When I came downstairs, I checked my phone again, but there was still no response to my texts. I started on the dishes, thinking about Josh’s CAR T-cell infusion tomorrow. I had the money in my secret checking account, ready to make the final payment tomorrow.
The tension that had kept me going for the last few weeks eased a little at the thought.
Soon this would all be over.
But I couldn’t get something Gabe had said to me out of my head. When we’d stopped at McDonald’s during the pillhead tour, Ben had gone to the bathroom, leaving Gabe and me on our own.
“What will you do after this?” I’d asked him. I waved a fry in the air so he knew “this” meant selling drugs, not just lunch.
He’d shrugged, chewing a massive bite of burger. “I’d like to get to know Josh. See what he’s like.”
“Gabe.” I shook my head. “You know I can’t allow that.”
He didn’t answer, just kept chewing.
“What about your girlfriend? Maybe you should settle down, get married, have kids. You’d be a great dad.”
“Maybe.” He seemed to think about it.
I stared at a grease-drenched fry, my stomach turning. “Will you and Ben keep going? Will you keep selling?”
He took another giant bite, shrugging. “Maybe. I don’t know. Never hurts to have a little extra cash. I kinda have the perfect way to wash the money.”
I snorted. “Cute. Illegally earning money to support an honest living.”
He stared at me, still chewing. “What about you? Say Josh lives, you get everything paid off, what’ll you do?”
“I’ll go back to the way it was: working at the clinic, helping people, being a loving wife, dependable mom, and respected doctor.”
Maybe my dreams were humbler, but at least they were honest, born from love, not greed.
It was his turn to snort. “You organized an opioid drug ring. People will be addicted because of you. They may die. You’re not innocent here.…”
The sound of Josh crying wrenched me from my thoughts. I raced upstairs, Charlie at my heels, heart thudding with fear as I burst into Josh’s bedroom. The room reeked of urine. Josh was sitting in bed, sobbing pitiful, jagged sobs that reached into my chest and wrenched at my heart.
“I’m sorry, Mommy!” he wept. “I peed myself!”
“Oh, my love.” Tears scorched my throat. I knelt and drew him into my arms. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s the chemo.”
I held him as he cried, trying to reassure him, but he was mortified and inconsolable that he’d wet himself. It was a long time before he stopped crying, but once he’d calmed down I filled the bath with warm water and carefully lifted his fragile body in.
“My legs hurt so bad,” he sniffed.
“I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“And my fingers. Look.” Josh lifted his fingers. Water slid off the wrinkled skin. My throat constricted.
His fingernails were peeling off the nail beds.
“Oh, Joshy. Let me get you the ice.” I ran downstairs and filled a Tupperware bowl with ice and water. We’d been told to keep his hands and feet in ice baths to reduce the chances of him losing the nails, but it didn’t look like it was working.
I put the bowl of ice water on my lap and he dipped his fingers in.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“A little.”
I kissed Josh’s bald head. “Not much longer. The Luke-Skywalker-esis is all trained up and you’ll get your infusion tomorrow. Dr. Palmer will send those mini Millennium Falcons into your blood and they’ll start fighting the Empire, okay?”
Josh nodded.
“Are you worried?” I asked.
He shrugged
“You know, it’s okay to feel lots of things at the same time, Joshy. You can feel scared and worried and excited. That’s all okay. Those feelings are how you prepare for new challenges.”
He looked at me from lashless eyes and asked: “Am I going to be sick?”
I hesitated, not wanting to lie, but desperate to reassure him. Nate and I had been warned that neurotoxicity and cytokine release syndrome, a form of systemic inflammatory response, were the most common side effects from CAR T-cell therapy. CRS could range from mild to severe, and was sometimes even fatal. But not every kid got it. We’d agreed that the short-term pain was worth the long-term gain.
“I’m not sure,” I said, as honestly as I dared. “You might feel like you have the flu and you might throw up some.”
My dad used to say, sometimes you’re dealt a losing hand, and that really sucks. But if you always fold, you’ll have a pretty tough time in life. Keep playing, keep fighting, and sometimes you can make that losing hand a winning one.
“Sweetheart, I am so, so sorry this is happening.” My vision blurred with tears. “I would do anything to fix it for you.”
“It’s okay, Mommy. You didn’t make me sick. It isn’t your fault. And I’m really strong. I can keep fighting.”
I choked out a little laugh. My sweet boy. He got it.
“You’re doing so well, Joshy.” I brushed my thumb across his cheek, tenderness throbbing in my belly. “You’re so strong and you’re going to fly through this. And Mommy and Daddy will be right here with you. Okay?”
Josh nodded and closed his eyes again. “Okay. Can I go back to bed now?”
“Of course.”
I carefully lifted Josh out of the bath, wiping a fluffy towel over ribs that poked out like a skeleton’s. I gently applied moisturizer to his skin, which was dry and flaking, and changed him into his too-baggy Star Wars pajamas.
I couldn’t believe we’d only found out about Josh’s illness less than a month ago. This horrible waiting felt like our new normal.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow he’ll start getting better.
Charlie flopped in a corner of the room as I put fresh sheets on Josh’s bed. I lay next to him as he drifted off to sleep, letting myself remember when I was pregnant with Josh, his body floating inside mine, the tiny pings of his feet as they brushed against the skin that separated us. How strange it was that there was never a time in your life you could be so close to someone, but still so very, very far away. He was inside me but I couldn’t hold him, couldn’t touch him.
I’d watched him roll under my hands and ached for him to arrive. I wanted a family so much. I deserved a family.
After Josh was born, the doctor had lifted him onto my chest. I’d felt completely and hopelessly lost. He was so tiny; he’d arrived too early and his skin was a disturbing yellow. The nurses swept him away to get the care he needed. But even once he was better and we went home, I felt strangely disconnected.
As the days and nights wore on, I went through all the motions. I slept next to Josh, Nate almost relegated to a helper as I held our son, swaddled him, fed him, changed him. I wanted my mother. I wanted my father. I felt alone and adrift.
It wasn’t until a few nights after we came home that the strange distance eased. Josh started crying and I stumbled to him, exhausted and delirious. But as soon as I picked him up he quieted, nuzzling into my chest, his tiny fingers gripping mine. I sat in the rocking chair, his little body pressed against mine, chest rising and falling, his soft newborn smell twining around me.
He’d looked up at me with that somber, wise expression infants have. And right there, in the stillness of night, I’d realized this was my family. Right here, in my arms.
I finally belonged.
Now Josh’s breath came in wheezy little pants, his eyes pinched shut, as if even in his sleep he was warding off waves of pain. I felt so helpless. All I could do was hold him and tell myself that this treatment would fix him.
I was no longer a weak, helpless girl. I’d worked hard to shed her like a snake sheds its skin.
I would save him.
CHAPTER 34
AFTER JOSH HAD FALLEN back asleep, I went downstairs, my mind returning to Gabe’s text: Ben’s using again.
I tried calling Ben, but he still wasn’t answering. I was terrified he’d overdosed and was lying on the cold warehouse floor, his heartbeat slowing, his breath crushed in his lungs.
I called Gabe, but there was no answer from him either. Breaking my own rule, I tried his personal phone. He didn’t answer, and when I tried calling again he’d turned his phone off.
I paced the living room, Charlie watching with large, inquisitive eyes from the couch. Finally, desperate and plagued by a fear of something I couldn’t quite name, I went upstairs, wrapped a sleeping Josh in a big blanket, then bundled him into the car. I’d have to find Ben myself.
Josh woke as I pulled up next to the chain-link fence by the warehouse. “Where are we, Mommy?”
“I just need to check the tire. Stay here, okay? Don’t get out or let anybody in no matter what, you hear me?”
Josh nodded and snuggled down under the blanket, seeming to go back to sleep. I hovered between my instinct to not leave my child in a dark car in the middle of the night and my fear that something horrible had happened to my brother.
I locked the car doors, slipped through the fence, and jogged quickly over the cracked cement. The moon cast silver streaks across the ground, lighting my way. Frost shimmered on the trees, the chill of darkness and a freezing wind pressing a heavy bleakness on me. My hands were stiff with cold. In the distance, the sound of the waterfall was a menacing roar, plumes of mist coating the air.
I passed a battered old motorcycle pushed into a large bush at the side of the warehouse. Ben’s?
“Ben?” I stepped inside, instantly hit by the smell of damp.
The building was warmer than the last time I’d been here, but I shivered anyway. Water dripped insistently from the ceiling, a mournful, haunting sound that gave me the creeps.
“Ben?”
No reply.
I swept my flashlight over the cavernous space. The light cut through the murky darkness, revealing an open door next to the one leading to the room where Ben had been making the pills.
I crept toward it. “Ben?” I hissed.
I peered inside. A lantern flickered warily from the floor. The room was small, maybe an old storage closet, and stank of sweat and dirty clothes. I saw a backpack and a pair of old tennis shoes sitting atop a camper bed. I felt a wash of relief—Ben had gotten my warning text in time; he’d obviously packed up his stuff and come here.
Then I saw a figure on the floor.
“Ben!”
I rushed to him, dropping to my knees. I tugged on his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. His arm flopped limply against his chest. Something fluttered out of his hand onto the floor. A slash of crimson, like blood.
Damp, covered in mud, it was still unmistakably the silk scarf that Violeta had been wearing the night she died.
My stomach plunged. It must’ve come off when Gabe and I dragged her to the water. And Ben had found it.
I shoved the scarf into my back pocket. My brother’s face was tinted a horrible bluish gray, and when I shined my flashlight in his eyes, his pupils were tiny, like flecks of pepper.
“Oh, no, no, no!”
I shoved my fingers against his carotid artery, checking for a pulse. He was alive. Barely, but his heart was still beating. The bigger problem right now was how shallow his breathing was. Respiratory depression.
I thought of the naloxone in my car. If Ben was overdosing from oxy, it would work. But I didn’t have a high enough dose to treat fentanyl. Still, it was worth a try.
I raced back the way I’d come, shoving past the overgrown bushes at the side of the warehouse and staggering to my car. I threw open the trunk and fumbled with the zip of my first aid kit. I grabbed the naloxone and the needle, slammed the trunk closed. In the backseat, I saw Josh jump and twist to look at me with wide, frightened eyes. I put a finger up, motioning that I’d be right back.
In the warehouse, I knelt next to Ben.
“Come on. Come on.”
I ripped the orange top off the vial and jabbed the needle into the top, carefully drawing the naloxone into the syringe.
My heart was thumping, but my hands were steady, the way I’d been trained. I yanked the collar of Ben’s sweater down and plunged the needle into his shoulder.
Nothing happened.
“Ben, wake up!” I slapped him hard across the face. Still nothing.
I started on rescue breaths. I was on my third breath when Ben twitched. His eyelids fluttered open. I sat back on my heels, tears blurring my vision.
“You’re okay,” I whispered, pulling his head onto my lap. My tears splashed onto his face. “Don’t do that again! You’re okay! Don’t do that again!” I said over and over.
Ben blinked at me, dazed, then rolled onto his stomach and retched, dopesick and trembling.
“We have to get you to a hospital,” I told him.
If there were enough opioids in his system, he could overdose again as soon as the naloxone wore off. The problem was, the hospital would report him to the police. He might go to jail. And what then? Would he talk?
No, of course not. Besides, I had Violeta’s scarf now. And information that would keep him quiet.
“Come on.” I grabbed Ben’s coat and yanked it on him, then put an arm under his armpits and helped him to his feet.
He staggered next to me, disoriented and weak, teeth chattering, as I guided him to the car. “V… V…”
“Shhh.” I heaved him into the front seat. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Why… do you always… try to save me?” he slurred.
I reached across to buckle him in, but didn’t answer. The truth was, I couldn’t give up on him. Family was family. As long as there was breath in his lungs, I wouldn’t give up hope that he could be saved.
But you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, an insidious voice whispered.
Suddenly headlights flashed and tires crunched as a car pulled up next to mine.
“You all right there?” a woman’s voice called.
I straightened too fast, bashing my head against the roof. I rubbed my throbbing skull and squinted. The driver was an older woman, with sad, droopy eyes, snow-white hair. A stranger.
“We’re fine,” I called out.
“You sure?” She pushed her door open and started to get out.
“We’re fine,” I snapped, sounding harsher than I’d intended. “I’m a doctor. I’ve got it.”
The woman hesitated, then climbed back in her car. “All right, if you’re sure. Bye then.”
I shut Ben’s door and hurried around to the driver’s side.
Josh was staring at me with wide eyes.
“Josh, this is your uncle Ben.”
* * *
NATE AMBLED into the emergency room, throwing waves and grins like candy from a parade float. Kia followed like a dark shadow in his wake, looking like she’d eaten a sour grape.
I watched my husband and rubbed my forehead. How did he do it? He never appeared to hurry, to worry. Only I could see the strain in his eyes, the pinch at the corners of his mouth. The toll his latest case and Josh’s illness were taking.
“Hey, babe. Thanks for calling me.” He kissed my cheek with his eyes open. He knelt and stroked a hand over Josh’s head, which was on my lap as he dozed.
I couldn’t have Nate finding out Ben was here from someone else, so I’d called him as soon as the doctors had admitted Ben, telling him my brother had called me from Target. I’d been waiting here since Cass had wheeled him into the emergency room. Before she’d come to get him, Ben had stared at me with wide, questioning eyes from where he was lying on a gurney.
“V… V…” He could barely wrap his tongue around his words, the sound pouring slow as wet asphalt from his mouth.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I’d reassured him.
“Vvvv…!” He was getting agitated.
I pressed him down onto the gurney. “Shhh!” I hissed. I bent lower and whispered
to him: “That scarf you have, was it Violeta’s?”
He nodded.
“I saw it in Gabe’s back pocket. He had it when he met me at the hospital.”
Ben’s eyes widened. My gaze darted to Cass, who was approaching.
“Listen to me carefully,” I whispered. “Nate thinks you killed Santiago. He’s going to question you, maybe arrest you. Don’t say a word. He doesn’t have any evidence, just theories. I’ll fix this for us, but you just have to stay quiet.”
Ben had slumped back onto the gurney, eyes closed, as Cass arrived. He nodded, and I knew I’d bought myself a little time.
“What’s going to happen to Ben?” I asked Nate now.
He sat next to me. “Ben’s a person of interest in our case. Kia will question him and find out if he has any information once he’s stable. When he’s released, we’ll likely bring him in for more formal questioning.”
“You mean you’ll arrest him.”
“Only if he refuses to be questioned.”
“He didn’t kill that guy, Nate. He’s been in rehab.”
“I already told you, Em.” Nate’s shoulders tensed. “I’ll check. Just let me finish my investigation.”
Fury and helplessness overwhelmed me. My husband’s unimpeachable sense of right and wrong was something I’d loved when we first met. But now it felt like a trap. Good, I’d learned, meant different things to different people. I wanted to lie on the ground and scream and rail against the unfairness of it all.
I was a fool. I’d thought Ben could stay clean. I should’ve known addiction was indiscriminate and eternal. It invaded the homes of rich and poor, black and white, young and old. Its effects were far-reaching, its causes deep. And it never, never went fully away.
As a family, we’d never told people about Ben’s problem or talked about it with friends. It was a secret. Our family’s nasty little secret. The night my parents were killed, they’d been picking me up from a friend’s house when Dad’s cell phone rang. It was one of Ben’s friends calling to say they couldn’t wake Ben up.
As with so many other things, Ben was to blame for our parents’ deaths.
I shouldn’t have trusted him, and now people were dying. How high had he been when he’d been mixing the fentanyl with oxy? Too high to use the right measurements, that was for sure. Julia had overdosed today. Alice Jones had died. Had they both taken the pills he’d mixed? How many others were at risk?
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