“Your head is pink.”
“Yes,” she said, then realized what I was worried about, and touched her hair. “It really is pink. Fuchsia.”
“Um,” I said, so I didn’t have to nod.
“Dizzy?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right back.” She came back, too quickly for me to sit up or reach for the phone, carrying a blood-pressure cuff, stethoscope, and clipboard. “My name’s Suzanne. Left arm, please.”
It was more of an effort than it should have been to lift my arm. As I straightened it, I felt a twinge inside the elbow. She pushed up the pajama sleeve—whose? I don’t wear pajamas, but they weren’t new—and I saw the neat hole in the vein. “Let’s use the other arm.”
She wrapped the right biceps in the pressure cuff, and pumped. The back of my right hand started to ache. There was a hole in a vein there, too.
“Please keep still.” She let out the air, listened, made a note on her clipboard. Unwrapped the cuff and took my wrist in her hand.
“What—”
“Hold on.” She finished counting, made another note. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“What day is it?”
“Saturday. Five-thirty Saturday morning. Can you sit up?”
I did, very slowly. She rubbed her stethoscope warm, then listened to my lungs and heart. I studied the clothes folded on the striped chair. They were mine, but not what I’d been wearing last night. The door to the left of the chair was double, and louvred. I was in a suite. Then I recognized the coffee and cream stripes on the upholstery: the Fairmont.
I’d been in a hospital. Police.
“You okay?”
Pioneer Square. Those things I’d said to Kuiper. Someone had done that to me.
“If you’re too warm I could strip off some of these bed covers.”
“I’m fine.” Snuffle my truffle. That’s my vehicle. Tongue palace.
She took a penlight out of her pocket, turned it on. “Look at the light, please. Sorry,” she said when I flinched. “Touch your nose with your index finger.” I had to move slowly. “Good. Other hand.” I was panting again. Someone had done this to me. “You can rest now. I’ll get you some water.”
I’d been in a hospital, and now I was in a hotel suite. Someone had moved me and I didn’t remember a thing. She came back with a pitcher and a glass on a tray. She poured for me, only half-full.
“Can you manage?”
I took it from her grimly, managed to drink most of it before the glass began to slip. She eased it from my hand. “Lean forward, please.” She cradled my forehead on her shoulder and efficiently rearranged my pillow. “There. Lean back. Comfy? Good. I have to make a call. I’ll be right back.”
My muscles felt hot and hollow and soft, like just-blown glass. A red light on the phone winked as Suzanne talked on another extension. I heard snatches of her side of the conversation. “…sit up… pressure low but not dangerous… talk to her?”
The chair holding my clothes stood about six feet from the end of the bed. I could do it if I had to.
“Aud.”
I didn’t realize I’d shut my eyes until I had to drag them open. My mother stood several feet away. Not in the wine, then. She wore black yoga pants and a charcoal fleece zip-up. Her face was clear and clean and her hair caught in a clip at the base of her neck.
"How are you?”
In the kamikazes at the hotel bar? Just as I remembered Dornan slugging back the rest of my cocktail, it struck me that I had gone to all that trouble to wear the right clothes last night and here I was at half past five in the morning, half-naked in a strange bed, and my mother perfectly poised and coiffed, as usual.
“Aud?”
I forgot what I’d been trying to remember. “Tired.”
“That’s only to be expected.” She came a little closer. “I am very glad you are all right.”
“Reta—relative term,” I said. I still couldn’t get my breath.
“Indeed.” She cleared her throat and gestured at the edge of the bed. “May I?”
I nodded. She sat gently, careful to not rock the bed.
“Is Suzanne treating you well?”
“Pink hair.”
“Yes. But her references are excellent.” In the silence my breath sounded light and gasping, like a frightened girl’s. “They wanted you to stay in hospital but I believed you’d prefer a less… structured environment. The nurse was Eric’s idea. She says you’re doing well. Your blood pressure is a little low, but your pulse is strong and steady.” Her eyes moved in a search pattern: my eyes, my mouth, my chin, my chest, and back again. “She says you have good hand-eye coordination, your pupil dilation is improving rapidly, and your eyes should be back to normal in a few hours.” Her eyes never kept still. “The breathlessness might take a little longer. A day or two.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
“Yes, and very lucky. After what you took—”
“Given.”
“Of course. Were given, yes.” Her gaze settled on a spot between my eyebrows. “I’m told that so far they have identified MDMA, barbiturates, amphetamines, opiates, psilocybin, and PCP, and some other substances that haven’t yet been classified. Quite a cocktail.”
Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, oxycodone or something similar, angel dust, speed.
“The medical team wanted to give you a stomach pump, but as Eric pointed out, it would have been a needless procedure given the fact that you’d ingested the drugs in liquid form. In the coffee, they think. Most of the damage would already have been done. Plus it was clear that you had been vomiting.”
I frowned.
“Your clothes,” she said gently. “Apparently you can thank the wine you drank for that. Those who hadn’t had any alcohol weren’t so lucky.”
Lucky. Dancing around in Pioneer Square with vomit on my clothes.
I lifted my right hand, needle hole towards her. “This?”
“Saline IV. Dehydration apparently is one of the main side effects of MDMA, or ecstasy. Suzanne will be insisting that you drink plenty of water.”
“And this?” I nodded at my left elbow.
“Blood draw.”
I remembered none of it. Someone had done this to me.
“Your clothes are being cleaned, but I thought you’d want to have something to hand immediately.”
“Yes.” Thank you, I wanted to add, but didn’t have the breath.
“Aud.” She started to reach for my hand.
“You said. Others.”
“I’m sorry, yes. A score of people from a film set were admitted to Harborview Medical Center before you arrived. I thought I had told you.” She smoothed her eyebrows with her fingertips—for my mother, a shocking expression of fatigue, which reminded me of my surprise when she had repeated herself yesterday, and why.
“Dornan?”
“Your friend is unaffected.”
“Information?” I was too tired to say more, but she understood.
"Perhaps when next I speak to the police liaison he will be able to tell us something.”
The coffee urn. Had to be. Kuiper? No, she had been surprised when I’d said, when I said those things. Somebody had made me say and do things that… Somebody had rendered me helpless, somebody… "Uh,” I said as my heart skipped a beat and then slammed against my rib cage in the wrong place.
“Aud?” She was leaning over me. “Aud?” I didn’t have the breath to speak.
Suzanne ran in from the other room, brushed my mother aside, thrust her stethoscope through a gap in the pajama top.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Shssh,” she said, and frowned—the skin between her eyes rolled in a plump sausage—and moved the stethoscope slightly.
Whatever it was seemed to be over. My heart pulsed neatly, in the right place.