The Venus Fix

Sunday Twelve days remaining
Thirty

The phone rang, jarring me awake. I could barely open my eyes, and I reached for my cell phone where I always left it when I was away from my daughter, on the bedside table. But before I could find it-while I was still groping in the dark- I heard Noah talking. It was his phone.

I lay there listening to the one-sided conversation, unable to fill in the gaps but making wild guesses at what was going on.

“What time?”

Pause.

“What hospital?”

Pause.

“How are they?”

Pause.

“Which one?” One last pause. “Okay. I’ll be there in a few hours. I can turn around and fly back here for Monday.”

I heard the click as he shut the phone and the thud as he put it back on his nightstand. As he lay back, his breath was rapid and his body was tense.

“Noah? What happened?”

“Did you hear that? I’m sorry it woke you.”

“No, it’s fine. What is it, though? What happened?”

“Looks like another poisoning.”

I sat up in bed and leaned on my elbow. In the ambient early morning light, I could see that Noah’s features were drawn.

“I’m going to have to go back to New York this morning,” he said.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You know, you could stay. Your ticket isn’t until tonight and there’s a lot that-”

“No, I don’t want to be here without you. We can come back and you can show me the rest of your city. Tell me about the woman. Is she dead?”

“Women. There were two of them. One has a chance, the other…they don’t think so.”

“What happened?”

“Crazy. This is so crazy.” He rubbed his eyes and ran his hand through his tousled hair.

“Christ, I’m sorry, Morgan. We finally have a whole weekend together and now this.”

“It’s okay, just tell me what happened.”

“Men watching the Web cast saw them getting sick and started calling it in…dozens of them…just like the last time… it might have taken forever to find them again but one of the women managed to call 911 before she passed out. The ambulance got there in four minutes.”

He rubbed his eyes again.

“Would you like me to order up some coffee? It’s already six o’clock. The menu said room service started an hour ago.”

“Yes, coffee. And food, too. I’ll call the airlines and try to get us out of here.” He picked up his cell but just stared at it. “Two women. One’s twenty-two, the other one is twenty-three. And God knows how many men, just watching it happen.”