The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1)

by Weston Mitchel

  When Catherine forced her daughter to choose a new name, Kasey hadn’t taken longer than half of a second before blurting out “Ashley Avalon, I want to be Ashley Avalon.”

  Catherine just looked at her daughter nonplussed and replied “Don’t be ridiculous, you aren’t changing your last name,” she said putting the brush down and leaving her daughter’s hair half finished, adding “but Ashley will work, I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Now sitting beside Mia’s bed Ashley could remember her mother coming back with the school enrollment forms for her with the name Ashley Greer in all the name boxes. She could remember staring at them in disbelief, and excitement. Her dreams were coming true, she was Ashley now.

  Too bad the only thing that changed was my name, she thought as she waited for Brian to come and make sense of everything for her so she could stop being someone else.

  Izzy Comes Home

  Izzy Ramirez told herself when she left for California to see family, even though she was flying back the day after Thanksgiving, that she wasn’t going back in to work until the Monday after. It was more of a promise she made to herself than a guideline, knowing damn well she was putting way more into her job than she was getting in return.

  She was almost ashamed at herself during the break how much she thought about what they were doing at the K Prize. Here she was on a supposed vacation and she paid more attention to her non-buzzing phone than she did to any particular person in her family. Everyone that is except her little two month old nephew Charlie, who was too cute to put down unless he had a category 3 hazmat spill in his diaper, which was actually quite often. She could play around with blood all day long but throw a little poop into the mix and no thanks, even if it was from the world’s cutest nuclear reactor.

  Besides Charlie, her focus was solely on the updates from the Good Doctor that came sporadic at best and lessened from there as the days wore on. As of her return to her tiny apartment today it had been two and a half days since her last text or call had been answered. Her empty one bedroom, one bath bachelorette’s pad made her feel even lonelier than she was before spending nearly a week in her Abuela’s crowded house.

  Friends and family constantly filing in and out over the days, to where there was literally never a quiet moment. Until Abuela’s bedtime, then everyone knew it was time to go and it went from a symphony of conversations and baby’s cries to being able to hear an orchestra of crickets chirping outside a block away.

  It only took Izzy fifteen minutes of being bored in the silence of no company before she jumped up from the couch, grabbed her purse and headed out. If any type of promises were actually made to be broken, promises made to yourself were most definitely that type. Who would know?

  ***

  If it hadn’t been for the darkening skies of the evening outside, the emptiness of the building was eerie enough to make Izzy keep peeking around behind her to see if anyone was following as she walked to the K Prize lab inside the cavernous center.

  Two steps into the lab that had been her home away from home for months now she had to do a double take to make sure she was in the right place. The lab wasn’t just a little messy, which she sort of expected since she was normally the one to tidy up, the place was a wreck.

  She could see shards of glass hastily kicked to the side instead of being swept up shining from the edge of toe kicks under the cabinets running the length of the lab. Tiny drops of blood, probably from the broken vials, cast about on the countertops and floor a like. Not a ton, but enough for Izzy to notice.

  Izzy double-timed it to the clean room in the back to see if the Doctor was there and okay. In her hurry to get to the to lab she hadn’t checked for the Doctor’s car in her reserved parking spot. Izzy just expected to see her there since she was seemingly always there.

  Izzy didn’t bother to gear up just to open the door and peek in. She was glad she didn’t waste the time seeing an even bigger mess inside waiting but no Doctor. Now she wondered if she even wanted to see the Doc, she was apparently not in the greatest of moods judging from all the stuff thrown to the ground or at the wall. It looked like a giant baby had a hissy fit to rule all hissy fits in there.

  She didn’t understand any of it, the Doctor would have surely known the effects that would have caused on any outcome for the tests. Any deviance from the steps in procedure would cause a null result. Now, Izzy was more angry than confused after seeing the clean room knowing all her hard work would now be for naught if any of this got out.

  Izzy walked her way to the not-so-good-now Doctor’s office, thinking she was probably in there sleeping off a bender or some crap like that, pinche puta. When she passed the recliner used for donations on the way to the office she noticed a vial of medicine on the ground next to it. This looked to be the one thing that hadn’t shattered during her temper tantrums.

  She picked up the vial and saw a label on it that didn’t make sense. The name itself of course made sense, but not the reason why it would be in here on the floor, in a lab.

  Ketamine.

  Ketamine was a sedative used mostly by veterinarians, but also for human patients as well for a deep anesthetic. Izzy also knew it was used as a street drug for it’s hallucinogenic effects.

  So great, this meant she was on a drug fueled tantrum instead of a drunken one.

  The bottle was only about half used and although Izzy wasn’t sure how much was needed to get good and messed up, but she guessed a half vial would more than do the trick.

  She slid the bottle into her purse that was slung over her left shoulder and continued to her boss’s office, now figuring for sure she would be passed out in a trance on the couch.

  When the office was empty too, Izzy didn’t exactly know where to search next. This might not be her lab or experiment necessarily, but by all means Doctor Greer owed her an explanation for just what the hell was going on here. If she knew where the Doctor lived she would just go beat on the door like a cop until she answered.

  Izzy then remembered that the doctor sometimes got her personal mail sent to the office. Just last week there was an electric bill addressed to Dr. Greer mixed in with the normal bills for the K Prize. Izzy started doing the accounting and payables for the foundation the second week after she was hired, volunteering after the Doctor spouted on about not ever having enough time to deal with the trivial details.

  Izzy hadn’t thought there was anything trivial about keeping the lights on, not as many times as the power had been cutoff at her Abuela’s growing up. Last week when she mistakenly opened the bill she didn’t realize it wasn’t for the lab until she saw the balance. At first, she thought the electric company had got it wrong somehow, there was no way they owed such a small amount when the normal month’s bill was several hundred dollars and this was barely a fifth of that.

  That’s when she looked at it closer and realized it wasn’t for the foundation but addressed to Catherine Greer herself and had an address that wasn’t familiar. Izzy had known the Doc lived in some upscale apartment building in the Research Park area of Austin. The address on the bill however, wasn’t for an apartment unit. Even though it was an apartment, Izzy also thought the Doc’s hoity-toity pad, probably a penthouse or something if they even have those in Austin, would have a much larger balance than what this was showing.

  Shit, I pay twice this much and I’m never at my place to use anything.

  Izzy went back into the office, and searched through the two-tiered black plastic tray that served as the Dr. Greer’s inbox and outbox where she placed the bill after seeing it wasn’t for the K Prize. She remembered it vividly thinking the doctor could pay her own crap, and knowing this was unlikely to happen and would finally feel the results of not dealing with the trivial.

  “Bingo,” She said aloud to the empty room when she found it just where she left it. Izzy pulled the paper out of the envelope, used her phone to take a picture of the address before placing it back in the envelope and the envelope back into the tray. />
  She locked the lab back up and scurried her way back out to the parking lot even faster than when she came in so as to not be caught by the imagined ghosts of the empty building. Laughing at herself while doing so made it no less important to do it.

  She typed the address in to Google Maps, and waited for the voice on her phone to blare out directions.

  Izzy Has a Tail

  Brian couldn’t make much sense from Ashley’s babbling over the phone so he told her he would come to her, listen to her craziness in person. When his girlfriend texted him where to meet he was almost as confused as when they were on the phone. The waiting room at the same hospital they had spent so much time at waiting for Mia to be discharged.

  Brian didn’t consider himself a genius in the slightest but even he could put two and two together. On his way to the hospital to see just what exactly was going on he tried to get a hold of Austin. About a hundred texts went unanswered and twenty calls went straight to voicemail.

  After what happened between him and Austin he understood why he wouldn’t answer his calls. His texts and voicemails, however, explained what was going, at least what Brian thought was going on anyhow. Brian was sure at the first mention of Mia being in the hospital Austin would have forgotten all about his betrayal. Maybe not forgiven, no not even close to forgiving, but momentarily forget and then they could pick the hatred and graveling back up after this situation was dealt with.

  Once it was clear Austin had no intention of answering any call or text he decided Austin’s phone must be dead, it was the only reason he could think of for why Austin wouldn’t call back and check on Mia at the very least.

  The nurses wouldn’t let Brian in to the critical care wing, so he was stuck in the damn waiting room again doing just that, waiting on Ashley.

  Ashley came out finally looking annoyed at Brian as if he was intruding, not the one who was called and begged to come. He wasn’t sure of what, but something in her had changed just in the twenty or so minutes it took for him to get here. He could tell before she even said a word he was about to get the Ashley from the off again part of their relationship. That Ashley was cold, callous, and calculating.

  This should be fun.

  “You didn’t need to come up here, there’s not much you can do for her, especially from out here,” Ashley said as if he came on his own volition and not her frantic need for him to be by her side.

  “Well that’s a damn shitty thing to say, she’s my friend too,” Brian said.

  Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and replied “Oh please, the only reason you even know her is because of Austin and me. I know I called you in a moment of panic but I’m fine now, you don’t need to be here.”

  “I know I don’t need to be here, I need to be out there getting Austin’s attention. Whether or not they broke up he deserves to know what’s going on with Mia, and damn it so do I,” Brian said adamantly, drawing stares from onlookers now with his raised voice.

  “There’s no need to make a scene Brian. Grow up, be an adult for once in your life.”

  “Are you fuckin kiddin me? Be an adult?” Brian said looking around, his face and posture asking the rubberneckers watching them now a rhetorical can you believe this shit? “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only adult in the bunch, especially around your crazy ass mom. I mean what the hell is she doing? What did you mean by when you said you think she did something stupid?”

  “Nothing, Brian. Just forget about it, it’s none of your business anymore. None of it! Me, my mom, and especially Mia just forget all of us and leave us the hell alone,” Ashley said this with as sharp of a tongue as she could muster. She stood there watching the automatic door open for her, after she hit the button, giving the impression that that was that, and she had already forgotten all about Brian.

  Brian stood there watching in disbelief as she walked down the hallway as the doors closed behind her. Am I the only sane one around here?

  “This isn’t over Ash! Not even close!” Brian yelled through doors that were now only centimeters apart before turning and walking away himself.

  So many thoughts were soaring through Brian’s mind right now that it was hard to catch hold of just one and stick to it. He didn’t know what was going on in the slightest but what he did know was that Austin needed to be aware of what Mia is going through no matter Ashley said.

  The only other thing Brian was sure of right now was that he had a long damn ways to go before he fully understood women.

  We can sequence an entire human genome, but try and map a woman’s mind and fuhgeddaboudit.

  Brian texted the downstairs neighbor from Austin’s apartment asking her to let him know if Austin came home. She replied saying she hadn’t seen since before Brian left earlier that day, but would shoot him a text if she did.

  His next move was to go see what Ashley’s crazy bitch of a mother was doing. Before Ashley changed her mood and her mind she did mention something about her mother doing something stupid, he could swear on it. Plus, he really had no idea where to start looking for Austin, so not only did this make sense it would give him time to figure out his next step.

  The Blood Center where K Prize ran their office out of was also right across the street from the hospital which made it his first logical step. The route he took from the waiting room to the Center took him through the shared parking garage for both facilities.

  As Brian came around the second to last corner in the garage he saw a girl that he vaguely recognized from the K Prize lab, that first time him and Austin went after finding the flier on that community corkboard. His first thought was to yell out for her and make her answer some of his questions.

  What was her name? Libby? Lizzy? Some shit like that right?

  He changed his mind when he saw how spooked she was leaving the building, running to her car. He watched as she kept looking back over her shoulder like someone was chasing her or at the least scared that someone might be.

  Since he had already passed an empty parking spot with the doc’s name on it, and he knew the only other person working there was leaving in a frazzled state he thought his best chance to get answers was simply to follow her. Brian placed a quick hand on his upper thigh feeling the keys to Ashley’s Jeep still in his pocket through the worn denim.

  Brian laughed a silent chuckle as he thought, In your rush to forget about me you also forgot to get your keys back, dumb bitch. He chuckled again as he ran back the way he came and up a flight of stairs to the second level of the parking structure. He hoped he could get to the Jeep and drive back down quickly enough not to lose sight of Kimmy or Kristi or whatever the hell that girl’s name was.

  Thanks GPS

  Izzy followed the commands coming from her phone, each turn making her doubt herself a bit more about whether or not she should be doing this at all. The anger leaving her mind a little more with each passing minute.

  As she pulled up to what the slightly human, slightly robotic voice told her was her intended destination, it was pure curiosity that made her put the shifter in park. The neighborhood itself was a little suspect, but nothing like what she grew up in. The area didn’t scare her, the abandoned look of the place she drove to is what scared her. Abandoned buildings weren’t the sort of places a woman would ever opt to go into on her own.

  Again the curious little cat in her head, pawed at the idea of just what was going on.

  Why in the world would the Doctor have this place. It’s not like she was the type to buy a place and gentrify a neighborhood. She was the kind that just kept rolling through in her Benz til she came across a Starbuck’s on the good side of town. Gueras and their pinche Starbuck’s.

  Izzy picked her phone up out of the cup holder and turned the flashlight app on. Before she got out of the car she reached over the console and grabbed her purse, sitting it in her lap as she rummaged around inside it.

  The one thing her ex-boyfriend ever gave her that she might actually get some use out of was a taser he
bought online. He gave it to her before she left for Texas over the summer, to protect herself since he wouldn’t be there to do it. Once she had it in her grip she slung the purse over her shoulder in a way that let her keep her hand inside it wrapped around the stun gun while the other hand used the phone as a flashlight.

  Izzy had parked her car where the gas pumps used to be, where now just the cylindrical pillars of concrete remained that guarded them from the crazier drivers. Using the light to guide her path she could see what looked like fresh skid marks leading into the garage part of the building. She started to walk towards the bay door that was closest to her where the burned rubber left its mark, but stopped at the entrance to what used to be the small storefront.

  She tried the doorknob, it twisted, but when she leaned her shoulder into the door it didn’t budge.

  Of course not Iz, did you think it would be that easy?

  What she saw next though made her retract that last thought. One of the panes of glass in the grid of nine small frames on the top half of the door was already busted out. To be more precise, five of the panes were busted out now that she took the door in as a whole. The pane closest to the deadbolt for some weird reason however, had been left in tact.

  Guess I’m not the only one that likes to make things difícil on themselves.

  The panes weren’t that big and she found that she could easily reach her hand through the middle one and across the unbroken pane to undo the deadbolt. Accidentally shining the light right into her eyes as she did so.

  That’s about right, babosa.

  Blinded for only a quick second, she was able to twist the deadbolt while holding the phone and reaching through the broken panes. All without dropping her phone even, which had been what she was most worried about in that moment. Mere moments from now that would no longer be the case.

  The door creaked open before she was ready for it to and had to walk with it as swung on it’s hinges, pulling her arm from the empty pane, phone still in hand. Izzy pointed the back of her phone around the littered store front. This hadn’t been one of the gas stations that sold various groceries and road trip snacks. It was the kind that sold gas, and worked on vehicles, that’s it.