The Iron Bangle: He Owns The City That Betrayed Him

Chapter 5: The Antidote.

His hands shook so hard the bangle rattled against the pharmacy lock.

The steel door stood at the end of the old corridor. A sign above it read MILLER WING PHARMACY, AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY. Above the card reader, a small red light glowed.

Jace pressed the bangle flat against the reader.

The light blinked. It turned green. The lock clicked.

He pushed through into cold white air that smelled of plastic. Shelves of boxes rose to the ceiling, and a refrigerator hummed in the corner. He walked the aisles, and his mother walked with him.

Dimercaprol. Second shelf. The brown box.

He had the box in his hand before he had found it with his eyes. Saline. Syringes. Needles in sterile paper. He laid them on the steel counter in a straight row, the way he laid out Evelyn's silverware every Sunday.

He looked down at the row.

The syringe was shaking in his fingers. Its needle trembled against the light.

You walk dogs. You fold napkins. You have never given anyone a shot in your life.

He gripped the edge of the counter until his knuckles went white. If the voice in his head was wrong, if the fireplace had cracked something inside his skull, he was about to walk into Lily's room and kill her.

Look at me, Jace.

He shut his eyes. A tired woman smiled at him from the black glass of a break room window.

You saw her nails. Trust your eyes.

He opened his eyes and drew up the dose.

The pediatric ward keypad flashed green under the bangle without a sound.

Lily's room was dim. Clara slept in the corner chair with her mouth open and her coat slipping off her shoulders. Lily lay where he had left her, gray and small, her chest barely lifting the blanket.

Jace knelt beside the bed. He found the thin muscle of her thigh through the blanket.

"This'll sting, Lily-bug," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

He pushed the needle in and waited for her to flinch.

She did not flinch.

He pressed two fingers under her jaw and found her pulse, faint and fluttering, like a moth trapped in a jar. He pushed the plunger slowly. He pulled the needle out. Then he laid his palm on her cold forehead and did not breathe.

"What are you doing?"

Reardon stood in the doorway in a fresh white coat. He looked at the empty syringe in Jace's hand, and the coffee cup slid out of his fingers and burst across the floor.

Clara woke up with a cry.

"Get away from her!" Reardon slammed the call button with his fist, again and again. "Security! Security to Pediatrics! What did you put in her?"

"Dimercaprol." Jace kept his hand on Lily's forehead. "For arsenic."

"Arsenic?" Reardon barked a laugh. "This child has leukemia, you lunatic..."

"Then where's the marrow?"

Reardon took one step back toward the door.

"Two years of chemo." Jace's voice shook, and he kept going anyway. "Two years of her hair coming out in my hands. And you never once took her marrow. Why not, Doctor?"

Reardon's mouth opened and closed. He turned to Clara.

"Step away from him, Clara. He's not well."

Clara was on her feet, staring from one man to the other. "Jace, what are you saying? What arsenic?"

Boots pounded down the hall. The two guards burst in. The gray-haired one saw Jace kneeling by the bed and shut his eyes for a second.

"Son. I told you."

"Get him out!" Reardon's voice cracked high. "He injected my patient! Call the police!"

The young guard grabbed a fistful of Jace's shirt and hauled him up. Jace's palm slid off Lily's forehead.

Above the bed, the monitor chimed.

It was a soft, steady tone, not an alarm. Every head in the room turned.

The number in the corner of the screen read 91. While they watched, it ticked to 92. Then 93. The jagged green line of her heartbeat stretched long and smooth, like a rope being pulled straight.

A night nurse shoved past the guards to the screen. "Her sat are climbing." She swung around to stare at Reardon. "Heart rhythm's settling. Doctor, she's coming up."

No one moved.

"Jace?"

Lily's eyes were open. They were bloodshot and heavy, but clear. She turned her head on the pillow and found him hanging in the young guard's fist.

"You came back," she whispered. "You promised. And you came back."

The young guard let go of his shirt.

Jace went down on his knees beside the bed. He took her hand, and it was warm. An hour ago it had been paper. Now it was warm. He pressed it against his cheek, and he could not see her anymore through the tears, and his whole body shook with them. He did not wipe them away. He let them fall onto her blanket.

"I promised," he said into her palm. "I promised, Lily-bug."

She frowned at him weakly. "Don't cry. You'll make me cry."

A laugh broke out of him, wet and cracked. Behind him, Clara sat down hard in the corner chair with both hands over her face.

The nurse already had the phone in her ear. "Heavy metals panel on Whitmore, room six. Arsenic. Stat. And page Dr. Adler." She glanced at Reardon. "Now."

Twenty minutes later the corridor outside room six was full.

Nurses crowded the station. A resident had come up from the ER in scrubs. An orderly leaned on a mop he had stopped pushing. Every one of them was looking at Jace.

"That's the husband?"

"The one Mrs. Whitmore said was the help."

"He walked in off the street and caught what Reardon missed for two years?"

"I heard he made the antidote himself. In the Miller Wing pharmacy."

"Two years. She had Reardon for two years."

Reardon came out of Lily's room. He walked through the staring faces straight to Jace and stopped too close. His golf tan had gone yellow. The clipboard in his hands rattled against his wedding ring.

"How?" His voice was hoarse. "How did you know? Nobody saw it. Please. I'm asking you. How did you know it wasn't leukemia?"

The whole corridor waited.

"I looked at her," Jace said. "You never did."

A nurse at the station put her hand over her mouth. Someone near the back let out a low whistle.

Reardon leaned in. His breath smelled of cold coffee, and his voice dropped so low that only Jace could hear.

"Who else have you told?"

Reardon was not looking at Jace when he said it. He was looking past him, at the nurses, the resident, the orderly, one face at a time. A bead of sweat slid from his silver hairline down his temple.

"Paul."

The voice came from the end of the hall. It was low and dry, and it cut through the corridor like a scalpel.

The crowd parted. A woman in her sixties walked through it in a long white coat. Her gray hair was cropped short, and reading glasses hung on a chain around her neck. The badge on her coat read DR. RUTH ADLER, CHIEF OF MEDICINE.

Reardon straightened. "Ruth. I was just..."

"I read the chart on my way up." Adler held out her hand. "The clipboard."

Reardon did not move.

"The clipboard, Paul."

He gave it to her. She did not look at it. She looked at him over the top of her glasses, and the whole corridor held its breath.

"Two years of chemotherapy on a nine-year-old," she said, "and not one marrow sample."

"The presentation was textbook, Ruth, I..."

"You're off the floor." Her voice did not rise. "As of this minute. Pending a full review. Go home."

"You can't just..."

"Go home, Dr. Reardon."

Reardon stared at her. Then he looked around at the corridor full of nurses, his nurses, and not one of them would meet his eyes. He pulled his badge off his coat, and his hand shook so hard he dropped it. The orderly bent, picked it up, and held it out to him without a word.

Reardon snatched it and walked to the elevator. Nobody watched him go. They were all watching Jace.

Adler turned to him.

"You gave her dimercaprol." It was not a question. "Intramuscular?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Who taught you that?"

Jace opened his mouth. He did not know what to say.

Adler looked down at his left arm. His sleeve was still pushed to the elbow from the injection, and on his wrist the black iron bangle pulsed slow and blue.

She went very still.

The reading glasses slipped off her nose and swung on their chain. She stepped closer, close enough to see the tiny crest etched inside the open seam. When she spoke again, her dry voice had cracked straight down the middle.

"Where did you get that?"

"It was my mother's."

Adler pressed her fingers against her lips. Her eyes filled. She looked up from the bangle into his face, searching it, the way strangers had been looking at him all night.

"Mara," she whispered. "I hired Mara Miller. Best trauma surgeon I ever had on this floor. In this building." Her voice broke. "We buried an empty coffin for her son."

The corridor went dead silent.

Jace could not answer. His throat had closed. He stood there with his mother's name hanging in the air between them, and he felt every eye in that hallway land on him and stay.

The elevator chimed.

Evelyn Whitmore stepped out in a camel coat with her phone in her ear. She took three quick steps toward room six, saw Jace standing in the middle of the crowd beside the Chief of Medicine, and lowered the phone.

"I said if he came near this hospital..."

"Mrs. Whitmore." The night nurse stepped forward. "Lily's awake. She's stable. Your son-in-law caught it. It isn't leukemia. It's poisoning."

Evelyn stood still.

She looked at Lily's door. She looked at Jace. She looked at Ruth Adler's wet eyes. Then she looked down at his left arm.

The bangle pulsed blue in front of thirty people.

Evelyn put one hand flat against the wall.

"You opened it," she whispered.

She crossed the corridor in four strides and seized his wrist. She yanked his sleeve down over the bangle, hard, and dragged him through the stairwell door. It thudded shut behind them.

In the gray stairwell light, Evelyn's lipstick was bitten off. Her fingers were still locked on his wrist, over the sleeve, over the iron, and he could feel them trembling.

"Do you know what you've done?" Her voice cracked on the last word. "Half that ward just watched you open a Miller lock. Ruth Adler just said your mother's name out loud."

"Lily's alive," Jace said. "That's what I've done."

"Listen to me." She pulled him closer. Under her perfume he could smell sweat. "They will come for you now. Do you hear me? They will come."

"Who will?"

She let go of his wrist. From inside her coat she drew a thick white envelope and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart, and held it there.

Her eyes were wet.

"Sign the divorce, Jace. Tonight." Her hand on the envelope was shaking. "Sign it tonight, or you will not live to see Friday.”