Dangerous Women Part 67

"It's okay," I said. "I think I'm off tonight. What's up?"

"I've got a dilemma," she said, her face troubled, "and I need some advice."

"I'll get the s.h.i.+raz, you save me a seat on the couch."

"You'll probably think it's silly," she said as I poured wine into her gla.s.s.

"Apparently that's going around. Never mind," I added when she looked bewildered. "Just tell me. We'll decide if it's silly later."

She hesitated, gazing at me with uncertainty. Then she took a deep breath. "Okay, there are certain things that everybody at Brightside has to do-certain rules, I mean, that everybody has to obey, no matter what, or get terminated. Even the nurses. Even the janitorial staff. Even the gardening service people."

I nodded.

"Those are the strictest rules, and if you see an infraction"-she made a face at the word-"you're supposed to report it. Which is, like"-she rolled her eyes-"who wants to be a snitch? I mean, if I ever saw someone hurt a resident, I'd yell at the top of my lungs. But-"

"Did you see something?" I asked gently.

She nodded. "It was one of those things you can actually get away with if you're careful. And probably everyone there's done it at least once, but they'll fire you on the spot for it, even if nothing bad happens."

I shook my head. "What is this incredibly evil thing?"

"Having any unauthorized medication on you during your s.h.i.+ft." She frowned. "I thought I told you that. We can't even have aspirin in our pants pocket."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's a hazard to the residents."

"Only if they get into your pants pockets," I said, laughing a little.

"They don't care." Gloria was shaking her head. "Zero tolerance. The only way to be absolutely certain a resident doesn't take anything they're not supposed to is if there isn't anything."

"That's even stricter than a hospital, isn't it?" I said, thinking out loud.

"Beats me. And it doesn't matter anyway-it's their policy."

"So you saw someone-" I cut off, already knowing who it would be.

"Lily Romano," she said with a mournful sigh. "I caught her so red-handed, I couldn't even pretend that I didn't see anything. She was doing the rounds with water pitchers"

I put up a hand. "Been there, sis."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, unsure again and about to get angry.

"I caught Lily Romano with pills," I said sadly. I gave her a quick run-down of our encounter in Mom's room, adding, "I can't remember if you told me about the no-drugs rule. If you did, I forgot it that day."

"Did she beg you not to tell?" Gloria asked, still unhappy.

"Yes, but not about that." I told her the rest.

"That's weird. Why would she ask you to keep quiet about her having to change the bed but not about the pills?"

I thought for a moment. "Because she realized that I didn't know the rule and she didn't want to tip me off. Making me think I was just saving her some embarra.s.sment was pretty clever. Really clever."

"She kind of took a chance, though," Gloria said.

I shook my head. "I didn't even tell you, did I?"

Gloria sighed again. "She made me go with her to her locker and watch her put the pills in her purse, all the time begging me not to tell and promising she'd never do it again. I feel bad for her-cl.u.s.ter headaches really are murder-"

"Yeah, that's what she told me," I said. "But when I asked her this afternoon, she said she hadn't had any lately." I fetched the pill from my room. "It got stuck in my shoe," I explained, holding it out to her on a fingertip. "Is it the same as what you saw?"

"I didn't actually see the pills, just the bottle," she said, picking it up between thumb and forefinger. "This isn't a headache pill. It's methylphenidate."

I frowned. "Is that meth as in meth?" I asked, uneasy now.

"Methylphenidate as in Ritalin," she said. "You know, ADHD? No, you don't. Pardon me for saying so, Val, but you're too old. You grew up before they started trying to cure childhood. At least half the kids I went to school with were on Ritalin or Adderall or whatever."

I was aghast. "Did Mom and Dad-"

"Oh, h.e.l.l, no." Gloria laughed. "But plenty of kids supplemented their allowance by selling anything they didn't need to kids without prescriptions. They'd buy it to lose weight or study all night before a test, and I heard that a sixth-grader was supplying a couple of teachers." She frowned. "You'd never take this for a headache. It would give you one."

"Okay, pointing out the obvious now: Lily Romano isn't a schoolkid. So why would she take it?" I asked.

"Adult ADHD, I guess?"

"Never mind, I think we'd better go back to the home right now and talk to whoever's on duty."

Gloria caught my arm as I stood up. "Okay, but what do we tell them?"

"We'll start with what we know and let them figure it out."

Gloria was as surprised as I was to find Jill Franklyn in charge of the graveyard s.h.i.+ft. I supposed it figured: unremarkable but competent enough that no one would lose any sleep. Jill Franklyn was a h.e.l.l of a lot more surprised to see us. We were heading down the main corridor in the residential area toward the nurses' station when a door on the left opened suddenly but very quietly and she stepped into the dim, shadowy hallway. She had her back to us but I knew that thin silhouette and ballerinaesque posture. She paused with her back to us. Gloria and I stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other. I shrugged, then cleared my throat.

Jill Franklyn whirled and snapped on her flashlight, blinding both of us. "OmiG.o.d!" The word came out in a screechy whisper. The light went off again, leaving me and Gloria no less blind as Jill came toward us, her shoes making tiny squeak-squeak-squeak sounds. "What are you two doing here at this hour? It must be after midnight. Are you out of your minds?"

"Which question should we answer first?" I gave a nervous laugh and Jill Franklyn shushed me. She herded us down the hall toward the nurses' station, I thought, but before we reached it, she shoved us through a door on the right, hurriedly and with a strength I'd never imagined she had in those skinny ballerina arms. Gloria seemed equally taken aback; she was rubbing her upper arm.

"Sorry about that," Jill Franklyn said, not sounding very apologetic. "If anyone else sees you, they'll call Akintola and we'll all be in trouble. What are you doing here?"

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision, and saw we were in Celeste Akintola's office. Jill Franklyn surprised me by sitting down behind her desk and motioned for us to take the chairs on the other side. Gloria and I traded looks as we sat down; she gave me a you-first nod.

Jill Franklyn sat straight up in the high-backed chair, listening to me with a troubled expression, nodding from time to time but saying nothing. I finished and turned to Gloria, who hesitated, waiting for some kind of response, but the nurse remained silent, not even looking at my sister.

Gloria spoke in a small, uncertain voice, occasionally pausing to look at me. Each time I made a small, keep-going gesture. She did, but any confidence she'd had had deserted her, and I had no idea why. Maybe she was having trouble with the whole snitching thing, I thought. Except this wasn't just tattling to teacher-Lily Romano was carrying around more pills than she needed. A lot more.

When Gloria was done, I sat forward in my chair and said, "What would happen if someone gave that stuff to a patient here?"

Jill Franklyn finally lifted her gaze to meet mine. "It would depend on the patient," she said, sounding calm and logical, like we were discussing the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee. "And the dosage. And, of course, what other medications they might be on at the time. Someone taking vasopressin, for example, might be less drowsy. Depending on the dosage. It would probably have to be twenty or thirty milligrams, I think.

"Dementia patients respond best, though. Early dementia, I mean. Dexedrine's a lot better than methylphenidate but you have to work with what you've got." She sighed. "I don't suppose either of you have access to Dexedrine? It's practically impossible to get nowadays."

Gloria and I looked at each other. "Did you hear anything we just told you?" I asked.

Jill Franklyn wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, Lily Romano's screwed. And so am I, right?" She sat forward, putting her arms on the desk. "Or instead of being Girl Scouts, you could be part of advancing medicine and making life better for dementia patients everywhere."

"How?" I asked, wondering why her eyes weren't crazy.

"By going home and catching up on your sleep, and when you get up tomorrow, we'll all just have business as usual. You"-she pointed at Gloria with one hand-"can volunteer as much as you want, whenever you want; I'll get Akintola to sign off on it. I don't see why she wouldn't, considering you're four for five. That was pretty nice, wasn't it-getting to be a hero? Heroine, whatever. It was too bad about Mrs. Boudreau, but that'll happen-every so often, one of them won't come back for you, no matter how healthy they look. And you"-she pointed at me and frowned-"I can't remember what you do, but I remember your mother's always talking about how you never take a vacation. So take one. She won't lose much ground while you're away. Maybe none."

"How many people are in on this?" I asked incredulously.

Jill Franklyn looked up for a moment. "Hard to say. Here, it's just me and Lily."

"Are you saying this is a-a conspiracy?" My sister practically squeaked on the last word.

"What conspiracy?" Jill Franklyn looked at us like we were crazy. "You're on the Internet, does that mean you're in a conspiracy?" She looked from me to Gloria and back again, then stood up abruptly. "I should have known you wouldn't go for it." She began edging toward the door. "You two Girl Scouts're probably like most middle-aged women-not too physical. I know I don't look like much, but I've got nurse muscles-I can lift almost any resident here una.s.sisted. Or subdue them if they get violent. So I'll just fold my tent now and you can call the-"

I never even saw Gloria move. One moment Jill Franklyn was opening the door; I felt something brush past me. A framed picture of Celeste Akintola's children skidded off the top of the desk into my lap. I barely had time to register that Gloria was crouched on the desk before she sprang forward, landing on top of Jill Franklyn as they fell through the open door into the hallway.

The next minute or so was chaos. Jill Franklyn was on her belly, screaming in outrage and calling for help while Gloria sat on her back, holding her arm so that she couldn't move without breaking it. I stood in the doorway, blinking down at them.

"I'm calling the police!" yelled a woman, presumably Deirdre, from the nurses' station.

"Tell them to hurry," Gloria yelled back. "No security guard?"

"Cost-cutting," Jill Franklyn grunted. "See how safe your mother is? No on-site security guard-"

"Shut up," Gloria said and twisted her arm slightly. "I'll show you who's middle-aged, b.i.t.c.h."

Now, I would like to say that Gloria kept Jill Franklyn subdued until the police arrived, and after hearing what we had to tell them, they immediately sent a car to pick up Lily Romano and they were prosecuted and got long prison sentences and so on and so forth. But Deirdre-yes, it was Deirdre-only saw my sister a.s.saulting another nurse and, after summoning more staff via the PA, did something about it. Deirdre was closer to my age but her nurse muscles were more well developed and more experienced. She knocked me flat on my a.s.s when I tried to get in her way. I still might have had a chance, except, of course, we woke everyone up and they all came out to see what was going on.

Except that it wasn't just a lot of half-asleep people opening their doors to see what all the noise was about-it was a lot of very disoriented elderly people who couldn't see or hear properly, all b.u.mping into each other, stepping on me, falling over Gloria and Jill Franklyn, and crying out in pain or panic or both. In all the confusion, Jill Franklyn managed to get away several minutes before the police arrived.

They arrested me and Gloria, of course.

We didn't end up going to jail, but it was a very near thing. Fortunately, Celeste Akintola believed us.

There was little evidence-methylphenidate leaves the body relatively quickly. Metabolizes efficiently was how Celeste Akintola put it, I think. By the time she got a doctor to order blood tests, it was too late. I turned Lily Romano's pill over to the police but I couldn't prove it was hers; when I told the cop taking my statement how I had come by it, she just shook her head. Needless to say, both Lily and Jill were long gone. Celeste Akintola resigned.

I had to take a second mortgage on the house to cover our legal expenses, and yet I still felt funny about telling Gloria that she had to get a job. She started looking, which, in her case, meant uploading her somewhat padded resume to a few job-hunters' websites and checking her e-mail before she went to see Mom. There was no more volunteering, but she still went to see our mother every day.

Interestingly enough, the firm that owned the nursing home saw fit to give me a nice break on the bill-apparently, their legal department advised that, despite the lack of hard evidence, the disappearance of both alleged wrongdoers might be enough for civil proceedings. I signed all the papers happily, including the confidentiality agreement and the waiver of responsibility (theirs, of course). With a second mortgage to feed, I was short on resources.

The change in Mom was undeniable, though not as dramatic as I'd feared it would be. She complained about not having any energy, of feeling slow. A number of other residents seemed to feel something similar, including some whom I knew weren't dementia patients.

I asked Gloria one night if there were any new heroes or heroines at the home, now that she was a civilian again. She said she hadn't heard anything. "But then, I probably wouldn't," she added. "They replaced most of the staff and all the volunteers. I'm out of the loop."

Gloria found a health club that needed an aqua-aerobics teacher, but still found a way to squeeze in a visit to Mom almost daily. Apparently aerobics in water was less exhausting than the dry-land variety. Or maybe exercise really was energizing-I didn't remember being able to maintain such a high level of activity in my late thirties.

And even then, it was six months after the fact before I really began to wonder. Mom's decline had come to another of its periodic plateaus, but she was still having slightly more good days than bad, or so I thought. Or so I wanted to think. And then I finally started thinking about Gloria and her energetic lifestyle.

It was a stupid idea, I decided, which was why it hadn't occurred to me before. But still, a small voice in my mind insisted that it actually had occurred to me and I'd deliberately refused to consider it. So it had simmered on the back-most of back burners in the back-most area of my mind until I was ready to jump at shadows.

Which made me think of how Gloria had leaped up onto Celeste Akintola's desk and from there across half the room to land on Jill Franklyn. With my own eyes, I'd seen her sitting on Jill Franklyn's back with her arm in a bone-breaker hold. We had both suffered through everything that followed. How could I think that Gloria would go through all of that with me only to turn around and do the same thing?

Not the same, nagged that mental voice. Gloria's messiah complex is strictly limited-just her and Mom, no one else, not even you. Not yet anyway.

The only way to kill shadows was to turn on all the lights. I got as far as opening the door to her room, but I couldn't go any farther. I'm not sure what I was more afraid of-that I would find Ritalin or Adderall or even Dexedrine, or that I wouldn't. If I did, I'd know what to do-I just didn't know if I could.

But if I didn't, no one would ever have to know ... except me, of course. Because that's what I would find instead. I decided I would rather wonder about my sister than know for sure about myself, and closed the door.

It's been the same every night since for the past year and a half. Intellectually, I know I might as well stop, because I'm not going to do anything different. But on a gut level, I don't dare. I'm afraid of what could happen if I don't stand there and deliberately choose not to be a bad, sneaky, dangerous woman.

Caroline Spector Caroline Spector has been an editor and writer in the science fiction, fantasy, and gaming fields for the last twenty-five years. She is the author of three novels, Scars, Little Treasures, and Worlds Without End, and her short fiction has appeared in the Wild Cards collections Inside Straight and Busted Flush. In the gaming world, she has written and edited several adventure modules and sourcebooks for several TSR game lines, notably Top Secret/S.I. and the Marvel Superheroes advanced role-playing game, both on her own and coauth.o.r.ed with her husband, gaming legend Warren Spector.

Here she gives us a deadly cat-and-mouse game between a woman with superhuman abilities and a faceless, enigmatic adversary who may be able to use her own powers against her, a game that she can't afford to lose, where the highest stakes of all are on the table, waiting for the next turn of a card.

LIES MY MOTHER TOLD ME.

Zombie brains flew through the air, leaving a trail of blood and ichor on the throne riser of Mich.e.l.le's parade float. She smiled as another bubble formed in her hand. This one was larger and heavier-the size of a baseball. She let it fly, and it caught the zombie full in the chest and exploded. The zombie fell backwards off the float and was trampled by the panicking crowd.

Mich.e.l.le saw more zombies moving toward her. They clambered over the floats in front of hers, pus.h.i.+ng people aside as they flowed up the street. Another zombie crawled up onto her float, using the papier-mache arbor for purchase. The arbor came loose, and Mich.e.l.le watched in dismay as the sign reading "The Amazing Bubbles, Savior of New Orleans" broke off and fell into the street. Her daughter, Adesina, who'd been hiding under Mich.e.l.le's throne, let out a frightened shriek. Mich.e.l.le released the bubble, knowing it would fly unerringly where she wished. When it hit, it would explode and leave a big, gooey zombie smear all over the decorations. Her beautiful float was getting ruined, and it really p.i.s.sed her off.

There were three things Mich.e.l.le hated about Mardi Gras: the smell, the noise, and the people. Add in a zombie attack, and it was going to put her off appearing in parades altogether.

To make sure she could bubble as much as needed during the parade, she spent the morning throwing herself off the balcony of her hotel room ... until the hotel manager came up and made her stop.

"But I'm doing the Bacchus parade," she explained. "I won't be able to bubble through the whole parade if I don't get fat on me. And the only way to do that is to take damage. A lot of damage. A fall from a fourth story is good, but not great."

At this point, the manager turned an interesting shade of green.

"Look, Miss Pond," he said. "We're all grateful that you saved us from that nuclear explosion three years ago, but you're starting to scare the other guests. It just isn't normal."

Mich.e.l.le stared at him, nonplussed. Of course it isn't normal, she thought. If I were normal, New Orleans would be a radioactive hole in the ground and you'd be a black shadow against some wall. I didn't ask for this. None of us wild carders did.

"Well," she said, thinking if she just explained it to him, he'd be less freaked out. "It isn't as if when I get hit, or slam into the ground, or even when I absorbed that explosion that it hurts me. I just turn that energy into fat. Actually, it feels pretty good." Too good sometimes, she thought. "So you don't have to worry that I'm in pain or anything like that."

But his expression said he really didn't want to hear about her wild card power. He just wanted her knock it off. So she stopped trying to explain and said, "I'm sorry I frightened the other guests. It won't happen again." It meant she didn't have as much fat on her as she wanted, but she'd make it work.

Adesina was still watching TV when Mich.e.l.le closed the door after talking to the manager. She was perched on the foot of the bed, her iridescent wings folded against her back and her chin propped on her front feet. Just seeing Adesina made Mich.e.l.le smile. Mich.e.l.le had loved the child from the moment she'd pulled her from a charnel pit in the People's Paradise of Africa a year and a half ago.