Page 109 of The Villains of Winter

James headed over to the line of public telephones on the walls, ringing the Hudskins immediately. He informed them to come to the JFK Hospital in Deer Ridge as soon as possible, an incident occurred. It was an emergency.

Elliott raised his head out of his hands as he heard James call him over to him. James handed Elliott the phone to tell the parents what happened. Meanwhile, James traversed back to the desk to provide Finch’s extensive medical history. He knew Finch’s medications, surgical records, and charts by memory and he could provide a detailed account of Finch’s chronic illness condition.

“Hello?” Elliott asked.

“What happened?” Finch’s father was on the other line. “Is this Elliott?”

“Yes. We were eating–” Elliott started and stopped his words, petrified by the memory. “He ate a strawberry and he started to choke. He’d been coughing beforehand. No, not like this. This was different, Mr. Hudskin. He had blood everywhere. No, not only his mouth. No, I didn’t know about the ulcers, but I know he has spittles of blood sometimes. It was…God, his eyes.” Elliott pressed his head against the metal of the phone booth, squeezing his eyes shut to block the graphic images out. “His eyes were crying blood. I can’t explain it.”

“Alright. Thank you for informing us. We’ll be there.”

Elliott could hear the tightness of Finch’s father’s throat. His low timber voice wavered as though he were on the verge of tears at the news. Everyone thought Finch would be dead by twenty-two, but it was an entirely different matter for it to happen that night.

“Elliott!” James called him over again. James was speaking to the second nurse who needed more information. “What was on the dinner menu at the refectory, Elliott? They need to know.”

Elliott couldn’t breathe. His blood froze beneath his skin as he stood on his unsteady feet.

“Elliott, you need to remember. What was the dinner menu you had?” James explained to the medical professionals that Finch sometimes ate at the refectory with Elliott, if the infirmary released him. Finch must’ve signed himself out for the night.

Elliott’s tongue coiled in his mouth. He felt the rise of vomit.

James sat him down, then he rushed past him to telephone the Winterthur Hall front desk himself. Elliott heard him hurriedly ask the receptionist to transfer his call to the Rædwine Refectory at once. He relayed that he needed to inform the town medical center of the dinner menu that night. Down to the fruit. Elliott felt his chest pound in horror as James argued heatedly with the head chef. “There had to have been strawberries served tonight. All that I am fucking asking you is what kind of strawberries–Albion strawberries, Camarosa strawberries, everbearing strawberries–what were they?”

James pressed the phone against his panting chest.

“Elliott, did Finch bring his own strawberries? Did he bring his dinner there or did he eat there, the refectory is claiming there were no strawberries served. They’re fucking incompetent. His allergic reaction had to come from somewhere.” Tears gathered in Elliott’s eyes, and now wasn’t the time for it, but James was patient. He squeezed his arm. “Finch has medical episodes all the time. I know it must’ve been traumatizing to see him like that. But if Finch had an allergic reaction to the strawberries, then we need to know where they–”

“It was the banquet.”

The phone fell out of James’s hand. “What banquet, Elliott?” He grasped Elliott’s shoulders through his blood-stained shirt. He searched his eyes as if in prayer to find a different answer there. “Don’t tell me you went to the theater banquet.”

Elliott watched the rage spread over James’s features. As James towered above him, he remembered then that James was six feet and four inches in height with a powerful stature. Even though James was an inch taller, in that moment, it felt like a meter.

His golden eyes were stakes of fury.

“Don’t tell me you brought him to her banquet, Elliott. Answer me.” His patience had eclipsed. His vocal chords tautened in his hellish command. “Answer me!”

The typist paused, her hands frozen at his sudden anger. The chatting paramedics on their break quietened down to glance over at the scene. The rural nurses awaited Elliott’s answer with their mouths parted in confusion.

“Elliott, I swear to God. You better answer me right now. You better not have lied to me.”

Finch’s life was more important than anything, and the truth tumbled out of Elliott with a thread of guilt.

“I thought he’d enjoy the banquet festivities. He’s in the infirmary all the time. The provost’s chalice likely had medication for senior citizens on the rim, and it possibly contraindicated his own medication.”

He mentioned the strawberries were the last thing Finch remarked before the coughing episode began.

James listened to him silently as Elliott explained that he attended the banquet because he had to express his gratitude to the professor for helping return his life to him. James didn’t speak a word as he heard Elliott relate that he brought Finch as a last-minute decision and they had nearly finished the feast before the incident occurred. Finch was fine. He was lucid. Then everything went awry.

It was the provost’s chalice.

James lifted his head only after Elliott finished his explanation.

“If my best friend dies here because of her, I will murder her.”

​​ CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

IN THE JOHN F. KENNEDY HOSPITAL waiting room, Elliott tried to hand James a cup of local hot coffee to help him keep awake, but James couldn’t even look at him. Behind them were sniffling children stabbing their hospital Jell-O cups and puddings with plastic spoons in their tired mothers’ laps. Exhausted fathers left to pay the parking meters as the intercom announced the doctors pressingly needed in the trauma unit. A clot of hospital volunteers stood around the vending machines, trading pretzels and trail mix as restocked medical supplies were brought in for patients; the workers immune to the distant screams and weeping.