Pain twisted his face.
“Medication.”
I grabbed the bottle.
He swallowed one pill.
Thirty seconds passed.
Nothing.
Then his eyes rolled backward.
“Ethan!”
He collapsed.
The ambulance arrived in six minutes.
Harrison arrived at the hospital in eighteen.
I was pacing outside intensive care when he walked in wearing jeans and a dark coat, no convoy theatrics this time.
“What happened?”
“His heart.”
A doctor emerged.
“Ms. Parker?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve stabilized him.”
My knees weakened.
“But?”
The doctor frowned.
“We found something unusual in his blood.”
Harrison’s attention sharpened.
“What?”
The doctor looked between us.
“Digoxin toxicity.”
I stared.
“What is that?”
“A heart medication.”
“Ethan doesn’t take digoxin.”
“That’s the problem.”
Silence.
The doctor continued.
“Someone has been giving it to him.”
I felt cold all over.
“How long?”
“Based on his levels? Repeated exposure.”
Harrison’s face became stone.
“Can it mimic cardiomyopathy symptoms?”
The doctor looked at him.
“In certain circumstances, yes.”
My stomach dropped.
I turned toward Harrison.
“You think—”
He was already pulling out his phone.
“Lock down every medication bottle in Claire’s residence,” he told someone. “Get CID and federal toxicology involved. Now.”
I grabbed his arm.
“Harrison.”
He looked at me.
“My brother has been sick for four years.”
“I know.”
“If someone has been poisoning him—”
My voice broke.
“—then maybe he was never sick.”
Tests took forty-eight hours.
The answer shattered me.
Ethan had a mild congenital arrhythmia.
Treatable.
Manageable.
Not the progressive disease we had been told would eventually require a transplant.
His supposed cardiomyopathy had been exaggerated by repeated low-dose poisoning.
For years.
Someone had deliberately kept my seventeen-year-old brother weak.
Dependent.
Trackable.
His medication came from one physician.
Dr. Samuel Bell.
Bell had treated Ethan since he was thirteen.
He had attended birthday parties.
He had reduced bills when I couldn’t afford appointments.
Once, when Ethan was hospitalized, Bell sat with me at three in the morning and bought me coffee.
I trusted him.
Federal agents arrived at Bell’s house before dawn.
He was gone.
Inside they found three passports.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
A burner phone.
And photographs of me.
At the grocery store.
Entering base.
