I don’t remember everything that happened next, which is unusual for me.
But it began with a stream of images, one after another.
Then the images came faster.
Infrequently a frenzy overtakes me. The details that I cannot help but record become like crystals that are too beautiful, and they resonate, as if struck by some strange tuning fork.
When this first happened as a child, it was the result of a boy named Jarvis, who repeatedly flicked my neck in PE. I jumped on Jarvis. Didn’t stop hitting him until an adult peeled me off.
I looked around the office.
Frank was staring at me, Poulton beside him. I turned and realized I’d wandered into a waiting area outside of a series of cubes.
A lamp flew off a side table, yanked from the wall and tossed across the room. The lower panel of my cubicle bowed inward suddenly, then out. My foot against it.
The wall went down, and Frank headed over.
“Get away from me!” I screamed.
The door to the office kitchenette was suddenly there. I must’ve traveled fifty feet. I moved inside. The microwave flew off the counter. A hole appeared in the drywall and my hand was inside it.
Find somewhere safe in these moments, Gardy.
I leaned over and stopped, and the world of the office went quiet. But the facts kept coming. One after another. Burned into my mind.
I saw Cassie approach me, but moved around her, my hands waving her and Frank away.
I pushed out of the kitchen, moved down a stairwell and out the emergency exit. I heard an alarm chirp as I left the building, but I kept going. Out toward a hedge of trees behind the building. Out into nowhere.
A squad car found me two miles down the road. A female officer got out. Blond. Heavyset. Pretty. I wish my mind did not track every inane detail, but it does.
“I’m just here to help,” she said in a gentle voice.
I moved away from her. Into another field. Picked up my pace. Counting as I walked. Prime numbers.
“I can control my breathing,” I repeated in between the numbers. “This is all temporary.”
I moved farther away from the noises of traffic. Got to the number 7,841 and stopped. I was missing a shoe.
I sat down in a bed of alfalfa. The smell of dirt was strong, and my face was wet with perspiration, my knuckles bloody.
“C’mon, Agent Camden,” the same officer said. “I’m here to take you home.”
I turned. Had she been following me?
The officer drove me to my place. She never lifted her radio receiver. Never asked a question. Just silence until I was at my apartment.
I moved inside in the dark. Stripped off my clothes and found the bed.
I thought of the conversation I’d had with Mad Dog. But mostly I thought about my mother.
Never use your intellect as a weapon, Gardy.
On the call today, I had found Mad Dog’s soft points and dug in. His childhood. His value system. Poulton had told me to break him, and I did. I caused him to lash out. To target my mother. I was responsible for this.
I found my cell phone and called my mother’s physician.
“Is she dead?” I asked when he answered.
“Of course not,” he said. “But she hasn’t regained consciousness, so we have her on a ventilator.”
Exhalation takes little effort, but inhalation requires multiple muscles to work. When respiratory muscles are paralyzed, the lungs are unable to breathe.
“We’ve taken blood samples,” he said. “They tested positive for vecuronium.”
This was a paralytic, commonly used by anesthesiologists. The same one I’d seen listed in the ME’s report the night before. The chemical found injected in Ross Tignon’s neck.
“What have you tried so far?” I asked.
“We’ve used other medications,” he said. “To antagonize the muscles to relax.”
“No effect?”
“With her age and condition,” he said, “it’s possible she won’t wake up again.”
I dropped my hand that held the phone. Stared into the darkness of my bedroom.
“We can call you as soon as—”
I hung up. Moved back to bed and felt the pillow, wet against my cheek.