Page 10 of Rescuing Josiah
“What else?” he snarled at the doctor, noting how the man paled at the venom in his tone.
“Josiah,” Chelsea rebuked. “He’s just worried, sorry about that. What was the other symptom you thought we should focus on?”
Eying him warily, the doctor focused his attention on Chelsea instead. “The swelling. We’ll need to send you along with some blood and urine samples if you get a meeting. You’ll have to figure out how to swap out the samples they take from you with the ones we’ll give you. But if they do a physical exam, the swelling in your legs will give credibility to your claims.”
“And how do we do that?” he growled.
“I was thinking we could give Mrs. Fleet prednisone,” the doctor replied.
“Steroids?” he demanded, not liking the idea one little bit.
“Prednisone is used to treat many different issues, including ones that would be easily explainable if they found out she was taking it. It can cause swelling in the legs and feet, exactly like we need it to.”
“But it might not,” Josiah countered.
The doctor nodded. “We’ll have her on a fairly high dose, because she won't be taking it for a prolonged period, I'm fairly certain that we can simulate the swelling from kidney failure with the prednisone.”
“What other side effects does the drug have?” Josiah asked.
“High blood sugar, increased blood pressure, infection, low adrenal gland function, which would actually help with some of the other symptoms Mrs. Fleet would have to fake, like nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite. Mood and behavior changes, and stomach bleeding. Which again, blood in urine would help with your claims of kidney failure.”
“Absolutely not.” Josiah shoved away from the table. This was too much. Too dangerous. It was one thing to take anuntrained civilian into a dangerous undercover operation, it was quite another to willingly inflict this kind of potential damage on her body.
“This was always going to come with dangers,” the doctor said. “You knew that. You want me to help you simulate organ failure. The only way to do that is to use medications that might cause damage to her body, and a whole lot of lying. I don’t enjoy being part of this, but since it’s for such a good cause, I'm doing everything I can to ensure that Mrs. Fleet is safe, both with the medications I’ll give her, and in trying to ensure she passes whatever examinations they give her to keep your cover. In the end, the only person who can decide if this is worth the risk is Mrs. Fleet herself.”
Josiah wanted to order Cheslea to tell the doctor this was too much, that she’d go back to Prey and let him take on all these risks, but he already knew from the stubborn glint in her eyes that she wasn't going to let him do that.
“Whatever we need to do, I'm up for it,” Chelsea said, her voice calm and sure. “These people have already hurt so many, and they made it personal when they went after the people I care about. It’s worth the risk.”
May 12th
4:17 P.M.
There was no way she would regret her decision, but Chelsea definitely felt yucky as she stretched out on the couch in the living room of her and Josiah’s rented townhouse.
They’d been at the hospital for hours this morning, talking things through with the doctor in more detail, having thecatheter inserted, and setting up fake dialysis appointments. Prey had virtually unlimited resources, and they would hire someone to come by daily with a fake machine so that no real time or resources were wasted on their charade.
Despite her fear about what this might do to her body and the danger she’d be walking into, she knew she’d made the right choice. Life was about taking risks, and while she’d never been much of a risk taker, she was glad she was doing this. For years, she’d sat nice and safe in front of her computer, tucked away in Prey’s secure building. It had never really occurred to her that danger lurked so closely until Ava had been abducted.
Of course, she knew the world was a dangerous place. She couldn’t not get that when she spent her days scouring intel that would be used to help keep Prey teams alive as they went on dangerous ops and gathered the information they needed to rescue innocents, or capture and sometimes kill dangerous people. But doing that from the safety of her computer and seeing it happen in real life were so very different.
Ava’s abduction changed everything.
Then Tobias going back into the field after a back injury, which ended his career, because the trafficking ring had gone after one of their own had inspired her. He’d been willing to put his health on the line, and in the end, he’d come out of it finding the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
And Teresa had been willing to allow herself to be abducted by the ring a second time to try to get them intel. If her tracker she’d been working on had failed, she could have lost her life, but that hadn't stopped her.
Her friends, her teammates, they were brave enough to make tough choices for the greater good, and she wanted to be the same. Maybe she was a bit more naïve than the rest of them, maybe she was a bit softer, but she could be brave, she could be strong, she could even be tough.
She had to be, because she wanted this trafficking ring destroyed.
This was her part to play in making it happen, and there were going to be no regrets. If she felt a little sick for a while, it was a small price to pay. Certainly a much smaller price than Ava had paid. She’d had a kidney stolen by the ring. A smaller price than Isabella had paid, she’d been tortured and sexually assaulted by the guards while forced to play nurse to the ring’s victims. And they’d taken part of Teresa’s liver, but still she’d been prepared to take them on again.
They’d all lost so much, and all she had to do was take some medication that made her feel a little queasy.
Easy peasy.
“Here.”
