Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.” Neil tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “As well as the Valium tells me I am.”
I took his hand and squeezed it.
We landed at Heathrow at seven A.M. local time, where the car service picked us up to drive us to our house in Belgravia. We hadn’t been to London in a long time, over a year for me. Neil had flown back for business once, but I wondered if the house would feel weird to me now.
When we arrived, though, it was just like coming home. Neil staggered through the door—I wasn’t sure how much Valium he’d taken, but he’d been pretty out of it since we’d landed—and I had to practically hold him up.
“Whoa,” Michael said, catching Neil as I slumped under his weight.
“Yeah, um, Daddy doesn’t take grief well,” Emma said, loud enough to be heard over our struggle to keep Neil from weaving into the wall. “Let’s get him upstairs.”
The three of us steered him into the elevator and miraculously got him into the bedroom. Michael helped him to the bed, where Neil sprawled across the duvet.
“Make sure he sleeps on his side,” Michael advised grimly.
“You guys go ahead. I’ve got him from here,” I assured them, though Emma still looked worried. Her gaze darted to her father one last time before she closed the door.
When they’d left the room, I sat beside Neil on the bed and stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not just on Valium.”
His eyebrows rose, but his eyes didn’t open, and he slurred from the corner of his mouth, “No, I’m not.”
A feeling of foreboding prickled over my skin. When he’d been going through chemotherapy, Neil had struggled with suicidal thoughts. The PTSD that lingered after his agonizing stay in isolation in the intensive care unit was always a threat in the back of my mind; I wondered if I should call an ambulance. “Neil, what did you take?”
“Holli gave me some special candy.”
Holli! I would so kick her ass when I saw her next. Not that it was her fault. We hadn’t seen her since before his mother passed, so she would have given him the weed candy during a happier time. I just wanted to direct my anger somewhere. “How much Valium did you take?”
“Four milligrams,” he mumbled into the duvet.
“Not more than that?” When he didn’t answer, I snapped, “Neil! Did you take anything else?”
He shook his head then let out an exhausted sigh. “I had some scotch on the plane.”
Because Neil had gone through chemo in London, I still had his general practitioner’s emergency number in my phone. I sighed and hit “call” on the screen.
Dr. Hearn was a physician I’d only spoken to twice during Neil’s treatment, but he seemed warm and affable. He also made bank with Neil as a private patient, so I wasn’t worried about calling too early.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Dr. Hearn, this is Sophie Scaife, calling about Neil Elwood.”
“Oh dear, he isn’t having trouble again, is he?” The man’s voice—I imagined him as a kind, older gentleman with sympathetic eyes, since I’d never seen him in person—was tinged with alarm.
“Not the leukemia, no.” I chewed my thumbnail. “His mom died—”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Dr. Hearn interjected into my slight pause.
“Thank you. Um, he…took some…drugs. And now I’m concerned.” Was Neil going to get arrested? Would he get in trouble?
“What kind of drugs?” The friendly tone was gone from Dr. Hearn’s speech, replaced by instant clinical concern.
“He took four milligrams of Valium, some scotch on the flight here, and some marijuana hard candies. I don’t know how effective they are, but they must have been pretty good, because his speech is slurred, he can barely walk, and he’s blacking out.” I really hated what I was going to say next. “I don’t know how to put this delicately, but it would be unfortunate if this required an emergency room visit.”
More than unfortunate. Neil wasn’t as famous as a movie star, but since his retirement, he’d had more time to attend social events, and his face had begun showing up in the society pages. He wasn’t the most famous billionaire in the world, but he was high profile enough that a trip to the ER while ODing had the potential to be publicly embarrassing. He didn’t need that on top of grieving his mother. Emma didn’t need that on top of losing her grandma.
“Oh, no, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Dr. Hearn said. “Four milligrams isn’t a heavy dose. My only concern over this interaction would be for his respiration. Do you know how to check respiration and heart rate?”
Did I ever. I just wished I wasn’t having to track those functions again. “Yes, from before.”
“Take those vital signs every fifteen minutes for the next few hours, and should there be anything wrong, ring me. Try to get some coffee into him, if he can wake up enough to drink it.” Hearn sounded weary. I wondered how many of his patients did this on the reg.