Page 53

NINETEEN

MOVING DAY

ISAAK

“ Y ou gotta go see him, doc.”

I nod, forcing a smile as I place the cold compress on Des’s forehead then reach for another to use on the back of his neck.

“I’m going to,” I say, my voice cracking right along with my heart. “As soon as Maggie gets here, we’re going to go to the board, then we’ll get Korvin out.”

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. It’s what I need to believe will happen.

Desmond’s face twists into a beautiful mask of pain as he curls into himself, clutching his stomach and gritting his teeth. “She shouldn’t be coming here.”

”No, probably not.”

Magnolia coming here today isn’t just for us to make a plea on behalf of Korvin for defending Calix.

We don’t have video backing that up, but we know Korvin and what he did was not some random act of violence fueled by his status here.

Pack dynamics aside, Nurse Jones was in the process of assaulting one of the residents and another came to aid in his defense. The one to intervene shouldn’t be punished for helping his fellow man.

Granted, Korvin killed Nurse Jones.

Pounded his head right into the tile floor before O’Brien and Stevenson could get to him.

That’s where the pack dynamic comes into play, an alpha protecting his beta, saving him from a near fatal threat.

Korvin said he felt Calix, that he could almost hear him in his head planning for death, but he was in the middle of an unscheduled physical and medication review.

One I didn’t authorize, nor had any knowledge of at all.

He and Des were both in the midst of those when Calix was attacked and I have a feeling it was extremely intentional based on what happened.

I’m grateful whatever divine intervention took place andmade Vin run out of the exam room and straight to the storage closet happened when it did. There’s no telling what that horrible monster would have done to our beta.

Unfortunately, things have been a bit of a disaster of late and it’s been up to me to keep our pack afloat.

Korvin normally does that. I believe he’s the heart of our connections, the starting point for the bonds we share, and I feel that’s why he’s able to naturally keep us functioning on a more normal level despite how abnormal our circumstances are.

However, Vin is currently in solitary confinement with no end in sight.

He killed a member of Blackhurst Ridge staff in cold blood , a decorated nurse who’d been employed here for years, and that meant he wasn’t exactly going to get a commendation for murdering a predator.

So, to the mysterious and unoccupied Ward D he went.

Calix is in the infirmary on the first floor, recovering from the injuries he received during the attack.

He’s been there for the last two days because Jones split his head open with the baton and it caused a relatively severe concussion.

The busted nose didn’t help, either. He can come to Ward C tomorrow according to his paperwork, but Calix is going to need to be monitored pretty closely.

Not that I’ll struggle with that, I’m sure I’ll annoy the shit out of him by the time he’s able to go back to business as usual.

Our girl feels helpless right now and that’s why Maggie is coming in, so she and I can try to convince the board Korvin shouldn’t be punished so severely.

We’re taking his files, his records, and I even have a few recorded therapy sessions where he actually did talk about why he was arrested, in hopes of showing his progress.

The plan is to show them that our treatment is working and even though it was a heinous act of violence , it demonstrates his success.

He made a friend, and he saved him from a life threatening situation.

So, yes, Des can pose the argument that Magnolia doesn’t need to come here to deal with any of that because she isn’t in any condition to do so after her own attack but he doesn’t know it’s permanent.

She’s moving into the apartment across from mine after we go to the board because her entire apartment complex burned down.

But he doesn’t know that, either. None of the boys do.

All of the commotion Jones caused meant we went into lockdown and between that and having the police on Ward C questioning everyone for hours, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in paperwork. I was also being watched so closely I wouldn’t have been shocked to find some kind of bugging device up my ass.

My babysitter left this morning, though, and I was cleared, whatever that means. I came right to Desmond as soon as I got the green light.

Not only is Calix laid out, Korvin is in solitary, Maggie is stills but banged up and starting over in a new place with zero personal belongings, but Des has gotten sick again.

According to the young nurse who performed his physical, my alpha passed out during his med review. She even had to use smelling salts to wake him. Unfortunately, she also had zero answers to my forty thousand questions about these unauthorized appointments, so I’ve gone fishing.

None of the men here take many medications. Neither myself or Magnolia are a huge fan of the way they’re pushed at psychiatric patients, specifically ones with criminal backgrounds, and we’ve only prescribed what seemed to be necessary case by case.

Desmond Hawthorne? When he came to Blackhurst Ridge he was on a rather wide variety of medications ranging from multiple anti-psychotics to migraine preventatives and we’ve worked hard to lessen his load while keeping him healthy.

He still has his monthly shot of Haldol, and he takes an antidepressant that also helps with his migraines.

Des has a PRN he can take if he becomes manic and paranoid, something to bring his anxiety down and take the edge off whatever else he’s feeling.

He has a rescue medication for severe headaches and migraines.

We also have a plan in place if Desmond starts having auditory or visual hallucinations, real ones and not the ones he makes up because he thinks he’s funny.

Outside of those, he takes a few beneficial vitamins and supplements like the rest of the residents, and not one thing he puts into his body is completely foreign to it since we built off of what worked for him in the past.

None of it should be making him sick.

”She’s stubborn,” Des chokes out as his muscles start to spasm.

He curls into the fetal position on his bed, his fingers twisting the fabric of my slacks as he presses his forehead against my thigh. He breathes deep and his eyes close then he starts counting backwards from thirty two, whispering the numbers so quietly I almost can’t hear him.

This is the fourth time he’s done that and I’ve only been here a little over an hour.

I smooth his hair back, the strands drenched in sweat, coloring them a dark brown almost black opposed to his normal light blonde. This is breaking my heart.

“Why thirty two?” I ask as I use a small towel to dry his face, trying to get him to focus on me instead of the obvious pain racing through his body.

”Years,” he grunts as he quickly sits up and leans over the head of his bed, barely missing his pillow as he begins to vomit.

After a few moments, Des wipes his mouth with another towel then all but collapses onto the mattress.

“I’ve had thirty two years on this planet and at least half of those were spent dealing with worse bullshit than this.

I can’t go back. Going backwards reminds me I have to keep going forward. It’s like running in place.”

While his phrasing and coherency makes me a little concerned we might be facing some sort of minor psychotic episode, I understand what he’s saying.

“Thirty two hurdles means thirty two obstacles you’ve overcome.” I feel his head again, his skin clammy but finally cool. “Figuratively speaking of course.”

Desmond’s lip twitches and his brows raise the tiniest bit but he doesn’t do more than that. It wasn’t much of a response, not by anyone’s standards let alone his, but it’s enough for me right now.

”Dr. Lowe,” says the same young nurse who ran my alpha’s physical. “Did you still want to draw blood in here or should I get a wheelchair to take Mr. Hawthorne to an exam room?”

”Here is fine.” I wave her in then start adjusting Desmond. “I’m going to have to poke you, my love, so you have to lie on your back.”

He grimaces as I help him roll, every visible muscle quivering with the pain it causes, and yet he still manages to say, “I’m not sure this is the time to try that, doc.

We both know I’m a switch, do it for you in a heartbeat, but I want to be able to participate.

” Des sighs, long and slow before drawing in another deep breath.

“Don’t think it’ll work in this position. Not the first time, anyway.”

”I’m going to draw blood, Des.” My cheeks flame as I straighten out his arm and begin looking for a vein. “So just relax.”

“You blushing?”

I clear my throat. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll relax.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, honey.”

I wish it were that simple.

Normally Des is a pretty laid back person, especially when you factor in everything, but right now, I don’t think he could calm his body if his life depended on it. Which is exactly what I’m terrified to find out.

It’s also why I’m drawing his blood myself, and running the labs here in our med room. I trust all of my staff up here, they’ve protected me and my pack from the very beginning, but something strange is going on and I’m determined to figure it out.

A few hours later, I have my answer.

I blink down at Desmond’s results in horror, my heart pounding in my ears as I reread them for the fourth time.

Not only does he have his prescribed meds in him, there are small quantities of the medications that kept coming up short during inventory as well as enough opioids and benzodiazepines to kill a horse twice over.

It should have killed Des, easily to be honest, but he must have built some sort of tolerance for this fucked up cocktail thanks to decades of treatment.

I’ve never been more grateful for morons who push drugs on their patients just so they don’t have to deal with them than I am right now.

Setting his labs aside, I start looking through his records, scrolling them on my laptop to see how something like this could have happened.

Intravenously is the only way, adding pills to his box would be noticeable. The same can be said if someone had tried hiding them in his food or breaking a capsule in a drink. There’s no other way Des could have so many different things in his body without it raising suspicion.

The problem is, his shot is only once a month.

Every month, right at the beginning, he gets his injection of Haldol and according to his file, that hasn’t changed once but that doesn’t make sense in relation to how sick he is right now.

He’s between injections. His next one isn’t scheduled for another few days, and a lot of what he tested for would be out of his system by now if he got them with the last one.

It doesn’t make sense.

Grabbing the nurses log, the handwritten one they have to fill out each time they take something from in here or pass an unscheduled medication, I start going through the last few months.

My heart starts beating faster as Jones’ name appears three times within this thirty day stretch, four last month, all of them for syringes without a medication listed, and before that, Nurse Hubbard had at least one extra injection logged each month she was here before her injury.

They’ve been poisoning him.

The goddamn nurses, the ones who took an oath the day they hired into Blackhurst, have been drugging Desmond for months, and I can only assume it was a sick attempt to kill him.

I don’t know what fucking purpose that was supposed to serve but it’s a good goddamn thing neither of those homicidal assholes with a RN behind their name are here right now.

I’m not built like Korvin or Des, not even really like Calix, and I might not have ever been in any sort of physical altercation before but I’m damn well ready for one now.

I’m furious, so full of rage my hands are shaking. Not only did those two screw with my residents, the men I’m responsible for and invested in, they fucked with my goddamn pack and someone, somewhere is going to pay for it.