Chapter 7 - The Poisoner’s Mother
"You ungrateful little bitch," Freya hissed beneath her mask, her voice a cracked, venomous whisper.
She seized the clear tubing of my IV line, her knuckles white. She tried to jam the tip of the syringe into the Y-port just above my wrist. Inside the syringe was a cloudy, milky liquid.
"Get away from her!" Tara screamed, launching herself from the armchair.
Tara didn't hesitate. She threw her entire weight into Freya, knocking the older woman violently against the rolling IV pole. The metal stand crashed to the tile floor with a deafening clatter, the Prussian blue bag bursting against the sharp corner of the bed frame, splattering bright azure fluid across the floor like an explosion of ink.
Freya shrieked, stumbling backward into the bedside table. A water pitcher clattered off the metal tray, spilling ice and water across the linoleum.
"Tara, the emergency button!" I yelled, pulling hard on the nurse call cord wrapped around the bed rail.
The room’s emergency alarm began to blare—a high-pitched, staccato klaxon that echoed down the hallway.
Freya scrambled to her feet with shocking agility for a woman in her late sixties. The blue surgical mask had slipped down her chin, revealing her thin, snarling lips. She held the syringe like a weapon, its plastic plunger halfway depressed, fluid dripping onto the floor.
"You ruin everything!" Freya spit, her face contorted in pure, unadulterated hatred. "You were supposed to just fade out! The doctors wouldn't have known! We gave you five months to quietly slip away, and you had to make a scene on his birthday!"
Footsteps pounded down the corridor outside.
"Room 412! Code Gray! Security to 412!"
Freya turned toward the door, her eyes darting like a trapped animal. She lunged toward Tara, slashing the syringe through the air. Tara ducked, grabbing a heavy plastic bedpan and swinging it with both hands, striking Freya squarely across the collarbone.
Freya grunted in pain, dropping the syringe. It rolled under the bed, disappearing into the shadows.
The door was thrown open. Two burly hospital security guards in dark uniforms burst into the room, followed immediately by Dr. Thorne and three nurses.
"Get her down!" Dr. Thorne shouted, pointing at Freya.
The two guards tackled Freya against the far wall before she could reach the door. She fought like a wildcat, scratching, kicking, and screaming obscenities that made the nurses blanch.
"He's my son!" she shrieked as the guards pinned her arms behind her back, ratcheting metal cuffs around her wrists. "He took care of that other girl, and he took care of this one! You have no proof! You have nothing on us!"
"Secure her!" the head guard barked, dragging Freya out into the hallway as other staff gathered in shock. "Call Covington PD! Tell them we have an attempted homicide on a restricted patient!"
Dr. Thorne rushed to my side, her eyes sweeping over the shattered IV lines and the blue dye covering the floor.
"Judith! Are you hit? Did she inject anything?"
"No," I breathed, trembling so violently my teeth were chattering. "Tara... Tara hit the pole. She stopped her."
Tara collapsed onto the edge of my bed, her chest heaving, sobbing openly as she buried her face in my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her neck, holding her tight, feeling the wild hammering of her pulse against mine.
Dr. Thorne knelt down and retrieved the fallen syringe from beneath the gurney using a pair of sterile forceps. She held it up to the fluorescent light.
"Potassium chloride," Dr. Thorne muttered, reading the hand-labeled masking tape wrapped around the barrel. Her face had gone completely white. "A concentrated bolus. If that had entered her central line, her heart would have stopped in under thirty seconds. It would have looked like an acute myocardial infarction."
She looked at me, her eyes filled with fierce, protective fury.
May you like
"Judith, they didn't just want the insurance money," Dr. Thorne said quietly. "They knew the tox screens were running. They were trying to silence you before the state lab finished typing the compounds."
***
