“When people call it ‘normal,’ they’re putting covers on a hideous disease.”
Gabriel took his eyes off the exquisite contour of his foster brother’s toned back and turned away like he was supposed to. A fraction of a second before he took his eyes off the figure changing into a hospital gown, the image of Arius’s tattoo burned into his mind. He didn’t see it very often. But right now, with headphones off, turtleneck gone, and hair brushed aside, the gray-black mark was fully visible: the simple number “21,” in faded permanent ink. It had been there since Arius and his sister joined Gabriel’s family. Two small, silent brown children, one with an odd number 21 tattooed on the left side of his neck. Whatever traumatic beginnings the fostered twins had experienced, it was history neither of them remembered and no one in Gabriel’s family knew about.
“She—She didn’t ask me if I needed more medication,” Arius spoke up, voice wracked with nervousness he was probably trying to swallow down. “She always asks me a bunch of questions before she has me change. If I need my meds refilled, if I’ve had any pain—”
“Well, do you? Have you?” An amused smile broke across Gabriel’s face at Arius’s awkward, wavering voice.
“Yes—!”
“Then tell her when she gets back.” Gabriel’s eyes settled on a counter full of assorted nursing equipment. There was a pale blue cloth lightly covering a metal tray of small glass vials. Arius’s medication, probably. Gabriel stepped over to the counter and lifted the corner of the dust guard. Small, printed labels and milliliter amounts met his eyes.
“Wildnil?” Gabriel’s fingertip tapped against the label of one of the vials, and a mischievous grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s name brand carfentanil. I think they’re gonna tranquilize you like a horsey-horse, Arius.”
“Shut up, they never tranquilize me,” came the muttered response.
Gabriel heard the soft crinkling of paper and turned to see his foster brother carefully settling on the bed. “Hmm, but they’re already doing things differently this time, aren’t they? Didn’t you just have a whole panic attack over the nurse not asking you questions before she told you to change?”
“Shut up,” Arius repeated, a definite edge of unease in his voice. Those dark eyes darted momentarily in Gabriel’s direction before fixing on the empty ceiling above.
Gabriel’s teasing expression softened a little, and he carefully replaced the dust cover on the vials. “They don’t use carfentanil on people,” he promised. “It’s for veterinary use. Not sure why they even have it here.” He shrugged lightly, then smiled reassuringly when Arius’s dark eyes flashed up at him again.
Moments later, the door opened, and the nurse reentered. She gave Arius a businesslike smile, then rolled over a tray of equipment. “I’m going to run an IV and transfuse your medicine.”
Arius obediently lifted out his arm and let her take his wrist. He watched as she ran an iodide-soaked cotton pad over the back of his hand. “Um. I…” His voice cracked a little, and Gabriel saw him swallow. “I need a refill. On my meds…”
The nurse gave Arius a blank look. “Of course.” Her reply was almost robotic. “I’ll get that ready for you.” She tossed the cotton pad into a waste basket, then tore a needle out of its packaging. Arius looked away.
“He’s also been having pain,” Gabriel added when he saw Arius’s lips press into a tight line and his eyes close in aversion to the sharp instrument the nurse was preparing to pierce him with.
“Pain?” The nurse did not even look up as she connected needle and tubing.
“Yeah. Tell her, Ari.”
“It hurts at night when I’m trying to sleep,” Arius explained in a tense voice. “My back and shoulders, especially. But everywhere, really.” He gasped quietly as the IV needle dipped into his skin, then slid into place in one of the scarred veins in his hand.
The nurse set the line, then gently taped the tube down. “That’s normal.”
“I—I know,” Arius offered uncertainly. “You…She…I-I mean…you guys usually want to know, right?”
“I’ll make a note,” was all the nurse replied. She hung a fluid bag, then opened the snaps on Arius’s shoulder and drew the hospital gown away from his chest in preparation to place electrodes. The shiver that shot across the surface of Arius’s exposed skin made something twinge uncomfortably at Gabriel’s nerves. He grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Dang, Arius, you’ve been working out without inviting me.”
Arius shifted his head, dark oval eyes briefly glancing down at his own slim, fit body—the smooth, formed pectorals the nurse was gently laying with cold electrodes. He sighed disgustedly and closed his eyes. “It’s just for rollerblade stunts.”
“Ah. Ah-ha.” Gabriel laughed lightly. He drew his arms across his chest and nodded in mock agreement. “Sure, it’s for rollerblade stunts. Wouldn’t be caught dead going to the gym with me, would you?”
“No,” came the well precedented response.
Gabriel nodded at the confirmation. “Naturally.”
Steady, rapid beeping sounded softly through the room, and a patient monitor switched on to display Arius’s quick, nervous heartbeat.
The nurse walked over to the counter behind Gabriel, and the twenty-two-year-old stepped slowly up to the bed and gently took Arius’s hand. The boy flashed a look at Gabriel, perhaps torn between feeling as if he was too old for someone to hold his hand and actually being—like always during these grueling appointments—scared. “How—How long will it be?” Arius spoke up, those dark oval eyes moving away from Gabriel and back toward the nurse. He delicately shifted his hand with the IV and relaxed it on the bed beside him.
“Two to three hours,” the nurse responded unemotionally. “Typical transfusion time frame.” The nurse was filling a syringe. She checked the measure, then walked back over to the bed. Smoothly, she pressed the needle through the injection port on the fluid bag and gradually emptied the contents of the syringe into Arius’s IV drip. “You might feel drowsy.”
“Drowsy?” Anxiety flashed across Arius’s face again. “I—I’m not being—tranquilized, am I?” Brown eyes moved up at Gabriel.
The nurse’s face froze at his question. But then her expression relaxed into easy amusement. “Of course not. It’s just your medicine. Like always.”
“The medicine doesn’t make me feel drowsy,” Arius mumbled. A small flinch darted across his body, and he grimaced for a moment, fingers flexing against the paper-covered mattress. “Burns a little…”
The nurse paid him no more than a glance. She checked over the equipment one more time, then unexpectedly switched off the screen tracking Arius’s heartbeat. She gave him a brief smile when he looked up at her questioningly. “You don’t want to listen to all that beeping the whole time, do you?” She did not wait for his reply before walking out of the room.
In her absence, the foster brothers met eyes. Gabriel lifted a hand and waved it across his throat. “Lovely bedside manner, this one, huh?” He smiled lightheartedly.
Dry lips pressed into a tense line, and a short, stiff shiver ran across Arius’s shoulders, rippling his half-exposed chest. He shut his eyes.
“Cold?” Gabriel lightly squeezed his hand.
“It’s always cold,” Arius muttered.
“Well…let me see if I can find you a blanket.” Gabriel left Arius’s bedside and walked over to a cabinet. He opened the four prominent doors beneath a row of open shelves and glanced across the basins, trays, instruments, and small machines stored within. A drawer above the cabinet doors had insulin injectors and an overdose reversal kit inside.
“Gabriel, I feel funny.”
He glanced back at the younger boy. “The fluid’s always cold, Arius.”
“No, it’s not that.” Arius shifted on the paper. “It burns. Like…it really burns…A-And…And my head…Oh god…” Those dark eyes blinked several times like he was trying to clear his mind.
Gabriel paced over to the counter and opened the cabinet below it. “It’s hurting your head?” He took a blanket from a small, folded stack and started to his feet. But somewhere on his way up, he paused. The tray with the little glass vials was at his eyelevel, and the dust sheet had been removed.
“Rhytepa” was the name on the label of the foremost little bottle. Gabriel poked a finger at it, then lightly nudged it to the side. A vitamin D supplement was right behind the Rhytepa.
“Hey, you know how you take Rhytepa and vitamin D?” Gabriel straightened and walked back over to the bed, the blanket under his arm.
“Yeah…” Arius sighed. His eyes were shut, neck strained under the ink of that tattoo.
Gabriel smiled and spread the blanket over Arius. “They have a whole collection of medication bottles sitting out on that tray over there, and it looks like your cocktail.” He seated himself on a stool beside the bed. “Odd.”
“Why…Why do they always keep Amana and I in separate rooms?” Arius asked after a moment. His dark brows arched into a frown, but his eyelids did not lift.
“Come to think of it…” Gabriel frowned too. “I only remember her putting one thing in your drip. Unless she mixed multiple fluids in the one syringe…but you have like ten different things they give you every time…”
“This is different…” Arius’s voice was little more than a muttered breath. “This is something different. I never…It never makes me sleepy like this.” Then, voice lifting with tension, “Gabriel? She…She usually does X-rays before she leaves the room. She didn’t do X-rays…”
“You can go to sleep, if you’d like,” Gabriel suggested. “It would make the time pass a lot faster, anyway—” But his statement cut short, and he got to his feet again.
“I think…I think I might,” Arius sighed behind him. “God, it…hurts…”
Gabriel walked back over to the counter and checked the label on the first vial again. Then the second. He checked the labels on each of the tiny glass bottles on the tray. “A-Arius.” He passed an uncertain glance at the bed, hands uselessly finding the counter ledge behind him. Had it been Gabriel’s heart hooked up to a monitor, the beeping would be no slower than Arius’s had been. “Ari, would you—hold off on that for a minute?”
“Hold off…?” Arius’s lips barely moved on the two words. His free arm shifted a few inches across the bed, crinkling the paper below him. Then stopped.
“Yeah. Hold off on falling asleep for a minute.” Gabriel’s eyes tore around the room, then settled on the small waste basket in the corner. He walked quickly over to it, tipped up the lid, then froze. There was a single glass vial lying discarded at the top of the trash within. Gabriel carefully lifted the empty bottle and turned the label to face the light. Wildnil.
No. Impossible, was the first thing to flash across Gabriel’s mind. Fingers turning white with tension on the tiny glass bottle, he moved back over to the bed. “Arius. Ari?” He reached for the boy’s shoulder and shook it firmly.
No response.
Time suddenly seemed to slow. His own racing heartbeat became like the ticking seconds on a clock. “Arius!” Gabriel shook harder, that silent face offering no reply. The empty glass vial in his hand felt vividly cold in that frozen moment. The silent, blackened screen of the patient monitor stared like a blind person. This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, she wouldn’t have given him an animal tranquilizer, shot feebly through Gabriel’s mind before it was replaced with, What if she did? Gabriel glanced at the liquid quietly dripping from the fluid bag connected to Arius’s IV, then turned and ran out of the room.
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