They want to know if he’s got a history of psychiatric problems. Substance abuse problems. He’s unconscious in the hospital bed but they’ve got his wrists restrained, attached to his bed rails. And I hate it with every fiber of my being, but there was no way I could leave him suffering like that for another hour waiting for some guy to come who may or may not have been able to help.
Will and I are sitting here being quizzed by a nurse that’s asking medical history questions.
He has no medical history, according to Will. Never any broken bones, no hospital stays other than when he got jumped. He’s got his tonsils and his appendix, and has hardly been sick a day in his life.
She’s asking me about his stress levels, about what he could be stressed about. I tell her he’s been sleeping very little, that we’ve had some marital problems recently but we’re working it out. That I’ve recently found out I’m pregnant. I say nothing else because I don’t know what it’s safe to say and not say, so I kind of play dumb.
Inside, I’m just reeling because I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep, if it’s got anything to do with what happened with Ray today, or what it is, but I’m haunted with the images that keep flooding my brain of Killian losing it in his office, of him hurting people. And most of all, of it taking several men to hold him down so that a paramedic could sedate him while he was hallucinating about Max, the man who killed his mother, the man who Killian told me himself that he killed in cold blood at the age of seventeen.
I don’t know what went down between the time we parted this morning and this evening, he messaged me a few hours ago seeming like himself. I’m a wreck. And I want to wake up from this nightmare.
The nurse says we should sit tight and wait for a doctor.
A while later, the doctor comes and reads over the chart but then asks us all the same questions the nurse asked and it’s exasperating. After he leaves us alone, Will rubs my back.
“What else is going on?” he whispers. “Any idea? Because this isn’t him. He’s strong. He’s the strongest person I know.”
Maybe he’s had to be too strong for too long. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I gulp hard. “There’s so much happening but I don’t know what I should say and not say. I only know that he needed to be sedated and not a moment too soon because he could’ve said things in front of the police that would not have gone over well.”
He gives me a knowing look. “Say nothing more than you’ve said. You’ve said nothing you shouldn’t. Okay? Leave it at that. We’ll see how he is when he wakes up and go from there. You did the right thing, Violet. Calling 9-1-1 was the right thing.”
I nod, holding in the tears.
“You okay?” Will asks.
I nod again.
But I’m not.
“You did the right thing,” he repeats like I’m doubting that, which I’m not, but I let him talk anyway. “Jag and Tony were tryin’ to do what Kill would want, but I get why you called 9-1-1. Fuckin’ killed me seeing him like that. We could still be there if you hadn’t, he could still be suffering. You did the right thing. You’re okay.”
I choke on a sob, unable to contain it any longer. He puts his arm around me and gives me a hug.
I’m not okay. And I don’t know if I ever will be again. Because will Killian be okay? Was this the lack of sleep he’s been getting along with all the stress he’s been under that caused a nervous breakdown?
I lived with mood swings with Ray, but I’ve got no experience with anything this extreme.
***
Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later, Will’s phone rings and after just a few seconds, his face goes shocked. It takes only a few sentences for me to realize he’s talking to Tony. When Will hangs up, he looks to me.
“Jagger’s on his way in, too. Tony’s bringing him. He’s freaking out. Someone had to have drugged them both. Jag’s just reacting later to it.”
“Oh my God.”
I rush out to find the nurse at the nurse’s station, Will following me.
“Hi. Can you run a tox screen. Someone else from the club my husband was at is having similar symptoms.”
“We’re already doing that. Where’s the other person having the symptoms?”
“He’s on his way here.”
***
Knowing what might be happening seems to have made it easier on Jagger than Killian, when the symptoms started. Tony came to see us in Killian’s room and said Jagger started acting strange and sweating with heart racing and immediately told Tony to get him to the hospital because it looked like things around him were melting.