The Lost Apothecary(64)
I thanked her, folded the pages in half and shoved them into my bag. Then, offering her a final apology, I rushed out the door and started running to the hotel, hot tears finally breaking through and rolling down my cheeks for the first time since I’d arrived in London.
When I entered the hotel room, the stench hit me first: the sweet, acidic odor that I had smelled on him earlier. Vomit.
I tossed my bag onto the floor, ignoring the water bottle and notebook that fell out, and rushed into the bathroom. I found James on his side in a fetal position, knees tucked up against his chest, white as a sheet and trembling terribly. He must have removed his shirt at some point because it lay rumpled near the door, soaked through with sweat. This morning I couldn’t bear the sight of him without a shirt, but now I dropped to my knees alongside him and placed my hand on his bare stomach.
He looked at me with sunken eyes, and a scream rose into my throat. There was blood on his mouth.
“James,” I cried. “Oh, God—”
It was then that I looked inside the toilet. More than just vomit, it looked as though someone had splashed it with crimson watercolor paint. Unsteady on my feet, I ran to the hotel phone and asked for the front desk’s help calling an ambulance. I hung up and rushed back into the bathroom. This wasn’t food poisoning from Italian food, that much was clear. But I had zero medical knowledge of any kind; how was it that James had only a mild cough this morning, and now he was vomiting blood to within an inch of his life? Something didn’t make sense.
“Did you eat anything after you went out this morning?” I asked him.
From where he lay on the floor, he shook his head weakly. “I’ve had nothing. I haven’t eaten anything.”
“No water, no nothing?” Perhaps he drank something he shouldn’t have, or—
“Just the oil you gave me, which I’m sure came up a long time ago.”
I frowned. “There’s nothing to come up. You just rub it on your throat, like you’ve done before.”
James shook his head again. “I asked if you had DayQuil and you said no, you had yucca oil or something.”
The color drained from my face. “Eucalyptus?”
“Yeah, that one,” he groaned, wiping his mouth with his hand. “I took it like I would take DayQuil.”
The bottle sat next to the sink, and the label affixed to it was clear: the toxic oil was meant for topical application only. Not to be ingested. And if the danger wasn’t obvious enough, the label also stated that ingestion may cause seizures or death in kids.
“You drank this?” I asked incredulously, and James nodded. “How much?” But before he could answer, I lifted the vial up to the light. Thank God, it wasn’t empty—not even half empty. But still, he drank a mouthful of it? “James, this is fucking toxic!”
He responded by hugging his knees closer into his chest. “I didn’t know,” he mumbled in a soft voice. It was so pathetic, I wanted to crawl on the floor next to him and apologize, even though I’d done nothing wrong.
There came an abrupt knock at the door and a shout from the other side. “Medics,” said a deep male voice.
The next few minutes passed in a blur as I was told to stand aside while the paramedics evaluated James. Including a pair of hotel managers who’d just appeared, there must have been ten people in the room, a merry-go-round of spinning, concerned faces.
A young woman in a well-kept, navy blue uniform stood near me—La Grande was embroidered on her shirt—and she offered me tea, a biscuit, even a sandwich tray. I declined them all, instead trying to listen to the thick British accents flying around as everyone made an effort to treat my husband. They asked him question after question, only some of which I could understand.
The medics pulled equipment from a heavy canvas bag: an oxygen mask, blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. The hotel bathroom soon resembled a trauma room, and the sight of the equipment was like a slap in the face as I wondered, for the very first time, if this might be a matter of life and death for James. No, I shook my head, don’t even go there. It won’t happen. They won’t let it happen.
When I left for London without James on our “anniversary” trip, I expected emotional turmoil, but not of this kind. Now, with my own wounds still so raw, I found myself hoping desperately that James didn’t die on the bathroom floor in front of me, even if I’d had such fleeting, dark notions about killing someone in the hours after learning of his affair.
Soon, James told the medics about the eucalyptus oil, and one of them lifted the bottle to look at it, just as I’d done. “The bottle is forty mil, but it’s still half-full,” the medic said in an authoritative voice. “How much of this did you have?”
“Just a swallow,” James muttered as someone shone a small light into his eyes.
One of the paramedics repeated this into the cell phone he held at his ear. “Hypotension, yes. Significant vomiting. Blood, yes. No alcohol, other medicines.” They all paused a moment, and I assumed that someone on the other end of the line was plugging things into a database, perhaps to determine urgent treatment methods.
“How long ago was it ingested?” the paramedic asked James, holding an oxygen mask to his face. He shrugged, but I saw in his eyes that he was terrified, confused and struggling even now to breathe.
“Two and a half, three hours ago,” I offered.