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That’s why I take hesitant steps toward her bathtub, knowing that what I’ll find may just be the last piece I need to break completely.
The second I see the crimson stain, I fall to my knees. I can picture exactly how it happened too. We left her and she needed to leave us. She needed to let us out so she could leave. It’s probably the only reason the men who attacked her got the upper hand for even a minute. She was hurting and hurt herself because of us.
I think for a minute I’m going to throw up or pass out but I don’t. I hold it back. I hold it in because I don’t know what this feeling is, but I can’t handle it.
I push myself to my feet, grab the remaining bottle, and rush back to Doc. He’s sitting behind the nurse's station, not far from Evie’s room. I shake the bottle and he jogs to meet me.
“Thank you, I really needed these,” he says, grabbing them from my hands. He turns to walk away but I follow, needing to know why they were so important. Maybe he can help her get the dosage right so she can fucking sleep.
Flashes of her in my arms come to mind, her face screwed up in a silent scream, her shaking body as she tries to do the simplest of tasks her brain is wired to do; breathe.
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the memory and the awful thoughts that come with it. I gave her my truth the night that we slept together. She’s the only one, and she still lied to me. It’s not much, but that thought is enough to shove away the others so I can keep walking.
As soon as we reach a room that looks like a pharmacy, he sets the drugs down and starts putting on gloves to examine them. I lean against the wall and watch him closely. He uncaps one and his face contorts in a way I haven’t seen before as he looks at the label then the pill he’s holding. He sets it down only to open the next, and then the next.
Shaking his head, he finally looks at me. “Are you sure these are the ones she’s been taking?”
I nod, knowing exactly what they look like. I’ve handed them to her countless times when she was weak or healing and even when I just knew it was part of her routine before we went on a run.
“This can’t be right,” he mumbles, going to a cabinet and pulling out a giant book. I peer over his shoulder to see what has him confused. It has pictures of the pills and capsules next to each drug name, and the first thing I notice is, Evie’s don’t match.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
“My thoughts as well,” Doc says. “Her bloodwork last time was a mess, but I assumed it was stress and all the other things going on. I never thought to dig further. But this is insane. How often does she sleep?”
“Maybe four hours a night, the night terrors happen every night. Some nights I can get her back to sleep, but more often than not, Lev and I take turns going running with her at four in the morning.”
“When does she take these?”
“She takes that one at night,” I say, pointing to the capsule with a green substance inside. He takes it and grabs a dish, immediately getting to work. He uses a solution on it and starts moving it all around. I flip through the pages of the book, but it’s massive and I notice quickly the pill doesn’t look like anything in here.
After about twenty minutes he shakes a vial, and his face goes still.
“What?” I ask, standing to see what he sees. The light blue color doesn’t mean anything to me, but it must mean something to him. Instead of answering, he starts taking notes and gets to work with the other two pills.
“When does she take these?” he asks, not even bothering to look up at me. I don’t take it as a sign of disrespect. I can see the wheels turning in his brain as he diligently works. Something’s wrong here. So instead, I do what I can to help.
“The white one she takes in the mornings, and the blue one she will take after breakfast or right before combat class. On days she seems more anxious, she takes the blue one earlier.”
He keeps moving, crushing some of the pills as he adds and takes away substances from them. Dipping sticks of paper in them, and then pulling up Evie’s blood work on the screen as he works. Eventually, he must have all his answers because when he looks at me with his face pale as the white gloves he’s wearing, worry envelops me.
“Whoever has been messing with her, it’s been happening for a while.”
“What are these meds, Doc? And why is there not a single one of them in that huge ass book?”
I flipped through every page as he worked, so it doesn’t surprise me when I look up and realize we’ve been in here all day.
“These are all forms of cannabis, MDMA, amphetamines, and other insane stimulants I can’t even wrap my mind around. If I don’t get her on a withdrawal program right the fuck now, she could have a seizure. In fact, I’m shocked she didn’t when we gave her that week of sedation.”
He slams his fists onto the table, but the thump doesn’t register in my ears. I reflect on how her moods would go from normal to anxious in a second, how she would be so wrapped up in her thoughts it was like she was high. And now we know why.
Someone was drugging her.
“Fuck,” I yell as I slam my own fist on the table. It dents in the center but I keep going. Suddenly, everything makes sense, and I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet. The girl I love was being drugged right under my nose, and I didn’t even notice.
All her panic attacks, all the over-sensitized fear, all the instant responses, the little flinches, it all makes sense now. PTSD is normal after everything she’s gone through, but the extreme ways in which she was forced to deal with it, having it thrown in her face every night because of these medications isn’t right.How could she even function with all of that in her system?I’ve done drugs before and all I got out of it was an extreme sense of paranoia and anxiety.
Then it clicks.
