The Fever (12 page)

"If you don't want him for a boyfriend," she had said more than once, **you shouldn't monopolize his time when there are so many girls out there without boyfriends."

Meaning Jane, of course.

But Kit had never been attracted to Jane. Duffy had suggested once, casually, that Kit ask her out,

and he had said, "I don't think so. She's not my type."

Meaning he liked "thinkers" and Jane wasn't a thinker. She was a "feeler," running mostly on emotion. Kit, who lived in a household devoid of emotion, couldn't understand that.

Dylan wasn't happy when he left her room, but Duffy couldn't dwell on that.

Where was Jane? I need to know the truth, Duffy thought, and I need to know it now.

A very long hour and a half later, she did. Because Jane, red-cheeked and breathless, came into the room carrying a brown paper bag.

**Well, here it is," she said wearily. She handed the bag to Duffy. "The pills are in there, and so is the report. Dean was glad to do it . . . for you." She hesitated, and then added in a voice that hinted of hurt feelings, "Duffy, why didn't you tell me you had a heart condition?"

Duffy looked down at the slip of paper in her hand, already knowing what it said.

DIGOXIN

Chapter 18

Duffy tried to still her racing heart. She told herself it wasn't as if she hadn't suspected . . . the word DiGOXiN shouldn't have been that great a shock.

But it was.

Seeing it there on the small slip of paper, seeing the proof that her suspicions, which had once seemed so wild, had been accurate after all, punched her in the stomach. Someone had actually done this to her? On purpose? Sent this awful, sickening drug flowing through her body?

Who could hate her that much?

She had been right. Someone had switched the digoxin with her antibiotics. Someone had actually stolen her pills, split the capsules in two, emptied out the "something-myocin," and replaced the antibiotic with the missing digoxin.

And no one knew that but her.

Except for the person who had done it.

Who was that person?

As she stared, frozen, at the slip of paper in her hand, Jane repeated her question. "Duffy? Why

didn't you tell me you had a heart condition?"

"I don't," Duffy replied. 'There's nothing wrong with my heart." Except that it was pounding wildly in her chest.

"Dean made a mistake? But. . . but he seemed so sure," Jane said. "I mean, I told him digoxin didn't sound like an antibiotic, and he said it wasn't. He said it was heart medication. I said you didn't have anything wrong with your heart, and he said, Then she shouldn't be taking this stuff. It won't make her well. It'll make her sicker,^ "

Duffy said nothing. She was debating whether or not to take Jane into her confidence. What if, in spite of Dean's analysis, Jane didn't believe her. What if she wrote it off as a simple mistake and accused Duffy of "paranoia"? Worse, what if she told someone that Duffy had had the pills tested? Word would spread quickly through the hospital that Duffy knew the truth . . . once whoever had done this knew Duffy was on to them, something really terrible might happen. Maybe to Janey because she had taken the pills to the lab.

No. She couldn't tell Jane. It was too risky.

"Never mind," Duffy said, **let's forget it. Let's talk about something else. Seen Dylan today?"

"Duffy!" Jane squealed. "Are you kidding? Dean tells me you're taking heart medication, and you say you don't have a heart condition, and you expect me to forget it, just like that? What's going on?"

When Duffy, her mind racing to come up with a plausible explanation that would keep Jane safe, failed to respond, Jane pressed. "Duffy, we don't

keep secrets from each other, right? Are you in some kind of trouble? You sounded so scared earlier. What are you doing with those pills? Where did you get them?"

Duffy wanted desperately to confide in Jane. She was so tired of worrying alone. And what was the point of having a best friend if you couldn't tell her the truth?

But what kind of friend were you if you deliberately put your best friend in danger?

A rotten kind of friend.

She couldn't stand the thought of anything terrible happening to Jane. Bad enough that Kit had left. What would she do without Jane?

Forcing a grin onto her face, she said, "Gotcha!" and added slyly, "Does the phrase 'wild-goose chase' have any meaning for you?"

It took Jane a few minutes. When the words finally sank in, her cry of outrage echoed throughout the room. "Dorothy Leigh Quinn! I don't believe this! You didn't! You didn't send me all the way across town for no reason, did you?"

Duffy's grin splashed wider.

Jane flopped back in her chair, throwing her hands up in the air. "This is not happening. Sick people are not supposed to play stupid practical jokes. I do not beheve this."

But Duffy could see that she did. And her relief was mixed with a terrible sense of loneliness. She had kept Jane out of it. Jane was safe. But now she was alone again, with no one on her side.

"Honestly, Duffy," Jane babbled, *^his is just like

the time you told me Michael J. Fox was making a personal appearance here and if I hurried, I could get tickets." The comers of her lips began to turn up in the birthing of a laugh. Glaring at DuJBfy in mock anger, she said, "You laughed so hard. I thought you'd crack a rib."

Then she added with a grin, "So, I guess this means you're getting better, right? And you'll be sprung soon?" Her voice softened, "I miss you something fierce, Duff. I hate it when you pull this kind of stunt, but nothing's the same when you're not around."

Thinking of the digoxin in her system, Duffy fell silent. Would she be going home soon? Would she be going home at alll In one piece?

She needed to think about what the lab report meant, and what to do about it. "Fm really all worn out," she told Jane. "I think I need to sleep for a while. Maybe you could come back tonight?"

Immediately, Jane jumped to her feet. "Oh, sure. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have stayed so long. I keep forgetting you're sick. I'll come back later." Her smile then was sweet to see. "I'm mad at you for sending me across town for nothing, but I'm glad that you felt well enough to do it. 'Bye."

Duffy watched her go, her thick dark hair swinging on her shoulders, and was glad she'd made up that silly story about a wild-goose chase. Being in this alone wasn't easy, but at least she didn't have to worry about something horrible happening to Jane.

Alone again, she asked herself if the digoxin in

her pills could possibly have been a mistake.

There had been a lot of '^mistakes" — the elevator sign being switched, the wheelchair being pushed down the hill, the attack in the shower, the digoxin. There was no way all of those things could be simple mistakes. Someone had engineered them.

If only she had some clue as to who it was, and why.

Duffy settled back against the pillow, her head throbbing, and closed her eyes.

As hard as it was to believe, Dufiy realized with horror, it had to be someone she knew, someone who'd been around the hospital and knew where she was and what she was doing.

Amy was still in love with Dylan, that was obvious. But Dylan was interested in the ailing Dufiy Quinn. That must either hurt Amy terribly ... or make her very angry. And she had a temper, Duffy-knew that now. She also had a very nasty scratch on the back of her leg.

How far would Amy Severn go to get Dylan Rourke back?

Dylan had a cut, too. On his wrist. He had said he'd hurt himself when he saved her from hurtling into the chilly waters of the lake.

But Dylan had no reason to hurt her, did he? What had she ever done to Dylan?

Amy had said Dylan was jealous of her fi-iendship with Kit, had been for a long time. How jealous? And why would that make Dylan want to hurt hert

Could Dylan and Kit have had an argument before Kit left? Was Dylan hiding a hatred of Kit so

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deep that he would attack anyone who was close to Kit? Duffy Quinn, for instance?

But. . . wouldn't that mean Dylan was severely unhinged? If he was, he hid it well.

If she only had Kit's phone number, she could call him and find out if Dylan and he had fought.

What about Cynthia? She seemed to be interested only in Duffy's health. But was that just a clever disguise? Duffy tried to recall something she might have done to anger Cynthia. But she came up with nothing.

There was Smith Lewis, too. He had been there at the empty elevator shaft, and again behind her wheelchair on the hill. As far as she knew, Smith had no reason to want her out of the way. And he had seemed so helpful. . . .

What am I doing? Duffy covered her face with her hands. Everyone is right about me, she thought in disgust. I am losing it. Suspecting my friends, people who have helped me since I got sick. No wonder everyone is treating me as if I've gone off the deep end. Ever since that night I heard those weird noises in my room.

Those noises . . . that night. . . the sounds . . . what if everyone was wrong and those sounds hadn't been figments of her fevered mind's imagination? What if there really was someone in her room? Someone who didn't want to be seen? Someone who was afraid Duffy had seen him? Or her?

But... what could that someone have been doing in her room that was so awful, killing the only wit-

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ness had become absolutely necessary?

"Fooling around" with a date, as Jane had suggested, couldn*t be it. That was ridiculous. Whatever had happened in her room, if anything had, it had been a lot deadlier than a few stolen kisses.

What was it?

Had she really seen something? And forgotten it because it was too awful to remember?

And who, exactly, had she shared the experience with? Who knew she'd heard something that night?

Everyone.

Everyone knew.

Duffy felt tears of exasperation stinging her eyelids. What difference did it make? Why waste time racking her brain to figure out who wanted her sick or dead, when it was so clear that the only way to be safe was to escape from the hospital.

Now that she knew the digoxin in her body had been put there deliberately, she couldn't spend one more night in this place.

She had to get away.

I am not, she thought with resolve, spending another night lying awake, waiting. If only I could call Kit, tell him to come and get me. He would. And he wouldn't ask any questions until we were safely out of here.

But Kit wasn't here.

She would have to figure out, all by herself, how to carry out her resolution to leave this place.

Chapter 19

Duffy decided on the midnight hour to attempt her escape. The patients would be asleep by then, the nurses occupied with night care and writing reports. She would have to be careful to steer clear of the maintenance crew. On her sleepless nights, she'd heard them out in the halls at all hours, mopping the floors or changing light fixtures. Any one of them would be suspicious of a patient lurking in the corridor at such a late hour. They might report her, clip her wings before she took flight.

That couldn't happen. She had to get out of here.

Her skin, hot and dry to the touch, felt too tight. It squeezed against her, a bodysuit one size too small. The hands on her watch crawled slowly, slowly, as if struggling through glue. Seven o'clock, eight. . .

When her parents came, she asked once more if they would take her home. She knew they wouldn't. They trusted the hospital completely, or they wouldn't have brought her here in the first place.

"If you would just relax, Duffy," her mother scolded lightly, **you'd get better so much faster. Dr. Morgan says it*s nothing serious, but that you're impeding your own recovery."

Impeding her own recovery? She wasn't the one doing the impeding!

Knowing she would just upset her parents if she kept insisting that she wasn't safe in the hospital, Duffy gave up. She'd get out of this place on her own if it was the last thing she ever did.

Jane never arrived. When Cynthia came in later that evening to bring Duffy fresh water, she said Jane had called the nurses' station to say she wasn't feeling well.

"Didn't you get her message?" Cynthia asked when Duffy's face registered distress. Jane, ill? Duffy thought. She'd been perfectly fine that afternoon.

*Teople around here don't seem to be very good about delivering messages," Duffy said dourly. "I almost never found out that Kit had called, either. Did Jane say what's wrong with her? I hope I didn't give her my bug."

Cynthia shook her head. "Maybe she was just tired. All that running around she did for you today. I saw her come in and go back out and then come in again. Did she bring you goodies?"

Hardly, Duffy thought. She brought me the news that someone is out to get me. Aloud, she said, "No. Just shampoo."

Cynthia nodded, said she was going home soon

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and she'd see Duffy in the morning, and then she left.

You won't see me in the morning, Duffy thought to herself, because I'll be long gone. I hope.

When the last visitor had left, the eerie silence she was waiting for crept, foglike, across the fourth floor until the last soft murmur had been swallowed up. Duffy tiptoed to her closet and slipped inside, dressing in the dark, narrow space: jeans, a sweater, socks, sneakers. Leaving her gown on the floor of the closet, she hurried back to the bed and slid under the covers to wait for the perfect moment.

She had no plan. There was no way to plan without knowing exactly where everyone might be at every second. She would wait and be very careful and do a lot of praying and hoping. If she could make it to the elevator without being seen. . . .

"You still awake?" a voice said from the doorway.

Duffy jumped, startled, and quickly yanked the blanket up to hide the telltale sweater. "Smith? What are you doing here?"

He came into the room, moving toward the bed. In the weak glow of the night-light beside the door, she could see his grin. "Checking up on you," he answered. Noticing the blanket tucked up underneath her chin, he frowned. "You cold? Doesn't seem that bad in here to me."