Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

I sighed. “Fine, I’m sorry for being snappish. I’m tired. I’ve been up all night. I’m worried sick about Gus, and you look like you’re abut to go spend the day crooning with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. So, unless it’s to entertain me with some tunes, you probably shouldn’t talk to me right now.”

Forrest chuckled and handed me the iPad. “I admire a woman who speaks her mind.”

*     *     *

After they took Gus for his ultrasound, Forrest and I sat and stared at each other.

“You don’t like me,” Forrest finally said.

“No, I don’t think I do.” I said.

“Why? People usually like me. I’m told I can be quite charming. Is it because you think I’m going to take Gus away from you?”

“No,” I said. But why didn’t I like him? I was so tired, I couldn’t really remember when my dislike had started. I tried to poke in his mind, to see what he was thinking, but all I got was a smooth darkness, like volcanic glass. My ‘sight’ slid off it and I was no closer to uncovering his secrets than I had been when we first met.

I finally said. “I don’t trust you. You’re always so guarded. Makes me wonder what you’re hiding.”

“Me? I’m an open book,” he protested.

I snorted.

*     *     *

When Gus came back from his ultrasound, we had another piece of the puzzle. His lungs had partially collapsed because his liver was swollen to almost twice its normal size. But they still wanted to discharge him, so he could go see his regular doctor.

“No,” I said. “We’re not going anywhere, until you find out why his liver is swollen.”

“I’m sure the doctors know what they’re doing,” Forrest argued. “If they want to discharge him, there’s got to be a good reason.”

“Forget it,” I snapped. “You can take your opinion and shove it. Why don’t you go home?”

“Because I’m his significant other. You’re just his roommate.”

“I thought you were his sister,” the nurse said, glaring at me. Then she turned to Forrest, sweet as saccharine. “Do you mind signing these papers? We need the space for incoming patients.”

“I don’t… feel… good.” Gus said, barely able to get the words out.

Instinctively, I put my hand on his forehead.

He was burning up.

Chapter 47

F
orrest made an excuse about why he had to leave and said he’d be back later. I ignored him and watched as the nurse took Gus’s temperature. It was 103.

A few minutes later, a new doctor came into the room. He felt Gus’s throat, commented on how swollen his lymph nodes were, and asked the nurse to schedule an ultrasound of his thyroid.

I was ready to scream. I believed that Gus’s lymph nodes were swollen, but I was sure everything was centered in his liver. And with the parade of different doctors that were coming through, I wasn’t at all sure they would be communicating with each other.

“Why… so… upset?” Gus asked, when we were alone again.

“Because,” I said, trying to hold my anger in check. “It shouldn’t be up to
me
to diagnose you. I didn’t go to medical school. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know why they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on. I don’t know whey can’t even read their own freaking reports.”

“Devil… block,” Gus said.

“Yeah. I think it is. Why don’t you just give the Devil back the stupid toad bone?”

“Never,” Gus croaked. “I won… fair and… square.”

*     *     *

While Gus was moved from the Emergency Room cubicle to an actual room, I called Paul, told him where the spare key was and asked him to look after the dogs. I knew he was leery of spending time at the cottage, so I asked if he could take the Dobes to his house.

“It’s only for a few days, just until Gus gets out of the hospital.”

“You’re going to owe me for this, big time,” he said.

“Whatever happened to joint dog custody?”

Silence on his end.

“Fine, whatever. I’ll owe you. Absolutely. We’ll settle up later. I’ll buy you lunch. Gotta go.” I said, hanging up before he could change his mind.

After scouring the Internet on Gus’s iPad, to figure out what kind of doctor he most needed to see, I was finally able to track down an Infectious Disease Specialist. Mainly by ‘accidentally’ walking into every department and office in the Medical Center, until I found one who would talk to me.

I told the doctor what was going on with Gus, and my suspicion that it was all centered in his liver. I convinced her to run blood tests for anything that could possibly lead to a swollen liver and gave her a run-down of everything and everyone Gus had been exposed to, from flu vaccines to Grundleshanks and the cats, to me and Forrest.

*     *     *

Forrest came back later that day, wearing a Santa hat and rubbing sanitizer gel into his hands. “You’ve got to watch out for flesh-eating disease on hospital toilets. I once met a lady, had half her ass eaten off.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

A new nurse came in, took seven vials of blood from Gus and left.

Gus was exhausted and wavering in and out of consciousness. I wasn’t sure he knew either of us were there.

Forrest puttered around a little, turning the TV on and off, before saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little peckish. You want anything from the diner?”

“No,” I snapped. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you go treat yourself to a really long lunch? Followed by a spa treatment. Maybe even a vacation. Come back next week.”

“You’re not the only one who cares about Gus,” he said, sounding sincere.

If that tone of voice had come out of anyone else, I’d have believed them. But not Forrest. I shot him a dirty look.

“It’s amazing how crabby you get when your blood sugar bottoms out,” he said. “I think you’d feel a lot better if you ate something.”

“I’ll grab a candy bar from the vending machine.”

He shrugged. “Your funeral.”

My head snapped around and I glared at him so hard, I thought my eyes would bore holes through him. “Excuse me?”

He backed away, his hands in the air. “It’s a phrase… a saying. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like it. Considering the situation, it’s insensitive and inappropriate. Why don’t you just go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under and stay there?”

“Mara!” Gus weakly protested, waking up.

“I apologize if I offended the lady.” Forrest said to Gus. “She’s very protective of you. So… how did the toad bone ritual go? Did you get it? Can I see it?”

Gus was about to pull the pouch out of his bedside table and show Forrest, but I stopped him. “No. We couldn’t finish it. Gus got sick.”

Gus frowned.

But every time I looked at Forrest, inside my head, I could hear a tiny whispered voice saying:
Don’t trust
.

Over and over again.

*     *     *

Forrest finally left, although I knew he’d be back. While Gus slept, I sat and researched everything I could about partially collapsed lungs and any kind of illness that would affect the liver, until my eyes were stinging and swollen, and I was starting to go into hypochondriac mode.

By nightfall, my stomach was burning from all the vending machine food. But Gus looked so pitiful, hooked up to all the machines and the IV drip, with the oxygen cannules in his nostrils, that I just couldn’t leave him. Thankfully, the room was private and it had a couch, so I was able to catch a catnap.

When the nurses came to clear the floor, they assumed Gus was the father of my child and let me stay. The nurse on the late shift even gave me a blanket and a pillow.

Throughout the night, Gus grumbled about being woken up every couple of hours to have his vitals checked. But I was glad they did it. Every grumble meant that he was still alive.

The morning nurse took pity on me, and gave me a spare breakfast tray.

Once Gus was awake, I ran home to shower, change my clothes and give Duke Gronwy fresh food and water.

*     *     *

When I returned to the Medical Center, the Infectious Disease Specialist came in and told us that Gus had tested positive for active infections of both toxoplasmosis and cytomegalovirus. Between the two of them, that’s what caused his liver and lymph nodes to swell, his lungs to partially collapse, and what was fueling the fever.

“That’s insane,” I said. “What causes that?”

“CMV is a highly contagious virus, in the herpes family. Over half of the population carries it, but most are asymptomatic. About eighty percent have been exposed. You’re really only at risk when you have a compromised immune system.”

“Is it sexually transmitted?”

“It can be, but not necessarily. He may have had it for years, if he had mononucleosis or Guillain-Barre when he was younger. He may have even gotten it from his mother when he was born. In this case, the toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite, weakened his immune system, triggering an acute recurrence of the CMV and allowing it to run rampant. The good news is that Gus is HIV negative, or he’d be in a world of hurt right now.”

“Toxoplasmosis?” That one sounded familiar, but I was too tired for my brain to function properly. One thought bumped into another one, until it triggered my memory. “Isn’t that why pregnant women aren’t supposed to clean litter boxes?”

“That’s right,” the doctor nodded. “Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that is spread through raw meat and cat feces. It’s dangerous to pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems. Everything seems to be coming back to a compromised immune system, but I’m not sure what caused his immune system to become that vulnerable, to begin with.”

Suddenly, I remembered the plum that made him ill—the plum that had fallen into the garbage disposal and the horrible stomach issues that resulted. I filled the doctor in on it.

She nodded her head. “It sounds like a perfect storm. My guess is that he picked up a bacterial infection from that plum, which depressed his immune system and left him open to a parasitic infection from the cats. That then reactivated the dormant viral infection and sent it into acute mode. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Bacterial infection, parasitical infection, viral infection.
Fuck!
Talk about a rolling snowball of hellfire and brimstone.

“In fact, since you live together, we should probably test you as well. Especially in your condition.”

I nodded, acutely aware of the danger my baby could be in, if I was affected. “Wouldn’t I be sick though, if I was positive?”

“Not if you have a healthy immune system.”

“Okay, then. Sign me up.”

She nodded and then made a notation on his chart. “I’m going to put Gus on an antibiotic drip and an antiviral treatment. I’ll keep him here for a week, but then he’ll have to continue taking meds at home. I have to warn you though, you should not come in contact with the meds we’re putting him on. Not even skin contact. The antiviral is fairly toxic.”

“But it’ll cure him, right?” I asked. “We’ll never have to go through this again?”

The doctor shook her head. “He’s always going to carry Toxo and he may continue to carry CMV as well. It all depends on his reaction to the meds. We’ll cure what we can, but our main goal is to get everything back into a dormant state, so his liver and lungs can return to normal. If his immune system gets run down again though, this acute level of infection could happen all over again. In fact, when he gets old and is less able to fight it, it will probably be what kills him.”

Son of a bitch
.

Chapter 48

W
hile Gus slept, I sat and thought about everything that had happened. And every thought led me back to Forrest.

Aunt Tillie had said that the Devil had to play by certain rules. That he could exploit existing weaknesses to cause other weaknesses. In this case, Gus had a weakness in his immune system, and what had exploited that was Forrest’s cats. The cats that were too sick to go to Forrest’s stepsister, so Gus had to take care of them. The cats that were infected with toxoplasmosis and were the size of small leopards.

Had Forrest been in league with the Devil, this entire time?

When I had first met Forrest, he had looked so familiar. But I couldn’t quite place him. And J.J. and I had been looking at Forrest and the Sheriff when J.J. freaked out and had either vanished or been turned into a rat.

Was Forrest capable of doing something like that? Did he have that kind of power? Was Forrest one of the Devil’s demons? Some kind of advance guard that’s sent out when a witch begins the process of the Toad Bone Ritual?

What was it the Devil had said in the cemetery? That Gus and I were a
hoot
.

Where else had I heard that phrase recently?

I thought back, and pulled up a vague memory of Forrest calling me a
hoot
during the dinner in the cemetery.

My blood ran cold. I suddenly realized where I had seen Forrest before, and why he would have wanted to get J.J. out of the picture. But if I wanted to prove any of my suspicions to Gus, I was going to need to get out of this hospital and track down the evidence.

*     *     *

I ran home and took Gronwy out of his cage. He chittered at me as he gnawed on a slice of carrot.

“If I need to get into J.J.’s apartment, where can I find a key?” I asked   , then I tried to look into his mind for the answer.

Carrots, pumpkin seeds, rocks, grass, more rocks, pieces of watermelon.

I gave up and put Gronwy back into his cage. I needed to get my hands on that picture of J.J.’s great-great-grandfather. It was the one that used to be on display at The Trading Post, but last time I was there, I had noticed it was missing. Maybe it had fallen. Or, maybe, since there was a new employee there who seemed pretty savvy, she had taken it to be restored and framed, since it was part of the Trading Post’s history.

*     *     *

Anna was working behind the counter when I walked in. She seemed a little frazzled, and her bouncy blonde hair was lifeless, hanging in clumpy strands. She rang up a customer and slammed the cash register drawer shut, looking frustrated, as I walked up to the counter.