how to set a positive model of behaviour for our patients,” Mathias said smoothly, and sneered at Ophelia.
“Oh, yes. Well that’s a good start. Lead by example, I suppose.” Emily gathered the folders into her arms and plopped into a seat beside her partner. She looked around, smiling. “Did everyone get some breakfast?”
There were murmurs of thanks as people shifted in their seats. Oblivious to the group’s discomfort, Emily introduced Sam, announcing that she’d be working with Fadiya due to her expertise in thought reform consulting. The lie increased Sam’s discomfort over the ethics of accepting the practicum, but she smiled gamely at the faces around the table.
“Expertise… Well, I guess that’s one perspective,” Mathias drawled. “Ms. McNamara was a member of the Bueton cult.” He chuckled. “Let’s hope her allegiance to its leader and his beliefs isn’t reignited while she’s in the company of a zealous supporter.”
Sam grinned, playing off his insult as a mutual joke. “I’ll try to resist the urge.”
“Interesting case, Bueton,” another man piped up. “I’d love to talk to you about it, Sam. Collective consciousness is fascinating, as is the method he used to seduce all those young girls.” He rubbed his hand across a scraggly red beard.
“Doug, really, collective consciousness has little to do with why people like Sam join a cult,” Mathias said. “It’s social and affective vulnerability. Cult members suffer a high prevalence of psychiatric and addictive disorders. I’ll send you some research.”
“You mean Fadiya,” Emily corrected him coldly. “You accidentally said Sam.” She stared at him, unblinking, for a few seconds, then turned to address the table. “Sam went to Bueton to rescue a child. Her inside knowledge of the cult’s sacraments will be valuable in leading Fadiya to question her irrational belief system.” She opened her tablet and nibbled on the end of her stylus. “Now, let’s go around the table and have everyone update us on their primary cases.”
The meeting droned on, with Mathias injecting negative feedback on every case. When Emily finally opened the discussion on investors, he majestically raised his hand to prevent her from continuing.
“Non-essential personnel may excuse themselves,” he said.
Assuming he was referencing her, a lowly student, Sam stood. Eager to make her escape, she bid farewell to the room at large with a bright smile and trotted to the door, resisting the urge to grab another pastry on her way by the sideboard.
“Anytime, people,” Mathias drawled.
Sam glanced over her shoulder, wondering who the other student was, but Mathias was staring at Ophelia with a smug smile. The facility’s head psychiatric nurse was anything but non-essential. Sam expected Emily to defend Ophelia. Instead, the doctor busied herself on her tablet, feigning sudden deafness. Sam’s respect for her mentor plummeted.
With a thin-lipped frown, Ophelia stood and crossed the room to join Sam at the door.
Mathias now aimed his stony glare at the red-bearded man who had exhibited interest on collective consciousness. “Anytime now, Doug.”
Doug’s pale cheeks flushed a soft shade of red that matched his curly hair. He gathered his papers and pushed back his chair. The room fell silent, waiting for the three rejects to leave. The trio stepped out into hall and Sam closed the door behind them, happy to escape Mathias Beauregard. Without a word, Ophelia marched down the hallway to the elevators.
“She and Dr. Beauregard have, ah, well, a complicated relationship,” Doug said. “A word to the wise; stay out of it.”
“Are you a practicum student?” she asked.
Doug shoved his wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his long, slightly upturned nose. “Yeah, from Western in London. Money has always been an issue, so I took a few years off between my master and doctorate degrees. You’re University of Toronto, right?”
She nodded, pitying the poor sod for being stuck with Mathias Beauregard as a mentor. “What’s your specialty?”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder, with a focus on veterans and victims of violent crimes,” he said. “You?”
“Early detection of psychiatric disorders in puberty and adolescence. How do you find working with Dr. Beauregard?” She wonde
red what motivated anyone to suffer the man’s unpleasant personality.
Doug’s close-set eyes shifted to his hands and he fidgeted with a folder he held. “He’s a brilliant diagnostician. He was an army physician and saw action in Afghanistan.” He cleared his throat. “Have you read any of his research?”
“No.”
Doug pursed his lips and gave her a hard stare. Oh God… had she offended him, too? She rushed to add, “I thought his primary role was fundraising and that he didn’t treat patients.”
Doug nodded. “Yeah, it is, but he still writes and publishes papers. I’m responsible for overseeing his qualitative research, and I treat patients in the withdrawal unit.”
“Right. Ophelia asked me to pop in on one. Bethany. Is that okay with you?” she asked.
He blinked like an owl, an exaggerated and slow closure of his eyelids. “I’d rather you didn’t.” A knotted vein bulged and beat under the thin skin at his temple.
His refusal confused her. Medicine was a collaborative field and it was peculiar for a psychologist to be possessive of a patient. Practicum students received grades from their placement, so Doug’s resistance must be insecurity about his internship. With Beauregard as his lead, Sam sympathized.
“This is a bit awkward,” she said. “Ophelia specifically asked me to speak with Bethany.” Sam didn’t want to repeat that Ophelia had said Doug’s patient disliked him. Rather than challenging his therapeutic relationship, she said, “Sometimes female patients relate better to a woman therapist.”
His face had frozen into a strained expression while she had spoken. He’d pressed his lips into a thin line and the vein in his temple continued to throb. “It seems the decision is made, regardless of my opinion,” he said indignantly. “Bethany suffers from night terrors and has a difficult time differentiating between reality and her nightmares.” He sighed and relaxed his shoulders. “She doesn’t make sense most of the time.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Hoping to defuse the tension Sam asked, “When did you join the staff?”
“I started my five hundred hours in May,” he said. “It surprised me that you started outside the usual placement schedules.”
She shrugged. “It worked for Emily and I was flexible.”
“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?” His expression was guarded.
“I’m a doctoral student,” she replied with a laugh.
“Okay, I get it.”
“Get what?” she asked.
“I read the papers. I know who you are, but if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
His tone was irritable, so Sam switched topics. “How is Dr. Beauregard as a mentor?”
“He’s a brilliant visionary.” Behind his glasses, Doug’s beady eyes studied her, as if challenging her to contradict him.
Sam smiled politely. “It’s lucky you have the opportunity to work with him. I’m off to the lockdown unit, so I’ll take the stairs.”
“You have all-access security clearance?”
She quickly shook her head and lied. “No. I mean I can access the lockdown unit, but I can only open Fadiya’s door on that floor.”
He owl-blinked again. It was either a physical condition or an unconscious tic. “Aren’t you special,” he said mockingly. He turned his back on her and walked to the elevator.
Puzzled, Sam watched him angrily jam his finger on the elevator call button. One day in and she was already arousing suspicion and making enemies. With a sigh, she opened the door to the stairwell and trotted down to the lower floor.
At the fire door, she swiped her card, noting that there wasn’t an alarm bell here to warn the unit nurse that someone had entered through the stairwell. Perhaps it rang at the nurses’ station. She made a mental note to check with security.
Rather than unlocking Fadiya’s door and entering, Sam knocked. The unlatched door swung open. The floor nurse must be in the room and had neglected to lock the door. Not wanting to interrupt, Sam poked in her head and stepped back in surprise. In a split second, she took in the scene. Fadiya lay supine on the bed. Her thin cotton nightgown had ridden up her naked thighs. Her feet thrashed and her body bucked as she fought a man who pushed her against the mattress with his shoulder. Fadiya clawed at the back of the man’s head and cried out in pain. He was gripping her right arm, struggling to hold her down while he fumbled around the crook of her arm with his other hand.
Sam flew into the room, grabbed him by his shirt collar, and hurled him off Fadiya. He fell to the floor with a grunt of pain. Sam rolled him onto his stomach and twisted his wrist. A syringe of blood fell from his hand. She wrenched him to his feet and threw him into a chair.
Aazar Basha stared at her. “I can explain.” His face was grey. Puffy, bruise-coloured moons circled his sunken eyes. He was breathing in shallow pants. “I was drawing blood.”
“Stay in the chair,” Sam said.
She went over to the bed to examine Fadiya. Blood dribbled down the girl’s forearm. Beads of perspiration covered her flushed skin and her pupils were severely dilated.
“What did you give her?” Sam demanded.
“Didn’t. Wanted blood. Someone’s drugging her.” He spoke slowly, fighting for breath between each word. He stumbled to his feet and fell to the floor beside a black jacket that lay beside the chair.
Ignoring him momentarily, Sam checked Fadiya’s arms and legs for puncture wounds. Other than the crook of her arm, there weren’t any needle marks, but Sam didn’t have time to check for obscured injection sights. She straightened the girl’s nightgown, tucked the blankets around her, and spun around to face Aazar. He lay on the floor, sucking on an inhaler and reaching for a liquid oxygen backpack that had slid under the bed. She knelt and retrieved the black leather satchel, found the nose buds, shoved them into Aazar’s nostrils, and turned on the tank. Slowly, his colour improved.
“Can you talk?” she asked.
He nodded and tucked the plastic tubes around his ears, securing the nose buds against his face.
“Then start. You have five minutes before I call security.”
He stood carefully, using the side of the bed to support his weight. Sam hooked her arm around his frail waist and helped him back to the chair. She sat across from him.
“I’ve suspected for the past three months that someone is giving my sister a hallucinogenic drug,” he said. “It would explain her deluded state and physical symptoms.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
He shrugged his emaciated shoulders. “To keep her mentally incapacitated in order to prevent her consenting to the transplant. Or maybe to stop my research, or maybe it’s a means to extort money from my father. I don’t know the reason.” He paused to catch his breath. “I’m a medical doctor, Ms. McNamara, as well as a scientist. Dr. Armstrong assures me that she hasn’t prescribed Fadiya medication, but my sister is under the influence of psychotropic drugs.”
“How did you get onto the unit?” Sam asked.
“I have an RFID keycard,” he said sheepishly.
“How?”
“I used a high frequency antenna and a mini computer to capture the hexadecimal stream of Ophelia’s ID card,” he said. “I cloned it.”
“Give it to me.”
Sam would have to check with Danny, but the process sounded ominously familiar. The use of a small radio frequency identification tool was how Danny had described accessing people’s smartphones.
She motioned to the door. “I’ll see you out.”
There wasn’t any point in talking to security, she knew. She remembered Saul telling her that Dr. Beauregard always put on a dog and pony show to impress the wealthy Basha family. Telling on Aazar wouldn’t accomplish anything and could give Mathias grounds to have her pulled from Fadiya’s case. She couldn’t risk it. Whatever was going on at Serenity Clinic, Sam intended to get to the bottom of it. To do that, she needed unrestricted access to th
e clinic.
Aazar studied her. “You believe me. You also suspect they are drugging her. Do you know why?”
Sam held his gaze without acknowledging his question.
He stood, slinging the strap of his backpack over one shoulder. “I know who you are, Ms. McNamara. You’re a private detective. I think you’re here to protect my sister. For that I thank you.”
She glanced around the floor, and then knelt to look under the bed. She picked up the needle by the plastic holder. The vacuum tube was missing. “Where’s the blood sample?”
He removed it from his pocket. “I picked it up when you were getting my oxygen. If I test the blood, we’ll know if her delusions are due to drugs,” he told her.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking. If she let him test the sample, he might discover Fadiya’s pregnancy. Sam didn’t agree with Emily’s refusal to disclose the pregnancy to the family, but it wasn’t her place to question the doctor’s decision.
“Something is going on in here.” Aazar held out the tube containing his sister’s blood. “This could tell us what it is. Please help me.”
She didn’t have the authority to allow him to take the sample but her gut told her to trust Aazar. She took out a card and handed it to him.
“Those are my cell and office numbers. Call me with the test results. Tell no one but me, understand?” she said.
He nodded. “Do you know what’s happening in this clinic?”
“No.” She escorted him into the hallway. “But I’m going to find out. I promise you that.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Reece
REECE HAD BEEN loitering on the corner across from Cardoon Bistro for ten minutes, waiting on Eli who had texted to say he was on the Queen West streetcar stuck behind a fender-bender. Frustrated by the wait, he decided to have yet another discussion with Eli about getting a driver’s licence. He’d taken him to the written test, which Eli had passed with flying colours, but whenever Reece had offered to teach him the ropes, Eli had refused to get behind the wheel. Thinking it worried him to drive his boss’s car, Reece had enrolled him in driving school. Again, he’d passed with flying colours. All he needed to advance to the next level of Ontario’s graduated licensing system was to take the road test. Not being able to drive interfered with his ability to do his job, yet Eli consistently refused to take the damn test. Reece was sick of trying to work around the problem when there such a simple solution.
