Young Truths (Young Series) (27 page)

Mark’s smile looks forced all of a sudden, and I’m not sure why. I want to ask what’s bothering him, but I have a feeling I already know and forcing the topic won’t do any good. I decide to skate over it. “So I was about to order some lunch. Want to join me?” I ask brightly.

His answering smile is more genuine and we peruse the takeout menu for the café across the street. He even offers to pick it up, though I refuse to let him buy. Every time we’ve met for lunch, he’s bought, I remind him. Eventually he grudgingly agrees and while he goes for our lunch, I nurse Olivia and send Matthew a text message asking him how his day is going. He doesn’t respond right away like he normally would, which tells me he probably should have gone back to work sooner to avoid an overloaded schedule. When he does respond, he promises he’ll be home in time for dinner, though I somehow doubt that, and he loves me and he’s making arrangements for our trip to Iowa once he has a spare moment. I think this might be the first time he hasn’t put up a fight about visiting my family. That probably has a lot to do with his recent bonding with my brother Jimmy around the time of our wedding. Before then, the two of them couldn’t be in the same room without flinging insults and threats. Jimmy never thought Matthew was good enough for me, that he’s dangerous, and all I would be left with at the end of our relationship would be a shattered heart, or worse. It’s taken Jimmy eight years to admit that maybe Matthew might be exactly what I need, despite the trouble we’ve ended up in over the years.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to the farm for a little while. The last time I was there, the Christmas before last, I was with Tom and spent most of our visit debating the positives and negatives of marrying him, and leaning more towards the positives. That was fifteen months ago, when I thought I had nothing to lose by marrying my childhood best friend. I knew Tom and I would never have what I had with Matthew, but at least it was stability, if not for me, then for Tyler. What I never understood about Tom was that he knew full well I’d probably never get over Matthew, yet he still put his all into our relationship. It almost makes me feel guilty for ending things with him the way I did—he was my safe option, the person I knew would be there for me no matter what, and I went to sleep at night knowing nothing was going to hurt him or me or Tyler, because Tom would never get himself mixed up in anything that might.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I can’t imagine things going any differently than they did. Matthew was who I wanted—I knew that and so did Tom—and if circumstances had come to pass, if the threat had been dealt with, and I’d gone back to Omaha with Tom, I’d probably be worse off than I was the first time I showed up on Tom’s doorstep.

And why exactly are we dwelling on a situation that never happened?
my mind wonders.
You’re where you belong with the man you love more than any other. You have two beautiful children and while life might not be picture perfect right now, you wouldn’t change a thing.

I’m jolted back to reality when the bookstore door opens and Mark enters with a plastic bag, grinning. “Lunch is served,” he announces.

As we eat, we talk. Mark tells me how he’s been spending a lot of time with his sister since Bonnie died and how he thinks she’s helping him work through a lot of his issues. Part of me wants to discuss everything that’s gone on in my family recently, but somehow I don’t think Matthew would approve of me telling Mark about our drama. Aside from the fact that he still doesn’t trust Mark enough to not make a move on me when we spend more than five minutes together, I don’t think he’s discussed any of it outside of our family. Not that I can blame him; the last thing we need is more attention on us than we already have.

After lunch, Mark announces that he needs to get to work and Olivia starts getting fussy, so we make a plan to have lunch next week. I make quick work of changing my daughter’s diaper so she can go back to her nap—she really is a little princess; if her diaper is even slightly damp, she throws a fit—and get on with my own work until Lauren comes in for the next shift. I stop suddenly as I reach down to open a box, dizzy, and reach out to brace myself against the counter. The dizziness passes after a moment and I make my way over to the stool behind the counter to sit down. I consider calling Matthew and telling him I’m not feeling well, but he’s got his own work to deal with; he doesn’t need to rush all the way out here because I’m a little lightheaded.

Just as the urge to call him fades, I realize I should have done it anyway; another wave of dizziness hits me, this one much more disorienting and I close my eyes against the spinning room. My head explodes in pain, fire shooting through my brain down my spinal cord, and all I can do is whimper, my eyes opening slightly and resting on my sleeping daughter in her car seat. I’m suddenly terrified—not for myself, but for Olivia—and there’s nothing I can do to protect her. From what, I don’t know, but this can’t be just a random occurrence. My last thought before my vision fades is that somebody did this to me. I just wish I knew who.

I’ve been pacing the same corridor for the last two hours, seconds away from pulling out my hair while I wait for news about my wife’s health. All I know at this point is from the phone call I got from Lauren, one of the girls who works at the bookstore, who told me she came in and found Samantha unconscious behind the counter. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she was breathing, and had called for an ambulance. In my shock and panic, I managed to ask about my daughter. Lauren assured me Olivia was just fine and she’d send her with the paramedics. On my way to the hospital, I made a few phone calls I barely remember to Marcus and Claire. I asked one of them to pick Tyler up from school, though under threat of death, I couldn’t tell you which one.

Upon my arrival to the hospital, I first located my daughter and nearly collapsed in relief when I realized she was completely unharmed. Apparently she was still sound asleep when the paramedics arrived. Since then, she’s been wide awake. Claire has been taking care of her in a waiting room—she even stopped by the apartment and grabbed the spare bottles of breast milk we had stashed in the freezer.

I haven’t seen even a hair on Samantha’s head since I got here and if I have to wait much longer before someone comes to tell me what the hell is wrong with her, I might go on a murderous rampage. Starting with Mark fucking Reilly who’s come to check on us probably a dozen times, acting like the concerned golden boy. Anytime he pops in to check on the baby, I notice Claire subtly turning herself in a way that shields Olivia from him. I don’t know whether Reilly has even noticed, but I’ve made sure to keep a close eye on him the whole time, particularly with Claire’s words from the day Samantha and Olivia were last released from the hospital running through my mind.

“Matt, come sit down before I have someone sedate you,” Marcus says quietly from where he’s leaning against the wall, watching me.

I glare at him. “I’ll sit down once somebody tells me what the
fuck
is going on with my wife,” I growl, my voice getting louder with every word I speak. “Until then, leave me the fuck alone.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “You’re going to get yourself kicked out,” he informs me calmly. “You’ve snapped at four nurses and threatened to shove an orderly through a window for asking if you wanted a glass of water. Unless you want to await news about Samantha from your apartment or a jail cell, sit the fuck down.”

I’m not sure what’s more annoying—the fact that he’s talking to me at all or how his voice never wavers from his matter-of-fact tone. Regardless, I have no doubt if I don’t sit down like he’s telling me, he’ll have me handcuffed to a light post outside the hospital until I calm a little. Shaking off the hand that was poised to grab my arm on my next turn past Marcus, I head into the waiting room where Claire is trying in vain to feed Olivia. She gives me a sympathetic smile as I sit beside her, silently asking for my daughter. Her eyes are squeezed tightly shut and her little pink face is scrunched up as she wails, clearly as pissed off as I am about not having access to Samantha.

Now that I have something to focus on, I feel myself begin to relax slightly. I don’t know how I manage it, but it only takes a few minutes of rocking and quiet singing to calm Olivia down enough for her to realize that even though it’s not coming from Mommy’s breast, the milk in the bottle is the same thing.

“You’re good with her,” Claire comments softly when I sit down again. Olivia is happily sucking from the bottle and I know it’ll only be a few minutes before she’s asleep again.

“Samantha’s better,” I reply automatically.

Claire snorts a laugh. “Of course she is,” she scoffs. “She’s Mommy. But seriously, I’ve been trying to calm that baby down for an hour; it’s taken you fifteen minutes and she’s putty in your hands. It was the same with Tyler.”

I shrug. “It’s luck,” I inform her. “She’s hungry; eventually she would have settled down for you, too.”

Ignoring the eye roll exchange between my sister and Marcus, I’m on my feet the instant the waiting room door opens and a middle-aged doctor I somehow  haven’t met on my frequent visits to the hospital enters. “Mr. Young?” he asks, his eyes lingering on me.

“Yes,” I say. “How’s Samantha?”

He hesitates a moment. “Perhaps we can talk in private.”

I’m in no mood to argue; I hand Olivia over to Claire and quickly follow the doctor down the hall to a small office. He closes the door behind us and moves to sit behind his desk, gesturing for me to take a seat.

“Mr. Young, your wife is stable,” he says quietly. I slump in my chair in relief. “When she arrived she was unconscious and while she remains in that state, we’ve managed to even out her blood pressure, which was very low.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I demand hoarsely.

He sighs, resting his arms on his desk as he leans towards me. “Mr. Young, we found large traces of several chemicals in her system, most obviously Rohypnol.”

I blink rapidly as my brain processes the word. “Rohypnol?” I repeat, deadpan. “As in roofies? As in the
date rape drug
?”

“Yes.”

I stare at the doctor in shock. “Somebody roofied my wife?” I say loudly.

“It would seem so,” the doctor says calmly. “Along with the Rohypnol, we believe she’s been poisoned, though we’re having trouble identifying the culprit. We’re currently checking every possibility and narrowing down the one responsible. In the meantime, Samantha will probably remain unconscious for the next day or so while her body recovers. Side effects will be minimal; she may experience headaches for the next week or so and have episodes of severe nausea, but she will make a full recovery.”

I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be relieved that my wife will recover or incredibly pissed off that someone has done this to her. At this point, it’s highly likely that my murderous rampage will extend from the hospital to include the entire fucking state of New York until I find Frank Marone, because there is no doubt in my mind right now that he’s somehow behind this. “Can I see her?” I ask quietly.

The doctor, Lassiter, I see on his nametag, smiles kindly at me. “Of course,” he says. “Before we go, however, I need to ask about your daughter. I assume she is breastfeeding?”

I nod, uncertain where he’s going with this.

“I’d like to check her over just to be safe. If Samantha nursed after ingesting what she did, it will affect your daughter as well. Judging by the fact that I could hear your daughter crying from the other side of the hospital, however, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

I smile weakly, nodding my acquiescence. Luckily the logical part of my mind registers his lack of urgency regarding Olivia or I might actually need that sedative Marcus threatened. I wait with surprising patience while Olivia is poked and prodded and has blood drawn from her tiny arm. Of course this causes her to start screaming again, which forces me to start singing to her again, which then causes the nurse to give me an odd look when she recognizes the song as “I’m Too Sexy.” I have no idea why that one in particular works to calm Olivia down—I should probably be on my toes when she gets older—but it does. Once again, I leave my daughter with Claire and finally make my way to see my wife.

She looks like she’s sleeping. Which, I suppose, she is, even though it’s not what I would call a natural sleep. I approach her bedside and lean down, pressing a kiss to her cold, clammy forehead, careful not to jostle the oxygen mask over her face. Sitting down beside her, I take her limp hand in both of mine and bring it to my lips, hoping to bring life back into her by pressing my lips to her fingers.

“No matter how many times I do this, it never seems to make a difference,” I murmur, mostly to myself. “But for what has to be the millionth time in less than a year, I am so sorry for this, Samantha. I can sit here and tell you until I’m blue in the fucking face that I’ll fix this and I’ll keep you safe and this will never happen again, but we both know it’s complete and utter bullshit, don’t we? Over and over, I fail you and our children, and there is nothing I can do about it. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out the best way to keep you safe and even sending you away and cutting all contact with you isn’t good enough. We tried that; it worked for a while, but the trouble still found you, Sam. I can’t even guarantee your safety if they manage to kill me; at this point, they might come after you just to make a clean job of it. How’s that for comforting?” I watch her unresponsive face for a few minutes. “And I really hope you can’t hear me right now...”