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Andy–
“It doesn't matter, anyway,” Andy went on audibly, needing to vent. “Devon doesn't even know what the key is to that barrier.But Crawford is thelastperson I'd go to for help on this. He can just fuck right off for all I care.”
Vorena took a step back and held up her hands.I think I'm gonna give you some space. Before Andy could say anything, Vorena vanished.
Andy grabbed the nearest thing to hand—one of his patient files—and flung it across the room.
Paper showered all over the floor, the sheets drifting and fluttering as they swayed through the air, landing softly on the carpet. They all lay there, a still, scattered mess.
Andy bent over his desk and cried, knowing Devon was going to die.
Knowing there was no way to stop it.
Chapter 29
DEVON SAT at the desk in Andy's old office, surrounded by files.Gods. It was absolute chaos. Even more so than the morgue had been. It had looked bad enough that morning, but now, from the perspective of sitting down—and in a wheelchair, no less—all the stacks seemed to have grown.
The sight made his heart sink. Each one of those files represented a person with Ashworth-Grahams. A person who was now probably dead. All those lives. All those files full of study and experimentation, with zero results.
It made his own situation feel that much more hopeless.
Devon rolled the chair forward so he could reach one of the files. That simple action alone made him grimace. He'd never been confined to a chair before. Even when he'd been rendered temporarily paralyzed—ignoring the time that had driven him to put out that want ad for live-in help—no attack had lasted long enough to warrant getting a chair. But when Andy had come back to check on him at lunchtime, Devon still had no use of his legs. Walking out to the gardens was out of the question.
Andy had rushed off and requisitioned a wheelchair, then pushed Devon outside. He'd picked a beautiful, shady spot for them to sit and eat lunch, but even the stunning surroundings hadn't cheered Devon up one bit.
He felt stuck. Trapped within his own body.
It was the same way he'd felt when he began to realize that he was trans, except this was worse. The former, he'd been ableto fix with surgeries and hormone therapy. But the latter? There was absolutely nothing anybody could do.
Devon glanced across the room. Andy was on his feet, darting from one table to another, reading file after file. The man almost seemed to have forgotten Devon was even there. His intense focus was insane. One time, Andy even gave a start and rushed over to one stack of files, deftly snatching out the fourth one down without even checking the label. Somehow, the man just knew exactly which file was where in all that chaotic mess.
The confidence of his movements would have been impressive if it weren't for the frantic, almost panicked undertone of it all.
Devon made himself take a slow, deep breath, then opened the file he'd grabbed. Unlike the morgue files, the handwriting in this one was meticulous and legible. Devon started to read, his eyes going wide. The documentation in the file was insane, everything noted down precisely and in extreme detail. Andy had recorded dates, times, and all manner of measurements, to say nothing of obsessively tracking even the tiniest symptom. Devon flipped back to the first page, then typed the patient's name into the desk computer.
He brought up the records matching the dates in the paper files, ready to start scanning the pages to digitize them. Devon paused. Someone had already entered most of the basic data, but the handwritten files expanded on it considerably. Devon spread out the pages, scanned them, and linked them up. In this case, the system flagged no confusing words. Everything imported without issue.
Even so, it took considerably longer than any of the morgue files had done. There were so many more pages. So much more detail. It took almost half an hour to do just one file. When all the scans were finished, Devon carefully collected the pages, making sure they all went back together in the correct order.
On a hunch, he grabbed a pen. With the way Andy was working, Devon had a feeling all of the files were going to move around too much before he was done with them, so he'd easily lose track of which he'd scanned and which he hadn't gotten to yet. Devon wrote his initials on a corner of the folder, keeping the letters tiny and unobtrusive, then set the file aside.
Andy almost immediately snatched it up and rushed back over to one of the tables.
Devon winced, watching him go, then reached for the next file.
He opened it up and had to stifle a gasp.
Gerard, Anderson Jr.
Devon snuck a glance at Andy, then looked back down at the file.Oh my gods. Andy's son. Devon swallowed hard and started to read.
If the previous file had been full of detail—almost to the point of going overboard—this one took it to a whole new level. There were records of every single attack, even merely suspected ones. Every trip to the emergency room. Every minor checkup. Every minuscule change in diet, bowel movements, sleep patterns, or mood. Anything and everything that could be even remotely relevant.
Then there was the documentation of the boy's final weeks. The more Devon read, the more his heart sank.My gods. The poor boy had suffered horribly. Paralysis. Systems shutting down. Organs failing. Blindness. Difficulty breathing. It just kept getting worse and worse until it finally came to an end.
And Andy had to suffer through all that, too. The man had to watch his son slowly die little by little as the days and weeks stretched out.
He didn't want Andy to go through that again.
