The hallway tilted. A nurse caught my elbow, steadying me.
A cardiotoxic agent.
Fast-acting.
Not accidental.
In my mind I saw the chocolates again, glossy and perfect, lined up in their little gold cradle.
“Doctor,” I forced out, throat raw, “they ate chocolate. A fancy box of it at my dad’s house. Could that be…”
“We are running full toxicology on blood and stomach contents,” he said. “But yes. If something was introduced into the chocolates, that would be a plausible delivery method.”
His words continued. Ventilators. Drips. Monitoring. ICU transfer.
But my brain latched onto one truth and would not release it.
Did you eat any?
How much did Brandon eat?
Please say you ate some.
They had not been worried about me getting sick.
They had been terrified I had not.
The realization did not arrive slowly.
It slammed into me like a door kicked open.
My hands began to shake so hard I had to press them between my knees to keep them still.
The birthday gift was never meant to reach tomorrow.
They had wrapped death in ribboned cardstock and written Happy Birthday on the card.
The only reason I was still breathing was because I never learned how to accept anything from them without flinching.
And somewhere behind plastic curtains and fluorescent lights, my brother and my sister’s children were fighting for their lives because I had handed the box to them with a joke about Evelyn charging admission.
I swallowed bile. My mouth tasted like metal.
Dr. Harris’s voice pulled me back. “We need to ask you a few questions,” he said gently. “Who had access to those chocolates?”
I stared at him.
Then I heard myself say, very quietly, “My family did.”
And in that moment, with monitors beeping and the hospital air too cold against my skin, I understood that I was no longer dealing with family dysfunction.
I was dealing with a crime.
Dr. Harris asked who had access to the chocolates, and the question sounded simple. It sounded like something you could answer in one sentence and move on.
“My family did,” I said.
The word family tasted wrong in my mouth.
He nodded once, as if that confirmed something he already suspected. “We need names,” he said. “We need addresses. We need to know where the chocolates came from and who handled them.”
My brain tried to run ahead of him. It kept returning to the same image: the glossy white box on my doorstep, ribbon perfect, card in Evelyn’s handwriting that wasn’t her handwriting. My stomach churned as if my body was trying to expel the realization.
A nurse guided me down the hall, and the hospital swallowed me whole.
Everything about the ICU felt designed to strip comfort away. The lights were too bright, the air too cold, the walls too pale. Machines hummed and beeped in rhythms that sounded like a language I did not want to learn. IV bags hung like sad balloons. Tubes ran from small bodies into equipment that looked far too large.
Brandon was in the first room.
He looked tiny in the bed, swallowed by sheets, his skin the color of paper. A white hospital bracelet circled his wrist. There was a bruise on his forearm where an IV had been placed. The monitor beside him blipped green lines with a steady insistence that felt obscene.
I moved to his bedside slowly, like sudden movement might break him.
“Hey, kiddo,” I whispered.
His eyelids fluttered, then opened. For a second his eyes were wild with panic, as if he did not know if he was awake or trapped in a nightmare. Then he saw me, and something in him loosened.
“Kendall,” he croaked. His voice sounded scraped raw. “I am sorry.”
My throat tightened so hard it hurt. “Sorry for what?” I asked. “This is not your fault.”
His gaze flicked toward the curtain dividing his bed from the next room. On the other side, I could hear soft beeping that belonged to Leighton and Matteo. I did not look yet. I could not look yet.
Brandon looked back at me, eyes glossy. “Evelyn told me,” he whispered.
Ice slid down my spine. “Told you what?”
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