The Slip Toby Kept Hidden

I had left the bottle where it was, but its size stayed with me. There had been so many pills inside. What was Brenda doing with a huge supply of tablets that had no label?

If they were meant to end a pregnancy, a Friday surgery made no sense. And prenatal supplements wouldn’t explain the savage marks where someone had scraped away the label.

I had to check the insurance records. I needed to find out what had been charged on Tuesday.

I hurried into the den and dropped into the chair at the broad oak desk. A nudge of the mouse stirred the family’s aging computer awake.

Its display shone into the quiet room. The machine’s fan rattled as I opened the browser and went to the Blue Cross website.

Dad wasn’t good with computers. Years ago, he had chosen the option to save his password. His email appeared in the first field, and a row of dark dots filled the next one.

I pressed the sign-in button.

A page of insurance totals and recent activity appeared. I went straight to the claims section.

My gaze moved down the entries until I found it.

The service date was Tuesday, October 15. The patient listed was Brenda Miller.

Eastside 24-Hour Urgent Care appeared as the provider. The service was a pelvic diagnostic ultrasound, and the claim had not yet been finalized.

So Brenda had used Dad’s coverage for the scan after all.

Relief loosened something in my chest. The story I’d pieced together still seemed to fit: there was a reason for her secrecy, evidence of the affair, and now proof she’d tried to conceal the appointment.

I moved to close the page. Dad would be home eventually, and I could wait until then to speak with him.

Then another entry, directly below Brenda’s, caught my eye.

It was dated Monday, one day before her ultrasound.

The patient was Mark Miller. The clinic was Eastside 24-Hour Urgent Care, and the service description read laboratory and pathology.

Its status showed processed. A forty-dollar copayment was listed as Dad’s responsibility.

My hand stopped above the mouse.

Forty dollars.

I saw Toby again in my mind, holding the crumpled paper he’d fished from the garage bin. Brenda had punished him for finding that receipt.

The patient on the screen wasn’t Toby. It was Dad. And that printed forty-dollar charge matched the figure beside the receipt’s copay line.

I’d read the clue wrong.

Toby’s paper hadn’t come from Brenda’s Tuesday ultrasound. It had been for Mark’s visit to the clinic on Monday.

Dad had never told me about going. He couldn’t stand doctors, and he’d worked every day at the pipeline for four years without calling in sick.

Why had he gone to urgent care for lab tests?

My pulse started hammering. The explanation I’d been holding onto no longer felt steady.

I clicked Dad’s Monday entry to see its details. The page refreshed, revealing two billing codes from the clinic.

80307 was the first. The other read 82550.

I opened another browser tab and looked up both numbers in a medical-code directory.

The answers came back at once.

Code 80307 referred to a comprehensive drug screen, a toxicology panel using blood and urine. Code 82550 was a creatine kinase test, used to check for serious muscle damage or poisoning.

The room seemed to lose its air.

This hadn’t been a routine visit for a cough. Dad had been checked for drugs and toxins.

I kept staring at the screen, trying to fit that fact together with everything else I’d noticed.

His crushing fatigue. His head dipping at dinner as if he could hardly stay awake. The shadows beneath his eyes.

Lately, he’d seemed slow to respond, muddled, and older than his years. We’d blamed his brutal sixty-hour weeks on pipeline work. We’d said Paul Vance was demanding too much of him.

But maybe the job wasn’t the whole explanation.

Could those blank white pills in Brenda’s purse have something to do with it?

My stomach tightened until nausea rose in my throat. The thought was terrifying: Brenda might be giving Dad drugs without his knowledge.

The pills could account for his exhaustion, his confusion, and the way his reactions had slowed. I couldn’t make myself look away from the test codes.

Then I noticed the processed status again. If the claim had been completed, perhaps the results had come back.

I hurried to the portal’s secure-message inbox. A red marker showed that something there had not been read.

The message had arrived the night before, Wednesday, at 8:45. Its sender was Dr. Aris of Eastside Clinic.

I opened it.

Mark,

Your toxicology report is back from the laboratory. As we discussed at your appointment, the amount of Zolpidem in your blood is dangerously high. It is a powerful Schedule IV sedative, and you have no prescription for it.

This could account for the ongoing lethargy, memory lapses, and delayed reactions you’ve had at the worksite.

You operate heavy machinery for a living. Using it while this drug is affecting you could be lethal.

Stop eating or drinking anything made at home immediately, until you can identify where the substance is coming from.

The doctor’s message confirmed it: Mark had been exposed to a powerful sedative without knowing it.