my hand and I squeezed back weakly. I’d never felt so helpless in all my life.
“Maggie!”
For a second I thought it was Connor calling my name, but when I looked, I saw Simon running toward me, holding something in his hand. The school nurse was right behind him.
“Pens! I have pens!”
Simon, suit blazer flapping behind him like a cape, charged through the cafeteria at a full sprint. Working quickly, he pulled a pen from the carrying case, then removed the blue safety cap as if he’d practiced it before. Swinging the pen in an arc, he jabbed the orange needle cover into my thigh at a ninety-degree angle. I heard the click. Simon held the pen in place for a full ten seconds. Even with my vision blurred, I could see the indicator change color. The medicine had been dispensed correctly. I massaged the injection spot, feeling the epinephrine swim through my veins.
My eyes closed and the world around me grew darker, then darker still. In that moment, I left my body, feeling nothing but an unbelievable kind of lightness, like I could float away, far, far away, free from gravity. As I drifted off and the blackness became more pronounced, a single thought flickered through my mind before all thoughts ended.
Did Simon get the injection into me in time?
CHAPTER 50
A young female ER doctor took forever to complete a battery of tests that confirmed what Nina could tell merely by observation: Maggie was healthy enough to go home. It was a relief for everyone, especially Maggie, who was dreading the thought of spending the night in the hospital—the same hospital where Dr. Wilcox was still a patient.
There’d be no visiting her therapist this time. Nina’s focus was on her daughter—and besides, she felt too guilty to pay a visit. After all, it was her husband who had administered the savage beating. Glen was out there somewhere—profoundly, violently angry with her, and anytime, day or night, he could show up.
Nina had been at work when she got Simon’s panicked phone call about Maggie and had driven to the hospital at a reckless speed. She kept Simon on the phone with her as he followed the ambulance with Maggie inside. He knew Nina was coming from The Davis Center. As a concession to ease his worry for her safety, Nina had agreed not to leave the office for client visits and was now getting home before sunset.
The police continued to conduct random patrols during the day and kept a single unmarked car parked outside their home at night, but that hardly seemed a long-term solution. The only answer was to find Glen, to catch him, but how? They were no closer to knowing his whereabouts even with the information extracted from Maggie’s phone. According to Detective Wheeler, Glen had expertly hidden himself using technology that turned him into a digital phantom. Nina didn’t know Glen to be particularly tech-savvy, but he certainly was smart enough to have picked up the skills. He could be anywhere, Nina was told, which she had interpreted to mean he could have followed her to the hospital right now.
“You really need to make sure you have your EpiPens on you at all times,” Maggie’s doctor had instructed, taking a sterner tone than Nina thought necessary.
“The pen case was actually in the backpack, in a zippered pouch Ben didn’t check,” Simon said. “There was a lot of confusion, so it’s completely understandable he missed it. Lucky for us, the nurse keeps a supply on hand.”
Nina could picture the scene in her mind, the utter pandemonium in the cafeteria as Maggie’s breathing slowed while her scarlet rashes deepened.
“Ben feels terrible about it,” Nina told her daughter. “He’s really upset and blames himself.”
“I called the Odells to let them know you were going to be fine,” Simon added.
“Do you know what caused the reaction?” Nina asked the doctor, who returned a somewhat indifferent shrug. Her job was to stave off death, and so as far as she was concerned, this was mission accomplished.
“It’s hard to say. Could have been cross-contamination from a food-processing plant,” the doctor offered. “It’s rare, but I’ve seen it before.”
Nobody was going to analyze what Maggie had for lunch that day. In the rush to get to the hospital, it had been left behind and then discarded by custodial staff. Even so, Nina would carefully revisit every scrap of food she’d prepared and contact any company she suspected of cross-contamination in case a recall was