The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(19)

I heard Jacob directing Delavergne and Morel to lift Harry into the car. It was all happening too slowly.

I pushed Hugo into the backseat after Harry, then scrambled in behind him and closed the door. Harry was moaning, still shuddering and twitching.

“We’ve got to get to the hospital. Fast!” I shouted.

Jacob said to us, “Buckle up.” And to Morel, “Let’s go.”





The American Hospital was to hospitals what the Plaza is to hotels. It was an awesome place with famous doctors and the best medical services on the Continent. And then there were the bonus amenities like Wi-Fi; gourmet meals; and hairdressers, pedicurists, and masseuses by appointment.

It was almost like a resort where you could have brain surgery and get a high-fashion haircut at the same time.

Hugo kept Harry company while Harry’s doctor met with Jacob and me outside the closed door. Since Dr. West is a highly regarded cardiac surgeon and I’m a sixteen-year-old girl, needless to say, he spoke over my head.

He said to my uncle, “Harrison’s symptoms: breathlessness, dizziness, and the syncope—that’s fainting—the fluttering in the chest and sudden weakness—these all are indications of tachycardia. It’s generally not very serious, and I’ve seen a lot of this in teenage boys.

“But you should know that tachycardia can be brought on by using energy drinks—either alone or as a mixer. Stimulant drugs like cocaine can also bring on tachycardia. Given that Harrison had been at a party, followed by the stress of the police interrogation, it all makes sense. I’m not concerned with the tachycardia—”

I interrupted. “So is he going to be all right?”

The doctor ignored me. “As for the arrhythmia, this is an irregular heartbeat that can be life threatening…”

Dr. West went on, saying that arrhythmia, or fibrillation, was potentially more serious, and that pretty much infuriated me.

Because I wasn’t convinced that any of my brother’s heart issues were caused by congenital defects or energy drinks mixed with booze or recreational drugs.

A different idea had occurred to me. A bad one.

I pushed open the door to Harry’s hospital room. It was a big, bright corner room, furnished with a supercomfy sit-up bed and a reclining chair currently occupied by Hugo, who was enthusiastically thumbing his Nintendo 3DS.

I saw a couple of huge, ostentatious flower arrangements and a garish bouquet of metallic balloons tied to the footrail. Who had sent them? Harry had arrived just hours ago.

Behind the balloons, Harry was sitting up in bed, talking on his phone. He had good color in his face, an open laptop on his knees, and papers littering his blanket. The papers looked legal. Like contracts. In fact, my brother looked less like a heart patient and more like a whiz-kid businessman.

He held up a finger to me, the universal gesture for “just a minute,” and said into the phone, “Yes, I can make it to the audition tomorrow at three. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

He clicked off his phone and grinned.

“Who was that?” I asked. “What kind of audition?”

“Haven’t you heard, Tandy? I’m a musical genius. I’m about to take Paris by storm.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. It felt like I was in a convenience store and a live deer had wandered inside. And when that happens, you want to approach it very carefully so that it doesn’t go nuts and break up the place before leaping through the plate glass window.

“Dr. West said you have heart problems, Harry. You know that?”

“I heard him. I guess maybe I did party a little too hard. But it was no big deal, Tandy. I don’t know what Lulu ‘ingested’ because I lost sight of her the second we walked through the door. All I had was a couple of beers—”

I cut him off because he was seriously scaring me. I said, “Do not lie to me. I have to know. Are you taking the pills again? Are you having a reaction to our illegal, non-FDA-approved pills with whatever you ‘ingested’ at that party?”

“I’m not taking the pills,” he said. “I stopped taking them when you did. When our supply was cut off.”

“Harry, if you’re lying, if you’re mixing pills and other things, you could die.”

He shook his head. Like he couldn’t accept that I didn’t believe him. Well, there were boxes of pills in our father’s office when he died. Harry had had plenty of opportunity to stash some away for the future.

I had done it. Maybe all my brothers had, too.

Our drugs had their advantages.

Hugo looked up from his 3DS. He said to me, “He keeps them in a vitamin C bottle inside his suitcase. A big bottle.”

Harry glared at Hugo, then turned an even angrier glare on me. “I said, I’m not taking any pills, Tandy. Don’t worry. The Harry you’re seeing is all me. Something huge is about to happen, and I can’t afford not to be one hundred percent.

“Finally, it’ll be my time to shine.”





When I peeked in on Harry that night, he was cross-legged on his bed, scrawling on music sheets, humming to himself and counting off beats on his fingers. He looked good. He didn’t see me open and close his door.

Across the hall in his own room, Hugo was surrounded by pillows on the floor, intensely involved in a football game on the giant TV, shouting out to Matty, who was on Skype watching the game with him from thousands of miles away.