She Tried to Poison Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Positive

Emme takes the bottle and her blood to her own ER, Nolan and Fern try to have her held as unstable, and the doctor says thallium and calls the police.

Seth drove with both hands on the wheel and didn't speak until we hit the county road.

"Where to?"

"St. Brigid's," I said. "The emergency department."

"You work there."

"That's why."

I held the water bottle in my lap with both hands.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

Nolan. Then Kit. Then Nolan again.

I turned it face down.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"Eleven months I've been watching the house," Seth said. "Four months since I got the first picture."

"And you didn't tell me."

"I tried once. I sent a letter to the lodge in March."

"I never got a letter."

He glanced at me and looked back at the road.

"No," he said. "I figured you hadn't."

I didn't have an answer for that, so I looked out the window until the hospital sign came up over the trees.

It was a Saturday night, which meant the department was full.

The charge nurse at triage looked up and saw me in a blue party dress and a cardigan, holding a water bottle.

"Emme? You're off tonight."

"I need a favor," I said. "I need a toxicology screen on this, and a heavy metals panel on me. Now. And I need it logged."

She looked at me for one long second.

Then she took the bottle by the cap, wrote my name on a label, and slid it into a specimen bag.

"Room six," she said. "Go."

The doctor on shift had trained me himself.

He listened to the whole story in under two minutes, and he didn't once tell me I was being dramatic.

"Hair loss, numb fingers, GI cramps, how long?"

"Eleven months, on and off. Worse in the last four."

He drew four tubes.

"This will take a few hours on the metals," he said. "The bottle I can have a preliminary on faster. Stay here."

I sat on the bed with a cotton ball taped in the crook of my elbow.

Seth took the chair by the door and put his big hands between his knees.

He looked out of place under the fluorescent light.

"You're not what I pictured," I said.

"What did you picture?"

"A man who'd stolen something."

"I did," Seth said. "Once."

Before I could ask what, the curtain snapped back.

Nolan came in first.

His shirt was untucked, and he had the look he got at the lodge when a guest complained, calm and sorry and in charge.

Fern walked in behind him.

Kit was behind her, with her eyes red and a tissue crushed in her fist.

"Emme." Nolan crossed the room and took my hand. "Thank God. You scared us half to death."

"Let go."

"Babe."

"Let go of my hand."

He did, slowly, and glanced at the nurse in the doorway.

"She's had an episode," he told the nurse. "She's been confused for weeks, and I should have pushed harder. Kit says she's been talking about poison."

"I have never said that," I said.

"You said it tonight."

"Because someone put it in my glass."

"Emme," Fern said in her flat clear voice, "we are not going to do this in public. Nolan, ask the doctor about a hold."

A hold.

A seventy-two hour psychiatric hold, signed by a husband and a doctor.

I knew exactly what it was.

I had watched it done to patients who had less than I did.

"No," I said.

The nurse in the doorway shifted her weight.

It was a colleague I had worked three Christmases beside.

"Mrs. Kessling," she said, "your daughter-in-law is a patient. Please lower your voice."

Fern ignored her.

"She has been drinking," Fern said. "She is unstable. My son is her husband and he is asking for help."

"I haven't had a drop," I said. "Test me."

"We will," said Nolan gently.

"Don't you touch her," said Seth.

He hadn't raised his voice.

He stood up from the chair, filled the whole doorway, and every head in the corridor turned.

Fern looked at him for the first time.

Something flickered across her face too fast to read.

"Hello, Seth," she said coolly. "I wondered how long it would take you."

"Hello, Mother."

Kit made a small sound and pressed the tissue to her mouth.

"He's the one who's been stalking her," she said, in a trembling voice. "He's been out there for months, Fern. I told you."

"You told me," said Fern.

Nobody in that room moved.

The doctor came back through the curtain with a printout in his hand.

He read it twice before he looked up.

"Emme," he said, "can I speak to you alone?"

"Anything you say to me you can say in front of them."

His eyes went to Nolan and Fern, then back to me.

"The bottle came back positive for thallium," he said. "The concentration is high enough to kill a person in a few doses. I'm calling the police."

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