Meds

by Ray Garton

  Eli frowned at the wall across from him, lost in silent thought for a moment. Then he said, “Does profit have something to do with Paaxone suddenly becoming unavailable?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. It’s odd for such a popular drug to suddenly turn up missing from pharmacy shelves. Like I said, I’ll make a couple of calls and see what I can find out.”

  “I appreciate it. I’m a little... well, nervous. I only have two left.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Eli, it’s out there somewhere. Drugs like that don’t just disappear.”

  The bathroom door opened suddenly and started Eli. Roger walked in, closed the door behind him, then leaned against it and folded his arms across his chest.

  Everett said he’d call back when he had some information. Eli wrapped up the call.

  “Don’t you know how to use a toilet?” Roger said. “The lid goes up.”

  “I had to make a call.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, I just needed to—”

  ”Something’s on your mind.”

  “It’s obvious?”

  “Well, to me, yeah, but I’ve known you for thirty-eight years.”

  Eli told him. “Everett said he’d make a couple of calls and get back to me.”

  Roger nodded. “Good. Why are you so worried? I mean, you’re obviously worried. Your hands have been going in and out of your pants pockets since you walked in. You always do that when you’re worried.”

  Eli frowned. “I do?”

  Roger nodded.

  “Well, I’m worried because... what if I can’t get anymore Paaxone?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. This is America. Prescription drugs and guns—that’s what we do. Now come back out and get to know Jandie. She’s a sweet girl. Just... do me one little favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go easy on her when she starts talking about the magnets.”

  “Magnets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of magnets?”

  “Little magnets. She sells them.”

  “For refrigerator doors?”

  “No, to... you know, make you healthier.”

  Eli rolled his eyes as he stood and put the cell phone back in his pocket. “You’re not serious. I’ve heard of those. Magnets that draw pain out of the body and cure things like arthritis and blood disorders?”

  Roger nodded reluctantly.

  “Where do you find these women? The last one thought she could talk to dead people.”

  “Yeah, but she gave the most amazing head.”

  “Uh-huh. And what can this one do?”

  “She’s limber. Unbelievably limber. I’ve been having sex in positions I’ve never even seen in porn films. Just go easy on her, okay?”

  Eli sighed. “For you and the sake of your sexual positions, okay.”

  Frowning, Roger said, “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  Eli told himself that Roger was right. It was ridiculous to worry so much over a damned pill. He had two left, and he’d have more before he took the last one. He smiled and said, “I’m fine.”

  Chapter 3

  In the Middle of the Night

  1.

  Molly Clemens was awakened in the dark by the sound of gasping. She lay on her side, back to her husband Jim, but an instant after opening her eyes, she sat up. She quickly realized the sound was not gasping, but quiet sobbing. It was coming from the other side of the bedroom, near the door, and she assumed it was one of their two boys.

  “What is it?” she said, her voice cracked with sleep. “Baby?”

  As the sound continued, Molly realized it was neither of their sons. The voice was too deep, too... old.

  “Jim,” she said anxiously as she reached to her left to wake her husband. Her hand fell on the mattress. He wasn’t there. Her sleepy mind cleared enough to add things up. Jim was making the sound. Molly suddenly was awake and intensely alert. She reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. It cast a pool of light over the nightstand and sent a glow into the dark that diminished with distance.

  Jim was on the floor across the room. He was naked, back against the wall beside the door, arms hugging his knees. But Molly noticed all that only incidentally. The immediate focus of her attention after turning on the light—the reason her back stiffened as she sucked in a frightened breath—was the look in Jim’s eyes.

  He peered over his kneecaps, his eyes unwaveringly fixed on some distant point, shoulders quaking. In the fourteen years she’d known him, Jim’s eyes had never been so wide. Molly had not known they were capable of such size. They were impossibly round, with far too much white visible, and they glowed with an unfamiliar mixture of terror and rage. His eyebrows were huddled together just above the bridge of his nose in a hard, creased knot of flesh. She knew the figure curled up on the floor across the room was Jim, but it looked so unlike him that gooseflesh crawled across her shoulders and down her back.

  “Jim?” she said as she moved forward on the mattress. She got on hands and knees and crawled toward him, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Jim, honey, what’s—”

  There were no tears in Jim’s eyes. He was not crying, nor was he sobbing. His shoulders quaked because he was breathing loudly and rapidly, breathing out with explosive power. And he was talking through clenched teeth. The words were mixed in with the heavy breathing and she could not decipher them, but he really was talking.

  She climbed over the wooden footboard and went to him, hunkered down near him. His behavior was so disturbing that she was afraid to get too close. He didn’t seem to be aware of her and she didn’t want to startle him.

  “What’s wrong, Jim?” she said. “What’s the matter? Honey, please—you’re scaring me.”

  No response. He did not seem to hear her.

  Molly slowly reached out her right hand to touch him. Her fingertips were a fraction of an inch from his skin when he exploded. His arms and legs flew outward and somehow, he lunged forward with a ragged, inarticulate shout. Before she could register all of that, his fist slammed into her face.

  The world exploded into brilliant white for just a heartbeat. When it all came back, he loomed over her with his fist pulled back, ready to strike her again, and he was shouting something unintelligible.

  Molly screamed as she held up her arms protectively. She pulled her legs back and kicked at him, knees pumping as if he were pedaling a bicycle. It only made him louder, angrier.

  Suddenly, Jim pulled away from her. She kept kicking and hitting for a moment until she realized he was gone. Molly got to her feet and turned to him.

  “What is wrong with you?” she shouted. She felt a trickling sensation on her chin and knew that her lip was bleeding.

  Jim was on his side of the bed, quieter now but still talking to himself. He’d turned on his bedside lamp and now stood bent over the open drawer of the nightstand, doing something with his hands.

  For an instant, Molly wondered if she was dreaming, then made a shocked coughing sound when she grasped what he was doing. For eight years—ever since their neighbor had been raped by someone who’d broken into her house in the middle of the night—Jim had kept an unloaded .38 revolver in that drawer with a box of bullets. For the sake of the boys, he kept a combination lock on the gun. Now he was fumbling with the lock’s combination as he continued to gibber. Some of his words became clear: “... do it now... have to... fuckin’ kill ‘em... do it... now... kill ‘em all... “

  The lock dropped into the open drawer with a thunk. He opened the box of bullets and they spilled out into the drawer with a clatter.

  He’s going to kill us, Molly thought. The words went through her head like a white-hot blade.

  Jim slammed the revolver’s cylinder home as Molly stumbled to the door. She pulled it open, threw herself into the hall and turned left. She ran to the boys’ room, burst through the door and slammed it behind her. Both boys cried out, startled from sleep. Molly locked the do
or and tried to turn on the overhead light, but her trembling hand kept missing the switch. The light finally came on and she turned to her sons, sitting up in their twin beds with fear in their faces.

  Jim’s footsteps thumped down the hall toward them.

  Things were going so well, Molly thought. He was happy for awhile, we were all so happy! I thought everything was okay!

  “Mom, whassamatter? What’s happening?” Jason was already out of bed, standing in front of her. He was eleven, the oldest and most confident of the two. Meanwhile, his younger brother Paul still lay in bed, clutching at the covers with white-knuckled hands.

  Jim pounded on the door. “Open this fucking door!” he bellowed. The door shook with a boom once, then again. Jim was slamming into the door on the other side, throwing himself against it with all his strength.

  “Your cell phone,” Molly said to Jason. “Where is it?”

  The boy moved quickly. He swept the small phone off the nightstand and handed it to Molly. She opened it, but it was turned off. She pressed the button with her thumb.

  “Is that Duh-Dad?” Paul said, his voice thin and unsteady.

  Jim rammed against the door again and again. “Open this fucking door and let me in or I’ll shoot through it!” Jim shouted.

  The cell phone lit up and made a chiming sound. Molly’s finger was on the 9 key, about to punch in 911, when Jim fired the gun in the hall. Molly flinched as a small, splintered hole punched through the door, then another as he fired again. She heard a small thump beside her and turned to the left.

  Paul lay on the floor in a limp heap, eyes staring up at the ceiling. Blood was spattered around a small hole just above his left eyebrow.

  Gaping down at his brother, Jason cried, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”

  Molly opened her mouth to scream as the cell phone slipped from her hand, but Jim fired his gun a third time before she could make a sound. She suddenly found herself on the floor. She could not remember falling, but she lay on her side staring at the cell phone a few feet in front of her face. For a moment, she heard Jason screaming—

  Things... were going... so... well ...

  —but his voice faded rapidly, along with the light in the room, until there was nothing.

  Chapter 4

  Tension

  1.

  When Chloe woke Eli on Tuesday morning, he felt less than rested. His sleep had been disrupted by dreams that woke him repeatedly throughout the night. He’d had one dream in particular more than once, in which he’d stood before his open medicine cabinet, its shelves bare except for the little orange bottle of Paaxone that contained only one pill. As he stared at the bottle, he heard the thunderous drumming of his own heart. Each time he had the dream, it seemed to go on forever, and he woke from it feeling heavy, stiff, and drained.

  He lay in bed and dozed longer than usual, slipping in and out of a foggy half-sleep. When he finally lifted his head to look at the clock, he knew he couldn’t doze any longer if he wanted to catch his usual morning AA meeting. He dragged himself out of bed, went into the bathroom, and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His black hair spiked in all directions and his eyes looked puffy. But he’d looked worse. When he was drinking and using coke, his face had been pale and hollow-cheeked, eyes sunken with dark circles beneath them, and hair that was flat and dry. Since he’d quit both substances, he’d gotten his color back, his face had fleshed out a little, his hair had become full again. But in spite of his healthy appearance in the mirror that morning, he felt like crap.

  He opened the medicine cabinet. He took a multivitamin from the squat bottle on the bottom shelf. Then he removed the orange bottle of Paaxone, took the cap off, and tipped one of the two remaining pills into his palm. The yellow pill looked tiny next to the fat multivitamin. He looked into the Paaxone bottle at the single pill at the bottom. The knot in his stomach tightened as he put the bottle back, then drank the pills down with a glass of water.

  A hot shower helped a little, but he still felt like going back to bed. With his hair still wet, he put on his robe and slippers and followed the aroma of coffee to the kitchen.

  Chloe still wore her robe, but she’d already had her shower. She would dress and leave soon to get to work by five-thirty.

  “Morning,” she said as she slid her arms around his waist and kissed him. She tried to make the kiss linger, but Eli pulled back to yawn. “You didn’t sleep well, did you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Didn’t think so. I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren’t there. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by going back to bed and sleeping till noon.” He went to the coffeemaker on the counter and poured a cup.

  “Oatmeal’s on the stove,” Chloe said as she squeezed his ass. “I’m gonna get dressed.”

  Eli took his coffee, a bowl of oatmeal, and a banana to the table and dropped into a chair. He could not shake the way that vivid dream had made him feel—as if he were swollen and puffy and his joints felt calcified. Even as he ate his breakfast, he saw the pill bottle in the empty medicine cabinet when he closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t finish his oatmeal—even with a drizzle of honey, it was flavorless slop in his mouth—and he stood to empty the bowl. The phone rang before he got to the garbage can. He put the bowl on the counter and took the cordless phone from its base. It was Everett.

  “I made a couple of calls last night,” he said. “It’s true, Paaxone has gone missing since last week. At least around here. I put in a call to a doctor I know in Los Angeles, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. I want to see if he’s having the same problem.”

  “Why is it unavailable all of a sudden?” Eli said.

  “Well, I heard one explanation, but I’m not sure I buy it. I talked to a pharmacist at the medical center. He heard there was some flaw in the manufacturing process that rendered a segment of the drug inert.”

  “A segment of the drug?”

  “A large number of Paaxone pills were as useless as sugar pills. They were recalled before they hit the market they were earmarked for, which apparently was most of California, maybe the whole state. So we’re part of that market. The pharmacist I talked to heard the story from another pharmacist who claimed to have heard it from someone at one of the suppliers. But... I don’t know... that just doesn’t ring true.”

  “Why not?”

  “Braxton-Carville is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country. In the world. This story sounds like the work of amateurs. Somehow, I just can’t imagine a bunch of guys at a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company standing around in white coats, scratching their heads and saying, ‘Uh, what happened?’ Any flaw that showed up in the manufacturing process would be identified and fixed quickly to avoid any loss of revenue. They’re prepared for problems like that and know how to handle them immediately because wasted time is lost money. Drug companies aren’t interested in making people better, they’re interested in making money. Those guys aren’t going to sit on their asses and wait around while their drug isn’t pulling in dollars. Paaxone’s been on the market—what?—two years? Less than that? It’s a very popular drug, a real jewel in Braxton-Carville’s crown. They wouldn’t sit still for this, something would be done about it instantly. This story just doesn’t sound right.”

  “Then where do you suppose the story came from?” Eli asked.

  “Who knows,” Everett said with a sigh. “Look, the reason I called is to ask you to lunch. I’m meeting an old friend and I’d like you to join us. Have you met John Falczek?”

  Eli thought back a moment. “We haven’t met, but I know the name. You’ve mentioned him before.”

  “Fascinating guy. He’s an old-school newspaper reporter. An investigative journalist. He does a little work at the Journal, puff pieces, but he’s mostly retired and he’s always looking for an excuse not to work on the book he’s trying to write. I’ve never known anyone so tenacious and resourceful. If an
ybody can get answers about this quickly, it’s Falczek. Can you meet us at Jade Garden for lunch? Say twelve-thirtyish?”

  “Sure. I might have to leave early because my lunch break isn’t that long, but I’ll be there.”

  “How many pills do you have left?”

  “Well, after today, um... only one.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll dig some up somewhere.”

  When he was done, Eli put the phone back on its base.

  Chloe came in, dressed for work and looking chipper. “Who was that?”

  “Everett. We’re meeting for lunch.” He leaned his hips against the lip of the sink.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  He looked at her and pushed out a smile. “Wrong?”

  “Well, you look... worried.”

  “No, nothing’s wrong.”

  She came to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, leaned on him. He kissed her forehead, reached down with both hands and squeezed her ass once, then massaged it.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Looking for a quickie before work?”

  “You’re already dressed.”

  She reached into his robe and squeezed his growing erection. “We’ve got time for a blowjob if you want.” She cocked a brow and gave him a naughty look that he loved.

  Eli embraced her, smelled her hair. His mind flashed on the dream he’d had several times and he saw that orange bottle standing on the empty medicine cabinet shelf holding his last Paaxone. His back stiffened slightly, an involuntary reaction to the fear he suddenly felt. What if he couldn’t get anymore Paaxone? Would he slip back into the life he’d had prior to taking the drug? If so, how would Chloe react? Would he lose her? Holding her in his arms, he tightened his embrace a little, then a little more, until he was holding her to him in a powerful grip.