"Yes, I can understand you. What's going on? What are you doing here? Where's my shirt?"
"It seems you managed to drive nearly into the Emergency Room itself before you collapsed. You smashed down the horn with your forehead. There were a dozen nurses, orderlies, security, patients, and doctors with you within two seconds."
I remembered the loud noise. The horn blasting in my ear. "I've been pushing too hard, haven't I? My body's angry at me and finally just shut down?"
"Paul told us you'd been in a terrorist attack out of the country, and in the hospital until very recently. But no, this had nothing to do with any relapse. Actually, you had a high level of phenobarbital in your system. You've been out of it for about three hours now. Once we guessed the problem, we began treating you, but this kind of thing takes time. You're going to feel groggy for a while."
I thought about the likely treatment and nearly turned green. "Tell me you didn't pump my stomach. I saw that done once and nearly puked."
"Sorry, Mac, we had to. We didn't have a choice. But hey, you were unconscious. We also put some activated charcoal in your stomach. There's still some flecks of black above your mouth and a bit dried on your chest. Pretty gross, but it soaks up all the poison. Don't worry about the IV and the oxygen. That's just in case something goes wrong. We'll keep them in for a while longer. Does your throat hurt?"
It did hurt. I nodded. My brain was finally kicking in again. "I was drugged, you said? With phenobarbital?"
"Yes. No one's suggested yet that you were trying to kill yourself. Who gave you the drug, Mac?"
I looked up at Dr. Coates, then over at Mrs. Himmel, whose face was shocked and still, and at a man I didn't know. "Well, damn," I said.
A few seconds later, Dr. Coates knew I was very much awake because I had his wrist in a vise as I said, "This is important. The cops need to get to Laura Scott's house in Salem. That's where I was this morning. She may have tried to kill me."
Dr. Coates wasn't a young man, but he could move fast. He was out of the room in a flash. Mrs. Himmel patted my hand. "You'll be all right now, Mac. Oh, this is Dr. Greenfield, he's the one you told not to butt in."
I looked at a skinny older guy who wore a thick black beard and sported a green and white dotted bow tie. "I'm alive," I said. "Thanks."
He said, "Your body's still not fully recovered. That must have been some terrorist, er, incident."
"Yeah, an incident."
"You're young and strong, Mr. MacDougal. You'll pull through this just fine. I'll leave you in good hands." He turned on his heel, gave Mrs. Himmel a little salute, and left.
"He's our resident guru," Mrs. Himmel said. "Now you just rest, Mr. MacDougal. Why would this woman try to kill you?"
"I don't know. I drove to Salem early this morning to speak to her. I'd like to think she had something to do with Jilly's leaving the hospital last night, but I didn't find out anything. I drank her coffee, then got really tired. I left." I wanted to cry or howl, I didn't know which. How could I have been so wrong about her?
"You almost didn't make it back, Mac," Dr. Coates said, coming back into the hospital room. "Why didn't you just pull over and go to sleep?"
"I didn't think of doing that, for some reason. I just thought about getting back. I guess I was blurry because stopping wasn't an option in my mind."
"Well, you made it back. Some of that road you were driving is tricky enough when you're not drugged to the gills."
"A truck nearly got me and the adrenaline surge bolstered me up for a few minutes. I was singing, shouting, anything to keep myself awake. I just couldn't go over a cliff in the car, like Jilly. I had to make it back." I drew a deep breath. "All right, what about Laura Scott?"
"Detective Minton Castanga will get back to us as soon as they get to her house and find out what's going on. I got him when I mentioned the words attempted murder and FBI agent all in the same breath."
"She could be long gone. If she wanted to kill me I don't think she'd hang around." Then I thought that if Laura had done it, she'd go to prison. I wondered: In prison for what? What has she done? It had to be something bad enough to make her believe she had to kill me.
Dr. Coates said, "As to that, there's no way to know if her intent was to kill you, unless she's caught and admits to it. You had a butt-load of the drug on board, but you probably would have survived the dose even without us. Your blood level was never that high, and you were never really unstable. They'll have to find her and see what she says."