Page 85 of Harrison's Wedding

I can barely manage to walk because tears are welling up in my eyes and clouding my vision. I want to break into a thousand pieces as everything hits me. I cheated on Heather. The world knows, and I can’t change that.

“They’re going to show her the picture,” I mumble under my breath to nobody in particular.

It’s the only clear thought I have in my brain. I instinctively pull my phone out and dial Heather again as we’re escorted through some doors from the emergency room and into the hospital itself.

My call goes to voicemail, and I say quietly, “Please call me, Heather. I love you. I’m so sorry.”

The nurse deposits me into a room and says, “You’ll be in here, Mr. Smith. A doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

It’s about ten minutes before another nurse comes in, also calling me Mr. Smith, and she takes my pulse, asks me questions about how I’m feeling, and takes a blood sample from me.

Some time after that, a doctor comes in with another nurse and he says to me, “My name is Dr. Johnson. How are you feeling, Mr. Smith?”

“Not great,” I admit with a shrug as this nurse takes another round of observations.

“Any nausea?” the doctor asks.

“Yes.” An image of Maddy comes to my mind, and the nausea hits as I say it.

“I see,” he replies.

Dr. Johnson frowns and writes something down on my chart. The nurse is finishing up her observation and remarks on my temperature, which the doctor writes down.

“Very good, Wendy. I’d like to talk to Mr. Smith privately, if you could please leave the room.”

She nods and walks out of the room, closing the door behind her again as she does. Dr. Johnson frowns at me and sighs.

“Well, Mr. Fletcher,” his switch to my real name is disconcerting, and I blink at him. “I’m not sure how much you’ve been told about the situation.”

“Apparently, we were drugged last night.” I can feel the bile rising in my throat.

“Yes, that’s what we suspect. Given what we know, we expect your tox screen to come back clean because what we suspect is GHB poisoning, and we think it was probably in the wine you were given. That doesn’t readily show up in blood tests, we’ll need gas chromatograph testing done, and we have an item of clothing that had some of the wine spilled on it, which we can use for that.

“In the meantime, the police are here and with some other patients, but they’ll be coming in to speak to you and get a statement for their investigation.”

The police? I can barely comprehend it, but I suppose it makes sense. My body stiffens as I realize that we were drugged. Someone put something in our wine. I know that it’s been said, but it didn’t feel real until right now. Someone drugged me and I slept with Maddy because of it.

The nausea hits me forcefully, and I don’t manage to go anywhere. I retch twice before I vomit on the bedsheets I’m lying under.

The doctor pulls open the door and calls out, “Nurse! We need clean bedsheets!”

There isn’t much to vomit up, and it’s mostly bile that I’ve thrown up. The retching doesn’t stop, and my brain throws images of Maddy from last night at me, causing the retching to continue for a long time.

I’ve just managed to stop the retching, and climbed out of the bed when a nurse comes in with clean sheets for me.

“I’ll leave you in the care of Nurse Hilton, Mr. Smith,” Dr. Johnson tells me. “I’ll be back later, and you can expect that visit from the police soon.”

The nurse hands me a hospital gown to put on, and I go into the attached bathroom to change into it. I fold my clothes neatly and place them on a chair at the edge of the room, then stand aside as she finishes making the bed for me.

“There you go, Mr. Smith.” I climb into the bed as she says, “There’s some water here for you if you need it.”

I thank her and take a sip as she leaves the room. I try calling Heather again as soon as I’m alone, but only get her voicemail. It’s not long before two police detectives come to speak to me.

“Mr. Fletcher, I’m Detective Gavin Hill, and this is Detective Kelly Gomez. We’re from the LAPD, and we’d like to talk to you about last night.”

A tall man with pale skin and brown hair cropped close to his head tells me this. I nod at him, unable to say anything right now because I’m fighting nausea at the thought of what happened.

“What can you tell us about last night?” his partner asks with a kind smile at me.

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