The Law of Nines

And then, the answer was simply there.

He had to somehow make them think that he had taken his medication. He had to trick them. But how in the world could he do such a thing?

He sat for hours as the evening wore on, struggling mightily to come up with a way to do it. If he didn’t somehow accomplish what he needed to do, Jax was going to suffer.

He wasn’t aware of the idea coming to him. But he realized that it had. Some part of him, some inner will, held on to that solution for dear life so that it couldn’t slip away from him.

He knew that if he could pull it off, then without the drugs his mind would begin to work and then maybe he would be able to come to his own rescue.

He got up and turned on the smaller reading light over the bed, then shut off the main ceiling lights. The smaller light gave off a muted illumination, but it was plenty of light to see by, and it made the room dimmer than the hall. The partial darkness would help cover what he intended to do.

Exhausted from the effort of plotting and adjusting the lights, he flopped back into his chair to wait for the nurse to arrive with his evening medications.

He nodded off twice before she arrived.

He woke with a start when she knocked and announced “Medication time” in a musical voice. She was one of the nicer nurses, a top-heavy woman with at least a dozen moles on her face and more on her plump arms. She always had a ready smile.

“I have your medications for you, Alex.”

Alex nodded and reached up for the cup of Thorazine on the tray before she had a chance to wonder if he might need help.

He tipped his head back as he poured the syrupy medication into his mouth, then brought his head back down, making a face as he swallowed. He crushed the paper cup in one hand and tossed it in the wastebasket beside his chair.

He hadn’t swallowed the medication, though. He held the Thorazine syrup in the hollow under his tongue.

She held the tray out for him. He dumped the second cup with the pills into his mouth and immediately captured them under his tongue as well as he tossed the cup in the trash.

The nurse yawned while she waited for him to wash down the pills. Alex had to repress his urge to yawn in sympathy with her as he immediately took the third cup with the water. He drank it down as he tipped his head back, pretending that he was swallowing the pills with the water, and then as his head was coming back down after swallowing the water, he used his tongue to push the syrup and pills out and into the cup.

Alex immediately crumpled the paper cup with the Thorazine and pills in it as he had done with the previous two and tossed it in the wastebasket.

“Have a good night, Alex,” the nurse said as she hurried away.

Alex sat in the dimly lit room, unable to summon joy, exhilaration, or triumph.

But he knew that when the drugs in his system began to wear off, he would feel all of those delicious things and much more.

33.

BY THE NEX MORNING, Alex was noticeably more alert. While not entirely out from under the numbing influence of the drugs, he did feel as if he was coming out of a long, dark sleep. He knew it would take more time for the drugs to get out of his system. Also, even though he had spit out the last dose of Thorazine, it wasn’t possible to spit out one hundred percent of it. At least he’d been able to completely eliminate the pills.

The first thing he did when he woke was to take the cup from the night before, the one with the medications in it, and crumple it up inside a paper napkin just to make sure that there was no chance the people who collected the trash would see any syrup or pills and alert the staff.

If anyone found out that he wasn’t being controlled by the drugs, they would put him in physical restraints. These people were only posing as medical professionals, after all. They were hardly interested in his well-being. He didn’t know how many of the staff were involved in the scheme, so he dared not trust any of them. For all he knew, the whole place could be in on it.

When a nurse came in with his morning dose of medications, Alex acted the same as he had been acting for days—lethargic, uninterested, sleepy—and repeated his trick of spitting the Thorazine and the pills into the water cup and throwing it away.

Almost immediately after the nurse left, Dr. Hoffmann strolled briskly into the room. Alex concentrated on sitting still and staring. He finally looked up, blinking slowly as he met the doctor’s gaze.

“How are we doing this morning, Alex?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said as he pulled the blood-pressure cuff from a pocket.

He wrapped the cuff around Alex’s arm and pumped up the bulb, then read the dial as he let air out. When finished, he pulled the stethoscope from his ears.

“Just as I promised, you’re getting acclimated to the medication.” He wrote on his chart as he talked. “Your blood pressure is coming back up. It’s a little surprising, but everyone reacts differently. You’re young and strong, so your body is handling it well.”