Young Truths (Young Series) (30 page)

Despite my gentle tone, Samantha flinches as though she’s been slapped. Olivia whimpers quietly, burrowing herself into her mother’s chest. “What?” Samantha breathes, horrified.

I nod grimly. “So far the only component of the poison the doctors have been able to identify is Rohypnol, though they’re still investigating.”

“Rohypnol?” she repeats, stunned. I nod. “What the hell?”

“Believe me; I’ve been wondering the same thing. I think the combination of the Rohypnol and whatever else was used might have caused a bit of memory loss. Hopefully, it will all come back once you recover.”

“I was poisoned?” Samantha whispers, staring down at Olivia. I already know what she’s thinking.

“Olivia wasn’t affected,” I assure her quickly before she has time to work herself into a panic. “From what we could tell, her last feeding was before you ingested the poison, so it’s not in her system. The doctors checked her out and all her tests came back completely clean.”

Samantha sighs deeply in relief. “Good,” she breathes, resting her cheek against Olivia's head. “What about me? Am I okay? Is this stuff going to sneak back up and kill me?”

“No,” I say so forcefully that Samantha actually shrinks away from me slightly. Closing my eyes, I compose myself. “No, Sam. You’re going to be fine. Whatever it is will work its way out of your system and that will be the end of it.”

She doesn’t look as convinced as I’d like, but she nods. “And do we know
how
this happened?” she asks quietly.

I swallow hard, wishing I had a better answer. “No,” I whisper. “I was rather hoping you had some insight. The only scenario we’ve been able to come up is that someone laced your food from the café.”

“No way,” she says emphatically. “They’d never—”

I shake my head sadly. “We don’t know that,” I interrupt. “I can’t trust anybody anymore. Hell, even Dave mysteriously disappeared a couple times. I don’t know if he was in on it or if it was all coincidental timing, but I can’t leave anything to chance right now.”

Before we can continue our conversation, Samantha’s doctor arrives, surprised to see her awake, then throws me a disapproving look for not informing him about this new development. With an apologetic smile, I stand aside while he examines my wife, assuring both of us that she’s recovering like he’d hoped. When I enquire about the other part of the poison, he hesitates.

“We’re still working on it,” he says quietly, sitting on the edge of Samantha’s bed and speaking to both of us. “The problem is that once it hit Samantha’s bloodstream, it began to break down. We’ve managed to pick up very minute traces of a watered down version of the chemical Ricin. I take it from the look on your face, Mr. Young, that you’re familiar with it?”

I feel like I’m going to be sick as I nod. “How minute were the traces?” I manage to choke out.

“Very,” he says firmly. “So very that it barely registers in our tests.”

Samantha is looking questioningly between the two of us. “What’s Ricin?” she asks.

Swallowing hard, I meet her eyes. “It’s a naturally-found poison found in castor beans. A dose the size of a couple grains of salt is enough to kill a person.” I reel off the information automatically. “There’s no antidote.”

“That’s true,” Dr. Lassiter agrees, “but as I said, the traces found in Samantha’s system were not only minimal but watered down as well. If she had ingested a full dose, I agree that there would be cause for concern. Right now, we’re monitoring Samantha very closely for any signs of side effects associated with Ricin, but I don’t believe we’ll see any.”

“How accessible is Ricin?” Samantha asks. We both look at her and I realize she’s being the rational one in this situation while I’m the one on the verge of panic. It’s strangely comforting. “Can anyone get their hands on it?”

“If they know where to find it,” Lassiter says. “But it’s not a common household plant.”

I can’t open my mouth to comment any further, knowing if I do, things are only going to be worse off for me. My mind is reeling, and I’m once again reminded that no matter what I do, I am a danger to my family. There is a very small part of me that is telling me to get up right now and walk away for good. I know exactly where the Ricin came from. And I think I know exactly what else was in the poison Samantha ingested. Telling the doctor won’t change anything either; everything they’re doing is exactly what needs to be done. What I’m really dreading is telling my wife.

Then, of course, there’s the added concern about how somebody managed to access the restricted labs in Young Technologies in order to get their hands on it in the first place.

“Matt?”

I’m dragged back into reality by Samantha’s voice and her fingers running across my wrist. With a forced smile I know she’ll see through in seconds, I meet her gaze. “So with any luck, you’ll be out of here in a couple days,” I tell her quietly, taking her hand in mine. “And once you are, we’ve got a plane to catch.”

Luckily, this works as a distraction. For now. “Do we now?” Her suspicious tone makes me smirk.

“Yes, we do,” I say. “Your family will be expecting us.”

“I thought we weren’t going for another couple weeks?” she asks quietly, her tone telling me she knows the answer, but wants me to spell it all out for her.

I sigh, pulling my chair closer to her bed. “I want to get the three of you out of here for a while. Even if it’s just a week and a half, I think you’ve all earned a break. It feels like anytime we start getting settled, something comes along and fucks it all up again. I just want a few weeks where I can sit back and enjoy my family. Is that too much to ask for?” I’m a little surprised at the amount of bitterness in my tone, while the look on Samantha’s face suggests she’s been waiting for this.

“No, it’s not,” she says sympathetically. “I want that, too. We’ll get there.”

Doubt fills my mind, but I merely nod at her words in agreement, knowing an argument about how much of a failure I am as a husband and father won’t help things in the slightest. Besides, she’s in the Goddamn hospital; the last thing she needs to deal with right now is my self-loathing.

I’m actually relieved when Olivia starts crying and Samantha’s gaze snaps away from mine. “Here, hand her to me,” she says quietly, already starting to rearrange her hospital gown. When I realize what she’s doing, I hesitate. She looks at me expectantly. “What?”

I close my eyes slowly, knowing exactly how this is going to go over. “Samantha, you can’t breastfeed Olivia right now,” I inform her very carefully. She gives me a look like I’m absolutely insane, reaching out to take the baby from me. I pull away. “Samantha, you’ve been poisoned. It’s still in your system. If you nurse Olivia...”

Realization dawns slowly and I watch her slump back into her pillows, an expression of utter dejection on her face. “Oh,” she mouths, looking like she might cry at any second. “So I’m useless to my daughter now?”

“No, Samantha,” I say firmly, sitting on the bed beside her, still holding Olivia. “Absolutely not! Don’t
ever
say something like that again. You’re sick right now, that’s all. Once this stuff is gone, we can go back to normal.”

Something tells me she doesn’t hear a word I’m saying as she helplessly watches Olivia crying. Sighing, I crouch down for the diaper bag, opening the insulated pouch and retrieve a bottle of milk. I turn back to Samantha and wordlessly hand Olivia over. She takes her daughter, readjusting her gown again while I walk over to the small microwave in a corner of the hospital suite. After heating and testing the milk for temperature, I return to my wife and daughter, holding the bottle out for Samantha. She takes it hesitantly, gently inserting the nipple into Olivia’s mouth. Almost immediately she stops crying and begins feeding. I smile in satisfaction.

“See, you are far from useless,” I say quietly, sitting back on the edge of the bed again. “Olivia agrees.”

Samantha gives me a weak, watery smile, looking down to where Olivia’s eyes are big and trained on her. “Yeah, I guess,” she says quietly.

I swear to God, I will kill whoever did this to my family. Not only have they poisoned my wife, but they made her feel like a useless mother to her newborn daughter. This is so far beyond unacceptable.

Once Olivia is fed to her satisfaction, Samantha hands her over to me for the burping process. We learned rather quickly that Olivia responds quicker when I do this. I still have no idea why, but it’s another excuse to hold my daughter, so I’m not complaining. Samantha is curled up on her side, her knees pulled into her chest as she watches us almost longingly. I suppose I never really understood the importance of a woman breastfeeding her child. It seems, for Samantha at least, to be more than a necessity for sustenance; it’s a bonding experience between them and for that privilege, something that should be hers by right as a woman, to be taken away from her so suddenly... Well, I can understand her feelings of uselessness, even if it’s completely unfounded.

With Olivia sleeping soundly, I wordlessly climb into bed behind Samantha, wrapping my arms around her waist, and hold her until the tension finally begins to leave her body. Just as I think she’s falling asleep, she sighs shakily and speaks. “There’s more, isn’t there?” she whispers.

I nod against her hair. “Yes,” I answer. “A lot more. If you want to know now, I’ll tell you, but I’d prefer waiting until you’re out of the hospital.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yes.”

She’s quiet for a while. “It can wait, then.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, reaching over to her other side to switch off the light. “I love you, Sam. You have no idea how relieved I am that you’re okay.”

We don’t speak again and eventually we fall asleep. At least this wasn’t taken away from me—the ability to hold the love of my life in my arms and breathe in her scent for the entire night. If I were to lose her again, there would be no question about my inability to go on, despite the knowledge that my children would need me more than ever. I have no idea how often I’ve said over the years that I’m nothing without Samantha, but every time something hurts her, the words become more and more true.

I hate hospitals. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s no less true. In less than a year, I’ve been in this hospital enough times to last me two lifetimes. The only upside is that the cafeteria is actually serving decent-tasting food for breakfast. When I woke, it took me a few minutes to realize where I was and why, and the only thing that kept me from utter panic was the feeling of my husband’s sleeping form behind me, holding me tightly against him. It was only a matter of moments between my realization of where I am and when he’d woken up as well. The look of relief in his eyes when he saw me was almost overwhelming and I realized he had taken my hospitalization much harder than he let on. We spent a few minutes reassuring one another that I’m okay before Olivia demanded our attention. It occurs to me as we eat breakfast that in another week or so it will be safe for us to be intimate again and assuming I’m released from the hospital as scheduled, we’ll be on the farm in Iowa then. Something tells me Matthew and I are going to have to get rather creative while we’re there... I smile a little at the thought; my husband is without a doubt the most creative person I’ve ever met, and I know whatever he comes up with will be incredible enjoyable for all involved parties.

After breakfast, Matthew informed me he had to head into work for a couple hours, but promised a quick return. It was then I realized I had my very own security guard standing outside my room. I’d raised an eyebrow at my husband, silently asking whether it was necessary to go to such lengths, but he ignored my glares completely. I just rolled my eyes and kissed him before he left. Taking into account recent events, I suppose he isn’t acting like the paranoid husband I’d normally accuse him of being.

What I don’t understand is how this happened. It’s not as though I’ve eaten anywhere new lately where I didn’t know the entire staff; I cook our meals at home and the only time I eat out is when I’m working at the bookstore. And the only place I frequent with any regularity is the café across the street. I can’t imagine anyone there wanting to poison me, let alone how they’d have the ability to get their hands on something like that. Possibly the most disturbing thing is that there is a large block of time I have no recollection of passing. According to Dr. Lassiter, my memory should return once the poison is completely out of my system, and while that will do a lot to aide in finding the culprit that did this, I have a really bad feeling about it. This isn’t the first time I’ve been hurt since coming back to New York and while it concerns me greatly that someone is going to great lengths to harm me and my family, this feels different somehow. I feel a thought in the back of my mind, just out of reach, that I know will shed light on everything and probably break my heart a little, but I just can’t seem to get a grasp on it.

Rolling my eyes at myself for being so dramatic, I turn on the television and search for something aside from daytime soaps to watch. My interest is drawn instead to just outside my room where I hear my bouncer/bodyguard apparently arguing with somebody. And that somebody sounds like Mark Reilly. I push myself up for a better look and listen, intending to inform my would-be guardian that Mark isn’t someone to be concerned about, but Mark throws up his arms in annoyance or frustration or a combination thereof and turns around to walk away. When my guard glances over his shoulder and finds me watching, he has the decency to look contrite.