Deadly Stillwater

Carrie turned on the flashlight and shined it around the box. Shannon was groggy, but her eyes opened wider and looked around and started to realize and remember where she was at. She rubbed her eyes.

“Wake up, Sunshine.”

Shannon managed a weak smile and whispered. “Nice try.”

“Hey, I always try to operate as if the glass is half-full,” Carrie answered, rubbing Shannon’s arms.

“Then you must be the most optimistic person to walk the earth,” Shannon retorted, more awake now.

“We’re still alive,” Carrie proclaimed. “And as long as we’re alive, we’ve got hope.”

“They better come soon then,” Shannon responded.

Carrie held the light closer to Hisle. “Getting worse?”

Shannon nodded as she pulled her legs up to her chest. “I don’t know how long I can go on like this.”

Carrie knew that Shannon needed to stay awake. “Tell me about your diabetes.”

“What do you want to know?” Shannon asked weakly.

“Tell me everything you can. We’ve got time to pass. Nobody in my family has ever had diabetes. I think I had one friend who had it, but it didn’t seem like too big of a deal. My sense is that you have a worse kind.”

“I probably do,” Hisle replied. “There are two types of diabetes, type 1 and 2.”

“Is one worse than the other?”

“Yes. Type 2 is the most common form, and most people who have diabetes have it.”

“If you have type 2, what happens?”

“With type 2, your body produces some insulin, but either it isn’t enough or the body doesn’t recognize the insulin and doesn’t use it right. Over time, if the body doesn’t have enough insulin or doesn’t use insulin properly, then glucose…”

“Sugar?”

“Right. When the body doesn’t use the insulin properly, glucose can’t get into the body’s cells and instead builds up in the blood. If that happens for long enough, the cells won’t function properly. Over time, if not taken care of, a person will get dehydrated and fatigued, and you can be more prone to infection. This could take weeks or months before those problems will manifest themselves. Sometimes people go a long time without even knowing they have that kind of diabetes.”

“That’s probably what my friend had then,” Carrie said.

“Probably,” Shannon answered, but then got quiet, “That’s not the kind I have.”

“You have type 1 then?”

Shannon nodded.

“What makes type 1 worse?”

“With type 1, my immune system has destroyed my insulin-producing cells in my pancreas so that my body doesn’t have the insulin hormone. That means glucose won’t move into my cells and instead, it builds up in my blood and I get high blood glucose.”

“So you need to inject insulin then, right?”

“Yes. I need to take insulin. Like I mentioned before, I take, or I should take, insulin every time I eat.”

“How long have you had type 1?”

“About five years. Generally, I’m really good about taking my insulin, but there are times where I’ve forgotten to bring it with me and of course the time I didn’t take it intentionally for a few days and got really sick. I’ve been thinking of going on an insulin pump but I didn’t like the idea of having this little machine attached to my body all day. However, right now I’m really wishing I’d gone to the pump.”

“If your body starts to get out of whack what will happen?”

“My body will start to break down. Eventually, I’ll get confused and start to shake. I’ll probably have issues breathing, rapid breathing.”

“And maybe lose consciousness?”

“At some point,” Shannon said, her voice down to a whisper, “if it gets really bad, I could go into a coma.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Let’s just try to keep talking. The longer I can stay conscious the better.”

The review of documents at the off-site storage was slow and plodding. It wasn’t that people weren’t trying or they didn’t have enough people. They were and they did as Shamus brought the cavalry. It was simply a slow process. While there was a portable Wi-Fi point set up, the work took a lot of manual labor just to get the information into a place where it could be used. The group had to work through the archived files, pulling out the red-ropes, digging through pleadings, correspondence, memorandums, and depositions to find names and other key data. It was a massive and manic excavation of information.

Once the group mined the data out of the files, the information was placed, via laptop and over the Internet, into a program that Hagen had quickly created over at Hisle’s office. The program was cross-referenced into the police and FBI databases that had been created for purposes of cross-referencing Hisle and Flanagan’s work on criminal matters. Hagen was now cross-referencing the information the group was finding with those FBI and police databases. Scheifelbein was doing his best to mask it at HQ and to keep the Feds from noticing.