He turns his attention back to me. I can see the faint wrinkles around his eyes. He looks older, as if a day has aged him.
“You scared the piss out of me, Angie. You know that?” he asks. His eyes scan over my body. It’s as if he is making sure all my limbs are there.
“Why am I here?”
“You had a seizure last night.”
“What? Really? When? The last thing I remember is calling you a bastard in the back of your car.”
Graham brushes hair off his forehead. “You don’t remember vomiting on the side of the road?”
I shake my head no. “No.” My voice is barely audible.
“You don’t remember going back in the car?” he presses. “I was going to take you back to your townhouse and then you started acting really weird. I had Collins rush us to the nearest hospital. I knew something was wrong. Your eyes were glassy. It was as if your soul left your body. Then you twitched, and it was then that I knew you were seizing.”
“I…I…” I start. My tongue feels like cotton. I motion to the pink water pitcher on the rolling table.
Graham pours me a Styrofoam cup’s worth and lifts it to my lips. It is room temperature and tastes like chlorinated rust. I make a face.
“Want me to get you a bottled water from the vending machine?” Graham asks with a smirk. “A soda or juice?”
I take another sip of the stale water and cough to clear my throat. “I really just want to know what happened to me. Why am I here? What made me have a seizure?”
“I can answer those questions,” a deep voice from the doorway answers. “I am the doctor assigned to you.”
I watch as he walks inside the private room. He is short, roughly in his sixties, and wears wire-rimmed bifocals.
I hit the button on my bed to sit up straighter. Graham shakes the doctor’s hand and then pulls up a padded armchair to sit on.
“So, Miss Angela McFee, your blood work came back suspicious.”
“What does that mean?” Graham demands before I can even form together a sentence.
The doctor straightens his glasses on his nose. “Are you on any kind of depressants? Antidepressants?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Prescription drugs?” the doctor quizzes.
“No.” It is a white lie. I hate myself for it. It was one pill from an old prescription. A moment of weakness, drowned with an abundance of alcohol.
“Why the interrogation?” Graham huffs, raking hair off his forehead.
“Miss McFee,” the doctor addresses, “you tested positive for benzodiazepines.”
“Was she drugged?” Graham interrupts.
I sink into the abused mattress of the hospital bed. Part of me is relieved that he thinks this is not my own doing.
“It’s hard to say when recreational drug use is so common these days.”
“I’m not a drug addict!” I insist.
“Miss McFee, you had a seizure which was most likely the result of the drug’s effect to your central nervous system. Regardless of whether it happened by choice or not, you ingested a potent drug.”
I grab my water and take another sip, listening to the doctor explain the blood results in a bit more detail.
“Are there any long or short-term effects to the body?” Graham asks.