Chapter 5 - The Drawing on the Desk
Two hours had passed since Mia’s arrival. The little girl had been moved to a private recovery room on the pediatric floor, her fever managed with cooling blankets and IV fluids, though the mysterious rigidity in her legs stubbornly refused to subside.
To keep her calm, Diane had brought in a box of crayons and a stack of white drawing paper. Mia had accepted them without enthusiasm, quietly setting to work at the small rolling tray table pulled up to her bed.
Diane stood at the nurses' station down the hall, reviewing the initial lab results that had just printed out from downstairs. She scanned the electrolyte panels and blood cell counts, her brow furrowing deeper with every line. The electrolyte levels were profoundly skewed, showing severe hypocalcemia and alarming signs of sustained neuro-muscular blockade. It was as if the child’s nervous system was being chemically overridden from the inside out.
“Diane?” Dr. Vance walked up, holding a clipboard with a grim expression. “Have you seen the preliminary tox screen?”
“I was just looking at the panels, Doctor,” Diane replied, her voice dropping to a low whisper so as not to carry down the quiet hallway. “The muscle markers are off the charts. It looks almost like…” She hesitated, balking at her own terrifying conclusion. “It looks like a controlled neurotoxin exposure.”
“Or a heavy-metal overdose,” Vance added darkly. “I’ve already contacted Child Protective Services and the local police department. We need to find the mother immediately. Where is she working again?”
“Downtown, according to the child. Some kind of workshop with glass bottles,” Diane said, turning back toward Mia’s room. “Let me check on her, make sure she’s resting.”
Diane walked quietly down the linoleum corridor and pushed open the door to Room 214. Mia was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her crayons scattered around her. She looked up as Diane entered, sliding a piece of white paper across the tray.
“I finished my picture, Nurse Diane.”
Diane smiled softly, stepping up to the bed and looking down at the drawing. It was a crude, childlike sketch executed with shaky, dark crayon strokes. It depicted a tall woman standing beside a smaller figure—evidently a mother and daughter—inside a room lined with shelves of jars.
But what froze Diane’s blood in her veins wasn't the crude figures. It was the object clearly drawn in the woman’s hand.
May you like
It was a long, thin cylinder with a sharp point at the end. A syringe. And suspended just above it were tiny, floating circles representing droplets falling onto the little girl’s legs.
Before Diane could open her mouth to speak, the heavy footsteps of hospital security and local law enforcement echoed loudly from the hallway outside, closing in fast.
