Chapter 3 - The Sterile Cage
The ceiling tiles of St. Elizabeth Edgewood’s trauma bay were perforated with thousands of tiny gray dots. I counted them to keep from screaming.
Twelve rows. Sixteen columns.
My arms were pinned with IV lines. Saline was flushing cold into my left forearm; a thick gauge needle in my right hand was drawing three separate vials of dark crimson blood. The emergency room smelled of iodine, industrial bleach, and the distinct metallic stench of panic.
"Judith, I’m Dr. Thorne," a woman with cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses said, leaning over my gurney. She was already tapping a small reflex hammer against my patellar tendon.
My knee remained completely limp. No jerk. No reflex.
"How far up does the sensation stop?" she asked, dragging the dull edge of an uncapped needle along my skin.
"About three inches below my belly button," I whispered. My throat felt like it was coated in sand. "Earlier it was just my knees. It's moving up, isn't it?"
Dr. Thorne didn't lie to me. Her expression was solemn. "The paralysis is ascending. That's why we're moving fast. We're running a full metabolic profile, heavy metal panel, autoimmune markers, and an urgent lumbar puncture to rule out Guillain-Barré syndrome."
Before I could answer, the glass sliding doors of the trauma bay rattled.
"She is my daughter-in-law, and I demand to know what experimental drugs you're pumping into her!" Freya's voice shrilled through the curtain.
A nurse immediately stepped in front of the glass. "Ma'am, you cannot be back here. This is an active trauma bay. Security!"
Through the gap in the privacy curtain, I caught a glimpse of Leo standing behind his mother in the hallway. He wasn't yelling. He was on his phone, typing furiously with both thumbs, his shoulders hunched. Then he looked up.
Our eyes locked through the narrow slit of fabric.
There was no fear in his face. No husbandly grief. No panic that his wife was paralyzed from the waist down. There was only a chilling, analytical scrutiny. He looked at me the way an engineer looks at a machine that failed to shut down on schedule.
When he realized I was staring back, he instantly adjusted his face, pulling his mouth into a grimace of manufactured anguish, stepping forward with his hands outstretched.
"Judith! Honey, I'm right here!" he called out, his voice cracking with rehearsed emotion. "Doctor, please, I have her insurance card! Let me in there to hold her hand!"
"Do not let him in," I gasped out. My pulse monitor spiked, the steady *beep-beep-beep* racing into an alarm tone. "Dr. Thorne... please. Do not let him near me."
Dr. Thorne’s eyes flicked from my face to the monitor, then to the man outside the curtain. She stepped over to the door and slid the privacy blind completely shut, cutting Leo off from view.
"Nurse Kelly," Dr. Thorne said evenly. "Flag this chart. Restrict all visitors. No one enters this bay without my direct verbal clearance. Not the husband. Not the mother. Nobody."
"Understood, Doctor."
Ten minutes later, the curtain parted again, but this time it wasn't Leo.
My sister, Tara, burst into the room, her hair windblown, her scrub jacket half-zipped over her nursing uniform from the dental clinic across town. Her face was pale, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Jude," she cried, dropping to her knees beside the gurney and grabbing my cold hand. "Oh God, Jude. What happened? Leo called Mom and said you had a nervous breakdown at the party and threw yourself down the steps!"
"He... he said what?" I stammered.
"He called everyone," Tara hissed, tears pooling in her dark eyes. "He told the family you lost your mind because of work stress, smashed the food, and had a hysterical fit. He told Mom not to come to the hospital because the doctors were going to commit you to a psych ward."
A cold dread pooled in my gut, sharper than any needle.
"Tara," I whispered, squeezing her fingers with all the strength left in my upper body. "Listen to me very carefully. You cannot let him go back to our house alone."
"What are you talking about?"
"The kitchen," I said, my voice trembling with raw terror. "The blue stoneware mug on the island. The green tin of chamomile tea in the top cabinet beside the stove. He made it for me every single night. Every time I drank it, my feet burned. He’s poisoning me, Tara."
Tara stared at me, her mouth parting in horror. "Judith... do you know what you're saying?"
"Look at my legs!" I sobbed, the tears burning my cheeks. "Look at me! I can't feel my body! He told everyone I was crazy so that when this happened, no one would look twice. You have to get that tea before he dumps it."
Tara stood up slowly, her shock hardening into something ferocious. She was my younger sister, but she had always had the survival instincts of an alley cat.
May you like
"I have your spare key on my ring," she whispered, glancing toward the closed curtain. "Leo is still out in the waiting room trying to smooth-talk the charge nurse. I'm leaving right now."
***
