NORTHPORT, NEW YORK
Laura guided Rick to the VA Medical Center in Northport. Under different circumstances she would have enjoyed the alone time together, but the closer they got, the more tense she became.
“What’s here?” he said as he pulled into a parking space.
“I need to check on somebody.”
“Relative?”
She shook her head. “A new friend.”
Should she tell him? She decided to hold off … wait until this was all a fait accompli. After all, he had strange ideas about the origins of the ikhar …
He said, “I’ll wait here. Not a fan of hospitals.”
“You’ve got plenty of company there. I won’t be too long.”
Inside, the receptionist returned her wave as she entered the lobby and made a right turn for the elevators.
“Happy Tuesday, Sarge,” Laura said after knocking on the doorframe to Emilie Lantz’s private room.
Emilie smiled and mouthed hello. A nice smile. Her teeth were big and white, her skin a lighter brown than Laura’s—a Beyoncé shade—her hair done in neat cornrows. They took good care of her here.
Laura wasn’t here as a doctor, simply a volunteer. She’d started using a few hours of one of her afternoons off to help out. Since she was heading for a neurology residency, she gravitated toward those patients with neurological disorders.
Emilie had been a military intelligence staff sergeant in Marine Air Control Group 1 during the first Gulf War. She’d accompanied her unit into Iraq itself. Her multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 1991, shortly after the combat phase ended. In the decades since, her condition had gradually deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk, no longer raise her arms, and barely speak.
She was perfect.
A woman who had feared nothing in her prime had been reduced to complete helplessness and chronic pain by an autoimmune disease that gnawed the insulation off her nervous system.
The MS itself wouldn’t kill her. She’d die of a complication of some sort: pneumonia or a pulmonary embolism. To Laura’s mind, she deserved a whole lot better. Laura wasn’t a fan of her country acting as the world’s policeman; in fact, she flat-out hated the idea of spilling American blood on foreign soil. But none of that mattered where Emilie was concerned. She’d enlisted, and when called on to go fight, she’d gone. ’Nuff said.
A special woman laid low.
Well, Laura could fix that. Or rather, the ikhar could.
Laura simply had to administer it without Emilie knowing she was being dosed. And she thought she’d found a way.
“Thirsty?” Laura said.
Emilie gave a tiny nod.
Slipping the half ounce or so of the not-so-great-tasting liquid into a few ounces of juice had done the job before. She figured the trick was to choose just the right amount of juice—too much, she might not finish, too little and she’d taste the ikhar.
By the next morning all signs of her illness would be gone, vanished as if they’d never been.
Or so Laura hoped.
“How about some apple juice?”
Another tiny nod.
“I brought you the healthy kind,” she said, pulling a sixteen-ounce bottle from her shoulder bag and holding it up. “It’s unfiltered. Supposed to be better for you.”
The cloudy ikhar would change the clear look of the filtered and pasteurized juice they served here at the VA. The unfiltered kind was already cloudy.
She stepped out of Emilie’s line of sight and found a six-ounce plastic cup. She pulled the snuff bottle from her pocket, removed the stopper, and emptied the ikhar into the bottom of the cup. She swirled it as she half-filled the cup with juice, then held it up. Perfect. She grabbed a straw and approached the bed.
“Here you go.” Laura fitted the straw between Emilie’s lips. “Okay. Drink.”
Poor woman … couldn’t even hold a cup. This had to work.
Emilie quickly sucked up the three or four ounces. She released the straw and made a sour face.
“What? You don’t like it?”
A meh expression.
Laura got a fresh cup, poured in a few ounces of juice, and quaffed them.
“Tastes okay to me. Maybe you were expecting something different. Try a bit more.”
She poured a couple more ounces of juice into Emilie’s cup. She wanted her to get every drop of the ikhar. This time when Emilie finished it she gave a little nod of approval.
“Good job.”
Laura slipped Emilie’s cup into her bag. She’d leave the bottle of leftover juice behind.
“All right. Reading time.”
Emilie couldn’t hold a book, couldn’t even touch the screen of a Kindle. So Laura read to her. She knew Rick was waiting but she had to make this look like a routine visit.
“What’ll it be? More Hammer’s Slammers?”
Now a smile with the nod.
Laura had learned that Emilie liked science fiction, specifically military SF. Since Laura didn’t come by often enough for them to get into a novel, she’d looked for a collection of short stories. She’d Googled around and found The Complete Hammer’s Slammers Volume One by someone named David Drake—twenty stories about a future tank war. Perfect.
She pulled out a pair of reading glasses and turned to the table of contents. She could read without them, but had picked up a +1.5 diopter pair at a dollar store. She’d leave them behind when she finished here. All part of her plan.
“Okay, ‘Hangman’ looks good. Let’s do that.” She thought of Rick outside. “Trouble is, I’ve got an appointment so I don’t think we can finish today.”
Emilie said. “’S’okay. Bushed.”
With a bittersweet pang Laura realized this would be her last reading session with Emilie. By tomorrow she’d be cured and would be able to hold a book on her own.
If it worked.