Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
He scowled. “Why the hell am I in the hospital? Did you run me over?”
“Ha ha. I’m not the one with three speeding tickets.” Reaching over, she pressed something beside the bed. “Got told to buzz if you woke up.” Then she squeezed the hand she held. “Some asshole slipped a drug into your drink last night. You were out of it.”
Danny’s blood ran cold. Jerking up into a straight-backed sitting position, he tried to think back to the night, hit a blank wall. His heart thudded, his mouth dry. “I can’t remember anything after the game.” He’d been buoyant, delighted at their win against the Southern Blizzard.
“I looked it up on the web when I couldn’t sleep,” Catie said. “Being roofied can result in retrograde amnesia.”
“Roofied?” Mind spinning, he tried to make sense of what she was saying. “Why—?”
The curtain rustled to reveal a small-boned woman in scrubs. “Good, you’re awake,” she said. “And perfect timing. Dr. Smitherson is doing her final rounds before heading out.”
He didn’t have to wait long for the doctor.
After checking Danny over—including testing his cognition and motor skills, she slipped her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “Your friends were right—and wrong,” the doctor told him.
“You were slipped a drug, but it wasn’t what’s colloquially called a roofie. Rather, it was a downer cut with another drug.” She rattled off the technical names. “Tests show you were dosed with a relatively small amount comparative to your physical size.”
Danny tried to think. “Why would anyone do this?”
“Given the circumstances—that you were surrounded by friends who would and did notice that something was off with you—it might’ve been for no reason but that certain individuals get a kick out of it.” Her face reflected her distaste. “Last month we had five people come in sick and vomiting after a supposed friend spiked their drinks with an illegal substance simply to see how they’d react.”
“It could’ve also been an unscrupulous reporter,” Catie put in. “Photos of Danny out of it would bring in serious bucks, and all they’d have had to do was bribe a member of the bar staff or a groupie who could get close to you.”
“Shit.” Danny shoved both hands through his hair, only then realizing he’d been holding on to Catie all this time. “This could get me thrown off the fucking team. Zero tolerance to drugs, that’s the policy.”
“It’s all confidential,” Dr. Smitherson told him. “It won’t leak from here. But if it does ever come up, I’m more than willing to testify that you didn’t voluntarily take the drugs. I also suggest you file a police report.”
Danny’s mind was a huge roar of noise.
“Can he go home?” Catie asked, taking charge.
For once he didn’t argue. Didn’t have the capacity to argue.
“Yes, but I don’t want him alone for the next forty-eight hours. The effects can linger.”
“No problem. I’ll stick with him until his parents arrive from Auckland.”
“If they were planning to fly in, they’re out of luck.” The doctor nodded to the window behind Catie. “Big, once-in-a-century snowstorm swirling outside. All flights grounded. It’s forecast to get worse before it passes. I’m discharging you now so you can get home before it gets too dangerous on the roads.”
Dr. Smitherson was as good as her word, and Danny walked out of the ward only minutes later.
“I called one of those fancy executive cabs,” Catie told him. “You know, the ones that advertise about being super confidential. If the driver blabs anyway, we’ll pretend I fell and had to get my prostheses checked out and you came with me.”
Danny was used to Catie’s quick mind, but it was too quick for him today. “Catie, I can’t think quite right.”
She slipped her hand into his, slender and warm and with calluses from her weight work. “Lingering effects, remember? Doc also gave me a bit of advice about food and drink while you were in the bathroom, so we’ll start that, try to get your body into the right state.”
He looked down at their clasped hands. Funny, how delicate she was, though he never thought of her that way—but while Catie was honed and sleek, a bullet on the race track, her hand was all slender bones, and it held his with fierce power. Telling him it was okay if he leaned on her; she could handle it.
Curling his bigger, browner, blunt-tipped fingers around hers, he said, “I’m incapacitated. This doesn’t count.”
No one else would’ve understood. Catie grinned. “Granted. This does not go on the scoreboard.”
The taxi driver proved to be an older guy who was far more interested in Catie’s prosthetic feet than anything to do with Danny. She’d worn skin-hugging black capris that exposed her high-tech ankle joints, her equally high-tech feet clad in gold-sequined sneakers.
Catie chatted away to the driver as the taxi crawled through the snowy streets, the silence beyond a soft hush. She’d told him once that she liked talking about her prostheses. “As long as people aren’t rude and are just curious,” she’d said. “I figure if I can help them see prosthetic limbs as nothing strange, just a normal aid, it might help another amputee who isn’t as comfortable talking about this stuff. Plus, I mean, my hardware is wicked cool.”