dropped the phone and the banana. The receiver clattered against the edge of the nightstand before landing on the floor. Sweat had broken out on her palms, beaded across her forehead. Already she felt the tightness in her throat as the tissues began to swell. In seconds her breathing plunged from shallow to labored.
She could hear McCall shouting her name while she told herself to stay calm. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. The litany looped through her head even as thick, sticky cobwebs settled over her brain. She’d had allergic reactions before. She had survived them.
No reason she couldn’t survive this one.
Weaving like a drunk, she made her way around the bed. She stumbled against the mattress, knocking the stack of assignment sheets onto the floor.
By the time she reached the bureau where she’d left her red suede purse, her hands were shaking uncontrollably. Using her forearm, she swept her purse onto the floor, dropped to her knees and dumped out the contents amid the scattered papers.
Her throat tightened as her air passage narrowed. Her breathing transformed into painful gasps. A headache barged down on her like a freight train. Pinpricks needled over her flesh; she was shuddering, sweating.
Banana, she thought hazily. Not right. Not right. She was allergic to peanuts, not bananas. She had eaten bananas all her life. Tons of bananas. Hundreds.
Dizziness swirled up from the ground. Panic surged through her as she clawed at the contents of her purse, shoving aside her billfold, her sunglasses case, her Palm Pilot. Her backup meds were in her stolen briefcase, but she always kept a supply in her purse. They had to be here. Had to be.
Finally—finally!—she found the metal case that held the syringes preloaded with epinephrine. She fumbled one out, jerked its safety cap off with her teeth. Setting her jaw, she stabbed the needle into her right thigh.
Her lungs heaved. She struggled to drag air past her constricted throat. You’ll be fine, she told herself. Just fine. The shot would buy her enough time to get to the E.R.
She had to get to the E.R.
Fighting to remain lucid, knowing her legs would never support her, she crawled around the bed. Her vision doubled, tripled; she followed McCall’s shouts, flailing a hand for the receiver, found it.
“Carmichael? What the hell’s going on? Carmich—”
“Ambulance.” She forced out the word between gasps. “Call…ambulance.”
Chapter 3
The E.R. doctor jotted a note on a clipboard, set it aside, then gave Paige a scrutinizing look. “You’re still pale. But your breathing is good and your heartbeat’s back to normal.”
“I feel fine now.” Fully dressed again and sitting upright with her legs dangling off the gurney, she sent the young intern a hopeful look. “You’re releasing me, right?”
Without comment, he hooked a finger under her chin and nudged her head from side to side. “No swelling in your face now, except around the bruise on your right cheek.” His forehead furrowed. “The nurse said you got mugged?”
“I’ve had a lousy day.”
“Sounds like it.” He released her chin. “It would have been lousier if you’d swallowed that bite of banana.”
A low whisper of suspicion sounded in the back of her brain. “I still can’t believe I had a reaction to a banana. I’ve eaten them all my life with no problem.” She shoved a hand through her hair. “The way I had to fight to breathe, the hives, the headache, the dizziness. Everything felt like the reaction I have to peanuts.”
“A person can develop a sudden allergy to a food they’ve never had a problem eating. That might be what happened.”
Having a vague memory of her own allergist telling her the same thing, Paige studied the intern. His wiry brown hair needed serious combing. His eyes were bloodshot. The cast of his skin was a little too close a match to his pale green hospital scrubs. Looks aside, the guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
“This type of allergic reaction can encompass more than food,” he added. “Like sex.”
“What?”
“When you have intercourse, does your partner wear a condom?”
Paige blinked. “Excuse me?”
Mouth twitching, he held up a hand. “Sorry, I tend to get ahead of myself. A person who’s allergic to bananas has a tendency to have an allergy to latex. That’s because bananas and latex have some of the same proteins. If you’ve experienced any discomfort while engaging in sex with a partner wearing a latex condom, that could explain why.”
“Oh. No discomfort.” No way was she going to admit that the last time she’d had sex was three years ago. With the husband she booted out of her life shortly thereafter.
“What about avocados and chestnuts? They have some of the same proteins as bananas.”
“I was in California last week teaching a workshop. I ate a salad with avocados for lunch one day. Zero reaction.”
“Well, you’ll want to discuss all this with your allergist.”
“He’s in Dallas where I live. Is there a way you can test me now to see if a banana caused the reaction?”
“No, we dosed you with steroids and antihistamines. Allergy testing can’t be done until you’ve been off antihistamines for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“Approximately two weeks.”
Rubbing her thumb over her numb scar, Paige thought about Edwin Isaac. If he was behind the theft of her briefcase, he was now in possession of her doctor’s memo that outlined the severity of her allergy to peanuts.
With his medical training, Isaac would readily realize her allergy could prove fatal. A sense of unease pressed in around her as if the E.R.’s disinfectant-scented air had suddenly become more dense.
She might be experiencing a cop’s innate paranoia, but she didn’t intend to wait to find out if she’d nearly wound up in the morgue because of a sudden allergic reaction or something nefarious. She couldn’t be tested, but the fruit could. And until the results were back, the fruit bowl in her suite had to be treated as evidence. Which meant she needed to turn it over to a cop.
Let’s just say I have this thing about escaped serial killers showing up in my city.
She remembered what Nate McCall had said and gave herself another mental kick for letting her personal baggage get the best of her that morning. Putting herself on the wrong side of McCall didn’t exactly open the door to asking him to submit the fruit bowl to OCPD’s lab. Still, he was the type of cop who cared about what happened on his turf. And he had quite possibly saved her life tonight.
For the first time since she’d arrived at the E.R., the memory of what had happened after she’d crawled back to the phone came crashing back. Fighting to get enough air into her lungs to stay conscious, all she
