THE TRADE - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of my unpublished international thriller, set in Bolivia!

Chapter 5

Andrea swam in endless blackness until she saw a pinprick of light. It circled in the dark, and then rushed out at her.

She sat upright in bed and gasped. Flycatchers, finches, and wrens chirped incessantly, their songs streaming in through the open Georgian windows. Cicadas roared and spades and trowels struck the earth in dry splashes. Sucked in lungfuls of warm mountain air and squinted around, her eyes aching in the light. White curtains fluttered around the windows, grazing white walls. She leaned back on her hands, almost up to her elbows in plush white cotton. She was in a silk sleeping shirt, and there was no sign of her dusty jeans and shirt - which were the last things she remembered wearing. She swallowed hard. Her throat was razor blades.

She rubbed her neck and coughed, looking around. The scent of jasmine hung thick in the air and blue smoke curled lazily from an incense burner on the dresser across the room.

The floors were white. The ceiling was white. The walls were white. The pictures were framed in white, and showed off white lilies and orchids on white backgrounds. The windows were big, and white, and there were six of them, each open and showing off a different, equally vibrant portion of the OV Coffee Plantation. From one side she could see fields, from the other she could trees and a corner of the house.

Shit.

‘Shhh, it’s alright,’ came a soft voice from her right.

She spun round and her neck clicked. 

‘Shit,’ she said aloud this time, grabbing it. ‘Ow.’

‘Let me have a look,’ said the stranger, standing up from a white wicker chair tucked against the wall next to the headboard. In his thirties. American accent. West coast, she guessed - California, maybe Oregon. He was lean and had a chiseled, shaven face. His brown hair was pushed back in a thick mop and he had thin spectacles that would have been fashionable in the forties.

He was sitting with his legs crossed, writing in a brown file when she’d woken, but it was the white lab coat that had given him away.

Andrea recoiled, and he paused, hands raised. He smiled. ‘Sorry, force of habit.’

She narrowed her eyes at him as he backed away and sat down. ‘Where am I?’ she asked, knowing the answer.

The doctor smiled even more broadly, taking off his glasses. ‘You’re at Mister Vasquez’s Plantation. You’re very lucky to be alive.’

She scratched her arm and felt a streak of pain. She’d caught the IV drip with her nails. She grimaced, her mind clearing every second. She could feel the tug of the needle in her skin, the pounding headache behind her eyes, the fire in her belly and throat, and the desperate urge to pee. ‘Am I, now,’ she muttered, looking around the room again. There was no mistaking it. ‘And how did I get here?’

‘Mister Vasquez and his… entourage… found you at your hotel. From what they told me, they arrived in the nick of time.’ He began polishing his glasses with the hem of his coat.

‘Did they. And how do you suppose they knew to arrive just then?’

The Doctor looked at her in silence for a moment, but decided not to answer the question. ‘Mr Vasquez told me that you might express a desire to leave as soon as you were able to, and that I should inform you of the situation as it stands.’

‘The situation?’ Andrea rasped.

‘You should drink this,’ he said, pushing a glass of iced water across the top of the bedside table with his fingers. ‘You’re dehydrated.’

After last night, she wasn’t in any hurry to accept unsolicited drinks, but her mouth was drier than the flagstones outside.

‘Thanks.’ She drained it, the urge to pee intensifying.

He smiled for a second, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. ‘Yes, so - the situation is… was… serious, shall we say.’

She raised her eyebrows ‘Serious how?’

He sighed and leafed back through the file he was holding. ‘When Mr. Vasquez first brought you here, he had his staff put you to bed in the hope that whatever you were drugged with would filter out of your system. But, after several hours, the person keeping an eye on you said that your breathing had quickened and become labored. It seemed that you were having an adverse reaction. I was called immediately, and when I arrived, you were on the verge of cardiac arrest - a heart attack.’

‘I know what cardiac arrest means,’ Andrea snapped, her fingers curling into the soft sheets.

‘I had no choice but to sedate you and pump your stomach. We had to intubate and ventilate you for almost fourteen hours before you started to breath on your own again. Mister Vasquez pulled some strings and put a rush on the lab results. The blood samples I took came back this morning. You were dosed with a concentrated Benzodiazepine.’

‘A what?’ Andrea shook her head and screwed her face up. She knew what intubation was, and between that and having her stomach pumped, it was no wonder her throat hurting.

‘Benzodiazepines are relaxants - like Diazepam, Valium, or Rohypnol.’

‘Rohypnol?’ She almost choked on the word.

‘Yes. The levels we found in your blood were enough to kill you three times over. It was only the fact that you’d eaten before hand, and your general state of dehydration, that saved your life.’ He smiled, his face soft. ‘The humidity here can be a pain at the best of times, and for tourists who aren’t acclimatized to it, it can mean losing pints of water every day without even realising. Your blood was thicker than normal, so your body didn’t digest and metabolize the contents of your stomach as quickly as it would under the usual circumstances. You should consider yourself lucky.’ He beamed.

Andrea scoffed and put her elbows on her knees, realising that whoever had put her to bed must have also undressed her too. She grimaced again. ‘Lucky. Right,’ she mumbled. ‘I almost die, and I’m lucky.’

He turned his head and stared out of the nearest window, watching as the hoes glinted in the sun as they raised and fell. ‘These sorts of attacks aren’t uncommon, you know,’ he said vacantly. ‘It’s unfortunate, but the criminals here know that the police are woefully under-equipped, especially when it comes to DNA testing, and even general investigation. Especially this far out. And the employment standards of places like the Gato are so low that there are often no employee records at all, and even if there are,’ he turned back and fixed her with a stare, ‘there’s never any corroboration of identity or work history. The person who did this to you has probably done it before, and then just moved on to the next hotel, the next town, the next woman. I’ve seen - I’ve treated - cases like this in the past. Women who weren’t so lucky. It really is a miracle that Mister Vasquez got to you when he did - you owe him your life, and probably more.’

Andrea swallowed with some difficulty, a shiver running down her spine. Owe him my life? The thought of owing him anything made her want to run to the window and splatter his terrace with vomit. Good thing her stomach was empty.

The doctor went on. ‘You’ve been unconscious for almost two days, but I’ve been monitoring you to make sure your vitals are stable. The house staff bathed you and washed your clothes. They’re folded up next to the door.’ He pointed with his pen at the stack on a small table next to the door. They looked like a heap of dirt on the pristine white furniture.

He watched as her eyes lingered there, not saying anything more.

She stared at them. Could she get up, dress and get out before someone stopped her? She looked down, weighing her options, hating herself for being glad that she’d woken up here. Though, the alternative was horribly worse. At best a filthy hospital. Otherwise some sort of dungeon. Or worst, not at all. She heaved a little, her stomach folding up on itself. She winced.

The doctor stood, patting himself down. He pulled a battered flip-phone from his coat pocket and handed it to her, with two cards. Andrea took it and pushed it open with her thumb. It wasn’t hers, but it had signal and full battery, which was something. She fanned the cards and stared at them. The first was plain white, and it it had only three lines of text on it. The first read ‘OV Coffee Plantation’, the second said ‘Dr. Henry Farkel M.D.’ and the third was a phone number. Andrea raised an eyebrow and looked up at the doctor, who she guessed was Henry Farkel, though he didn’t look much like a Henry, or a farkel for that matter. She wasn’t even sure she could imagine what a Henry Farkel would look like.

He read her mind. ‘Henry was my grandfather. Pop was Henry too. I go by Hank. And Farkel - well, I can’t do anything about that, and mom would kill me if I changed it.’ He smirked for a second.

Andrea smiled politely, blushing a little. She wasn’t sure if, or how she’d offended him. But she felt like it.

His smile softened and he leaned in, cupping her face without invitation. She felt his fingers press gently against her lymph nodes, and then probe her neck and throat. ‘Your cheeks are flushing which is a good sign. Your pulse is fine, and your lymphs have gone down.’ He pulled his hands away and pocketed one. ‘I’d say everything’s looking better. No sign of any lingering reactions.’ He pinned the file under his arm with the other, and then pocketed that one too. ‘If you need me, call that number, and I’ll come running. You’ve been taking fluids and vitamins to flush your system, but you’ve not eaten anything. You may feel fine now, but when you get up and start moving, you’ll probably feel a little woozy. That’s normal at first. If it keeps on, give me a call, and I’ll be over as quick as I can. The headache should subside by this evening, too. And if it doesn’t…’ he nodded to the card.

She bit her lip and looked at it, nodding back before shuffling them to see the second one. It was also a business card for a doctor, though a little more impressive than Hank’s. It was a mottled brown card, imprinted with gold letters. It read ‘Dr. Miah Cabrera, Psychologist MS. Psy.D.’

Hank cleared his throat and spoke quietly, lowering his head. ‘I didn’t know if you might want to speak to someone about... what almost happened… Doctor Cabrera - she’s very good. Her practice is in La Paz.’ His voice strained a little, and Andrea wondered whether they knew each other as colleagues or as patient and doctor. ‘I’ve already spoken to her,’ he continued. ‘She’s expecting your call - if you want.’ He went to the door, pausing for a second. ‘It’s a lot to take in, I know. Rest a little more, if you want, then, just come downstairs when you’re ready. Take all the time you need.’

Andrea opened her mouth to say something in thanks, but Hank had already gone, closing the door behind him. She sighed and looked at the cards, her head still pounding. Her grip tightened and they crumpled as she slumped backwards, closing her eyes. The birds sang and the cicadas roared. She rolled the events over in her mind, again and again, trying to straighten it all out. Her brain ached. Everything was fuzzy. There was no timeline. No sequence. Just fragments. Her head started to throb and she took a couple of deep breaths, the distant drip of the saline bag almost hypnotic above the twittering. Before she realised, she was asleep again.