§ § § -- September 15, 1996
"Do you know about it?" Leslie exclaimed hopefully, seeing his obvious recognition. "Christian told me Marina doesn't know the antidote."
Roarke focused on her with a start and frowned heavily, eyes still wide. "Then we had better hurry," he said. "Come with me." She followed him back to the jeep.
"Don't you think we should just…" Leslie began.
He shushed her, urging her into the vehicle, then spoke again with the policemen before climbing behind the wheel and starting the engine. Not till they were speeding up the Ring Road did he speak. "Surely, Leslie Susan, you didn't have it in mind to return the same way you came, with such a large audience to see you do it?"
His unexpected levity made her laugh aloud. "Busted again, Father," she said playfully, delighted to get an answering laugh from him. It made them both feel a little more optimistic as they raced for the Fantasy Island Hospital.
Along the way Roarke made an abrupt detour into the Main House Lane and came to a skidding stop near the fountain, earning a shocked look from his daughter. "Forgive me," he said with the quickest and faintest of smiles, "but I'm sure you realize time is of the essence. Come in with me and wait in the study—I must get something from the cellar lab." He led the way in and vanished down the hallway to the northern wing of the house while Leslie waited nervously in the study. Fortunately it took just a minute or so for Roarke to return with a small vial which he handed to her. "Don't let go of this," he warned, already making for the door. She scurried after him with the little vial, now so curious she could barely refrain from asking questions.
Moments later, at the hospital, Roarke urgently insisted that the nurse at the admissions desk summon Shara's doctor; and when the man appeared, he quickly filled him in with the information Leslie had given him. The doctor was the only other person in the room who recognized the drug. "Black lightning!" he exclaimed. "How on earth did your guest get hold of that stuff? I'm sure you know how rare it is."
"More than you know, doctor," Roarke said grimly. "You must make up the antidote immediately."
"We don't have all the ingredients," the doctor protested. "I'm not even sure what proportions to mix them up in." He eyed Roarke and finally admitted, "You're going to have to help us, Mr. Roarke."
"Precisely why I am here," said Roarke quietly, "particularly since this vial contains an absolutely vital component of the antidote." He took the vial from Leslie. "Now, please."
"Come this way," the doctor said and spun on his heel, leading Roarke away through a door to the right of the admissions desk. Leslie, calculating the chances of her father's telling her anything about the antidote and the mysterious liquid in the vial, wandered over to join the other sisters and Cyndy, who had shot to their feet and listened intently the moment Roarke and Leslie arrived.
They mobbed her immediately. "What's that stuff Mr. Roarke took from you?" "Is Shara gonna be okay?" "How did you find out there's an antidote?" Leslie, startled out of her reverie, lifted her hands in surrender.
"Whoa, hold it!" she protested, and they backed down. "I'll tell you what I can, but I don't have all the answers."
"What drug did Mr. Roarke say Shara's been taking?" Joy demanded. "Black lightning? I never heard of the stuff. What is it?"
"It's distilled from a very rare spice that most people have also never heard of," Leslie said. "What it does is reduce the need for sleep and provide extra energy, and I expect it has certain side effects that I don't know about. Either the doctor or Father can tell you about that. The vial Father has contains an ingredient to the antidote—and please don't ask me what's in it, because I don't know."
"How'd you hear about the antidote?" Cyndy wanted to know.
Leslie hesitated, gathering her words before replying. "I know someone whose wife is familiar with the spice and what can be done with it. He and I were chatting and I mentioned we'd had an emergency with Shara, and he asked me what had happened. I told him about her symptoms, and he and his wife figured it out. But I had to get word to Father, since she didn't know what the antidote is."
"Then obviously Mr. Roarke's familiar with the spice too," Joy said.
Leslie could see she intended to grill Roarke later. "Don't worry about that right now. Just be glad he is. As for whether Shara'll be okay, we'll just have to wait and see. Why don't we all sit down and wait."
Now Joy, Cyndy, Brooke and Daphne fidgeted throughout their wait; Leslie picked up a magazine and went through it to keep from having to watch them pacing, twiddling their thumbs or jiggling their feet. It was nearly an hour before Roarke and the doctor came out; everyone stood up, and the doctor smiled wearily.
"The antidote worked," he said, to answering cheers of relief from Shara's sisters and cousin. "In fact, it worked so well that she's awake and talking, and she asked to see all of you, including Mr. Roarke and Miss Leslie."
Roarke and Leslie trailed their guests and the doctor to Shara's room; the young singer lay in her hospital bed with an IV still hooked to her arm, her face pale but her eyes open and her expression alert. "Hi, everyone," she said softly. She sounded weak but spoke clearly, and the other Fosters wilted with relief.
"They say you overdosed on black lightning," Joy said before anyone else could respond. "What in hell is that, and where'd you get it?"
"Howie Helms got it for me," Shara said, sighing deeply, looking resigned. "It started about three years ago when I felt worn out all the time from the constant shows we were putting on around the area. You know how he was anyway, always hanging around and trying to get my attention. He finally did when he told me he had something that would fix all my problems. He said it was rare and expensive, but he'd try to keep the price down for me since we knew each other. Even at that, it cost all my spare cash…it's eaten up all my savings already. But I had to have it."
"You idiot," Joy said savagely, her eyes filling with tears. "Shara, you dope. Why?"
"It worked," Shara said simply, her gaze sliding away. She focused on Roarke and Leslie in turns. "I didn't know very much about it, but I could tell it worked. I didn't need nearly as much sleep every night, and I always had loads of energy. It was easy for me to keep up with the frantic pace of performing, so I became a steady customer of Howie's. I noticed that I was starting to lose weight too, and I figured that was a bonus. So I told myself it was worth the huge price, and I kept on taking it."
"How come it's called 'black lightning', anyway?" Daphne asked, voicing a question that had been knocking on the back of Leslie's brain for a while. "I mean, I guess I can see why the 'lightning' part of the name, but how come it's black?"
"That's the color of the drug," Shara said. "It's a thin black liquid."
"It's black," Roarke put in then, "because of its method of derivation. It is distilled, much like liquor, and then boiled in order to concentrate it and heighten its effects, which makes it very dark in color." He studied Shara with an unreadable expression. "You are the first person I have encountered in a great many years who has been addicted to it."
Shara blushed, putting some color back into her face. "I was doing fine on it. I could get by on one dose a day, but I just noticed today all of a sudden that now it was taking two doses to get me through. I'd brought enough to get me through this weekend based on one dose, and I ran out this morning without realizing it. After our third show I knew I needed more, but I discovered that I didn't have any…and since Howie managed to get himself arrested last night, I didn't know how to get any. Then Calvin Dill came backstage and found out I was out, and offered to supply me directly if I could talk all you guys into signing a contract with his record company."
"Eww," muttered Daphne, screwing up her face.
"How'd he know you were hooked, and what you were hooked on?" asked Brooke.
Shara's glance bounced nervously across her sister's face. "It turned out he's Howie's supplier," she admitted. "Where he gets it from, I have no clue, but from the way he talked, he's an expert on the stuff and what it can do, and what happens to people who use it. He gave me some, and by then I was suffering from withdrawal, so I couldn't think straight." She looked at Roarke, as though pleading for understanding. "See, one dose for me is half a syringe full. Dill completely filled my syringe, and I was so far gone from withdrawal by then that all I could think about was how much I needed the stuff. So I injected the whole thing." Roarke closed his eyes, a grim expression settling over his handsome features. "I can see you get my meaning. I felt great afterwards…full of spirit and energy and just dying to get onstage. But in the middle of the show, my head started spinning and I could feel my heart pounding, going faster and faster, and then my legs went out from under me and that's the last thing I remember."
"You overdosed," Leslie told her. "For awhile everybody was stymied. We didn't know what you were taking, much less what to do about it, and we had no way of finding out. I contacted someone who knows about it, and that's how we got the information we needed. Father was the only one who knew what the antidote is. If it weren't for that, well…you'd have died."
Shara blanched again and began to cry. "Oh my God," she wailed. Joy's tears spilled over then as well, and the others' eyes promptly filled. After a moment Shara looked at Roarke again and cried, "I'll stop taking it, Mr. Roarke, I swear I will. I'll tell the police everything I know…anything, I promise!"
"Shara, calm down," Cyndy said, squeezing her cousin's hand. "We'll all help you get through this, okay? Just calm down." She looked up. "Mr. Roarke, why couldn't they find any trace of it in Shara's blood, so soon after her overdose?"
"It is rapidly absorbed from the bloodstream once it reaches the brain," Roarke said. "Put simply, the brain apparently cleans out every trace of the drug from the blood as it passes through the head, so that once the blood leaves the head, it is clear of the drug. The doctors took no brain scans, but even that would not have provided any clue. Because the drug is distilled from an otherwise harmless spice, its components look completely natural and do not raise any alarms during medical tests of either the bloodstream or the brain."
"Weird," mumbled Brooke thoughtfully.
"Just to play devil's advocate," Cyndy said, "it sounds as if it can only be beneficial, so what's the problem with taking it?"
Roarke glanced at Leslie in a moment's hesitation. "Very few humans can tolerate the parent spice," he said, speaking slowly and with some reluctance. "Those who can, however, usually are not able to get along without it, particularly if they have had access to it all their lives. But in such a concentrated form as black lightning, the effects are harmful over time. The energy provided by the drug comes from one's inner store, and eventually depletes even the last reserves. You were using all of those reserves, Miss Foster, and that's most of the reason you lost weight. Had you not overdosed, it wouldn't have been long before you'd found yourself in the hospital for total exhaustion." He paused, frowning, then added quietly, "Also, if you had used it long enough, you would have grown so dependent upon it that in time you would have needed it merely to survive."
Shara broke down completely at this news, and her sisters rallied around her, crying too. Cyndy brushed away some tears and queried, "How long does detox take?"
"Fortunately, not long at all," Roarke said. "But your cousin will need to learn to resist temptation, and must develop a new routine and healthier habits that will allow her to continue leading a performer's lifestyle without resorting to drugs in order to cope."
"We'll handle that," Cyndy said and nodded. "Mr. Roarke, Shara owes you her life, and we owe you just about everything else. How can we possibly thank you?"
"It wasn't entirely my doing," Roarke replied dismissively, smiling at her. "Why don't you and your cousins stay with her for now, and we will leave you alone for the evening." He turned to Leslie. "Let's go, child."
