Chapter 9

Lucas called the emergency number. Someone had to be practical and do something, and Alex obviously wasn't that person (although they all half expected him to be the one who didn't react emotionally to anything). He picked the Teddy bear up and saw the pills.

"This is what she took," he said, but no one paid attention. He poured the bottle out on a table and counted the pills. There were ninety-five pills, and the label said it originally had a hundred. "She took five, with this dose they'll kill her," he told himself. Good thing he had already called an ambulance.

Trip was sitting on the bed, his eyes closed, his gem glowing. He was trying to get to Jen; Lucas hoped he would, that was the only way to keep her from dying now. ******

"Something's wrong," Jen told Alex. "I feel sick."

"Maybe it was something you ate," he said.

"I haven't eaten anything," she answered. She arched and threw up.

"This is bad," Alex commented.

"Worse than you think," Trip said behind him. Jen looked at him, angrily.

"What are you doing here?"

"You almost killed yourself."

"I just took some sleeping pills, so you would let me sleep!"

"You took too many."

"No, I didn't," she said.

"Jen, you are in great danger."

"I can't wake up now," she said, "My body is weak so I can't wake up."

"You don't have to stay here, you can fight this."

"Maybe I can, but I don't want to."

"Come with me and save your life."

"I'm not falling for that again, I'm not leaving."

"Jen, listen--"

"No, you listen," she interrupted him angrily. "This time, you'll have to force me to go back, because I'm not going, not of my own free will. I have my husband, and I'm not leaving him again, ever."

"Jen--" He started, but he couldn't finish. She threw up again.

"What's this?" she asked, scared.

"It's your body, you are very sick, you have an OD."

She threw up again, and fainted. Alex knelt next to her, before disappearing. Trip felt how his environment changed, and he felt himself being thrown out of that mind. She was dying.

********

He opened his eyes; the smell of vomit caught his nose. Now he knew why Jen had been throwing up in her mind, she could control herself, in the mind, only if her body remained still.

But Alex had snapped back out of it, apparently, and had forced her to throw up the pills she hadn't digested yet. She threw up three, but they were a little destroyed, so she had ingested more than she could tolerate, anyway.

The doorbell rang and the paramedics entered the room. "What happened?" one of them asked.

"We found her like this," Lucas explained. "She took five of these pills." He gave the paramedic the bottle.

"These are strong," the man said. "Ok, let's give her a general antidote, and let's take her to the hospital so they can detoxify her," he instructed his fellow paramedics. They got to work, and they soon had Jen stabilized, they were giving her oxygen and were monitoring her heart and pulse.

They took her in the ambulance. The rangers let Alex go with her, he had found her, and he was the reason all this was happening.

They all got into Lucas's car, and on their way to the hospital, their communicators beeped. "Rangers, we need you all here, we have new information on the dead children case," Major Logan informed them.

"That'll have to wait," Katie said.

"Why? What happened?"

"Jen is on her way to the hospital, with a drug OD."

"Drugs? Jennifer?"

"Yes, she took some sleeping pills, she accidentally overdosed, we are following the ambulance; General Drake is with her."

"Well, get here as soon as you can. This is important."

"No offense, sir, but I think Jen's health is a bit more important."

"Trust me, it isn't," Major Drake said and closed the channel.

"What could be more important than Jen's health?" Katie asked, somewhat hurt. Trip turned on the radio, his gem again glowing.

"---six children were taken from four different apartments of this building, they were all in the company of nannies, who are now all dead. The mutants destroyed and robbed the apartments and took the children, although they left the blood covered skeletons of a pair of twins who lived in one of the attacked apartments. The parents of these children were at a special evening for the tenants of the building's apartments. Of course, now they all regret it--"

To be continued.