By morning, Angie was sleeping soundly. She no longer thrashed about and her restraints were removed. Rollie stayed by her bedside, occasionally hearing the sounds of patients and staff outside the room. A nurse would come in occasionally and take Angie’s vital signs and smile, reassuring him that at least, she was comfortable. He rubbed his eyes, tired and yawning as he stretched, looking at his watch. He should have been on the set by now. Ben Poe was really going to fire him now.

 

The door to the room opened and the doctor from the emergency room entered along with another doctor who went immediately to Angie’s side and started examining her eyes, pulling down her lower lids. He opened her mouth, pulling a small light from his pocket and looked briefly. He looked at her fingernails and toenails as Rollie smiled, for she had left both her big toe’s painted with the crazy polish that Mira and she had bought while shopping before they got married. The little stars were still there, glittering. The examining doctor finally took his hand, with knuckles down toward her chest and very rapidly, ran his knuckles up and down her sternum hard.

 

Rollie jumped out of his chair in shock but the other doctor, the one from the emergency room, put his hand out to stop him from interfering.

 

"What are you doing?" Rollie asked, surprised and angry but he was amazed, for Angie was coughing slightly and opening her eyes. The doctor who had so roughly rub her sternum, snapped his fingers several times and was ready to put his knuckles on her chest again when she grabbed his hand, pushing it away with a frown.

 

"That hurts, you son-of-a.." Angie started to say, in pain, wincing and Rollie laughed as she propped herself up, staring at all of them and frowned.

 

"Where am I?"

 

"Mrs. Tyler? I am Doctor Terzis and this is Doctor Ramon. He saw you last night in the emergency room. Do you remember that?"

 

"No…Rollie?" Angie looked over at him and he came to her side instantly, grabbing her hand and sat on the bed beside her.

 

"You had quite an interesting presentation," Doctor Terzis continued, "you were hallucinating."

 

"Tell me about it!" she remarked, rolling her eyes, "but I can’t remember much now!"

 

"That’s because of the central nervous system effects of the toxin."

 

"Toxin?" Angie and Rollie said it in unison, looking up for an answer.

 

"Precisely, after taking a blood sample last night, we did some tests and a very peculiar and old toxin showed up in your blood smear."

 

"That Gypsy woman cut me with a knife, here on my finger!" Angie said, holding up her finger. The tip of the finger had turned a dark greenish- blue.

 

"Umm, typical skin reaction to Artemisia absinthium. And the hallucinations were also quite characteristic," Doctor Terzis remarked, very interested in her medical history.

 

"What? Arte-mesa absent- um?" Rollie asked, shaking his head.

 

"Wormwood, Mr. Tyler… to be exact- Absinthe- since there were traces of alcohol, sage, trejum, and other herbs as well."

 

"Absinthe? Isn’t that a liqueur? Illegal here in the U.S.?" Rollie asked, confused.

 

"Yes, but it still finds its way in, Mr. Tyler. There are societies in this country that are built around the drinking of Absinthe. But injected like this, no! I find this fascinating," Dr. Terzis continued, smiling as Angie’s mouth opened and she sat up, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed.

 

"I’m glad you all find this so fascinating but I want out of here!" Angie said, angry and started to get up. Her head started to pound so hard, she fell back on the bed as Rollie caught her.

 

"Oh yes, there are nasty side effects from the ingestion and in your case, the injection of Absinthe into your blood stream. I would slowly find your way to a standing position, Mrs. Tyler. As for going home, I see no reason to keep you, other than a purely personal one," Dr. Terzis went on, "you see, I find this whole thing so interesting. I rarely see patients, stuck in the lab all day. And to see my first Absinthe toxicity case in over forty years, well…"

 

"Hey, call me- I’m in the book, doc," Angie said, struggling to stand, unnerved by his sudden devotion to her, "but right now- I am out of here!"

 

"Yes, quite understandable, yes- really," he said, stammering and grinned.

 

Rollie was beside himself, "Doctor Terzis, could this have killed her?"

 

"Hmmm, well, I guess in a large enough ingestion or injection but the amount of toxin in her system was just enough for some very vivid hallucinations and memory loss. I would say, that whoever did this to her, knew the amount of Absinthe necessary to do the deed. Yes, I don’t think they were trying to kill her- just get her going…you know?" He whirled about, using his finger around his head in a spinning motion and chuckled to himself as he and Doctor Ramon left the room.

 

"Obviously, he needs to get out of the lab more," Angie said, grumpy and still unsteady on her feet.

 

"I got to call Mira about this!" Rollie told her as she nodded, pulling on her pants and shirt after throwing off her hospital gown without a second thought. Rollie was on his cell phone as Angie looked in the mirror at herself and groaned. She splashed cold water on her face, listening to Rollie tell Mira about her being poisoned with the wormwood stuff. She looked out of the small window in the center of her door and frowned as she saw some very scary people buzzing by in the hall, and some very insane actions as one individual looked directly at her, through the window, and took his tongue and licked the glass to her horror.

 

"Rollie, where the hell am I?"

 **************************************************

Back in the van, Angie shivered as she thought of where she had been. Rollie was busy talking with Ben Poe and she sighed, thinking that the bed at the loft was where she wanted to go right now.

 

"Great, he understands," Rollie said to her, shutting off the phone and smiling, "let’s get you home, young lady and to bed."

 

"Good," she replied, "the loony bin was not conducive to my sleeping mode."

 

"You scared the daylights out of me, Angela! Then, seeing you all restrained like that!" Rollie was shaking his head as she smiled, sitting in the passenger seat, looking at her finger.

 

"You loved it!" she told him, "every man’s fantasy! I know all about mens’ sicko fantasies!"

 

"What?" he asked her, still wondering if she was suffering from hallucinations or delusions.

 

He was serious, she could see that so she apologized, "sorry- I’m a little confused. Just trying to put a little humor into yet, another fun time doing cop work for Mira Sanchez."

 

"Yeah, well- this makes me want to get that bastard more than ever now, Ange! I can’t figure out why he did this to you?"

 

"It was the woman, Eck- Eckvara- he called her that."

 

"He disappeared right after that, you know," Rollie said, turning the corner to Brewery Lane and the loft ahead.

 

"He’ll be back," Angie said, eerily as Rollie pulled up and stopped.

 

"Let’s get you inside and to bed!" he told her, jumping out and helping her down.

 

Once inside the loft and safely in the bed, she smiled as he set a cup of tea on the bedstand beside her.

 

"The remedy for a good poisoning of Absinthe, my dear- some of the finest Australian tea in the world."

 

She grinned and took a sip. Rollie used loose tea, a nice black leaf tea that he had sent from Australia. He used a steeper and the flavor was wonderful.

 

"Ummm, good," she commented as he smiled and kissed her softly.

 

"Will you be alright? I can stay, you know?" he told her.

 

"Go on- get to work. Someone around here has to earn some money. God knows, I keep getting you in trouble now. Go on!" she told him, nudging him off the bed.

 

"Okay, be back around six. Mira is coming over to go over tonight’s plans. You however, are not going!" he told her, warning her of any argument.

 

"Rollie! I will be in mask!"

 

"No!"

 

"I won’t go near them."

 

"No!"

 

"I’ll stay in the van."

 

"Angie!"

 

"Please!"

 

"We’ll see…" and she smiled as she knew, she had won this argument.