If not, Mandrake was as good as dead.
Reluctantly, Monks hefted the two bottles, one in each hand, as if that could help him gauge the dosage. In the ER, when someone came in critically ill with IDDM, the insulin was administered intravenously, with the blood sugar constantly monitored. There was always the grave danger of the insulin driving the sugar level too low, which could bring on hypoglycemia, convulsions, and brain damage.
He knew the appropriate dosages and procedures for those situations, and in the ER he carried a personal digital assistant for calculations and information that wasn’t at his fingertips. But here, it was going to be a very dicey affair.
Freeboot was watching him intently. “You got a problem?”
“This isn’t straightforward, like an antibiotic,” Monks said. “There’s a lot of factors involved. How about finding me some rubbing alcohol.”
Freeboot’s eyes narrowed, and Monks realized again that even such a mild demand was an affront to that huge ego. But he had plenty to worry about without having to pussyfoot around.
“We don’t keep anything like that around here,” Freeboot said.
“Vodka, then.”
Freeboot stalked to the door. “Marguerite!” he barked into the other room. “Bring me a bottle of vodka.”
Monks went through the flow chart in his head once more. An adult patient would typically take both kinds of insulin together, morning and evening-perhaps ten units of the regular, to help metabolize meals, and twenty units of the NPH long-term, for general stabilization. But the NPH was of no use to someone in crisis, and ten units of the RU-100 would be way too much. Mandrake weighed no more than fifty pounds, and, sick as he was, the risk of overlowering his blood sugar outweighed the possible benefit of a high dose.
Monks decided on three units, injected subcutaneously rather than intravenously. If there was no adverse response, he would repeat it in two hours, then start lengthening the interval.
The vodka arrived, handed silently through the doorway by Marguerite. The smell of marijuana smoke wafted in with her. The vodka was Stolichnaya. Apparently Freeboot wasn’t roughing it when it came to liquor.
Monks didn’t bother to ask for cotton swabs. He wadded up a few tissues, soaked them with vodka, then sat on the bed again. Mandrake still seemed to be asleep, and didn’t stir when Monks pricked his finger with a lancet.
Monks squeezed a drop of blood onto one of the strips and fed it into the meter. The LED readout showed 326 milligrams per deciliter-severe to dangerous. Normal was 80 to 120.
Mandrake’s eyes fluttered as Monks eased him onto his back. Monks rubbed his shoulders and started talking, trying to soothe him.
“What about fishing?” Monks said. “You ever go fishing? I bet there’s some monster trout up in these streams.”
Mandrake’s eyes drifted shut. His diaper was wet again. Monks unfastened it, then peeled the wrapper off one of the pre-calibrated syringes and drew three units of the RU-100 into it.
“Maybe that’s what we ought to do tomorrow,” he said, swabbing Mandrake’s abdomen with fresh vodka-soaked tissues. “We’ll dig up some big fat worms and catch a trout for your mom to cook. How’s that?”
He pinched up a roll of unresisting flesh and made a quick stab with the needle, slowly depressing the plunger as he kept talking. The shot was subcutaneous, not penetrating into muscle, but still a sting. Mandrake did not react at all.
Monks withdrew the needle and swabbed the spot again, then eased the diaper free. He tossed it in the bucket and got a couple of fresh ones.
“I’m starting to take you seriously,” Freeboot said, watching him dry the little boy.
“That warms my heart,” Monks said curtly.
This time Freeboot didn’t seem offended. He leaned back against a wall and took a flat round can from his pocket- Copenhagen chewing tobacco, Monks observed, the kind favored by cowboys. But instead of taking a chew, Freeboot dipped in the point of his knife, and brought it out mounded with white powder. He inhaled it with a quick, harsh snorting sound.
He dipped the knife in again and offered it to Monks.
“Biker crank,” Freeboot said. “Keep you going.”
Monks shook his head.
“You a law-and-order guy?”
“If I was judgmental about what I saw in the ER, I’d have shot myself in the head a long time ago,” Monks said.
Freeboot lifted the knife to his nose and inhaled again, then wiped the back of his hand under his nostrils and put the can away.
“I’ve got a couple of questions,” he said.
“I’m not much for polite conversation when I’m chained up.”
Freeboot ignored this barb, too. “About what’s going on with the kid. I want you to help me believe you, man.”
Monks reminded himself that stubbornness wasn’t going to do either Mandrake or him any good.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” he said.
“It gets passed on by bad genes, right? The diabetes?”
“My understanding is that there’s some genetic predisposition, but it’s not cut and dried. Diabetic parents can have nondiabetic kids, and vice versa.”
“But it isn’t something you catch, like AIDS or hepatitis?”
Monks noted that Freeboot had chosen as examples two diseases that were prevalent in prisons. Like his tattoos, it suggested a familiarity with that milieu.
“No,” Monks said, “it’s genetic, but so are thousands of other things that might or might not ever show up. Something triggers them, and there are probably thousands of triggers, too.”
“Say, the parents don’t have it, but the kid does. Is there any way to tell if one of the parents passed it on?”
Monks paused in his diapering and glanced at Freeboot, remembering what Marguerite had said about Freeboot’s diabetic-and ultimately blind-uncle.
“I don’t know what the state of the art is,” Monks said. “That’s not my field. But I’d definitely suggest talking to a specialist if you’re planning to have more kids.”
He realized that he was speaking as if this was a normal consultation with a concerned parent. Enough was enough.
“I need my wristwatch back,” Monks said. “Timing’s going to be critical from here.”
Freeboot shook a cigarette from a pack-an unfiltered Camel, an odd choice for a man who so obviously kept himself in superb physical condition-and then took out matches, but didn’t light up.
“What do you think you’re seeing here?” Freeboot said. “A bunch of batshit bush hippies, right?”
“I’ve already told you,” Monks said impatiently. “I see a little boy who’s badly in need of help. The rest, I don’t care about.”
“How many people you think are ever born who leave a real mark on history?”
“What the hell has that got to do with it?”
“You think you will?”
The question was so absurd, Monks was almost amused. “My tombstone’s going to read: ‘Occupant.’”
The nuance did not seem to register on Freeboot. He pointed at Monks with his first two fingers, the cigarette held between them.
“To be that kind of leader, you got to have virtu. It’s something you’re either born with or you’re not. Like diabetes.”
Monks blinked. He didn’t know much about Machiavelli, but he recognized the term virtu. It wasn’t “virtue” in its usual sense; rather, it was the power to govern effectively, requiring a combination of cunning and ruthlessness.
“What I’m saying is, if you got it, you get yourself through the hard shit,” Freeboot said. “If you don’t…”
Monks waited, expecting some platitudinous followup, like: the hard shit’s gonna get you.
But Freeboot merely shrugged. Then he pushed off the wall with his shoulder and padded out into the main room.
Monks wasn’t quite sure what that exchange had been about. But he knew he been told that he wasn’t as smart as he thought.