Elixir by Galdi Ted

Author:Galdi, Ted [Galdi, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Medical, Spies & Politics, Conspiracies, Teen & Young Adult, Social & Family Issues, Runaways, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780989850797
Google: gaawoQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00MAYJIZM
Goodreads: 22849611
Publisher: Ted Galdi
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Impossible Things

Around six o’clock that night Sean sits on the edge of a stone bridge, feet dangling over Lake Zurich as snowflakes fall, streetlamps glimmering across the shadowy water, sun just set. The rumble of passing cars behind him, he sticks his hand in a bag of airline pretzels he had in his jacket, pulls one out, and flings it. His eyes follow it in the shine for a bit, but the wind carries it into the darkness, out of sight.

He gazes at the lake for a half-minute or so, then up at the stars. Some are so old he figures the light he’s seeing now was traveling for billions of years before reaching him. He ponders how some of the atoms in the world from the beginning of time got recycled generation after generation and came together eighteen years ago to create him. He thinks about all he is and all he isn’t for a while. Checking his watch, he realizes he’s allowed to see her in just over forty minutes.

In a bit he’s in the hospital elevator viewing himself in the mirrored walls as the gears crank. He checks out his bruised chin, then the rest of his face. Living in Rome and Southern California for the better part of a decade, he hasn’t been in snow for a while. He recalls his reflection as a young boy in Pennsylvania after a day of playing in the snow with the other kids on the block. Red blotches, dry skin, colorless lips. Sean Malone feels he looks like that now, how he did on those days as a boy.

The cart stops and he walks onto the fourth floor, quiet except the thump of his boots. He crosses the enclosed bridge, Zurich’s city lights twinkling outside the tunnel, and comes to a man in front of the steel door, different than the one who punched him. “Name of the patient you’re seeing?” the employee asks in German.

“Vonlanden. Natasha.”

“Badge?” He shows him the plastic card on his waist. “Pod two.” The staffer hits the red button and the heavy metal slab rushes to the right without a noise. Sean steps through the opening. It closes right away behind him, soft shimmer of the glass tunnel vanishing. He notices a long, dark staircase and goes down it to a ground-level hallway, spotting an arrowed sign engraved with “1-4” and another “5-8.” He follows the first toward pod two.

As he veers down the dead-silent corridor, the tile surface changes to cement, dome-shaped overhead bulbs in aluminum cages lighting the way. Once he reaches an alley marked “2,” he makes out a door labeled “Observation.” Beside it is a second called “Interaction,” a yellow-and-black biomedical-hazard imprint on it. The sight of this universal symbol for contamination nauseates him, the thought someone as good and pure as his girlfriend now associated with it.

He opens the one without the warning, “Observation,” and enters a dim area about eight feet by five with nothing in it but two metal folding chairs.

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