“Maybe because the other door was blocked?”
I shook my head. “The crash was head on, from the looks of it. The driver’s door isn’t even scratched. And they pulled him out of the passenger side just for fun?”
“That is a little weird,” Denny admitted. “But there are probably pictures of the crash site.”
“They’re missing from the police file,” I said. “Look, I know I sound like Nancy Drew right now.”
He grinned.
“Go ahead and laugh. But if you were me, you’d want to know what happened.”
His smile faded. “I’m sure I would.”
Thank you. I cut my crepe with a fork and let the mystery do another circuit of my mind. As if I could stop it even if I wanted to.
After dinner, Denny drove me back to my car in the hospital parking lot. “Thanks for dinner!” I told him. “You cheered me up.”
“My pleasure.” He nodded at my car. “Drive safe.”
I could see he was going to wait there while I got in. But I wasn’t getting in. “Actually I’m going back to my desk for a minute,” I said, trying not to sound shifty. “See you tomorrow.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Let me guess—you’re going to look something up in the patient database?”
“No,” I said firmly. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I was.”
“Ah.” His smile was sad. “Be safe, okay?”
“Always.” I watched Denny drive away, and then I went into the darkened Office of Social Work and switched on my computer. After it blinked to life, I typed Jude’s name into the computer database. There were three entries for him: one for his recent admission and surgery, and one dated June of this year.
That one surprised me, so I opened it. But then it all came clear. Admitted to Deep Pines Inpatient Drug Treatment Facility, it read.
Right. And now I felt like a snoop. From the menu I clicked on the third and oldest file, from May of 2012. There it was—his tox screen from the night of the accident. The results were exactly like the police report had said.
For a moment I just sat there staring at it, hearing Denny’s question echo in my head. What if you learn something you don’t want to know?
I realized that I’d been holding out a slim hope that Jude’s tox screen wouldn’t look like this. My foolish heart had been hoping to exonerate him. But there it was in black and white, blinking on the page. His bloodstream showed Oxycodone, and not a small amount. And another substance, too. I wrote the chemical down in my notebook to look up later.
Then I clicked on the doctor’s name. As I’d hoped, a list of the other tests he’d ordered the same day appeared before me. And there it was: Gavin Haynes, age 24. Dead on arrival.
One click later I was staring at my brother’s autopsy report. Thanks to my hospital job, I’d read these before, and they always gave me the willies. I really didn’t need to know how much my brother’s brain weighed on the day he died, so I skimmed. My eyes snagged on the words ineligible for organ donation. And then I saw why.
Gavin’s tox screen revealed Oxycodone, too. And not a small amount. Plus another chemical—the same one in Jude’s bloodstream.
Holy…!
I must have sat blinking at that screen for five minutes, wondering if I was crazy.
My brother had been high, too. Gavin was on drugs. I tried this idea on in my mind and it didn’t fit well. Gavin the athlete. He’d snorted pills?
Not only was this unexpected, but now I had a problem. The tox screen didn’t prove anything at all except that my family had withheld information from me. That was mean, but not illegal. So what the heck was I supposed to do with this information?
Instead of printing the file, I took a screenshot because it seemed stealthier. Then I printed that out, tucked it into my backpack and went out in the darkened parking lot to my car.
For a moment I just sat there in my car feeling shaky. It had never occurred to me to wonder if my brother took drugs. I’d never thought he was the type. Gavin was a sort of my-body-is-my-temple athlete—always drinking imported spring water and making protein shakes at the kitchen counter.
In other words, I’d bought into the same pile of bullshit social profiling that everyone else did. They looked at Jude’s tattoos and saw trouble. They’d looked at Gavin’s lacrosse stick and saw the great American athlete.
Two tox screens. Both positive for two different drugs. I thought my skull might explode just from trying to wrap my head around it. On the one hand, it cleared up a few things. I’d never believed that Gavin would get into a car with a strung-out Jude behind the wheel. I couldn’t picture him getting into a car with Jude at all. But if Gavin’s judgment had been impaired, it made more sense.