Page 82 of Totally Wrecked
“Are you really here?” she croaks, her chin starts to tremble.
“Of course I am, I’ll always come find you.”
Killian has gone flying across the sand and is kneeling by Brooke, circling her in his arms as she keeps stroking Leander’s hair.
She’s not saying anything. Her red-eyed, tear-stained face looks at me.
And Leander is unmoving.
My knees go weak. “Leander… is he?”
“Poison,” she says. “Me and Key are OK, but Leander…”
Fuckkkk.
“Tell me everything. What poisoned him? How long has he been out?”
By now, Gray and Harvey are with us too. Gray takes Key in his arms, and she snuggles into his neck. Killian keeps his long arms around Brooke. Harvey just stands there looking exhausted.
“He’s been unconscious for more than a day,” Brooke sobs.
Harvey puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK, Brooke, I’m here now.”
She doesn’t pay him any attention, instead she keeps talking, like her mouth can’t stop. She explains about the fruit, and how she thinks it was strychnine. I suck in my breath. Strychnine? That poisoning is no joke; it’s actually fucking terrible.
“But I made him drink salt water and vomit, then eat charcoal from the fire,” Brooke tells me. She’s looking at me like she wants reassurance. She wants me to tell her she’s done the right thing.
I’ve no time for that. Just tell me what I need to know, Hollywood.
Charcoal, vomiting. That’s good.
“It wasn’t long after that he had a seizure. He’s been unconscious ever since. I’ve been dripping water inside his mouth. I’m not sure how much he’s actually swallowed though.”
Seizure. Fuck.
OK, Rex. Assess the situation, make a plan—don’t panic.
Killian is stroking her arms. “You did good, macushla,” he tells her. I ease Leander’s head off her lap. She’s fully naked.
“Give me the lifejacket, Harvey.”
As I put the orange foam under Leander’s head, Killian strips off his shirt and gives it to Daisy, but before she can put it on, she collapses into his body. I can see she is at the absolute end of her limit—if she starts freaking out it will be no help.
“Take her away,” I growl.
“Is he going to be alright?” Harvey asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. I wish I did. I wish on my life I could tell him he was going to come through this. “I don’t know, we just have to wait.”
Strychnine. I have to focus on the fact that Leander is alive at this moment. That he doesn’t give up. Persistence, thy name is Leander.
I have always kept up with my first-aid training. In the off-season, I would do as many paramedic classes as I could. I had a thought that I could transfer from fire crew to EMT when I hit my forties. Running up the side of a mountain in full gear and carrying a hundred pounds of equipment is not an old man's game. Or even a middle-aged man’s game.
Now though I am just grateful that I can remember my classes.
I watch Gray playing with Keyara down the beach; that’s good. He’ll be perfect for her right now. Returning my attention to Leander, I try to get my thoughts in order.
Brooke had said it was fruit from the strychnine tree. I don’t know anything about that specific plant, but in my trauma management classes we had covered how to treat people who had ingested rat poison, and rat poison is basically strychnine.
