72 St. Margaret’s Way Chapter 9
“How could you do this to me?” Adele sobbed at the foot of the bed. “James, you were supposed to protect me! You told me you loved me!”
“I do!” he cried. “Adele, I do, I swear. I’m so sorry!”
She slapped him and it hurt vaguely in a way that had James wondering if this was a dream. But everything hurt and it was because he’d gone against her. He was going to die and it was his own fault.
“Come back!” she sobbed. “James, why did you leave? You put me in danger!”
James tried to stand, but his legs weren’t holding him up and there must have been someone in the room to force him and Adele to stay apart. He swung wildly, screaming as they pinned him. “WHERE IS SHE?” he yelled frantically, trying to hit them again.
He got his arm loose and swung. Something connected and he heard the sound of someone grunting in pain, but it was far away and it wasn’t Adele. “Help me!” he yelled. “Adele!”
“James, stop!” he heard behind Adele’s sobbing. “You need to stop!”
“Adele!”
“Adele wants you to stop!”
Amelia’s voice was firm and even though he could hear Adele sobbing for him to keep going, how could he be sure? Her voice was fading out and if she wanted him to stop, he couldn’t risk…
James took a few silent breaths. “There you go,” Amelia said, breathless and gentle, just before he started screaming again.
Adele had poisoned him, right? He wasn’t in love with her, she was here to kill him. “James!” Adele called.
“No!” he yelled, fighting off the hands holding him down. He tried to run, but someone had him around the waist, pulling him back. “Help! Get her away from me!”
“Can you give him something?” Amelia said, far away. “He’s in fucking agony, can you please just put him to sleep or something?”
Someone was hurt? He tried to ask Amelia who was hurt, but Adele was there again, covering his mouth so he couldn’t speak. He screamed around it, desperate for her hand to leave and desperate to leave with her.
Then Adele and the roaring around him evaporated so quickly his ears rang. “Who’s hurt?” James gasped out, desperately grabbing for Amelia’s hand. “Amelia, who’s hurt?”
“I can’t,” a familiar voice said as Amelia held his hand just as tightly in both of hers. “I can’t mix anything with the antidote, there’s strong sedatives in everything after the initial doses. It’s too risky. The antidote will help, though, we just have to wait until Graham gets here.”
The voices were getting further away as Adele’s sobbing filled James’s ears. It wasn’t Amelia anymore, it was Adele pinning his hands down. But someone was hurt and he needed to go to them. Sobbing in frustration and fear, James fought the hands holding him down.
“Got it,” came another voice after a vague, unknowable amount of time. Graham? He wanted to ask, but Adele was choking him. James screamed as Adele ran a finger over his mouth, grinning at him. He pushed away the glass that was pressed beside her finger. Then he was pinned and his nose was being held closed again until he gasped for air. Again? Had this happened before? Was it happening again? Who was hurt?
He choked and sputtered on something thick and sweet, screaming as someone pulled him upright, slamming him on the back as he choked and gasped for breath. Adele was grabbing at him now and James fought her as it got harder to move.
As the room faded, it was almost a relief until Adele started crying again.
***
James woke up a little while later with Amelia sitting beside him on the bed. The room was spinning as quickly as his thoughts, which flicked from fear to hate to confusion to relief, then right back to fear within a breath. Pain radiated through his body as Amelia looked at him carefully, then got up and went to the door. James sat up to follow her, but Bradley was sitting on the other bed, motioning for him to stay.
“Who’s hurt?” James asked through what felt like a mouthful of sawdust.
“You are. Lay back down.”
He was? Was Amelia going to get Adele? Where was she? And why was he thinking about her still? James laid back down, closing his eyes against the confusion until he heard footsteps coming into the room.
Dr. Jolene Oliver was here now, holding a glass of what looked like that same strawberry herbal liquid Amelia had tricked James into drinking when he came back from the wellness fair. He needed to get back. He needed to go to Adele, to tell her what had happened and have her save him. He needed to protect her from his team.
Oh God, why was he still thinking like that?
Jolene sat down beside him with a smile. “James,” she said. “Why is it that every time I get stuck in traffic at the Concord rotary, it’s to find out what hurt you now?”
James tried to look her in the eye, but couldn’t keep his gaze from sliding away as the room moved. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Are you feeling alright to talk?”
He nodded vaguely as Amelia came back into the room and sat down beside Bradley on the other bed.
“I have to ask some personal questions,” Jolene said. “Would you prefer to have your teammates here? Would that be alright?”
Neither Amelia nor Bradley looked alright, but James was too confused and the room was moving around him as he nodded. “Fine,” he whispered.
“You were dosed with a control compound,” Jolene said, taking his hand. “It’s a mixture commonly known as a love potion, meant to quickly form bonds of infatuation and control between the target and the user. You’re one of five people who appear to have been poisoned this way at the wellness fair, and one of twenty-seven who were poisoned in total.”
He wanted to die. Why wasn’t he dead yet? He choked and Jolene gently stroked the back of his hand as James squeezed his eyes shut, wishing to be dead.
“I need to ask for your safety, so please be honest with me,” Jolene continued. “Did you have any intimate physical relations with Adele Westcombe?”
James shook his head, trying not to burst into tears. “No.”
“Do you remember everything about the past few days?” Jolene asked. “Are there any notable gaps in your memory? Or any unexplained pain?”
He tried to think, but it was hard to remember anything right now, let alone exactly what had happened over the past few days. But there were gaps, he realized. He just couldn’t say when. But Jolene could clearly see the confusion on his face because she shook her head and stood up. “It’s alright,” she said. “I have the first dose of the next stage of the antidote sequence here if you’re ready.”
“It hurts,” he said finally, his mind still on the last question as he realized his head was hurting. And so was his side from when Madelyn had hit him in self-defense.
Self-defense.
“Where does it hurt?” Jolene asked.
He’d been towering over her, screaming at her, about to swing. He would have hurt his teammate without a second thought if she hadn’t hit him with her cane. And he’d told her…
You can’t get away from me if I decide to do it.
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head frantically. “Never mind, please.”
“James.”
Jolene’s cold hand was on his again, where he realized he was clutching his injured side. “Let me see it,” she said.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine. I’m so sorry. I’m fine.”
He was crying now and it was hard to think straight. “It was with Madelyn,” he heard Amelia say softly.
Jolene was gently prying his hand away now and he relented, letting his hand drop as he stared up at the ceiling. Jolene lifted his shirt and ran her fingers gently over the bruise, pain sparking as she pressed down lightly. “This is bad,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she hit a kidney. How bad is the pain?”
“It’s fine,” James said.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” he argued. “It was my fault. I’m fine, please don’t-”
She moved away. “Does it hurt anywhere else?”
“No.”
“He hit his head on the faucet,” Amelia said.
“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry.”
Jolene gently turned James’s head and touched the back of it, where he realized his hair was matted with dried blood.
“Can you sit up?” she asked.
He moved slowly upright. She handed him the cup and he drank it as she bandaged the cut on his head, his shaking hand nearly making him spill.
“Did she touch you anywhere in a non-sexual way?” Jolene asked gently. “That’s part of the technique a lot of perpetrators will-”
He remembered then as the room started to tilt even more. “My hair,” he murmured, falling against Jolene. “She touched my hair.”
“It’s okay,” Jolene said again.
“She made me feel…special,” he said as he closed his eyes. “Like I mattered.”
“You do matter,” Amelia said, almost too quietly to hear.
With effort, he opened his eyes and nodded, still supported against Jolene’s chest, looking up at her. “This cure takes a few days and a lot of antidote,” Jolene said. “But it’ll be alright. And that feeling will go away, honey. It’s like…” Jolene thought for a second. “Okay, hear me out. Do any of you have experience with cocaine?”
Amelia shook her head, but Bradley nodded. “Basically, cocaine overloads the dopamine receptors,” Jolene explained, her voice vibrating against James’s ear where he was still pressed to her chest. “When it leaves your system, your dopamine ends up even lower than it was at the start. Honey, the same thing is happening here, alright? That’s all it is, it’s got nothing to do with you as a person. You were drugged and we’re going to help you get rid of it.”
She seemed to be talking directly to James, but he was half-listening as he closed his eyes again.
