Until Jinx - Happily Ever Alpha World

Lowering his head so he could see my face, Jordan frowned. “Are you okay? Wes, her pupils aren’t right, and she’s pale and clammy.”

Moving around the side of us, Wes copied Jordan’s move and scanned my face. “Shock?”

This wasn’t shock, trust me, I’d felt that before. This was something else, like I was drunk or high on the painkillers they’d given me in hospital after the stabbing.

“N-not shu-shock.”

“Christ,” Jordan bit out, picking me up and sitting down in a chair with me on his lap. “Wes, what the fuck’s going on?”

Wes squatted down beside me and pressed his fingers against my wrist as he stared at his watch. “It’s a bit slow, but not alarmingly. With her pupils being quite small, I think maybe we should take her into the ER, Jinx. Just get her checked out, man.”

Jordan was just bracing to stand up when July came bursting back through the doors. “It’s an opioid, the bone’s covered in it. It’ll take us a while to figure out which one, but we’re administering naloxone to both of them to counteract the opioids in their systems.”

She stopped when she saw how they were crowded around me, but I was doing my best to understand what she was saying through the fuzziness in my brain. “What’s wrong?”

“Her pupils are small, she’s got a slightly slow pulse, slurring and stammering when she talks, and she’s pale and clammy,” Wes told her, standing from his crouch. “Did she touch the bone?”

“She got it out of the car and brought it in to me,” July rasped. “I’m wearing gloves but she’s not, so whatever it was could have been absorbed through the skin.”

Bursting into movement, Wes, Jordan, and Maddie all rushed to the door.

“Maddie, you stay here with the boys and keep me updated. They know you and love you, so if they get agitated, they’ll react better to having you around. Me and Wes will take her to the ER and let you know what happens, okay?”

I don’t know what she said back, but just as he started moving, I heard a door slam and July called out their names.

“The boys were in the back of her vehicle with the bone when she pulled up. If they’ve drooled on the seat or you touch where the bone was, one of you might get sick, too. I’ve put the bone in a bag so the hospital can test it, just let me know what they say in case the boys need something else administered. Here’s my car keys, take mine.”

What followed next was lost on me as I saw the world through new eyes. It felt like the roads we went down, ones I knew so well I could see them when I shut my eyes, were different now. What I was seeing seemed to speed up, then slow down, then it skewed out of proportion and was downright weird.

My diagnosis from the doctor: I’d absorbed a small amount of Fentanyl when I’d touched the bone, which, after they tested it, was covered in the stuff.

Because I didn’t usually take painkillers, it’d affected me more than someone who did. Fortunately, I hadn’t absorbed enough to give me complete Fentanyl poisoning, and my heart rate hadn’t slowed down to a rate that would worry them.

There was a discussion about giving me something called Narcan, which was what they’d given the boys, but they decided it wasn’t necessary and that my body would burn through it on its own.

As a precaution, they put oxygen tubes in my nose to help me out in case my oxygen saturation levels dropped and hooked me up to an IV.

Throughout all of it, Jordan watched me from the corner of the room, his eyes not missing anything, while Wes texted furiously on his phone.

I knew—hell, we all knew—this had been done deliberately. There was no way a random bone covered in a drug like Fentanyl just happened to appear in my yard.

Patting me on the shoulder with a sympathetic smile, the doctor left me with both men. After the door closed behind him, Jordan stayed mute and seething, but Wes came forward and sat next to me.

“Got a text from July. The naloxone counteracted the Fentanyl in the boys’ bodies, and they’re doing well. Maddie’s in a side room with them just now, making sure they know they’re loved.” Smiling tiredly at him, I felt the first tear trail down my temple.

“She also wanted me to let you know you saved their lives, honey. If you’d have left it any longer, they probably wouldn’t have made it.”

Licking my dry lips, I asked a question I wasn’t sure he’d have the answer to, but maybe he could ask July for it. “How did it get on the bone?”

“People wear patches when they’re in pain that has it on the inside of them, a bit like nicotine ones. It isn’t unheard of for assholes to scrape the shit off to sell it or make other drugs,” he explained slowly, looking over his shoulder at Jordan.