Read Online Where the River Ends by Charles Martin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charles Martin
Tags: Fiction
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get out of Charleston. Don’t you have this stuff in your office?”
“Yeah, but I can’t give you this much narcotic without someone else in my office assisting. Wait a few hours.”
“I don’t have a few hours.”
“Doss, there’s a reason the law requires us to keep this stuff under lock and key. It’s a check-and-balance sort of thing.” He dangled his keys. “I have the key. My office manager has the combination.”
“Come on, Gary. I know you better than that.”
“I won’t do it. If we’re audited, I’d lose my license.”
“Then tell it to me.”
“What?”
“The combination. I’m no dummy.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m going back to bed.” He laid his keys on the countertop next to him and stopped on his way out of the kitchen. “First drawer to the left of the cabinet. Left side. Written in pencil. It’s backwards, so start on the right side and work to the left. And don’t look at the cameras over your left shoulder. We have twenty-four-hour video surveillance. Better yet, put some panty hose over your head.” He walked out, so I grabbed his keys, drove to his office and let myself in. I found the combination, wrote it in reverse, unlocked the cabinet and on the second try, the safe door clicked open.
I dug through the inside, found what I needed, dropped it into a plastic bag and was about to walk out when I saw the unopened box of Actiq—raspberry-flavored pain lozenges on a stick that come in doses from 200 to 1,600 mcg. They were lollipops prescribed a lot for kids and older folks who needed fast-acting, ingestible medication to combat breakthrough pain. In the last several months, they had become Abbie’s candy of choice. She ate them as needed. I grabbed the entire box. I never looked at the camera over my left shoulder, but since I had turned on the light and wasn’t wearing panty hose, my identity would be rather obvious. The combination of all the drugs in my possession was basically weapons-grade pain management—and enough to guarantee prison if caught.
I drove back to Gary’s house, handed him his keys and he rummaged through my bag. He handed it back, speaking in his doctor’s tone of voice. “Now, listen. This is important. You’ve got six dexamethasone syringes, two dopamine syringes and enough fentanyl patches to last a month. The dexamethasone injections will reduce the swelling in her brain, giving her a few hours of clarity and returning her to a nearly normal playing field. If the pressure grows too much and begins pressing on her brain stem, it’ll do one of two things. If it raises her blood pressure, there’s nothing you can do. Probably won’t bother her much anyway. If it lowers it, it’ll hinder her body’s natural desire to breathe and probably send her into shock. The dopamine counteracts this by elevating her heart rate and pressure. In more practical terms, the dexamethasone is a nuclear bomb to her adrenal gland. Each injection will be like burning jet fuel in a car engine. It’ll run great while the fuel lasts, but chances are also good that it’ll blow it altogether. High-altitude climbers on Everest and K2, working in the death zone, pack it in as a last-ditch effort in the event that they need to counteract the effects of edema, which compresses brain structures. If you’ve ever been congested to the point that you could not breathe through your nose, then squirted some Afrin nasal spray up your nose, then you have a pretty good idea of how it works.”
He placed a finger in the air. “Oh, and both dopamine and dexamethasone, while effective when used alone, can cause a problem when used together. They counteract one another. Using both together can be a bit of a balancing act.”
He was right. Abbie had been using various forms of these and other drugs for so long that she’d become desensitized to their effect. Meaning, she needed more narcotic to achieve the same benefit. Which would have been fine if the pain had
“Yeah, but I can’t give you this much narcotic without someone else in my office assisting. Wait a few hours.”
“I don’t have a few hours.”
“Doss, there’s a reason the law requires us to keep this stuff under lock and key. It’s a check-and-balance sort of thing.” He dangled his keys. “I have the key. My office manager has the combination.”
“Come on, Gary. I know you better than that.”
“I won’t do it. If we’re audited, I’d lose my license.”
“Then tell it to me.”
“What?”
“The combination. I’m no dummy.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m going back to bed.” He laid his keys on the countertop next to him and stopped on his way out of the kitchen. “First drawer to the left of the cabinet. Left side. Written in pencil. It’s backwards, so start on the right side and work to the left. And don’t look at the cameras over your left shoulder. We have twenty-four-hour video surveillance. Better yet, put some panty hose over your head.” He walked out, so I grabbed his keys, drove to his office and let myself in. I found the combination, wrote it in reverse, unlocked the cabinet and on the second try, the safe door clicked open.
I dug through the inside, found what I needed, dropped it into a plastic bag and was about to walk out when I saw the unopened box of Actiq—raspberry-flavored pain lozenges on a stick that come in doses from 200 to 1,600 mcg. They were lollipops prescribed a lot for kids and older folks who needed fast-acting, ingestible medication to combat breakthrough pain. In the last several months, they had become Abbie’s candy of choice. She ate them as needed. I grabbed the entire box. I never looked at the camera over my left shoulder, but since I had turned on the light and wasn’t wearing panty hose, my identity would be rather obvious. The combination of all the drugs in my possession was basically weapons-grade pain management—and enough to guarantee prison if caught.
I drove back to Gary’s house, handed him his keys and he rummaged through my bag. He handed it back, speaking in his doctor’s tone of voice. “Now, listen. This is important. You’ve got six dexamethasone syringes, two dopamine syringes and enough fentanyl patches to last a month. The dexamethasone injections will reduce the swelling in her brain, giving her a few hours of clarity and returning her to a nearly normal playing field. If the pressure grows too much and begins pressing on her brain stem, it’ll do one of two things. If it raises her blood pressure, there’s nothing you can do. Probably won’t bother her much anyway. If it lowers it, it’ll hinder her body’s natural desire to breathe and probably send her into shock. The dopamine counteracts this by elevating her heart rate and pressure. In more practical terms, the dexamethasone is a nuclear bomb to her adrenal gland. Each injection will be like burning jet fuel in a car engine. It’ll run great while the fuel lasts, but chances are also good that it’ll blow it altogether. High-altitude climbers on Everest and K2, working in the death zone, pack it in as a last-ditch effort in the event that they need to counteract the effects of edema, which compresses brain structures. If you’ve ever been congested to the point that you could not breathe through your nose, then squirted some Afrin nasal spray up your nose, then you have a pretty good idea of how it works.”
He placed a finger in the air. “Oh, and both dopamine and dexamethasone, while effective when used alone, can cause a problem when used together. They counteract one another. Using both together can be a bit of a balancing act.”
He was right. Abbie had been using various forms of these and other drugs for so long that she’d become desensitized to their effect. Meaning, she needed more narcotic to achieve the same benefit. Which would have been fine if the pain had
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