Mother's Milk (28 page)

‘Squeeze my fingers,' Justine repeated. ‘We can't take you off the ventilator until you have adequate muscle control. Just try.'

She felt a warm hand on her forehead. Her mother's voice. ‘It's OK, baby. You're going to be fine.' She tried to see Max, but could only catch a bit of his gold hair, his face nestled against her mom's chest.

Barrett focused on her fingers, the feel of Justine's hand. Slowly she got them to grip, and then she pressed further.

‘Good,' Justine said. ‘I'll get the respiratory therapist and get you off this thing. I'll be right back, just stay calm, I know this is weirding you out, but you're going to be OK. They had to give you Pavulon so you wouldn't buck the ventilator. It's wearing off and you'll be fine. You're not paralyzed, it's just the drug.'

Justine disappeared and Barrett tried to relax. Her eyes met Hobbs's. He smiled, but she could see how upset he was, his expression hard, somewhere between cold anger and concern. She had so many questions, and why was Sanjee there? She saw Jerod, looking sick and worried, and a slew of connections raced through her mind, hurtling her back in time. Hobbs's question about why she cared so much about Jerod suddenly made sense. It was all in the dream – she was a turkey. Her mind flitted over a long-ago series of wonderful hours with Madeline Flemming, one of her supervisors when she was in her psychiatric training. An intense time in her life, with oppressive on-call duties, too little sleep, and endless stress in emergency rooms and psych wards. Madeline Flemming was a Jungian analyst to whom Barrett had been assigned for supervision; she was a throwback from all the biologically minded researchers, even her looks, with flowing almost Gypsy outfits, her long gray-streaked hair loose, and bright high-heeled sandals – once she'd even glimpsed a silver ankle bracelet with bells. Every week she'd meet in Madeline's cozy office, be offered a cup of herb tea and an hour's respite from a life that was running far too fast. It was Madeline who'd taught her about the near-lost art of dream interpretation. ‘It's our subconscious wanting to chat with us,' she'd explain, ‘just like your piano playing it's theoretically straight forward, but if you don't practice you'll never get good at it.'

As Barrett drifted, trying to stay calm, waiting for Justine to return, she remembered those long-ago instructions, how to pull apart a dream and find its inner meanings. Over the years she'd practiced quite a bit, amazed at just how much could be discerned from the seemingly nonsensical and random. Now, she thought back through the dream and let her mind softly focus on what it found most interesting or important. Like, she was supposed to give a performance and now that she thought of it, the stage was a lot like the one at the high school for performing arts. And why was Jerod there … and that's when it hit; it was Jerod and it wasn't. Tears came to her eyes; she tried not to choke on the ventilator as she remembered her freshman year at Performing Arts. Accepted a year early, at thirteen, tall and gawky, she'd hide in the basement practice rooms, just her and a piano with a soundproof door against all the high energy and glamour of the other kids. Then, early in the year, a knock at the door, he'd not waited for her to answer just came in, tall and beautiful, an infectious smile, blue eyes, and an easy grace. He'd told her to keep playing – Mozart, not her favorite but the fussy turns and trills helped push her fingers to be fast and precise. ‘I'm Kyle,' he'd said, but she'd already known he was Kyle Matthews, seventeen, a junior, a beautiful tenor voice, featured in the big musicals and in the jazz quartet. Her first crush … and her first heartache. He'd asked if she could play anything modern, and soon they were jamming, he scatting jazz riffs, she following along. She'd go to bed hugging her pillow, imagining it was him, wondering what it would be like to have her first kiss with him. Daily, she'd go down to the practice rooms and wonder if he'd show – more often than not he would. Now, as she lay in the ICU, hearing and feeling the push and pull of the ventilator, something throbbed deep inside – how long since she'd thought about Kyle. How they'd made plans to do street music during the summer, she'd bring a keyboard and he'd sing, they'd go into the subways, or just on the streets or even to Washington Square Park. But then summer came and he never called. Each day, she'd think maybe today, but it never came. Had he just been making fun of her? Finally she pulled together her courage, found his number and dialed. It was his mother. ‘No, Kyle can't come to the phone.' Barrett pressed, ‘Is he OK?' Then an uncomfortable silence; his mother asked who she was. ‘A friend from school,' Barrett said, and added, ‘We play music together.' His mother told her that Kyle was in the hospital. ‘What's wrong with him? Can I see him?' she pleaded, and finally the woman told her – a hospital she'd never heard of on the Upper West Side. Without telling anyone, she went to visit. Kyle, as she'd later come to understand, had had a psychotic break and become delusional – the details she'd never know. But that day, seeing him in pajamas and a bathrobe in the middle of the day, surrounded by other patients, all the light and excitement gone from his eyes, she never forgot. He'd tried to act normal, ‘They told me I have schizophrenia,' but he could barely form whole sentences – now of course she knew it was the meds. The ones that Jerod – whom she could barely see huddled back in the corner of her room – didn't want to take, the ones he said made him feel dull and not real. It was a weird moment of clarity – Kyle Matthews, her first crush, and she'd cried for nights after. He never returned his senior year, and she never went back to visit. Jerod, with his warmth, humor, quirky free spirit … and craziness, reminded her so much of him.

‘It's OK,' her mother said, misinterpreting the tears that spilled from her eyes. ‘Justine said she'd be right back.'

Slowly, the dream retreated and other thoughts intruded, the dinner with Chase. He'd drugged her, but what with? Hobbs's phone call: someone had shot Janice Fleet – a robbery. Images from the last couple days, from finding the dead kids, to chasing Jerod on the roof. But the face that haunted her was Chase's. She'd caught him in a big lie, he'd known the girl on the video, been her counselor for years. He had to be tied in with the dead kids and Hobbs thought it was Marky who had robbed and killed Janice, so she too was connected. Janice was Chase's therapist; he said she'd saved his life. It was a circle … only someone wanted to break it apart, to destroy it.

Justine returned with a balding man in a short white coat over green scrubs. He looked at Barrett.

‘Yup, she's awake.' He said, ‘Let's get her off this thing. OK, Barrett, I need you to wink your right eye and then your left … good. Now squeeze my fingers … excellent. I'm going to disconnect the ventilator and I want you to try and breathe on your own with the tube still in your throat, OK? It's going to feel funny, so just try and move some air through the tube. One, two, three.'

Barrett felt the last mechanical breath go in, and then nothing, just that awful tube down her throat. She pushed her diaphragm in and out, feeling the air move out her lungs, through the tube and across her lips, which felt dry and cracked.

‘I want you to keep this up, for thirty seconds,' the man said.

Seconds ticked as she focused on her breath, and on trying not to gag.

‘OK, we're good,' he said, ‘out it comes.' With a single practiced sweep he pulled the white-plastic tube out of her throat.

She coughed and gasped. ‘What happened?' she croaked.

‘Don't try to speak,' Justine said, ‘we'll tell you what we know. Mr. Singh brought you here in an ambulance a little before nine. You'd stopped breathing and were going into cardiac arrest; the paramedics intubated you on the way in. He told us that the man you were with tried to take you away in a cab and that you didn't want to go with him. Mr. Singh thought you'd been drugged, and yes, your toxicology came up positive for some kind of opiate. You've been poisoned. We sent for further testing to find out exactly what, whatever it was had to be strong.' Justine's voice cracked, and she turned her face away. ‘You nearly died, Barrett. If it hadn't been for Mr. Singh …'

‘Who was it, Barrett?' Hobbs asked.

‘Chase,' she croaked, struggling to remember his last name. ‘He works for DFYS. He knew Janice Strand. He was Carly Sloan's counselor.'

‘That's Marky's boyfriend,' Jerod said, filling the last gap in Barrett's circle. ‘I heard him talking on the phone to someone named Chase when he thought I was nodded out.'

‘Help me up,' Barrett said, feeling aimlessly for the metal bars of her hospital bed. Her fingers felt clumsy and numb, but now at least she knew why, that on top of whatever drug Chase had used, the hospital had given her a paralytic agent to keep her calm on the ventilator.
It's wearing off
, she reminded herself, feeling new fear. She looked at the IV bag hanging by the bed, and squinted. ‘Narcan,' she said.

‘Yes,' Justine replied, ‘it reversed the effects of whatever he gave you. Who is this Chase? Why would he do this?'

Hobbs turned to Justine. ‘He was her date.'

‘Figures.'

‘Comedy,' Barrett said, each word an effort through her sore throat and tender vocal cords, her mouth was bone dry. ‘Sanjee, did you see where he went?'

‘No, the street is one-way, he went east, but then I cannot say.'

She struggled to put the information together; it was too much. Chase had tried to kill her, but the toxicology screen said it was an opiate. ‘I felt something like an insect bite. I need water.'

‘When?' Hobbs asked, pouring her a glass of ice water from a pink plastic pitcher.

She sipped the cool liquid, having to go slow, and feeling it burn as it hit the back of her bruised throat. ‘At the restaurant, everything started to go funny. But if he'd given me heroin … I've never had heroin, but still it would take a fair amount and a decent-sized needle.'

‘Plus, he'd have to cook it up,' Jerod said, his arms wrapped around his sides, his teeth chattered. ‘You'd have seen that, and it wouldn't have been like a bug bite. You need a vein; if you just stab it into muscle, it takes forever to work.'

‘Good,' she said, feeling like a thick layer of cotton was clouding her brain. ‘So it wasn't heroin. It was something stronger.'

‘Fentanyl,' Justine offered, ‘or God forbid, Sufentanil.'

‘Translation, please?' Hobbs asked.

‘Synthetic opiates,' Justine said, motioning for Barrett to save her voice. ‘Fentanyl is strong; it's used for severe pain and it can be given through the skin, but the most potent is Sufentanil; it's mostly used by surgeons for almost immediate and complete pain control. But when we use it, the patient has to go on a ventilator because it's so powerful it depresses the respiratory drive.'

‘Can it be given through the muscle?' Barrett asked, having forgotten this archaic factoid from medical school.

‘We don't,' Justine said, ‘but it could. That might account for why it took a few minutes for you to pass out. It would be slower than a vein … and all it would take is a tiny amount.'

‘Like an insect bite,' Barrett said. She pictured Chase. ‘He wanted me dead, not just to drug me … and Janice Fleet is dead.' She looked at Hobbs. ‘He's pulling up stakes, some kind of end-game, and it's not going right. I don't think he came to that restaurant intending to kill me. I forced his hand.'

‘And he just happened to have a loaded syringe of super dope …' Hobbs added.

‘A contingency. He keeps lots of backups. Before I caught him in the lie about Carly Sloan, he kept trying to show how much we had in common. I think he wanted to … date me.'

Ruth, who'd been staying in the back of the crowded ICU room, holding the baby, and keeping a watchful eye on Jerod, couldn't contain herself. ‘Sweet Jesus, why is it that you can't find a normal man, Barrett?' She looked meaningfully at Hobbs. ‘Someone who doesn't take you out for a lovely dinner and then try to kill you.'

Barrett caught the connection between Hobbs and her mother.
Has he said something to her? But that ship sailed, he's seeing someone else. I am a turkey, one big fucking Thanksgiving turkey.

‘Justine,' Hobbs said, ‘it looks like I've got my work cut out, I'm going after this Chase guy. If you could have them run whatever tests they need to confirm this Sufentanil, or whatever other drugs she might have been given. Tell the lab to keep chain of custody … in fact I'll have someone from forensics do a confirmatory.'

‘Where are you going?' Barrett asked, finally getting the bed positioned so that she was sitting up.

‘There's every chance that he thinks you're dead, of course now he's got the problem of Mr. Singh to worry about. So Mr. Chase's Plan A has gone down the crapper. It's time for him to get out of town, which is what I expect he's doing this very minute.'

A thought played at the back of Barrett's mind, something so evil … ‘No! It wasn't just that he wanted a date with me … I was supposed to be part of his alibi.'

‘I already figured that,' Hobbs said, ‘the timing of Janice's murder, your dinner … too convenient.'

‘That's not all,' she said, and looked at Jerod. ‘All those other kids … Marky. If the plan was to eliminate anyone who could tie him to the dope, the dead kids … Carly Sloan. He's going to kill them all, if he hasn't already.'

‘Bet he'll do it with the house dope,' Jerod said. ‘Every week Marky gives out enough to get everyone through the week. It's different from what they sell. It's kind of a ritual and everyone shoots up together.'

‘Where?' Hobbs asked. ‘We've locked up the two apartments on 4th and C.'