Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
My throat starts closing, my next breath coming ragged, but I manage to choke it back.
“I know.” I lean into him, resting against his side and letting his presence take the edge off being here. “I just hope he survives. Not so we can pry out whatever he knows, or why he’s been following me. Because nobody deserves to die like that.”
“That’s my main concern,” Grant growls.
“You were right, though.” I curl my hand against the rock-hard tautness of Grant’s forearm. The thick hair there tickles my palm. “I don’t think he was trying to hurt me. Maybe trying to warn me.”
“Yeah, but about what?”
Before I try to guess through too many swirling thoughts, one of the nurses breaks away from the huddled heads bowed over the man’s twitching body and steps out of the room.
Without a word, she offers something to Grant.
A simple black leather wallet, slim and folded shut.
Grant grunts his thanks and takes the wallet.
The nurse answers with a nod, then ducks back into the room and joins the rest of her team again.
With a questioning look for me, Grant flicks the wallet open.
There’s not much inside, what looks like a debit card, a security access card, an ID, some cash, a few receipts. Grant slides the ID out and tilts it so I can see.
“Mason Law.” I read the name out loud slowly. Even his photo in the ID looks gaunt and sad. From the birthday, he’s sixty-four years old. “Is there a Law family in town?”
“Nah. Nobody with that name’s moved in since you’ve been gone. He’s not from here, I’d say, though I’ll get started on a real background check ASAP.” Muttering to himself, Grant fishes out the receipts. “Nothing really damning here. Looks like grocery shopping, mostly. Stopped by the hardware store yesterday. Bought a hose.” He frowns. “What the hell? Was he gonna try carbon monoxide poisoning first? Lock himself in a garage?”
“God, I hope not.” I shake my head, glancing at Law. “Honestly, if I had to guess...” I flick my gaze over his half-closed, empty eyes, the way he’s starting to convulse so stiffly. “Wait, he’s seizing, Grant. That’s a classic symptom of ricin poisoning.”
“Ricin? Like in the TV shows?” Grant does a double take. “Where the fuck would a civilian get ricin in this day and age, let alone use it to try to off himself?”
“It’s not that hard to make from certain beans,” I point out. “The internet makes it pretty easy to get a crash course in all sorts of crazy stuff. Plus, it’s so potent, you only need a little. It only takes a pinch to make the body shut down and crash. But it’s just weird, to me.”
“Weird how?” Grant asks.
“There are easier ways to do it. Ways that don’t hurt so much. Substances that don’t have to be made so precisely. So many over the counter meds that’ll let you slip off in your sleep while your liver shuts down.”
He stares at me.
“If you weren’t a nurse, I’d be really damned disturbed that you know that.” Grant watches me carefully. Like he’s worried for me that I have to know these things. “You deal with a lot of suicides back in Miami?”
“I worked in a hospice center,” I point out. There’s a pain there that tells me that no matter what happens to Mom, I might not be able to go back to my old career. I don’t know how to handle torturing myself like that again, no matter how much it helps comfort someone else.
There’s only so much fuel in the soul before your tank runs empty.
“Right,” he mutters.
“Sometimes people just want to choose how they go out, instead of waiting for their bodies to finish fading away naturally. Sometimes, other people step in, their loved ones wanting to help. So they sneak in ordinary stuff that wouldn’t be questioned.”
“Feels cruel.” His warm hand presses against the small of my back, bringing me in closer, as if he can protect me from dark memories that have already passed. “To have to choose one end or the other, with no hope of recovery.”
“Well, the ones who succeeded... they usually have a DNR. So we let them go when it’s too late because it was their choice.” The look he gives me cuts me in two.
He’s everything holding me together right now. As I watch them working on Mason Law, I see so many other faces from the past.
I see myself in those nurses, struggling like hell to pull someone back from the brink.
“Philia?” he urges.
I shake my head. “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always peaceful. Most of the time, they did it wrong. It almost hurt to save them, to bring them back, because they’d done just enough damage to make the end more painful and more prolonged.”