He felt mild nausea, but when he shook himself it passed. He blinked and the colored shapes came together and merged into a large shiny object. A hand came into his field of vision and it touched the object. That was when Jack realized it was his hand and the object was a car.
Other elements of his immediate environment became recognizable.
There were lights and a building. Then he realized that there were people on either side of him holding him up. They were speaking but their voices had a deep, mechanical sound as if they were synthesized.
Jack felt himself falling, but he couldn’t stop himself. It seemed as if he fell for several minutes before landing on a hard surface. Then he could only see dark shapes. He was lying on a carpeted surface with something firm jutting into his stomach. When he tried to move he found that his wrists were restrained.
Time passed. Jack had no idea how long. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. But at last he’d regained orientation, and he was no longer hallucinating. He realized that he was on the floor of the backseat of a moving car, and his hands were handcuffed to the undercarriage of the front passenger seat. Presumably they were on their way to the Catskills.
To relieve the discomfort of the driveshaft pressing against his stomach, Jack drew his knees underneath him to assume a crouched-over position. It was far from ideal but better than it had been. But his discomfort was from more than his cramped posture. The flu symptoms were much worse, and combined with a hangover from the ketamine, he felt about as bad as he’d ever felt.
Several violent sneezes caused Terese to look over the back of the seat.
“Good God!” she exclaimed.
“Where are we?” Jack asked. His voice was hoarse, and the effort of speaking caused him to cough repeatedly. He was having a problem with his nose running, but with his hands secured he couldn’t do anything about it.
“I think you better just shut up or you’ll choke to death,” Richard said.
Terese turned to Richard: “Is this coughing and sneezing from the shot you gave him?”
“How the hell do I know? It’s not as if I’ve ever given ketamine to a person before.”
“Well, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine you might have an idea,” Terese snapped. “You use it on those poor animals.”
“I resent that,” Richard said indignantly. “You know I treat those animals like my pets. That’s why I have the ketamine in the first place.”
Jack sensed that the anxiety that Terese and Richard had evidenced earlier about his presence had metamorphosed into irritation. From the way they were speaking it seemed to be mostly directed at each other.
After a brief silence, Richard spoke up. “You know, this whole thing was your idea, not mine,” he said.
“Oh no!” Terese voiced. “I’m not about to let you get away with that misconception. You were the one who suggested causing AmeriCare trouble with nosocomial infection. It never would have even crossed my mind.”
“I only suggested it after you complained so bitterly about AmeriCare gobbling up National Health’s market share despite your stupid ad campaign,” Richard said. “You begged me to help.”
“I wanted some ideas,” Terese said. “Something to use with the ads.”
“Hell you did!” Richard said. “You don’t go to a grocery store and ask for hardware. I don’t know squat about advertising. You knew my field was microbiology. You knew what I’d suggest. It was what you were hoping.”
“I never thought about it until you mentioned it,” Terese countered.
“Besides, all you suggested was that you could arrange some bad press by nuisance infections. I thought you meant colds, or diarrhea, or the flu.”
“I did use the flu,” Richard said.
“Yes, you used the flu,” Terese said. “But was it regular flu? No, it was some weird stuff that has everybody all up in arms, including Doctor Detective in the backseat. I thought you were going to use common illnesses, not the plague, for chrissake. Or those other ones. I can’t even remember their names.”