Lovesick

by Alex Wellen

  A bit further down in the Metalol entry of Janus’s database is a list of the drug’s active ingredients. The hyphenated word in the center of the page nearly gives me a coronary of my own: beta-blockers. Metalol uses beta-blockers.

  I quickly write up my findings and drive to the hospital. Dr. Yeardling’s shift doesn’t begin for another hour, but the night-duty nurse promises to deliver my package to him as soon as he arrives. Before leaving, I check in on Sid, who is fast asleep. I’m told he had a rough night, but is now stable.

  From the hospital in Vallejo, I cross back over the Carquinez and head home. But instead of stopping in Crockett, I pass right through. I’m on Eckley Drive, the very same road to hell that reunited us with our deranged high school principal, Harvey Martin. It was all downhill from there. That was the night Paige asked me if we could “wait” to get married, that Tyler reentered our lives, and that Sid invited me to join his drug gang. If we stay on this road, we could be in Vegas by sunrise, I told her that night. But instead we took a series of wrong turns, and here we are.

  I’m working on less than two hours of sleep. Twice already I nearly drove Hulk off the road and into the Carquinez Strait. I’m in so much trouble. I went to all this effort to protect Paige, to preserve the memory of her father, to make peace with my former father-in-law, and for what? More secrets. More trouble. Sid and Paige are right: I invent cockamamy timepieces that can’t tell time and high heels that crack in half. I’m no better a pharmacist, either: I hand out drugs willy-nilly. I killed my father-in-law, drove away the love of my life (more like dropped her off at the curb), and possibly put my best friend in the hospital.

  I’m running. But the farther I get from Crockett, the more I realize I can’t leave. I won’t leave Paige, not in this mess. I’ve tried to help but only put more lives in danger. I’ve committed hundreds of felonies. Paige has had enough heartache and hardship. The last thing she needs right now is to inherit my rap sheet. I will find her and we’ll talk. We’ll figure this out one way or another. If it’s over, then it’s over, but I won’t run.

  I turn around and head home. When I arrive on our street, I stop one house short of Gregory’s, just as I’ve done so many times before. Lara is home, but the Vomit Mobile is nowhere to be found. I call the news desk where Paige works, but she isn’t on the schedule until tomorrow. I check Ollie’s Auto Shop, but there is no sign of Paige’s car. I try Manny on his walkie-talkie. He hasn’t seen her either but suggests I try the Crockett Community Center—he made a delivery there this afternoon and thinks he caught a glimpse of her flipping burgers at the Independence Day barbecue.

  The Community Center is closed and deserted. Next door is Alexander Park, where the parking lot is empty but for one car—a white MR-2 Toyota Spyder. The Vomit Mobile. Cold to the touch, the car hasn’t been driven in hours.

  The longer I search for her, the more convinced I become of the inevitable: Paige is with Tyler Rich on his floating bachelor pad. I picture the two of them naked in Tyler Rich’s whirlpool. Fireworks go off behind them as they clink champagne glasses. As painful as it is, I need to see this for myself.

  I take Loring Avenue to the Crockett Marina, a gorgeous one-mile stretch of road along the Carquinez Strait. Halfway down Loring is the entrance to the construction site where Paige and I used to park. Underneath the Warner Construction billboard is a sleek architectural rendering of what the community is supposed to look like one day. The Waterfront Oasis is selling “30 completely renovated river-view lofts that provide the perfect blend of contemporary living and small town vibe.” The brick façades of the once-dilapidated C & H warehouse are newly sandblasted.

  The Crockett Marina is dark and deserted. Stapled to the telephone pole at one end of the wharf is a red flyer touting this evening’s celebration: “Join Us for Freedom, Flags, Fireworks, and Fun.” I make my way down the barely lit pier of the teeny boatyard. Beyond the sailboats and Jet Skis are the houseboats. There are no security guards, and at most, a dozen small boats, so finding Tyler Rich’s isn’t difficult. The Lobsta Mobsta is farthest out.

  Tyler Rich’s gas-guzzling love boat is two-tiered. All the windows are tinted black. A small grill is bolted to the floor of the boat, and a bunch of flotation devices are strewn about the back porch.

  I tiptoe closer and brace myself for cackles of laughter or moans of ecstasy, but all I hear is the sound of waves splashing up against the boat’s hull. The Lobsta Mobsta is uninhabited.

  In the far distance, I hear someone set off a few firecrackers. Then the high-pitched whistle of a bottle rocket. Paige is always saying that Lydia used to call these sounds “the hooligan fireworks,” and she graded each explosion on its level of difficulty and danger. There is a deep boom. A five-finger blast for sure.

  I take a seat on the wharf and speed-dial Paige’s home number. If Lara picks up, I pray she takes pity on me and hands the phone to her sister. If Paige hangs up me, I can race back to her house before she manages to get too far.

  Lara answers right away.

  “Where the hell are you?” she commands.

  “The marina,” I confess quickly, my legs swinging off the dock.

  “Oh, I thought you were Paige,” Lara mutters. “You don’t know where she is, do you? You’ve made a wreck out of my sister. I hope you’re happy.”

  “Ecstatic.”

  I tell Lara where and in what condition I found the Vomit Mobile. Lara sounds worried. She doesn’t have any good suggestions.

  “I need to find her,” I say with a hint of desperation.

  “I’m so angry with you,” she says plainly.

  It’s the Fourth of July. Families are barbecuing. Her parents are gone. Lara is alone, in a house filled with memories, and now her sister’s missing.

  “If you see her,” we say in unison.

  “Okay,” we say, doing it again.

  As a last resort, I try Paige’s cell. Even if she’s unwilling to see or speak to me, I need to hear her voice. I need to know she’s okay.

  Paige answers on the first ring.

  “Don’t hang up!” I plead.

  “Fine, but I thought you and I were done,” she says.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re starting to sound as callous as your sister.”

  “This is her sister,” Lara says, mostly entertained.

  “Paige forgot to take her cell with her … again,” I determine suddenly.

  “Bingo.”

  We both laugh. Finally I feel like we’re connecting. Unlike the last phone call, this time we say good-bye.

  Driving along the Carquinez Strait, suddenly the sky lights up. The pyrotechnics originate from Vallejo. I pull onto the shoulder to take in the show.

  I didn’t wait when I was supposed to. And I waited when I shouldn’t have. Had I just done like Sid said, Gregory and I might have been friends. If we’d been closer, maybe Gregory would have confided in me or revealed the Day Co-Pay or hinted at the looming financial problems or told me exactly what it was that I was supposed to “wait” for. Or maybe when I asked him for his blessing, he would have just said yes. I’d love to talk to Paige right now, but I wish I could speak with Gregory.

  At some point, I drift off. My cell phone wakes me. The hospital pops up on the caller ID. When I answer, it’s Cookie.

  “Are you close? Can you meet me here?” she asks. “I can be there in fifteen.” “I’ll be waiting.”

  CHAPTER 31

  With this Ring

  SID’S enabler stands by his side, loading gingerbread cookies into his grandfather’s mouth like he’s feeding sheets of paper into a fax machine. There are chunks of cookie on Sid’s gown. To see him sitting upright in his hospital bed, beaming from a sugar high, I’m overcome with joy and relief. Jordan is about to jam another pastry in Sid’s trap when the two of them notice me.

  “There he is!” Sid cries, his mouth still full.

  Jordan comes at me quickly. His pretty young bride, Abigail, jumps up from her chair to wa
tch her husband belt me in the kisser. I did nearly kill his grandpa. At the last possible moment, Jordan reaches out and rests his hand on my shoulder, smiling at me like we’re old pals.

  Sid calls Abigail over to him.

  “Abigail is hands-down my favorite granddaughter,” Sid informs me.

  She gives me a shy wave hello. “Your only granddaughter,” she reminds him, “and I’m not about to lose my second-favorite grandparent.”

  “Cookie does spoil you,” Sid admits.

  “We really appreciate everything,” Jordan tells me.

  Sid jumps in: “Wha? You appreciate him breaking in and ransacking my house?”

  “About that,” I begin. “I’m sorry I went through your personal belongings.”

  “The doc, here, told us everything,” Jordan says.

  “Very helpful,” Dr. Yeardling agrees, as he enters the room. “There’s no way we could have known Mr. Brewster was using an old bottle of Metalol to treat his glaucoma. We would have sent him home with a clean bill of health only to readmit him two eye-drops later.”

  “Or never at all …,” Jordan says somberly.

  Abigail cradles her grandfather’s face with both hands, and Sid smiles.

  “A couple of months back, we got an alert at the pharmacy. It said one of the big drug manufacturers was recalling its hypertension pill because it potentially caused heart failure,” I explain to the room. “Specifically because it contained beta-blockers. The story was all over the news,” I say, recalling the night the news broke, the very same night Paige earned points by miraculously inserting the word kumquat into a live television report. “When I realized that Metalol also used beta-blockers, I suspected trouble.”

  “Metalol was never specifically recalled,” Yeardling adds, “but a number of similar glaucoma drops got yanked after the New England Journal of Medicine connected beta-blockers with serious drops in blood pressure, fainting spells, and yes, in rare cases, cardiac arrest.”

  “Andy, you’re like that genius doctor on House,” Jordan says.

  Yeardling rolls his eyes.

  “Thanks to you, small fry, they’re also changing my cholesterol meds,” Sid adds, chewing on another cookie.

  And the gingerbread man figures into your high cholesterol how?

  Sid tells us he feels twenty years younger—a youthful sixty-three.

  “I’ve got something else here I really think you’re going to enjoy,” I tell Sid, fishing both articles out of my front two pockets.

  Sid’s face drops. His heart monitor captures the anxiety. The last time I did this, only a few feet from where I’m standing, I introduced him to the ill-conceived, much-maligned “Cookie Cane.”

  “Stick out your hands,” I instruct him.

  He hesitantly complies. In one hand I place a baby pacifier and in the other a Red Rocket candy ring.

  Sid studies my props as I describe the concept.

  “So how do you make a baby takes its medicine? It is a challenge that has baffled doctors, pharmacists, and inventors for generations. That’s where Gregory Day comes in. In 1977, his six-month-old daughter, Paige, got sick, and the compounding-pharmacist extraordinaire needed an easy solution. He filled a rubber squeeze bottle with medication, connected it to a souped-up pacifier using some thin plastic tubing, and popped the device between Paige’s beautiful bee-stung lips. It worked. Simple, elegant, useful. A true trailblazer in the field of medicated pacifiers.”

  Sid nods in agreement.

  “I thought we might try and patent Gregory’s idea, but I discovered that someone else—Jesse Clegg of Dequincy Louisiana—eventually beat us to the punch many, many years ago. Clegg even licensed the idea to a company called Baby Me Products. Medicine-dispensing pacifiers have come a long ways since then, but according to everything I’ve read, most of them still suffer from the same problems: spillage, leakage, and waste. In short: baby isn’t getting her proper dosage.

  “So the other day I’m in the pharmacy,” I whisper excitedly. I point at Sid. “Your wife has a headache because Ruth Mulrooney’s grandson won’t stop giggling his little head off. I’m looking for a way to salvage a batch of Gregory’s famous medicated Lemon Lollies when I come across that drawing of his souped-up pacifier. I snap up the closest thing that looks like a pacifier—one of those Red Rocket candy rings—and I shove it in Arnie’s mouth. In the silence that ensues, it hits me—my ‘Euraka Moment,’ so to speak. One way to guarantee baby gets the perfect dosage of medicine every time … a lozenge.”

  Sid shakes the Red Rocket ring in my direction. “So this essentially goes in that,” he says, holding up the pacifier.

  “I totally get it,” Abigail cries.

  Music to any inventor’s ears.

  Jordan nods his head in agreement.

  “By combining Gregory’s device with his lollipop formula, you get a pacifier that can receive a medicated lozenge. I love it,” Sid screams. His voice is hoarse. “We’ll need to make sure the nipple is porous yet resilient enough. And we can’t have that lozenge falling out and becoming a choking hazard.” He flips the pacifier around. His mind is racing. “We’ll definitely need some sort of child-safety cap.”

  I nod my head, taking mental notes.

  “So I’m to thank for all this,” Cookie brags.

  She’s been eavesdropping for a while.

  “Yes, if you didn’t bring a four-year-old boy to hysterics, I probably never would have put two and two together,” I say.

  “You’re coming with me.” Cookie beckons me with her finger.

  I follow her out of Sid’s room and down the hall.

  “Sit!” she commands.

  I do, faster than her own dog. Cookie takes a seat next to me, resting her cane on the wall.

  “When I was in intermediate school, my mother used to work at a fabric manufacturing warehouse in the Fashion District. After school, she’d make me baby-sit my brother, Sammy. He was five. One day, I’m chasing Sammy around the house, and I completely black out, clocking my head on the hardwood coffee table.”

  Cookie pulls back some thinning gray hairs to reveal a long, deep scar.

  “I used to be a skinny little thing. But I was never one of those health nuts. I never aerobicized. So at first, we just figured I couldn’t catch my breath and passed out because I needed more exercise. You see, in 1945, there was no such thing as ‘hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.’” The terminology rolls off her tongue. “They eventually did more tests and figured out there was something wrong with my pumper. The official name came later when I learned that the walls of my heart muscle were abnormally thick—something I inherited from my mother, along with her migraine headaches and her consummate diplomacy. It was scary for a while.”

  I remember hypertrophic cardiomyopathy from pharmacy school. The thick walls of the heart need more oxygen than an ordinary heart, and it’s this lack of oxygen that causes shortness of breath, dizziness, and the occasional heart attack.

  Cookie Brewster—the woman with the abnormally large heart.

  “Like me, my mother was absolutely smitten with Sidney,” Cookie continues. “I think she felt guilty about passing along this congenital heart condition; plus she felt responsible for introducing me to the man of my dreams right before they shipped him off to Libya. In all my letters to Sidney, I never burdened him with my problems. He had bigger fish to fry, like not getting killed. But my mother was a stubborn lady. She wanted Sidney to know I was sick. That I needed him. I begged her not to, but she wrote and told him everything.

  “Sidney received Mom’s letter after the A-bomb. Japan had already surrendered and the war was over. He was scheduled to return to an air force base in Maryland right before Christmas. All he had to do was stick it out for three more months, but that wasn’t soon enough for Sidney,” Cookie explains. “We’d had two dates. We weren’t married. Not even engaged. His commanding officer couldn’t justify letting him go home early. But Sid left anyway. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even
realize he was dishonorably discharged until many years later. We never really spoke about it, but I know Memorial Day was always tough for him, especially when they kept coming to him to be grand marshal of the parade. It got easier after Sid recommended Gregory do it.”

  “Do you still have blackouts or chest pain?” I ask her.

  “I’m ancient. Everything hurts, Andrew,” Cookie says. “But the symptoms with my heart happen less and less. Medication helped, too. Drugs are a wonderful thing,” she marvels. “As a precaution, of course, I had all the kids and grandkids tested when they were born. Then I made them all get retested after my baby brother, Sammy, died of the same heart condition.”

  Cookie pauses to regain her train of thought.

  “My son, Oliver, got it,” she says regretfully, “but he’s fine. We get him checked all the time. My grandson at the other end of the hall is safe, thank goodness. The only person who ever knew about my health problems or Sidney’s military record was Gregory” she makes clear. “With him in Korea and Sidney in World War II, Gregory always looked up to Sidney, helping us whenever and wherever he could. Just like you.”

  I thank her.

  “Don’t thank me so quick,” Cookie says, taking a deep breath. “After you broke into my house and scared me half to death, and before you magically diagnosed Sidney’s medical condition, I may have—in a moment of weakness—walked up to Paige at the Fourth of July barbecue and told her that you were illegally supplying sample drugs to the elderly. I may have also hinted that I planned on reporting you to the police.”

  I let out a nervous laugh.

  “But you tell me where I can find the girl and I’ll set her straight,” she promises.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I huff, inadvertently rubbing my bad eye. “I suspect she’s with this guy we went to high school with … Tyler Rich.”