an orderly at Serenity Home, a Grattin facility across town. Brittany’s story became far more complicated because she planned to be a star witness in an abuse case. Seems she saw one of her coworkers raping a young lady who’s been brain-dead for a long time. Brittany claimed the girl was pregnant and she was probably right. Brittany did the same syringe swap and gave us over forty samples from seven different patients. Our lab technicians here in D.C. found the usual concoction of various formulas and meds for blood pressure, diabetes, dementia, blood clotting, blood thinner, blood thickener, pretty much the entire menu. Plus some vitamins. And then they found something they could not identify. A mysterious ingredient that was neither food nor vitamin. And it appeared in all forty samples Brittany lifted from Serenity. Our scientists ran test after test but got nowhere. So Jumper went back to Brittany and said we needed more, we needed to get inside the pharmacy.
“This would take time. I moved on to the third facility, a Pack Line Retirement home in an even more rural area about an hour from Flora. I made contact with a twenty-year-old newlywed father with a kid, working for thirteen dollars an hour. Because Pack Line is a public company its pay scale is slightly better. He needed cash and took the deal. We eventually got samples from five Nons, and all checked out. Nothing suspicious.
“Back to Brittany. She volunteered to work double shifts so she would be on the floor late at night. We gave her a list of every medication and vitamin that the labs had identified so far, and she memorized it. She already knew most of the meds anyway. Without creating suspicion, she managed to learn her way around the pharmacy and realized that she could leave with certain over-the-counter items—aspirin, cough drops, Band-Aids, and so on—almost any time she wanted. Because of staffing issues, she told her supervisor that she was willing to learn how to handle the food and meds for the feedings. Eventually, she walked out with a jar of something called vitamin E3, a generic-looking capsule that could pass for almost any supplement. Don’t know how much you know about vitamins but there is no such thing as E3. It sent off alarms in the lab and went through every possible test. The bottom line is that it’s an obscure drug called Flaxacill, one that’s never been on the market. It’s never been approved anywhere because no one has tried to get it approved. The story is that it was accidentally created as some by-product in a Chinese lab twenty years ago and was tested on a few human guinea pigs over there. It was dropped immediately when they realized that the drug causes vomiting and blindness.”
“That would pose a challenge for marketing, even for a drug company,” Bruce quipped, but it fell flat.
“Apparently it’s an easy drug to make and is produced only on demand.”
“So what does the drug do?” Bruce asked.
“Keeps the heart beating, barely, but only in people who are practically brain-dead anyway. It stimulates the medulla, the lower half of the brain stem that connects to the spinal cord and controls our involuntary functions like breathing, heart rate, swallowing, blood pressure. Pretty important little area.”
Nick added, “It also causes vomiting, which explains that side effect.”
“Correct.”
“And no one knows the patients are blind, because they can’t open their eyes, right?” Bruce added.
“Exactly.”
Nick said, “So Nelson was on to something.”
“He certainly was. He knew about this drug, and the only way he could have possibly learned of its existence was through an informant, someone with deep connections at Grattin.”
“Thought so,” Nick said, almost under his breath. He shot a quick smug smile at Bruce, who could only shake his head.
“And what happened to Brittany?” Bruce asked.
Lindsey slowly took a sip of coffee while staring at Bruce. “Do you know what happened?”
“Yes, I do, and the question is whether you planned to tell me.”
“Yes, I was going to tell you.