She’d worked with them for years. She was used to it.
She didn’t answer, merely moved around Gage, pulling a vial and syringe from her hand and checking Lauren’s vitals before she injected the syringe into the IV.
It killed Gage to wait. Be silent.
He wanted to shake the fucking doctor, despite what she’d done for the club, despite the fact that she was a good woman. That didn’t mean shit if she couldn’t save Lauren.
The world didn’t mean shit if they couldn’t save Lauren.
She watched the screen where Lauren’s vitals had been sitting dangerously low. Just above dead, actually. Gage knew the numbers by heart. They were etched into his insides. He’d been watching them for about twenty-seven thousand seconds, after all.
And then they moved. Which was what he’d been terrified of.
But they moved.
But not down, not pushing him into the ground where the Devil could fully embrace him instead of just sinking his claws into his soul.
They moved up.
He exhaled.
Fully and completely.
Sarah, the doctor, did too.
She faced Gage. “It wasn’t making sense that Lauren’s organs were shutting down without any obvious illness,” she said, clutching his woman’s hand with a kindness absent from most in the profession. Detachment was what most doctors worked with; it was needed because, like Gage, they saw too much death to get attached.
“My colleagues focused on finding the illness, because that’s how they work, within the rules.” She paused. “But I know the club, so I had an inkling that it wasn’t an illness. And they don’t work within the rules, so I took a chance that what was killing Lauren didn’t either.”
Gage flinched. The words were spoken with the upmost kindness, but they cut surer and truer than any knife Gage had sunk into his skin.
“Lauren has been poisoned with small doses of Taydoxilne,” Sarah continued, eyes on the machines. “I couldn’t say for how long, but enough time to slowly eat away at her immune system without her noticing.”
“Taydoxilne?” he repeated.
She nodded, still holding Lauren’s hand. “It’s a new drug, originally created for weight loss, if you could believe it. It was heralded as a miracle because it was a powder that was completely tasteless when dissolved in water and melted off the pounds.” She shook her head. “But trials showed that in patients who didn’t lose weight, it began to literally eat away at their immune system and organs. So slowly it wouldn’t have been noticeable had they not been monitored. Obviously the trial was stopped and the drug discontinued.” She frowned. “So I’m not sure how someone got a hold of it to give it to Lauren.” She looked to Gage. “I’m sure you’ll be finding that out.”
The words underneath the ones she spoke were very clear.
“I’m sure you’ll be making them pay.”
He nodded once, violently, unable to speak.
If his mind weren’t paralyzed by the sight in front of him, he might’ve been impressed with the doctor, what hid underneath her professional exterior, something Jagger had obviously seen.
But Gage didn’t care about shit right then.
Nothing except the woman in the hospital bed with the slowly climbing vitals.
“I can’t say how long she’s been exposed. At least a month, maybe more.” She gave Gage a hard look. “But it’s not something anyone could have caught, not something a big biker could’ve noticed, unless he had a PhD and was getting weekly blood tests,” she said, as if she knew Gage was resting the blame firmly where it belonged, on his shoulders.
Because Lauren didn’t live a life where she was slowly poisoned. Gage lived a life where the only thing he loved would be slowly taken away from him though.
“We’re lucky Lily was there to administer CPR, that Lauren’s strong.” Sarah smiled.
“She’s going to be okay,” Gage managed to grind out. It wasn’t a question. It couldn’t be a question.
Sarah’s eyes met his. “I’ve given her the same drug used to help the patients in the trials. They all made full recoveries, though they weren’t exposed to as much as Lauren, so she might take a little longer, considering she experienced almost complete organ failure. But yes, she’ll be okay.”
Gage’s heart started beating again. For the first time in ninety-nine thousand, one hundred and two seconds.
Eighteen
“Poison?” Cade repeated, his voice holding only the slightest hint of surprise. And with Cade, the fact that there was even a slight ripple in his iron demeanor meant he was shocked.
Gage nodded once, sharply, pain coming with the movement. Because for as long as he didn’t see Lauren’s open, awake, and alert eyes, everything hurt. Every fucking heartbeat. Sarah said she was going to recover fully, but he didn’t believe words. He couldn’t, because they were too good to be true. Getting her back when he’d tasted the world without her.
So he would only believe this bitterness was temporary when he heard her voice, saw that light behind her eyes. Because anything less than that would be giving in to hope. And Gage knew hope was deadly.