Chapter 1 - The White Bottle Under My Medication Tray
My daughter saved me before I knew I needed saving.
I had the orange juice inches from my mouth when Sophie came running across the breakfast room.
“Don’t drink that!”
Her little hands closed around the glass.
Juice splashed over my fingers.
“Sophie?”
Bridget was across the room before I could understand what was happening.
Her palm struck Sophie’s face.
My four-year-old daughter fell sideways onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” Bridget shouted. “It’s just fruit juice!”
Something inside me went cold.
“Don’t touch her.”
Sophie pushed herself upright.
Tears filled her eyes.
Then she pointed at my wife’s pocket.
“I saw her put drops from a little white bottle in it.”
Nobody moved.
My older sister Diane stood beside my medication tray in her nursing scrubs.
Our mother, Alma, froze near the window.
I lowered the glass.
“Diane.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Seal it. Test everything in it.”
Bridget lunged.
Not toward Sophie.
Toward the medication tray.
She yanked it toward herself.
A small white bottle rolled from underneath.
No label.
No pharmacy sticker.
Nothing.
It stopped against the wheel of my chair.
Bridget stared at it.
So did I.
“What is that?”
She recovered quickly.
“I don’t know.”
“It came from under the medication tray.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s mine.”
Sophie started crying harder.
“I saw her.”
Bridget turned toward her.
I slammed one hand against the arm of my wheelchair.
“Look at me.”
Bridget stopped.
My legs had not worked properly since the crash seven months earlier.
But there was nothing wrong with my voice.
“What is in that bottle?”
She folded her arms.
“Probably something Diane left there.”
Diane looked offended.
“I don’t use unlabeled medication.”
Mom finally spoke.
“Daniel, everyone needs to calm down.”
I looked at her.
She had gone strangely pale.
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’m not.”
“You look nervous.”
Bridget interrupted.
“This is ridiculous. Sophie saw me using vitamin drops.”
“Then the test will show vitamins.”
Silence.
Diane sealed the juice.
Then the bottle.
Bridget watched every movement.
That was the first thing that frightened me.
Not the bottle.
Not even Sophie’s accusation.
Bridget wasn’t acting like a woman offended by a misunderstanding.
She was watching the evidence leave the room.
And when Diane said she would take both samples directly to an independent laboratory through my physician’s office, my mother whispered something she probably thought I couldn’t hear.
“Not again.”
I turned my wheelchair.
“What did you say?”
Alma’s face emptied.
“Nothing.”
No.
It wasn’t nothing.
Because my mother had just reacted as though she had seen that little white bottle before.
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And suddenly I had a question much more frightening than what Bridget put in my juice that morning.
How many glasses had I already finished?
