Book Six, Chapter 55: Andrew Interlude

~Andrew~

Kimberly left me in a supply closet.

But to her credit, it was quite a large closet. It even had a window, a small glass sliver that allowed me to see out into the darkness where the storm raged on. The water pelted the glass so hard it looked frosted.

Pain radiated through my body. Poisoned by a cigarette when I never took a single puff. I remembered, as a child, being warned of the dangers of second-hand smoke, but this was something else.

Why couldn’t I contain myself? Why did I have to entertain this strange mental fixation on nicotine? The Atlas warned that trauma could stay with you in the form of addiction. This was particularly relevant to Doctors, as we had tropes for acquiring pharmaceuticals.

I was lying down at first, seeking to rid myself of pain. And it worked, as long as I wasn’t flexing my muscles, I felt nothing. I could lie there and ride out this storyline until I was Written Off altogether. But then, what help would that be for my allies? Both Riley and Kimberly were still alive. I had to hope it would be enough.

I strained to sit up. The pain was unimaginable. Even as a doctor, I found it easy to forget how many muscle groups came into use through simple everyday actions like sitting up.

I was very aware of every single muscle involved as I fought against the pain.

To my horror and embarrassment, as soon as I began my exercise in agony, I went On-Screen.

Carousel saw fit to get footage of me struggling against the poison. What a pitiful sight it must have been. I had always been thin and had put more work into strengthening my mind than my body. I had never been so violently mocked for it as I was in this moment.

Still, I did have my mind. The poison did not affect my mental faculties.

If I was going to be On-Screen, I was going to be working my only remaining assets: my mind, my training.

I could only mutter, conjure up a series of words that sounded right. I had already thought through my symptoms and everything I knew about the poison and had firmly concluded that it was a fictional, made-up movie poison. Nothing from the real world quite fit.

Still, the audience didn’t need to know that.

“Inhaled dose… rapid onset… sensory intact,” I muttered, flexing, tremoring fingers.

“Not organophosphate, no drool, no pin-point pupils… Not succinylcholine, no twitch storm.”

I finally managed to make it to a sitting position. It felt like an enormous victory. But as I sat in near darkness, I realized it was nothing of the sort.

Giving my flashlight to Kimberly had been the logical move, yet I wished that I was able to see my surroundings.

I continued to think aloud, conjuring medical jargon in the best way I knew how. In the real world, we had procedures of how to deal with poison, of how to work backward from the symptoms. We could rule out environmental causes, narrow down the possibilities, and support life while we developed a fitting treatment plan. None of that mattered here. Identifying the poison, following medical procedure, neither would save me. I just had to put on a show. I found myself resentful of that. My education had been reduced to nothing but a jumping off point for nonsense that would sound smart to the average audience member. I hoped no real medical professionals were listening. The embarrassment would be too much for my ego to handle.

“Curare-like? Maybe. But smoke-stable? Unlikely.” I hissed as pain climbed my forearms. “Could be… custom brew. Multiple pharmaceuticals.”

I prodded my diaphragm with a sharp breath. It answered, weak but there.

“Competitive block, not permanent damage,” I told the darkness. “Pain signals good, wires intact, plugs jammed.”

Yada yada.

Another ankle flex, slow and molten. “Keep blood moving… stop joints freezing.”

For what felt like an entire minute, I pushed myself to my feet, hanging onto the nearby wall, tears welling up in my eyes, until I finally made it.

“Agony, yes. Harm, no.”

I willed a favorable prognosis into the universe.

From what I could understand, this poison functioned as a paralytic. It likely wasn’t immediately fatal. There would be no need to carry around an antidote if it killed that quickly.

More than that, I suspected that even if Riley’s homicidal bride could inflict poisoning by implication, it was unlikely a high dose could be implied, especially when I had been On-Screen struggling with the decision to smoke at all.

Once I focused and made peace with the pain, that simple change in mindset made it easier to walk. But still, the searing pain moving through my muscles every time I moved was an incredible impediment.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew my book of matches. I was fortunate that they were still dry, given how soaked I was from the floodwaters.

I quickly lit the match and used it to see the room.

Still On-Screen. As long as I was doing something, maybe Carousel would give me the chance to still be relevant.

The light was brighter than it should have been from a single match, but that was typical for Carousel. Matches were always brighter; in fact, all light sources seemed to ignite some sort of atmospheric glow far beyond the reach they should.

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The first thing I saw was that, between me and the little sliver of a window, there was a panel in the side of the wall, a circuit breaker.

The power was out, so I had no reason to believe this to be relevant. But still, it was worth checking out. Nothing else in the closet seemed that interesting. Some cleaning supplies, scrubbers, big yellow rubber gloves, sure, but nothing called out to me in the dim lighting.

Sure enough, when I opened up the panel, all of the breakers were still on.

I reached toward it to flip them back and forth. But what would that do? Establish once again that the power was out when nothing reacted to the flipping?

Standing tall enough to reach the breaker was rapidly sapping away all of my energy.

I was both literally and figuratively powerless.

But this was Carousel. And whatever horrors it held, it also held the powerful magic of thread pulling.

Instead of flipping one of the switches, I pressed my hand against the bare metal of the circuit breaker and quickly pulled it away, not in pain, just surprise.

In truth, the metal was cold and lifeless. But I pressed my fingers back up against it and then put my best light bulb moment face on.

I struggled my way toward the door where the light switch was and flipped it up and down to show that the power was still out. But then I moved to the window, wincing with pain, and peered outside.

Outside, the ground was flooded. It had probably covered up the entire first floor by now, and more water was coming. But there was something else out there, something I could use.

Floodlights.

Both the kind on the end of high poles that wouldn’t be underwater, and the kind that were settled in bushes along paths.

“The emergency lighting,” I said. “The floodlights.” I looked back at the circuit breaker.

I was trying to tell a story.

I was trying to tell the audience that this circuit breaker was not only live, flowing with electricity, but that it controlled the floodlights, which remained on as part of the emergency lighting system. Buildings like hospitals, or in this case, casinos and hotels, kept emergency lighting along paths and down stairwells lit, even when other light sources were out.

It would seem that the backup generator was not the only backup source of electricity. That was established every time we went into a stairwell, and those bleeding red lights lit off and on.

As I returned to the circuit breaker and placed my hand upon the metal, I found that it wasn’t cool and lifeless any longer; it was pleasantly warm. The breakers now thrummed with electricity.

The question was, what was I going to do with it?