Read Online Perfect Poison by M. William Phelps - Free Book Online Page B

they were from the medicine cabinet. Without removing them from Gilbert’s jacket, Baronas looked at the names printed on the back of each packet: nifedipine and captopril.
    In all her years of nursing, Baronas had never seen nor heard of the drugs.
    A few days later, while telling Beverly Scott over the phone what she had seen, the two nurses made a date to look up the meds in a reference book. What they eventually found out not only piqued their interest and confused them, but gave them cause for concern.
    Nifedipine is a calcium blocker. Calcium blockers are used in the treatment of certain heart conditions and victims of stroke. It causes the blood vessels and heart muscles to relax and dilate. The type of nifedipine Gilbert had in her pocket, however, had never been authorized or prescribed for any patients on Ward C.
    Captopril is used in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and congestive heart failure, generally for lowering blood pressure.
    Combined, both drugs can lower the heart rate of a healthy person to an extremely dangerous level—and, if given in a large enough dose, can cause death.

CHAPTER 10
    A week or so after the initial incident that had landed Glenn in the ER, Kristen, without notice, came home from work during her dinner break one night toting a large canvas bag. She had a simple request for Glenn: As she had promised, she wanted to take a sample of his blood back to work and have it tested. She said she didn’t trust the doctors. She wanted to be sure his potassium level was where it should be.
    Here they were discussing divorce and having arguments every other day about who would stay in the house and who would leave, and now Kristen was coming home to make sure Glenn was okay?
    Something didn’t fit.
    Kristen brought the canvas bag into the bathroom.
    â€œCome on in, Glenn,” she said, and took a large syringe out of the bag. It was filled with a clear liquid.
    Glenn looked at the needle.
    â€œIt’s saline,” Kristen said. “I need to flush your vein first, before I take blood from you.” She had another syringe that was empty. Glenn guessed it was for the blood she was going to draw.
    After wrapping a tourniquet around his arm, she inserted the larger needle “into the crook of his left arm and began injecting the clear liquid.”
    Glenn hadn’t thought of it at the time, but anyone who had ever gotten blood drawn knew that the vein was never flushed because it would dilute the blood.
    As the fluid entered Glenn’s body, his fingertips went numb and, growing cold, his “hands, arms and chest drain[ed] of color and [became] translucent.”
    What the hell is going on . . . ?
    As Glenn tried to pull away, Kristen pinned him with her hip against the wall and hurriedly pushed the injection into his vein until the syringe was at least half empty. At the same time, she ripped the tourniquet off his arm so the fluid would quickly enter his bloodstream before he could do anything.
    In seconds, Glenn’s legs locked. As he began to lose consciousness, he slowly slid down the side of the bathroom wall he had been leaning on like some drunken bandit in a spaghetti Western who had been hit over the head with a bottle.
    Within a few moments, he came out of it and saw Kristen scrambling around the bathroom in a frenzy. She was gathering up the syringes and putting them back into the bag.
    â€œThis isn’t going to work,” Kristen said as Glenn came to. “You must have fainted at the sight of the needles.”
    Even so, while her husband lay helpless on the floor, Kristen walked out of the house and returned to work as if nothing had happened.
    When she returned, she ran into Lori Naumowitz and gave her version of what had happened back at home.
    â€œYou just left him there . . . and came back to work?” Naumowitz asked.
    â€œHe’s fine. He just fainted.”
    â€œWe have to call him, Kristen. We have