He woke up the next morning to gray clouds and a heavy rain pounding the glass and drumming on the roof. And for the second morning in a row, he found Miriam in the bathroom weeping softly. Though this time it sounded different.
George knocked on the door. “What’s wrong now?”
A moment later Miriam opened the door. “I don’t feel very well.”
Her complexion was pallid with dark circles lining her eyes. Her forehead was cold and clammy to the touch.
“I just feel… a little dizzy.”
George helped her back to the bed. “Lie down and I’ll get Dr. Henderson.”
He went downstairs. It was still before eight o’clock, but he hoped Amanda would be up early. He went to the kitchen to find her preparing a tray of food.
“Where’s Dr. Henderson?” George said. “Miriam’s not feeling very well; I think she might need more medicine.”
Amanda frowned, then pushed past him and hurried down the corridor with George on her heels. “Where is the doctor?” he was saying. “Can you call him?”
But Amanda just said, “Wait here,” and disappeared inside Vale’s office.
George called after her, “Can you please just call the doctor?”
Amanda emerged from the office a few moments later with a glass vial in her grasp. George followed her back to their suite and the bed where Miriam was lying, now drenched in sweat and struggling, it seemed, just to breathe.
“Do you know how to administer this stuff?” he asked.
Amanda helped Miriam sit up in the bed, then uncapped the vial and held it to her lips. “Drink this down. Swallow it all and don’t spill any of it.”
Miriam gagged slightly but swallowed the perilium from the vial. Amanda made certain she drank every drop. Miriam seemed to relax; her breathing slowed and she settled back against the pillows.
Amanda felt her forehead, then got up from the bed. “She should be all right in an hour or so. Let her rest for now. I’ll call Dwight and he’ll come up and check on her.”
Amanda left the room, and George sat in silence for several minutes watching his wife. Vale had said that the effects of the perilium would wear off, but George hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly.
When he was satisfied Miriam was sleeping again, George dressed and slipped downstairs. He found Amanda in the kitchen, leaning against the big aluminum sink, her head down, the water running.
“What was wrong with her?”
Amanda didn’t look up. “Did they tell you what would happen if she ever stopped taking it?”
George shrugged. “They said that the effects would wear off. And that her Alzheimer’s could eventually come back.”
She shook her head, and her eyes glistened. “Well, let’s just say if she stops taking the perilium, Alzheimer’s will be the least of her worries.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
She turned back to the sink. “Never mind. I already said too much.”
George grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What will happen to her?”
She pulled free from his grasp, her eyes flaring. “Why did you bring her here?”
“To save her. I had to try to save her.”
“Really? Did you do it for her or for yourself?”
George stepped back and blinked. “What?”
“I mean, was it her suffering you were trying to ease or your own?” Amanda wiped her eyes, and her tone suddenly grew cold. “Who were you really trying to save?”
She pushed past him and left George standing in the kitchen struggling with his thoughts. Her question hung in the silence, pricking his conscience. Had he brought Miriam all this way for her sake or his own? He recalled hearing Alzheimer’s described just that way: a disease where the patient’s family suffers more than the patient. He hadn’t thought about it quite like that before. But now part of him had to concede it was true. He’d been more occupied with how her disease had affected him. His life. His plans.
George returned to his room and sat at the bedside as Miriam slept. An ominous thought overshadowed him as he considered the miracle drug and its side effects. Vale had purposely withheld the information about its rejuvenating abilities until it suited him. George wondered now what else Vale hadn’t told him. What other side effects were there? He couldn’t trust Vale for information. He would need to find out for himself.
After a time he dozed off and woke up again shortly after noon. He glanced out the window and saw that the rain had let up some. Miriam was still asleep but George was starving, so he decided to head back to the kitchen and find something to eat.
In the hallway he heard voices coming from the dining room. It sounded like Thomas Vale. And George thought he heard another woman’s voice as well. It wasn’t Amanda, and it didn’t sound like any of the other women he’d met at the dinner party two nights ago.
George heard Vale’s voice drifting up through the foyer. “She wanted to find her cousin. Go take her to him.”
George snuck along the hall until he came to the balcony over the foyer, where he saw Carson escorting someone down the corridor below him. It was a woman, her shoulder-length black hair hanging in wet clumps. She was drenched. George couldn’t see her face, and it almost looked like she had been handcuffed.
“Idiots!” Vale was saying now. “How could they not have known they were being followed? Is he completely incompetent?”
“What are you going to do with her?” Amanda’s voice responded.
“We don’t have any choice,” Vale said. “She didn’t leave us any.”
George watched as Vale and Amanda emerged from the dining room and walked down the hallway.
“See what else you can find out about her,” Vale said. “I need to know if she was telling the truth or not.”
“Yes, sir.”
They headed down the same corridor where Carson had taken the prisoner. Vale exited through the door at the far end of the hallway, and Amanda turned into one of the other doors.
George stole down the stairs quietly and listened. Maybe now was his chance to check in Vale’s office. It was obviously the place where he stored the supply of perilium, or at least some of it, and George needed to find out what else was in there. It was also where George recalled spotting the only phone he’d seen in the entire complex—on Vale’s desk. And since his cell phone had no reception in these mountains, it was the only connection George had to the outside world.
The door was closed, but George pushed it open silently. The office was empty, as he suspected. The big oak desk stood at the far end of the room, and George’s heart pounded as he sucked in a deep breath and stole inside.
He moved past the bookshelves and picked up the phone but heard no dial tone. The LCD screen indicated that a pass code was required in order to dial out. George wasn’t surprised. Vale’s mission was to keep this place a secret. And that meant no unauthorized communications.
To the right of the desk was a second door. George tried the knob, and it opened to a room filled with what looked like storage equipment and monitors. It was small and dimly lit, containing two large refrigeration units built into the walls, with temperature monitors and a security system connected to a large console in the middle of the room. Across from the refrigeration units was another door that led to some sort of supply closet.