Chapter 18: Page Nine

The numbness reached my elbows before Ansel had his trousers on.

"Sergeant," he said into the hotel phone, in the voice that had made colonels sit down. "My car. The medical case. Now."

He put the phone down and knelt on the broken glass beside me, barefoot, and did not seem to notice.

"Tell me what to do," he said.

"Breathing's fine," I said. "Pupils. Check them."

He tilted my chin to the lamp.

His hands were steady.

I noticed that, even then, with my own two lying dead in my lap.

"Even," he said.

"Good. It's slow. I got a smaller dose than you ever did."

"Because it was a glass of water."

"He knew I'd drink after I spoke."

I could hear myself, perfectly clear and a little far off.

"The water in the room was fine," I said. "It's whatever was in that glass."

"I have the glass."

I looked at him.

"I took it off the cloth when you kissed me," he said. "The colonel has it in a bag in his room. Nobody has touched it since."

I had never been so glad of a man's suspicion in my life.

The aide came in with the black case and stopped dead at the sight of the bed.

"Ma'am."

"Eyes front, Sergeant," Ansel said. "Hang the bag."

I walked him through it, a word at a time.

Where to tape, how to find the vein in the crook of my elbow, how slowly to run it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Thrown Out at Midnight, I Saved a General by Dawn from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.