Chapter 6: Pupils

At six the needle came again.

The orderly was there again, rumpled, an hour past her shift, holding my ankles and smiling at the day nurse about the traffic.

Saline again.

At seven-thirty the day nurse came back with a clipboard.

"Blood draw this morning, sweetheart," she said. "Doctor wants your levels."

She wrote my name on a slip and clipped it to the end of the bed.

My levels.

He was going to look for the drug in my blood, and he wasn't going to find it.

At eight they wheeled me to the dayroom for breakfast.

The professor's wife was at the table nearest my chair, doing her crossword.

The girl was beside her, slumped low, spooning cereal. Her eyes were heavy.

They'd watched her swallow this morning. I could see it in the way her head drooped.

"He looked at your eyes last night," the professor's wife said, without lifting her pen.

"The whole ward heard about the van. Nobody's ever stopped a van."

"He's ordered bloods," I whispered.

"Of course he has." She filled in a word. "What time?"

"Nine."

"Same as hers." She tipped her head at the girl. "Wednesday levels for anyone on the transfer list."

The girl looked up, slow and blurry.

"They made me swallow," she said. "Two of them. I'm so tired."

The professor's wife set down her pen.

She looked at the girl. Then at me.

She tapped the pen on the table, once for each point.

"Same drug. Same draw, same time, same cart," she said. "She's at full dose today, and you're at zero."

"The tech labels the tubes at the cart after she draws them. She lines them up in the rack in order."

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