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Charlie took his time walking down the corridor to his brother's apartment door, grateful for the shade that cut the late afternoon heat. He lifted a hand to knock, then hesitated. Maybe Don wasn't here. Charlie hadn't bothered to call before driving over. Maybe this was a waste of time. He'd already tried to talk to Don, and Don hadn't been interested.
Charlie curled and uncurled his hand, then lifted it and knocked.
There was no answer.
Traitorous relief warred with disappointment. Maybe Don hadn't heard him. Charlie knocked again, then bent close to the door, listening.
The voice was quiet, slurred, but unmistakable. "Yeah. Who is it?"
"Don," he called, pitching his voice to carry through the closed door. "It's Charlie. Can I come in?"
The voice became a little clearer. "Mmm. Jus' a minute."
Charlie pushed both hands into his pockets, fidgeting with the key ring there, and waited. He should have heard noises. Footsteps, maybe, Don clearing up or just coming to open the door. The bolt sliding back.
He heard nothing.
After a long minute--it was at least sixty seconds, not that he was counting--Charlie knocked once more, putting urgency into it this time. "Don, are you going to open the door?" In a fit of pique Charlie rattled the doorknob. It was locked, of course.
Still no response from inside. Charlie pounded the door with the flat of his hand, an echoing series of booms. "Don! Are you okay?"
He held his breath, listening as hard as he could. Except for the breeze sighing through the open corridor, and rock music drifting out of an apartment to Charlie's left, there was silence.
Charlie pounded on the door and called again, trying to figure out how to get into his brother's secured apartment. He tried the door again, but it was definitely locked, probably deadbolted as well. No windows opened on the corridor here, and Charlie had seen the outside windows when he entered. Those on the ground floor were barred.
Still no sound. Charlie tried to slow his breathing, tried to think. He brushed the sweat off his palms on the legs of his jeans.
The right-hand pocket chinked.
Keys. Car keys, which meant Alan's keys, since Charlie's Prius was in the shop.
Charlie dug the fat key ring out of his pocket and started shuffling clockwise through the bits of metal. Blue rim: house key; black rim: garage; plain gold: safety deposit box. . . . The ring slipped through his shaking fingers and clattered on the concrete at his feet.
Cursing silently, Charlie scooped up the keys and started going through them counterclockwise. You are seriously overreacting, he told himself. Don's just avoiding you. Which is weird, but he's been doing it a lot lately, so it's not that unlikely. . . .
The only sound was the rattle of the keys. Maybe Dad doesn't. . . . There. Small, gold, neatly marked with a plain white rim: the key to Don's apartment.
It took Charlie three tries to get the key into the lock. The same key turned the deadbolt. "Don?" he called, pausing with his hand on the knob. "I'm coming in, all right?"
When there was no answer, Charlie pushed the door open.
The blinds were drawn against the light, leaving the room gray and dusky except where the flicker of the muted television set cast a glow across the floor. There were dirty dishes on the end table, along with a few empty beer bottles piled underneath it, but if Charlie noticed any of that, it was only in passing.
All he saw was Don, sprawled on his back on the couch, left hand resting on his stomach, the other hanging off the edge. Sleeping. Charlie stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. "Knock it off, Don, I know you heard me out there. I want to talk to you."
His brother didn't move.
"Don?" Charlie crossed the room in a few quick steps, and bent down to shake Don's warm shoulder. "Don, are you okay? Hey, wake up." He shook him again, first gently, then harder. There was no response at all; Don's eyelids didn't even twitch, and the dangling hand swung limply.
A surge of fear clawed its way up from Charlie's stomach. He held one palm in front of Don's mouth and nose, holding his own breath until he felt the shallow movement of air that said his brother was still breathing. This time, there was nothing gentle about the shaking: Charlie used both hands. "Don! Wake up, you're scaring me. Come on, wake up!"
Nothing. Charlie straightened up, breathing fast, and looked around for an explanation. Cups, dirty dishes, a blanket balled up at the foot of the couch, a baseball game playing on TV.
An orange prescription bottle on the end table, at Don's head.
With a quick glance at his brother, just to check that nothing had changed, Charlie snatched up the bottle. Ambien. A sleeping pill. He switched on the table lamp, then turned the bottle, noting that the date of this (unrefillable) prescription was a bare eight days before. The container had held thirty pills, and at a rate of one per every eight-hour rest period, there seemed to be fewer left in the container than there should have been.
Charlie wrenched off the lid and tipped the blue tablets out across the table's surface. It was the work of a moment to count them: eighteen.
That's four unaccounted for. Charlie checked the label again; it clearly prescribed one capsule per rest period. Don had been at work all week, so he couldn't have been sleeping straight through the day. There weren't any cautions listed on the label itself. I need more data. Other variables. The beer bottles weren't fresh, he could smell that. What else could have interfered?
And who might know? Charlie glanced around the room once more. Nothing jumped out at him, and Don still slept. Charlie turned the bottle and found the number of the pharmacy that had filled the prescription. The handset of Don's cordless phone was on the end table as well, and it was the work of a few moments to dial.
"East Alameda Pharmacy, how can I help you?" The voice was young, female, and perky.
Charlie cleared his throat. "Um, I need to know the normal dosage for Ambien CR. And what kind of side effects there might be if that limit is exceeded?"
There was a slight pause. "Okay, the normally prescribed dose is one capsule per sleep cycle. Side effects include drowsiness, dizziness, headache, confusion–" Her tone sharpened. "Sir, by 'exceed the limit,' do you mean accidental overdose? Did you take more than is recommended?"
"Uh, I don't. . . ." Charlie rubbed his face with his free hand. Don's face was starkly pale under the lamp's glow. "It's not me, it's my brother. I can't wake him, and I thought, maybe he just needs to sleep it off?"
The girl's voice sharpened. "Is he responsive at all? Maybe you should be calling 911 instead of the pharmacy."
Charlie's vision narrowed abruptly to Don's still face, the darkness of the patches beneath his eyes, the slightly parted lips. "Um. Yes. Maybe. Thank you." The girl was asking him for his name, for his brother's name, but that didn't seem terribly important. He thumbed the handset off and dropped it on the floor next to the couch. One last time, he tried to wake Don. Shaking produced no effect, just as before; neither did an open-handed slap across the face. "Don!"
It was the dark, bluish tint to his brother's lips that sent Charlie scrambling for the phone again. He couldn't remember having dialed; by the time the dispatcher's calm voice answered, he had his right hand spread lightly across Don's diaphragm and was trying to figure out if Don was still breathing.
The dispatcher interrupted his count. "This is 911. What is your emergency?"
Charlie moved his trembling fingers to Don's mouth and nose and tried to gather his thoughts. "Um. My brother--he won't wake up." Way to collate data, he scolded himself, and tried again. "Male, 36 years old, unresponsive. I can't tell if . . ." Charlie took a deep breath himself, and closed his eyes, trying to feel for any exhalation from Don.
"Sir, what is your location?"
The unemotional tone helped; Charlie took another deep breath and rattled off Don's address.
"Is there anything else you can tell me? Do you know what might have happened?"
Charlie's gaze shot to the prescription bottle. "There's a bottle of prescribed sleep aids here. I think some might be missing."
"Thank you, sir." She paused, then came back on the line. "There's an ambulance responding to your location right now. Can you tell me if your brother is breathing?"
Charlie blinked away tears–of frustration, he supposed–and cleared his throat. "I, uh, I can't tell. And his name's Don."
"Well, let's check, all right? If Don is having trouble with that, I can talk you through CPR."
Numbly, clumsily, Charlie followed her instructions: pulling the pillow from under Don's head, tipping his head back to ensure an open airway, checking for a pulse (there, but slow; feeling its beat under his fingers nearly made Charlie cry out with relief), checking for breath.
If Don was breathing, Charlie couldn't tell.
The dispatcher talked him through the moment of blind panic that followed, and Charlie found himself kneeling half on the couch, pinching Don's nose shut, and struggling to breathe air into his brother. It was hard; Charlie found himself calculating the approximate air pressure needed to inflate the lungs and lift the weight of a human rib cage, and tried to adjust his air volume accordingly. The dispatcher's voice still echoed from the handset, wherever he'd placed it, but Charlie's world had become breathe, listen; breathe, listen; breathe, listen, and it took a sharp rap on the closed door break his concentration.
Charlie tried to straighten and found himself too dizzy to stand. Gloved hands helped him up, moved him away from the couch. He sat down hard on the floor, gasping for breath, as the two paramedics started working on Don. They were talking, but the words, even the numbers they were using to designate pulse, blood pressure, whatever, sounded like so much gibberish. They found the bottle of pills and secured it (as if this were a crime scene, Charlie thought). One of them had a mask over Don's face, using a hand pump to accomplish what Charlie had been doing before.
The other one, a buff blond guy who reminded Charlie of Colby, started firing off questions. "What's his name? Do you know how many of these he took? How long since you noticed he wasn't breathing?"
Charlie's head spun. "Don Eppes. E-p-p-e-s. I don't know. I don't–maybe five minutes?" He checked his watch (5:03), but couldn't remember what time he'd come into the apartment, much less how long after that he'd realized that Don's lips were turning blue. "I don't know."
The medics went back to ignoring him and had Don loaded onto their stretcher in another minute or two. Someone's got to go with them to the hospital, Charlie's mind whispered, conjuring up memories of his father in a hospital waiting room, signing papers for his wife, not able to speak to Charlie, only getting up to wrap his arms around him and hold on for dear life. He pushed himself up off the floor and followed them out to the ambulance, pausing to close and lock the door.
Charlie didn't notice the paramedic's outstretched hand until he bumped right into it. "I'm sorry, sir, there isn't room for you to ride with us. We're headed to Glendale Memorial Hospital. Can you follow us?"
Charlie, not trusting his voice, nodded, and watched the paramedic hop into the back and swing the doors shut. Sirens wailing, the ambulance roared out of the parking area and down the avenue.
For several long moments, Charlie just stood there, not sure which way to move or what he should be doing next. He felt like more than half of him had sped off down the street with Don. Please, please, he found himself thinking, over and over, please, Don, not you too. Dad. . . .
Dad. Oh. Charlie fumbled in his pocket. Yes, the keys were there; yes, by a miracle, so was his cell phone. Still standing in the middle of the parking area, Charlie dialed home.
An unexpected voice answered. "Eppes residence. Whom are you trying to reach?"
"Larry?" Charlie rubbed his aching forehead with his free hand. "What are you . . . uh, could I . . ."
"Charles, what's wrong?"
"It's about Don, I. . . . Is Dad there? I need to talk to him." Charlie swallowed hard against a sudden lump in his throat.
A confused scramble of noise on the other end of the line resolved into Alan's warm voice, tight with worry. "Charlie, what about Don? What's going on?"
Charlie's vision blurred. "I couldn't wake him up. I tried, but I, I couldn't even tell if he was breathing." He blinked, and two tears spilled unheeded down his face. "So I called an ambulance. They're taking him to Glendale Memorial."
There was complete silence. Charlie gripped the cell phone tightly, afraid of Alan's reaction, afraid for Don, just . . . afraid.
But when Alan spoke, he sounded all right. "Charlie, you've got the car. Come pick me up, we'll go to the hospital together. You hear me?"
That wasn't good enough, somehow. "Dad, I'm closer here. I'm going straight to the hospital, okay? Someone has to be there. This is quicker."
"Charles Edward Eppes--" Alan's sharp tone was interrupted by Larry, so close to the phone now that Charlie could hear his offer.
"Alan, let me drive you. Charlie's probably upset enough that he shouldn't be driving at all."
Charlie let out a sigh. Larry was probably right, but there was no way he was going to wait to be picked up.
"Fine," Alan grumbled. "Charlie, we'll meet you at Glendale Memorial, okay? And you drive carefully. One son in the ER is more than enough for today."
"Thanks, Dad. I'll see you there." Charlie tucked the phone back into his pocket and ran for the car, not even bothering to wipe away the tears that had stained his cheeks.