Destination, Wedding!

by Xavier Mayne

  Donnelly’s response was to grab up Brandt in an energetic tackle hug, which was returned in kind.

  “And we’re off to the races again,” Sandler said as the two troopers made up for lost time. He turned to Kerry. “Perhaps there’s a café or something where we could wait out the hormone tsunami?”

  “Good idea,” she said, rising and sidestepping the intertwined Brandt and Donnelly. “It may be a while before they come up for air again.”

  Kerry and Sandler were halfway through their bitter dockside coffees when Brandt and Donnelly strolled into the café.

  “They look so relaxed,” Kerry observed as they walked up to the counter. “Ethan’s not looked that calm the entire time I’ve known him.”

  “I’ve seen Gabriel relaxed—we were in a penthouse suite on a week-long cruise, after all—but I’ve never seen him glow like that. They are just perfect together.”

  “And, of course, completely hot.”

  Sandler rolled his eyes. “I’m glad I’m not the only one. I swear, that those two found each other—there’s no justice in the world for homely guys like me.”

  “Homely? Pardon my German, but give me a fucking break.” Kerry burst out laughing. “If you had a straight bone in your body, I would drag you back to the hotel and put it to use right now.”

  Sandler beamed. “That’s about the sweetest thing any woman has ever said to me. And, if I may say, you’re the first woman I’ve ever met that I would even consider breaking my perfect record for.”

  “Never given a gal a tumble, then?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

  “Not once. But keep being so charming and beautiful and my resolve may weaken.”

  “After a week of sleeping next to that”—she tipped her head toward Ethan—“I fear I may put your resolve to the test. Or at the very least you need to be my wingman—this girl’s been pretty pent-up.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. Gabriel and I slept in separate rooms, and even then I was lucky to have the companionship of a crew member who proved quite… service-oriented.”

  “Good for you. You are now obligated to the wingman deal. It’s only fair.”

  “It shall be my pleasure.” He bowed graciously.

  Brandt and Donnelly approached the table, coffee in hand.

  “You two look thick as thieves already,” Brandt observed as he sat.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kerry replied, a look of practiced innocence on her face. “Do you, Sandler?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” he agreed, shaking his head as if he’d been asked a game-show question involving trigonometry.

  “We’ll schedule formal interrogations for this afternoon, then,” Brandt replied with a growl that transformed into a grin before he’d even finished. It seemed simply impossible for him to be anything other than overjoyed that he was once again next to Donnelly.

  “Now, since you’re coming with us to Whitford,” Donnelly said, “we’ll need to arrange for—” He was cut short by his phone ringing. Clearly puzzled, he pulled it from his pocket. One look at the caller ID and he was on his feet. He flashed the phone toward Brandt, who nodded, and then he walked swiftly out of the café, phone to his ear.

  “It’s one of the detectives,” Brandt explained. “It must be pretty important if she called him as soon as he turned his phone on. Probably just some detail that didn’t get into a report.” He smiled at Kerry and Sandler, then took a sip of coffee.

  “Does he often leave details out of his reports?” Sandler asked.

  Brandt blinked at him, twice. “Never.”

  “So what you’re telling us is that you have no idea why a detective would be calling Gabriel during his wedding trip,” Kerry said, “but you didn’t want to worry us.”

  He cast her a critical look. “We’ve spent too much time together.”

  Sandler was looking through the windows out to the sidewalk. “He’s pacing,” he reported. “Well, at least now we know it’s not good news.”

  Brandt shot him a look through narrowed eyes that could have brought the temperature in the room down fifteen degrees. “You seem to have gotten to know Gabriel quite well over the last week. I would love to hear how you two met.” He leaned forward, his expression one of rapt attention—the kind an eagle might lavish on its small, furry prey.

  “We—” Sandler began, his voice a high-pitched whisper. He cleared his throat. “We met at the airport….”

  IT WAS a full twenty minutes later when Donnelly returned to the café table. He found Sandler glossed with what appeared to be nervous perspiration, Brandt in his trademark interrogation pose that brought his full muscular body to bear on the suspect, and Kerry looking helplessly between the two as if they were nitro and glycerin, headed for a collision.

  Donnelly resumed his seat at the table just as Sandler was describing how they had managed to get to the ship when so many of the other passengers hadn’t. “Well, this looks like a delightful exercise in third-degree storytelling, but I’m afraid I’ll have to interrupt for a moment.”

  “What’d she say?” Brandt asked. He looked away from Sandler, who slumped forward and took the deep breath he’d clearly been missing.

  “I had asked her to look into something for me as we left New York,” Donnelly said, and he turned to Sandler.

  The color drained from Sandler’s face. He took a halting breath, then another. “Trevor?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

  Donnelly nodded. “She found him.”

  Sandler blinked hard. “He’s… he’s alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  Sandler doubled over as if punched in the gut. He panted with the exertion of taking in what Donnelly had said. He gave a small groan, as if hearing this was physically painful to him.

  It may have been, Donnelly thought. But there was more he needed to know.

  “Trevor is not well,” Donnelly said, being as gentle as he could.

  “Still?” Sandler asked. This was the first word he’d managed to speak out loud, as if the outrage of it had driven his voice back into action.

  “He’s apparently been in and out of various clinics and treatment centers ever since the accident,” Donnelly explained.

  “But… what’s wrong with him? It’s been so many years—how can he still be…?” Tears filled his eyes.

  “She wasn’t able to get his medical records, of course. But his parents have had to file custodial paperwork for him every few years to be able to keep him under their care. The last time this was done, there was a bit of controversy, and it ended up in court because one of the doctors who examined Trevor filed a dissenting opinion.”

  “Dissenting about what?”

  “About….” Donnelly consulted his notes, wanting to be sure he got the wording right. “I asked her to text me the passages.” He looked at his phone and read, “He was concerned about Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks’s continued use of psychotropic therapies.”

  “What does that mean?” Sandler was crying now, but he steadfastly ignored the tears streaking down his cheeks.

  “She said there was one sentence in his report she wanted to be sure you knew about. He wrote that ‘every time Trevor so much as speaks the name Sandler, his parents seek out new doctors willing to try ever more radical interventions to expunge the memories that trouble him.’”

  Sandler jolted and let out a gasp. The other three people around the table could only watch, horrified, as this terrible news sank in. “I think I’m going to be sick.” He stood and, holding on to the backs of chairs as he went, rushed off toward the bathroom.

  “I’d better go and make sure he’s okay,” Kerry said, getting to her feet.

  “Shouldn’t Gabriel go?” Brandt asked, turning to Donnelly. “You’re his friend—you should be the one to help him through this.”

  Donnelly was touched that Brandt was so easily able to set aside his only half-pretend jealousy. “You’re the best,” he said, and kissed
his fiancé on the forehead as he rose. “I’m sure he’ll be fine—it’s just a lot to take in.”

  He found Sandler at the bathroom sink, splashing cold water on his face.

  “I’m sorry to drop all of that on you,” he said.

  Sandler gripped the sink as if it were a life preserver. He was still panting from shock.

  “All these years,” he said, shaking his head. “All these years.”

  “I know it must be hard to hear,” Donnelly ventured. “But there’s more you should know.”

  “Oh fuck, Gabriel, I don’t think I can take any more,” Sandler said with a defeated sigh. “Can you just give me a minute to try to fight my breakfast back down?”

  “You should hear the rest of it.” He handed Sandler a paper towel. “Take all the time you need to get yourself together, then come back to the table, okay?”

  Sandler closed his eyes for a long moment, then nodded silently.

  Donnelly withdrew, leaving him to decide when to face the rest of information Donnelly had gathered from the detective.

  “He’ll be out in a few,” Donnelly said with an attempt at jauntiness when he returned to the table. “Just getting himself together.”

  “So, we’re assuming Trevor was an early boyfriend?” Brandt asked, as both he and Kerry leaned in, expressions of deep concern on their faces. “And there was an accident of some kind?”

  Donnelly briefly outlined the story of Sandler and Trevor, including the horrific prom-night accident.

  “What kind of parent does that to their own child?” Kerry demanded, clearly furious at the Hendrickses, about whom she’d known nothing ten minutes prior. “They need to be stopped.”

  “There’s probably a lot we don’t know.” Brandt’s voice was soothing—something he could likely only accomplish with Donnelly’s fingers laced in his own. “Situations like this can be very complicated.”

  “Situations like this,” Kerry replied, biting off her words, “are a lot more common than you realize. I hear from doctors all the time about parents who demand meds for their kids—almost always it’s the sons—because they don’t pay attention in school, or they mouth off at home, or they get caught kissing a boy. Attention deficit, depression, antisocial behavior—they want a diagnosis, and they want a solution in a pill bottle.”

  “Kerry, take a breath,” Brandt soothed, putting a hand on her arm.

  She yanked it away. “And you know whose drugs end up being prescribed as some kind of cure for adolescence and family dysfunction? Mine. Medications that our chemists work and test and perfect for a decade or more to treat a real medical problem. The people who come up with these drugs never intended for them to be used to break the spirit of angsty teenagers, and the doctors know the only reason parents demand them is to make their kids docile, but they prescribe them anyway to keep everyone happy and keep the co-payments coming in. God, it’s such a fucked-up system.”

  “That’s horrible,” Donnelly said. He thought about teenagers like Jonah Fischer, whose parents would have jumped at a drug that promised to keep their star wrestler son on the straight and narrow. And he never would have found that Casey Melville, his best friend, could also be the love of his life.

  “Again, we don’t know what’s going on with this Trevor situation,” Brandt said, maintaining his calming intonation. Kerry looked ready to seek out and strangle the Hendrickses, and Donnelly felt the same—or worse, because of what else he knew that had yet to be revealed.

  “There’s more to the story,” Donnelly said quietly.

  “Is it something you can tell Sandler? Because he’s coming back now.” Brandt tipped his head toward Sandler as he approached from the other side of the cafe.

  Donnelly nodded but said nothing more.

  “Sorry for the freak-out, folks,” Sandler said with a smile and a willfully upbeat tone. “I promise I won’t turn into a blubbering mess again.”

  Kerry put her arm around him. “You’ve had a shock—don’t apologize for needing some time to take it in.”

  He smiled at her. “Thanks.” Then he closed his eyes for a moment, and when they opened, he was looking straight at Donnelly. “You said there was more. So let’s have it.” He took a deep breath.

  “As I said, Trevor’s not well,” Donnelly began, softly and slowly. “He’s in a kind of clinic, seeing a psychiatric specialist. Seems the Hendrickses are doing exactly what the dissenting doctor said they would—seeking out anyone who will promise to make their son… well, straight, apparently.”

  “Oh God,” Kerry and Sandler said at the same time. They turned and looked at each other in surprise.

  Donnelly continued. “Right now he’s in Geneva, at the clinic of Dr.—”

  “Rauthmann,” Kerry said. Her eyes were closed tightly, as if she were hoping not to hear even the slightest hint of confirmation.

  Donnelly, stunned, sat back in his chair. “Yes, it’s a Dr. Rauthmann,” he said slowly. “How on earth did you know that?”

  All eyes were on Kerry.

  “He’s been a… well, a problem for us—for my company—for years. We make a fairly comprehensive line of psychotropics, antidepressants, and other therapeutics for mental illness. And by and large the doctors who prescribe our products do so on-label.”

  She must have noted the blank faces looking back at her, because she took a deep breath and began again. “When a doctor prescribes a medication, he or she will normally prescribe it in accordance with the recommendations we make, based on the results of clinical trials and other research. A drug can also be prescribed off-label, such as when an antidepressant turns out to have a positive effect on chronic pain. It can’t be marketed for that purpose unless we do another round of clinical trials, but doctors are pretty much free to prescribe a drug off-label if they think it will help their patients.”

  “That’s actually kind of scary,” Sandler observed.

  “Again, the vast majority of doctors are responsible, and they are still subject to malpractice action if they aren’t. But there are a very few clinicians who use drugs in a completely irresponsible way.”

  “And our Dr. Rauthmann is one of those?”

  Kerry nodded.

  Brandt shook his head. “I’m still stumped as to how you happen to know this damning information about a random Swiss doctor.”

  “It’s not random. He’s actually very well known to my company—in fact, we’ve been trying to get him to stop using our products for years. But every time we manage to pin him down and prove he’s harming patients, he disappears and resurfaces somewhere else. Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this because we’re a publicly traded company and this is kind of insider info.” She took a deep breath and plowed ahead anyway. “Every time we take action against a rogue doctor, the value of the drug we yank out of his hands drops a little because people read about it being abused, and then our stock takes a hit. But I’m glad to say that we’re in the final stages with this guy.” She shrugged grimly. “In a couple of months, he’s going to be looking for a new way to screw people up.”

  “But you said Trevor’s there. Now,” Sandler said weakly, turning to Donnelly. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  Kerry took a deep breath, her distaste for what she was about to say evident. “Rauthmann offers parents like the Hendrickses hope. Hope that their kids can be made ‘normal.’ He uses high doses of one of our psychotropics—a dosage far in excess of what we recommend, an amount that’s never been clinically tested—to achieve a permanent behavioral modification.”

  “What kind of modification?” Brandt asked as he picked Donnelly’s phone up from the table.

  “All I know is what I read in the attorneys’ summaries. We get dragged in as a codefendant every time someone like Rauthmann gets sued for malpractice. It takes us a while to get removed from the suit, and during the hearings, we get to hear about the horrible things these maniacs use our drugs for. I don’t know of any victims of Rauthmann who have sued him, but I�
��ve seen testimony about young men who have been treated by other doctors who follow a similar protocol. It’s… horrifying.”

  “Oh my God,” Sandler moaned.

  “What, exactly, does that mean for Trevor?” Donnelly asked, leaning forward.

  “It means his parents will get what they want. Rauthmann will ensure Trevor never again expresses any kind of feelings for Sandler. He may not even remember him. And he certainly will never have anything like a healthy emotional connection to anyone. Rauthmann essentially hollows them out, which is—and it fills me with disgust to even say this—apparently what some parents would prefer to having a gay kid.”

  “That’s medieval,” whispered Donnelly. This was so far beyond the realm of possibility that he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  “But it’s actually happening,” Brandt said, handing Donnelly’s phone back to him. The web page of Dr. Rauthmann appeared, promising hope to families whose sons were experiencing “dysfunctions of the sexual identity.”

  Donnelly held up his phone for the others to see while he looked at Brandt. Wordlessly, they conferred and nodded in unison.

  “We’ll go with you,” Donnelly said to Sandler.

  “What? Where?” Sandler was clearly overwhelmed.

  “To Geneva. We’ll leave right now. We have to get to him before—”

  “But your wedding,” Sandler said, his confusion evident.

  “Is in nearly a week. Plenty of time.” Donnelly’s voice conveyed exactly the tone he’d hoped for: brave, certain. He could be these things with Brandt next to him once again.

  “You c-can’t possibly—” Sandler stuttered.

  Brandt stood, towering over the table, resolute. “We can, and we are. I’ll go make the arrangements.” He turned and strode out of the cafe.

  Donnelly smiled and held his phone aloft. As if on cue, Brandt marched back into the cafe, plucked the phone from Donnelly’s hand, kissed him on the head, and strode out again.