Dante's Poison

by Lynne Raimondo

  I looked up and realized with a crushing sensation that I couldn’t see any of her features. I nodded and asked with apprehension, “What happened to me?”

  “You went on a little sleepwalking expedition. Probably because of the concussion. No, don’t try to sit up yet. I’ll elevate the headrest for you. Can I get you some water to drink?”

  “Yes, but you’ll have to untie my hands first. And I have to urinate.”

  I felt her fingers slipping the knots on the restraints. “Don’t mind these. We only did it to make sure you’d stay put. You were pretty disoriented when they dropped you off downstairs. Here now, you’re free. But careful with the left arm. There’s an IV line in it.”

  She placed a plastic bottle next to me on the bedclothes and went off to allow me some privacy, returning some moments later with a cup full of water and ice. I took it in both hands, found the straw with my mouth, and lapped at it greedily.

  “That’s good. From the look of things I’d say you’re still dehydrated. Is it OK if I take your stats?”

  I nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “Naomi.”

  While Naomi took my temperature I felt around my face. There was stubble on my cheek, but no cuts or bruises I could detect. I flexed my shoulders and wiggled my toes. I wasn’t broken or sore. Other than being back in the gloom, I felt fine. Just to be sure of where things stood, I waved my hand back and forth in front of my face, sensing only the faintest of shadows.

  “What time is it?” I croaked.

  “Four in the morning. They brought you in around eight last night.”

  She slipped on a blood-pressure cuff and took my pulse. “You’ll live. One thirty-two over a hundred. Pretty good for a guy who almost got flattened by a commuter train.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Naomi readjusted my IV and went to stand at the foot of the bed. “Don’t you remember? You were in the middle of the Illinois Central tracks, just south of the Van Buren Street station. God only knows what you thought you were doing. You were just lucky there was a South Shore employee checking the lines when you climbed down from the platform. They’d still be picking up the pieces if he hadn’t pulled you out of the way in time.”

  So that explained all the lights and the noise.

  “And my things?” I asked dully, remembering now how I had thrown away most of the contents of my wallet.

  “Gone with the wind, as they say. Except for your clothes and the picture of the little boy. You were still clutching it in your hand when they put you on the stretcher. It’s right here on the nightstand. What an adorable little face. Is he yours?”

  I felt myself starting to shake.

  “Oh, honey,” Naomi said, returning to my side and putting a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. What a big mouth I have. I shouldn’t have told you all those things. Don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine. And I know one little fellow who’s going to be very happy to see his father again. Speaking of which, do you want us to contact them for you?”

  “Who?” I asked, wiping the back of my hand across my cheek.

  “Why, your family. I’m sure they must be very worried. But until you woke up we didn’t know who to call.” She gave me a tissue.

  I took it and blew. “No. I, uh . . . don’t live with them. It’s better that they don’t find out.”

  “Are you sure? You look like you could really use somebody to hold you right now. Isn’t there anyone I can call?”

  There was. But she was somewhere far away where no phone could reach her.

  Tim the resident came by to see me first thing in the morning. “I’ve got to hand it to you. You really know how to do concussion. Your pupils were as big as eight balls when they wheeled you in last night. And you were babbling away about some Indian chick and Sleeping Beauty and catching a rabbit before it escaped.”

  I was sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray over my lap. I forked a mouthful of powdered eggs into my mouth and made chewing motions. “Are you sure it was a concussion?”

  “I’m still waiting on the results of another scan, but it’s the most likely explanation. You took a helluva blow on the old noggin last week. Didn’t I warn you about a delayed reaction?”

  I replaced the fork on the tray. “True. But the scan you took then was clean, you said so. How much do you want to bet you won’t find anything new?”

  “How much money do you have? Oh, wait, I forgot. The switchman said you were merrily throwing away everything in your wallet when he spotted you.”

  I shot him an evil look and took a sip of something masquerading as orange juice. “With all due deference to your vast experience, I’ve treated people with concussions, and it wasn’t anything like that.”

  “How so, ancient one?”

  “I wasn’t just confused or disoriented. I was seeing things. Things that weren’t really there.”

  Lying in the darkened room for the last several hours, with nothing to do but replay the previous day’s events, I’d come to several conclusions. First, that what had happened to me after leaving Jane’s place didn’t fit the symptoms of any concussion I’d ever heard of. Second, that I must have been walking around in a waking dream. I explained this to Tim.

  “OK,” Tim said. “But explain to me how a blind man ‘sees’ things in a dream. Sounds, smells, stuff like that I get. But you say you were literally experiencing visions.”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “The same thing happens to me when I go to sleep at night. My mind isn’t blind. For that matter, technically speaking, neither are my eyes. The only thing that’s missing is a working connection between the two. But in here”—I tapped my head—“I can still see things I remember from when I was sighted. The only thing I can’t do is visualize someone or something I’ve never laid eyes on. You, for instance.”

  “I won’t comment on everything you’re missing,” Tim said.

  “And that’s why I know I wasn’t just confused.” I took him through the old man in the lobby, the woman in the plaid coat, the street scenes, and the views of Lake Michigan and Grant Park. “Everything I saw—or thought I was seeing—was based on memory, probably dating from the year after I moved to Chicago. I did a lot of walking back then because I was dealing with something . . . something personal, and it seemed to help. In and around the Loop, up and down the lakefront, and when I had the time, farther afield. Those images, the places I went and the people I saw, are still sitting in my brain, and because of my photographic memory, just as clear today as when I first saw them. Yesterday, I wasn’t really ‘seeing’ anything. I was remembering. Except for the one thing I couldn’t remember.”

  “Which was?”

  I handed him Louis’s picture, which was tucked into the bedclothes beside me.

  “I won’t ask whose kid this is,” Tim said. “Though it doesn’t take a Mendel to figure it out.”

  “I’ll tell you about it over drinks sometime. The point is, I’ve never seen the face in that photograph. So I couldn’t see it yesterday in my dream.”

  “I’m with you so far, but what do you think accounts for this extended dream state if not a concussion?”

  “That’s simple, too,” I said. “I was drugged.”

  “Seriously?” Tim exclaimed. “That’s what you think?”

  I nodded.

  “But who would have done that to you?”

  There was only one person I could think of, and she was probably still enjoying the joke. But I didn’t say anything about it to Tim, merely securing his promise to run some blood tests. If I was right, the tests would prove it, and I could decide what to do about the stunt then. In the meantime, I promised to be an obedient geezer and rest quietly in my hospital bed.

  I spent a boring morning listening to daytime TV and was picking through a stew of questionable origin when Tim returned, bursting with youthful excitement.

  “Holy shades of Timothy Leary, you were right!” he cried.

  “What was it?” I asked,
though I thought I already knew.

  “I think I’m going to regret what I said to you about a concussion. It was LSD. Somebody slipped you acid.”

  “You’re sure of it?”

  “Absolutely. You’d metabolized most of it, but there were still enough traces in your bloodstream to make a positive identification. But what clued you in?”

  “You don’t really expect me to tell you that, do you? Let’s just say I had a misspent youth.”

  “The thing I don’t understand is, how did it get into your system? Those little squares with the cartoon characters are hard to mistake, even for someone like you. You’d have to be tricked into licking it.”

  “Now who’s setting himself up for criminal prosecution?” I asked dryly. “And it didn’t have to be a tab. You can put LSD in a pill. In fact, it probably won’t be long until it’s approved once again for medical use. I was just reading about a Harvard study where it was being used as an experimental treatment for chronic headaches and—”

  I stopped and sat straight up.

  Experimental treatment.

  Pill.

  “What’s the matter?” Tim asked. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “Do you know where my clothes are?” I asked quickly, nearly knocking over the tray table with my lunch in my hurry to get up.

  “Should be right over here,” he said, going over to a door in the wall and opening it. “What do you want?”

  I threw off the bedcovers and stood, hiking the hospital gown around my shoulders so it wouldn’t fall off. “Whatever you can find that’s still in my pockets.”

  “OK. Let’s see. Phone. Change. Bottle of pills.”

  “The phone and the bottle, please.”

  He delivered them both to my trembling hands. I put the bottle on the bed and switched on my phone and swiped through the icons until I found the one I’d used to photograph the bottle the week before. The photo that I’d stored under the name White Rabbit.

  “What are you doing?” Tim asked.

  “Be patient. You’ll see.”

  Double tapping to get in, I took another photo and asked Weary to find the same image among my saved results. “Searching . . .” she said. “This may take a few minutes.”

  It felt more like a century.

  Finally Weary announced, “No results. Would you like me to search the Internet?”

  “No. Try again,” I said with mounting impatience.

  A few minutes later, the same reply came back. “No results among saved images.” I sat back down on the bed in shock.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Tim said.

  I blinked several times in disbelief. “It looks like that rabbit escaped after all,” I said. “But maybe now I know where it disappeared to.”

  The next several days went by in a whirl of inactivity. For me, that is. At first, it was too early to call in the police—all I had was a hunch, after all—but I kept everyone else busy: Tim getting tests run on the bottle of pills that had been substituted for mine, Bjorn performing a thorough background check on the individual I now suspected of doping me, Josh making some discreet inquiries among our colleagues. When Bjorn’s preliminary report came back, confirming some of my suspicions but adding a whole new layer of intrigue, I also put in calls to Tony Di Marco and Rusty Halloran, who were only too happy to help.

  Other than that, there wasn’t much I could contribute to the effort, so after going out and buying another cane—at the rate I was losing them, I ought to have been buying futures in fiberglass—I did what I ought to have done long before and went to visit Hallie. In the last several days, they’d transferred her from the ICU to a private room on the hospital’s fifth floor, where most of the neurological patients were housed. I exited the elevator, asked at the nurses’ station which room she was in, and didn’t object when one of them offered to walk me over, leaving my cane against the wall just outside the door.

  Upon entering, I was immediately attacked by a dog.

  I may not have done enough before now to explain my aversion to the canine species, which probably has its roots in some long-forgotten childhood episode. The fact is that dogs and I have always gotten along like—well, dogs. I don’t like them and they don’t like me, a mutual antipathy that is usually expressed on the dog side by hysterical barking, jaw snapping, or aggressive exploration of my privates. Blindness only made matters worse, since I couldn’t always be certain whether the beast baring its fangs to me was a five-pound Chihuahua or an eighty-pound Doberman. This one’s size, however, was no mystery. It nearly knocked me down when it leaped up to prevent me from coming into the room, and was now emitting a menacing growl at my feet.

  “Lola!” came a sharp command. “Bad girl. You know you’re not supposed to do that. Get over here and lie down.” Then to me: “I’m so sorry. She’s been trained not to do that sort of thing, but she forgets sometimes.”

  Lola quieted and took herself off, toenails scratching on the floor, to where her owner seemed to be seated a few yards to my left. I took a step in that direction. “No need to apologize. I seem to have that effect on them. You must be Hallie’s brother.”

  “That’s me,” he said, rising from his chair. “Gerry Sanchez.”

  I figured he was waiting for me to take his outstretched hand and said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve never really figured out how blind people do it.”

  “Are we talking about sex?” he said. “It’s really not all that complicated.”

  I laughed. “I meant shake with each other.”

  Gerry laughed, too, a mirthful sound from deep in his belly. “So you’re the mystery man we’ve all been wondering about. What took you so long? Here, try this. Come closer and wave it around. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.”

  I did as he asked and felt my hand captured in a powerful grip.

  “Mark Angelotti,” I said.

  “I know your name. Hallie talks about you all the time. I expect the first thing you’ll want to do is see her.”

  He guided me over to her bedside and put my hand on hers. It was warm and pulsating with the slow rise and fall of her chest. I stayed there quietly for a while, breathing steadily in and out myself.

  “She’s gonna be all right, you know,” Gerry said from beside me. “The doctor said so. He was in here half an hour ago, checking on her. They’re going to start easing her out of her sleep tomorrow.”

  I nodded dumbly, then remembered he couldn’t see it. “That’s great,” I said, reclaiming my vocal chords. “Are you the only one here?”

  “At the moment, yes. My mom and sisters are downstairs grabbing lunch. The security guard, too. I told him I’d sic Lola on anyone who tried to get near Hallie. I guess she actually listened to me for a change.”

  I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” Gerry said, filling the silence.

  “So long as it’s not how I use a knife and fork.”

  Gerry gave off another belly laugh and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re all right, man. Remind me to share some ways to answer questions like that. I’ve been doing it my whole life and know how to shut them down fast. No, what I wanted to know is why you waited all this time to come around? Were you afraid we’d bite your head off?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have worried.”

  “Why not? If it hadn’t been for me . . .” I trailed off morosely.

  Gerry sighed. “Look, I barely know you, but would you mind if I gave you a piece of advice?”

  “Depends. Will there be a fee?”

  “Uh-uh. That’s your gig, not mine. But as one blind dude to another?”

  “If it’s the party line, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before and it hasn’t made much of an impression.”

  “I’ll bet it hasn’t. But go lighter on the movement. More often than not, the organizations are headed by lifers like me, so they can’t fully
relate to what it’s like to be a newbie. And with all the negative stereotypes out there, they have to spin it like it’s no big deal. Me, I’m a realist. I’ve never known anything else, but it’s gotta be a bitch getting used to.”

  “I’ve used heartier expletives than that. But if we’re staying away from propaganda, what is it you wanted to say?”

  “Just this. I don’t know what Hallie’s told you about us growing up, but my family went out of their way not to shelter me. You want to ride a bike? Great. Take the ‘L’ by yourself? No problem. The flip side of that is that when I got hurt—fell down and broke my arm, or came home with a black eye after some piece of mierda tried to mess with me—they didn’t give me much sympathy either. If you’re gonna live your life like anyone else, you’ve got to accept that shit happens.”

  “Even to your sister?”

  “Even when it’s my sister. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Nobody here blames you for being out late with Hallie, or even for where the two of you were when you were attacked. If we did, we’d all be big fat hypocrites.”

  Maybe he was just being generous, but it sounded sincere.

  “Wanna know what else I think?” Gerry said.

  “I have a feeling my wants are irrelevant to this discussion.”

  “I think you gotta give it more time. You’ve been at this what—two years? I’ve heard it takes a lot longer to get acclimated, to the point where you really start forgetting. But they say it happens—eventually.”

  I prayed he was right. “The problem is, will anyone else ever forget?”

  “Yeah well, no sugar-coating on that score, either. Lots of ’em won’t. You just gotta pick the right people to hang out with. Like my sister, since we’re on that subject. And yeah, you can consider that a hint. Or, if you need more of my advice, a very strong push in that direction.”

  “Or you and your brothers will come after me with a baseball bat?” I said only half in jest.