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“Hallucinations?” I asked, slow blinking at him as he grabbed my hand and wiped it with an alcohol wipe before slipping in the line.
I could feel the cool rushing into my veins, hydrating me little by little.
“Yeah, you were out of it when they carried you in. Thrashing and fighting off a hawk?” he half declared, half asked. “But, yes, judging by all that and the rash that is on your chest now, I am leaning toward deadly nightshade.”
“Belladonna?” I asked, jerking back. “No.”
“I doubt you intentionally ingested it. Usually only small children do, but, yes, that is my best guess. And belladonna is serious. It seems like you likely got a small dose, so hopefully this is all there is to it. But you could feel off for a few days. Tired. Woozy. Imbalanced. The rash might stay. There’s a chance the hallucinations will come back too. But I’m hopeful that they won’t. You seemed to get here pretty quickly. And I am throwing everything I can at this.”
“Thanks,” I said, shaking my head at the idea of getting belladonna poisoning. What was this? A nineties movie? Who got poisoned with belladonna anymore?
“There is a drug I can give you. And I will give to you if your hallucinations come back within the next hour or so. It’s pretty heavy-duty, so I am going to avoid it if I can. For right now, charcoal and fluids along with monitoring are a good option. I am going to turn down the lights as soon as I’m done. Being in the dark and calm is important until we are sure the poison has passed through. That said, Slash is going to bust down the door if I don’t let him in,” he added, sighing hard.
Dr. Price dealt with a lot of shit in our town. We didn’t have a local hospital or even an urgent care. All we had was him. Which was why he lived beside the office in a duplex, making him available at all hours of the night in case of emergencies.
Clearly, he’d been fast asleep when Slash had charged in with me, because he was wearing a tee and pajama pants under his long white doctor’s coat.
He wasn’t what you expected from some small town doctor, either. First, he was somewhat young. Second, he had the sort of aristocratic good looks that would have guaranteed he’d be the star of a big city hospital.
He was tall and fit—in fact, when I went for a run in the morning, it was usually Dr. Price I passed most often, trying to keep in shape before a day filled with patients—with brown eyes and medium brown hair.
He looked out of place as Shady Valley’s doctor. But that was what he was. Which meant that on top of dealing with the cold and flu and vaccinating kids and doing physicals for work, he also dealt with the occasional stabbing or shooting or, it seemed, bella-fucking-donna poisoning.
“I feel alright,” I assured him, even if it wasn’t exactly true. “You can let him in for a bit.”
To that, he gave me a resigned nod before moving into the hall.
He was replaced almost instantly with Slash.
“Belladonna poisoning,” I told him before he could ask.
“The fuck?” he asked.
“I know,” I agreed.
“What crew deals in poison?”
“Crews don’t deal in poison,” I said, shrugging.
At the end of the day, the statistics didn’t lie.
Men used fists, knives, and guns.
But women?
Women used poison.
“This was a woman,” I explained. “The same one who drugged that guy at the bar.”
“What?”
“I know. Sounds crazy. But I saw her. Just for a second before she disappeared. Down the alley,” I clarified, not wanting him to think I’d hallucinated that.
“Fuck,” Slash groaned. “So, what? You were a target too? Or she was pissed that you fucked with her target?”
That was a good question.
“I have no idea.”
“Shit. Alright. I’ll get Dell to check into the cameras at The Bog.”
Just like that, another memory flashed across my mind.
Nyx.
Being weird about the cameras.
Something told me that they weren’t going to get what they were after with those.
Sure enough, sometime later the next morning when I was being picked up from Dr. Price and brought back to the clubhouse, Sway relayed the news.
“Craziest fucking thing. The cameras weren’t working right. It was all static. Dell said that the cameras always work. Her brothers are anal about that shit. But they weren’t working last night.”
Oh, they were probably working, alright.
I just got the feeling that someone fucked with them.
And by someone, I meant Nyx.
The problem was, I got the feeling that shit would hit the fan if I out-and-out accused Nyx of anything sketchy.
First, I would have to deal with Delaney. Who was Nyx’s best friend. Second, I’d have the whole of the Murphy family on my case, seeing as they considered Nyx a part of the family. And third, well, I got the feeling that maybe Slash wouldn’t exactly be okay with me slinging around shit like that either.
