Page 80 of Thorn

“My team needs the information, so we know how to keep you safe, but you’ve had some medicine that’s made you forget things. It’s possible that you might remember the answers now.” He leaned a little farther forward, resting his elbows on his knees, bringing his face down more in line with hers. “I wanted to ask you while we were here in the clinic so there was a doctor here if you needed help.”

“Thank you.” Arya tried to work up a smile to ease him a bit. But it felt wrong on her face. She wanted to be honest with Thorn and that meant even a silly lie, like a fake smile, would be a break in trust. She felt like trust between them was profoundly important. “I’m ready. I’ll answer my best. Would it be okay if we spoke in English? It’s been a long time since I spoke in Arabic.”

“Of course,” he said, switching languages. “Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.” Without releasing her hand, he swung around and gathered a laptop, bringing it closer to where Arya could see that someone was on a video call.

“Hello,” said the young woman with a gentle smile and long blond hair. “My name is Lynx. Can you hear me all right?” she asked.

Arya let her gaze drift to catch Thorn’s. He smiled at her encouragingly. “She’s a colleague who works for my company, Iniquus. She’s helping me get you home.”

Arya nodded.

“She wanted to talk to you about how you’re feeling and some things we’ve learned about why you’re feeling so sick.”

Arya’s eyes widened, and she stopped blinking, or breathing.

Thorn rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I’m here. We’ll do this together, okay?”

Arya nodded.

“Thorn asked me to speak to you,” Lynx said. “He thought that my talking to you over the Internet would give you some distance from the situation.” Her face broke into a grin. “And to be honest, he was afraid that his speaking to you might feel intimidating. Heiskind of intimidating.” The tone of her voice made it sound like the two women were best friends sharing a good joke. “It’s his job to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. And he does that very well.”

It was working, Arya’s face began to relax. Her shoulders weren’t all the way up to her ears.

“Youare not the enemy. And Thorn along with our whole team are dedicated to keeping you safe.” She paused and waited for Arya to nod. “Is there anything you need right now? Anything that might make you feel more comfortable? You’ve had a rough seventy-two or so hours, now. You’ve been very ill and at the same time, you’ve been heroic in saving yourself.”

“Thank you,” Arya said, her voice rough and rasping.

“As time has passed since you haven’t felt well, I’m wondering if it’s possible that you might be remembering things that go back in your past? Maybe remembering things that happened before you had an operation?” Lynx asked.

“Yes.” Arya exhaled.

“Let me give you a bit of information that might help make sense of at least some of it. Is that something you would like to know? Or maybe it’s something you’d prefer to wait until later, once you’re home−”

“No, now,” Arya interrupted her. “Please,” she tagged at the end, more quietly. She reached over to where Thorn was holding her hand and wrapped her other hand there too, hanging on as if for dear life.

“All right, but I need you to stop me if this becomes overwhelming.”

Overwhelming? Everything right now was too much. Bursts of sound and color, thoughts and names, faces and theories. Everything swirled and dipped then soared over head. Facts might just be the place where Arya could rest.

“We have some information for you about your memory. The blood sample that was drawn by the medics showed that you had a drug in your system that is unrecognized in pharmacological literature. I want you to stop me if I say anything that you don’t understand or that you’d like me to repeat. We can put voice-to-text on the screen if it would be helpful.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Yes, thank you. It takes a lot of energy to try to focus and hear everything.”

There was a pause and when Lynx said, “Testing, testing, testing.” It came up on the bottom of the screen.

“This is working,” Arya said.

“We brought in a professor of pharmacology and had her look at the results of your blood test. She said that the medicine in your body was similar to another drug that had been tested for people with severe PTSD. The one in your blood stream had some differences. She believes, as this drug leaves your body, you would develop a fever and have an experience very much like a heroin addict coming off of that drug.”

“Is it addictive, the PTSD medicine?”

“No. She thinks that the initial detox will be the only issue. Though, it could be that you might crave it for psychological relief. But we can get you help with that and get you on some better medications if you need them.” Lynx tipped her head. “My understanding, from talking to Roxanne, is that you had intermittent fevers that were not predictable in terms of the length between them. Is that right?”

They had gone to talk to her care giver? “Yes, sometimes a few days, sometimes many weeks…”

“And Dr. DuBois took you to his Montrim lab and gave you a bag of IV fluid?”

She cleared her throat wondering just what was in those IV drips. She’d always felt so sick − she’d just trusted. “Yes, it always helped.”

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