A Bitter Tablet

All characters are over eighteen. The author does not condone violence, non-consensual sex, poisoning, or revenge. The events in this story would be immoral and illegal in real life.

Please try to leave feedback in the comments section. Constructive criticism is invaluable to every author. I encourage everyone to vote and leave ideas for future stories as well. Finally, I would like to thank kenjisato for his time and help.

*****

Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?

My wife's unconscious and she's having trouble breathing.

Okay, does she have a pulse?

Yeah, but it's really weak.

All right, do you have any idea what caused this?

No. She just said she felt weird and started vomiting and couldn't stand up straight.

Okay, we've got an ambulance on the way. What's your name, sir?

Bob.

*****

Time blurred as seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into unbearable hours. Sterile lights illuminated the clock-free waiting room, a white solitude punctuated only by the occasional passing footsteps of someone unbothered by what lay beyond the reinforced doors.

Bob thought that repeating the events of the last day might lead to some form of catharsis, or at least acceptance. Instead, it only made denial and disbelief seem like more tempting companions than before. Alice was the most health-conscious person he knew. As an elementary school science teacher, she kept herself in top physical form to set an example for her students. It was ludicrous for her to be fine one minute and at death's door the next.

This had to be an elaborate dream, perhaps brought on by last night's leftovers. It was a tempting thought, but for better or worse, Bob was too practical to give in to wishful thinking. He knew the reality was that his wife was fighting for her life.

Finally, a nurse emerged, and Bob was on her before she could open her mouth. "Is my wife okay?"

"Well, I have some good news," she said. "She's past the critical stage and appears stable for the moment."

Bob mentally sighed in relief.

"The bad news is that the damage has already been done. She's in a coma at the moment, and it'll be a while before we can get a better idea of the severity of her condition."

Relief evaporated like liquid nitrogen on a hot summer day. "How bad is it?"

"Well, it'll be a while before we can get a clearer picture," the nurse explained. "It's possible she could worsen until she expires. It's also possible she could spontaneously awaken with no difficulties. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's also possible she could be left with permanent damage. At this point, there's no way of knowing if she'll be able to walk or even remember her name or how long her coma might last."

Bob felt his entire world collapse. To Alice, being a physical or mental cripple for the rest of her life was a fate worse than death. He knew she'd want to be kept alive as long as there was still some chance of recovery. She was too much of a fighter to give up. But never being able to teach or enjoy the simple pleasures of life again was something she would never want.

"Is there any hope?" he croaked.

"Of course," she said with a mild but sincere smile. "I can't make any promises, but in my experience, comas like this have a decent recovery rate. That doesn't mean there won't be some damage, though. It looks like her kidneys and reproductive system have taken a hit."

With a sickening flash before his eyes, Bob recalled all the times Alice had teased him about having kids. She'd be devastated to learn they could never have children.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "Can I get you anything?"

With a deep breath, Bob summoned all his pain, grief, and anger, then released it. It would be back later, but his mind was clear for now. He knew what had to be done.

"Yes. A toxicology test."

"Why?"

"Because," he said slowly, "I think my wife was poisoned."

*****

Take a seat, son. So, I understand you told the ER you suspected your wife had been poisoned.

That's correct, officer.

What makes you so sure there was foul play? My son is one of her students. I met her at some parent-teacher conferences. She's literally the last person I'd suspect of being poisoned.

She's always kept herself in shape for her students. It makes no sense for this to happen out of the blue.

I see. Were you aware the toxicology report came back negative?

It came back negative?

Yes.

Was it thorough?

The lab says they ran the standard tests. That's good enough for ninety-nine percent of cases. I don't think there's enough to justify spending money on more tests.

So you aren't investigating this?

There's not even a case file. Until we have some solid evidence, I think it's more likely she just ate something bad.

*****

Bob burned in frustration as he ended the phone call. He could forgive the police for being skeptical. His own training in computer forensics taught him to avoid jumping to conclusions. It was the unprofessional way they laughed at him that left him doubting they were worthy of their badges.

As the days dragged on, his pain grew exponentially. No matter where he turned, his mind always returned to the cold spot waiting for him in his bed.

Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, he momentarily regretted not taking better care of himself in the days since his wife's collapse. He'd probably be back to despondency soon enough, but the itchiness of his unshaven face and the grumble of his empty stomach was acute. As was the fact that he was out of his preferred pain pills.

He and Alice preferred different brands of painkillers. Alice insisted his refusal to use generics was just in his head, but he swore they weren't as effective for him. But in his current state, he'd take whatever he could get, so he took out the half-used bottle of his wife's pills. As Alice always said, something was better than—Bob froze and watched the palm of his hand with wide eyes, his heart racing in fear.

The tablets were white.

*****

Getting the independent toxicology test done overnight cost a pretty penny, but it was more than worth it.

Tetrodotoxin.

Lab technicians said they had rarely seen the infamous poison so pure. Twenty-five times more deadly than cyanide, whoever made it was not playing around. The tablets even had a thin layer of gelatin applied like the real ones did. Bob had come within inches of ingesting the deadly pills himself.

Yet, the tablets weren't intended to kill. Only a quarter were poisoned; the rest contained naloxone, an experimental antidote against tetrodotoxin. Bob could think of only one reason for that: Alice's coma wasn't an accident. Whoever swapped the pills wanted to leave her in the hospital, not the morgue.

Bob had more than enough evidence to turn this over to the FBI, but he decided to hold off. From the moment he suspected poisoning, the one question that plagued his thoughts was: Why? Why would anyone poison Alice? She was just a schoolteacher. He did have money from his parents' inheritance, but no one except Alice was listed in his will.

The lab report only added to his anguish. This was a crime of hatred, not passion. It wasn't as if some stalker had been angered by rejection. Someone with a real grudge had deliberately targeted Alice with cold and ruthless precision.

The only question was who.

*****

Bob managed to find the strength to shut off the alarm, drag himself out of bed, and shower. His clean-shaven face hid the sheer amount of pain he felt. In the long, dark hours he'd spent pacing the previous night, he'd moved past the denial stage of telling himself that there was still a chance Alice would make a full recovery.

He no longer had the strength to kid himself.

Just as he'd finished his morning coffee, his phone rang. "Hello?"

"Hey, Bob."

"Hello, Trent," he addressed the principal of his wife's school.

"I'm sorry about Alice. I know it must be painful. She was loved by all her students."

He nodded. "She was loved by everyone."

"Is it okay if I send someone to pick up her school plans? We could really use them while we get a substitute teacher in."

"Sure," he said automatically. "Who are you sending?"

"Carol."

Bob barely managed to cover himself. Carol was his ex-girlfriend. More importantly, she was his wife's rival.

His first thought was to beat himself for not thinking of Carol sooner. She was one of the few people who hated Alice, and she definitely had a motive to hurt her.

Carol blamed Alice for their breakup, but the truth was that she'd come along at the same time Bob had decided Carol was a psychopath. Her actions since then only bore out that diagnosis. She hadn't even been interested in teaching until she started seeing Alice as her rival. The fact that he was married never stopped her from openly flirting with him.

Bob had no problem buying that Carol would believe that by getting rid of Alice, she would inherit everything she owned. In her twisted mind, the fact that Alice hadn't died meant she hadn't done anything wrong.

Ding. Dong

When Bob answered the door, his worst fears were confirmed. His high-school girlfriend was waiting for him, dressed in an outfit the principal never would've permitted her to wear in front of her students.

"Hello, Bob," she said with a seductive smile. "I'm sorry about Alice."

Carol was sexier than Alice. Bob was willing to admit that. He fell in love with the average-looking brunette for her warmth and personality. There was only one thing Carol had that Alice didn't, and she was doing everything she could to flaunt it.

She was the living embodiment of a hot blonde in her white dress shirt and black miniskirt that exposed her smooth, slender legs. With her oval face, slim figure, and hourglass waist, Bob was surprised Carol never became a model. It would've suited her and her vanity just fine.

"Do you have your wife's papers?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. "I didn't realize you'd be here so soon. Alice usually keeps them in a portable file box, though."

"Great. Mind if I come in?"

Carol invited herself without waiting for an answer, making sure to add an extra switch to her step.

Bob knew what she was trying to do. Consistent with her psychopathic personality, she saw Alice's misfortune as an opportunity to gain something for herself rather than a terrible tragedy. She wasn't sorry in the slightest.

What made it all the more frustrating was that it was working. The moment he caught her perfume, his cock instantly hardened. He and Alice hadn't had sex in weeks, and the basal part of his brain reacted to seeing an indecently dressed woman in front of him.

Carol had no idea she was playing with fire. Bob was a jumbled mess of emotions. Grief in its purest form was eating him alive, chipping away at his self-restraint. He was desperate for something—anything—to make the pain stop. She was blissfully unaware of how close she was pushing him to the threshold of insanity.

Five minutes later, Bob felt his control slipping as he handed over the files and Carol refused to take the hint that he wanted her gone. She seemed interested only in showing off her bust, and unless she hadn't finished growing when they broke up, she'd definitely had breast implants.

"No thanks, Carol," he growled. "I just want to be left alone."

The amoral blonde smiled broader than ever, then moved in until she whispered in his ear. "I get it, Bob," she purred. "It hurts. Why don't you let me take your mind off her? You remember how good we were."

Bob was seized by two conflicting, contradictory impulses. The first was to grab Carol by the neck and demand to know what she'd done to his wife. The other was to rip off that ridiculous teacher's outfit, bend her over the couch, and fuck her brains out.

He found it disturbingly easy to picture Carol naked, and his cock twitched as he wondered if she still kept herself shaven bare. He could also imagine her large tits swinging freely as he fucked her from behind, thrashing about in ecstasy as he proved how much of a man he really was. He could even see himself exploding inside her pussy, filling her with his cum without regard to the consequences.

It was an intoxicating fantasy, one he could've easily made into reality. Only two things held him back. One was that Alice hated the bitch, and no matter how badly his cock ached or how mad he was with grief, he wasn't about to sink so low as to fuck someone his wife hated.

The other was that Carol wasn't smart enough for something like this. Whoever made those pills was a professional, and Carol couldn't have done it if her life depended on it.

"Get out!" he demanded in a face carved from stone.

Her look of disappointment provided some small satisfaction, but only temporarily. Agony returned as soon as he was alone.

In a way, Bob was glad for her visit. While Alice wasn't smart enough to manufacture poisoned medicine, thinking about how she might be stupid enough to accidentally leave the pills in the wrong bottle did provide a eureka moment.

The tablets were the same color he used. If they'd been meant for him and someone had simply left them in the wrong bottle, that would explain much.

Unlike Alice, he did have two enemies. One was smart enough to create the pills. The other was dumb enough to leave them in the wrong place.

*****

Three months ago...

Bob had never needed a drink so badly in his entire life. Even thinking seemed to take a toll as he left the courtroom.

Despite his wife, lawyers, counselors, and now a jury telling him he held no blame for the accident, he still harbored guilt. No matter what anyone said, nothing would undo the consequences of the worst night of his life.

Proof of that came running at him as he soberly approached his car in the parking lot.

"You hurt my babies!" Eve screamed, tears falling down her face. "I hate you! I'll never forgive you! I swear I'm going to kill you!"

The grieving mother had to be restrained as he drove off, doing his best not to fall apart. Two months ago, Bob had lost control of his car hydroplaning. Expert testimony said it was a one-in-a-billion chance, requiring both the extreme storm and an improper mechanical repair to trigger a bug in the supposedly impossible-to-be-unsafe code. At the moment he could least afford it, the engine went full throttle while the steering wheel locked hard to the right.

Stomping on the brakes was the fatal mistake. The jury ruled he couldn't be blamed for it, but without it, Bob might've missed his neighbor's car by mere centimeters. As it was, his rear end smashed into the side with more force than it would've head-on. Ted and Eve were relatively unharmed, but their twin boys weren't so lucky. Two months later, they were still in a coma, with doctors unsure if they would ever come out.

As soon as he was free, Ted and Eve began harassing him every chance they got. Both repeatedly vowed to murder him.

Bob never pressed charges. Eve was Alice's best friend, and he honestly couldn't blame them. He'd hurt their sons; Alice assured him they'd forgive him eventually, but they needed time.

He wasn't so sure.

*****

Bob knew he was crossing a line breaking into Ted and Eve's house, but he had to know. Did Eve's hatred of him really go far enough to endanger her best friend?

Alice had confided that their neighbors had left on a month-long vacation, supposedly to help heal their marriage, which had become strained since the accident. It also gave them the perfect alibi at the time of Alice's mysterious collapse.

It definitely wouldn't be a mystery how they got the poison. In theory, tetrodotoxin was notoriously difficult to synthesize. In practice, Eve was a genius in chemistry and a member of Mensa. Ted wasn't in the same league as her intellectually, but he did happen to work as a security guard for a medical institute, where he could get all the materials his wife would need to create the poisonous tablets.

Once inside, he found chemicals, equipment, and protective gear. He even found Eve's notes on the sleepless nights she spent obsessively trying to perfect a way of creating one of nature's deadliest toxins.

He really hit gold when he found a key to Ted's apartment. Confirming his opinion of Ted being less-than-brilliant, he found a notebook with most of his passwords inside, including one for his computer. Once in, he discovered Ted had made a backup of his iPhone before he'd left. With a simple phone call and a zero-day exploit, he had access to Ted's entire digital life.

Just as he'd suspected, Eve had made the pills which left Alice in a coma. From text messages, he gathered that his neighbor's marriage had broken down quickly after the accident. Eve claimed to be deeply in love with her husband, but Ted was too far gone. He'd agreed to do one last thing together: avenge their sons by putting him, Bob, in a vegetative state just as he'd done to the twins.

The final thing he learned was that Ted and Eve were nearly bankrupt. Keeping their sons alive in the hospital had stretched their bank accounts to the limit. They'd used the last of their money to create the pills.

Bob was now certain that Ted was the one who broke into his house and planted the poisoned tablets. Eve knew he and his wife preferred different brands of painkillers; Ted must've accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle. Had Alice noticed her usually red tablets were white, none of this would've happened.

There was more than enough evidence to have Ted charged with attempted murder. All it would take was an anonymous tip to the FBI about the phone backup. Eve was another matter. A good defense might be able to establish a reasonable doubt that she'd been coerced by her husband.

If anything, that made him angrier at Eve than Ted. At least he had no personal connection to Alice. Eve was supposed to be her best friend. She'd betrayed that trust by playing a hand in his attempted murder. She could lock horns with him all she wanted, but did she really think there was no risk to Alice?

He intended to find out.

*****

When the day finally came, Bob felt like his insides were being torn apart. He handed over a copy of his information to his attorney in case something went wrong. Eve would answer for her crime, whether by his hand or not.

As he gathered his things, Bob made one last attempt to pull himself back from the abyss. He tried reminding himself that Alice wasn't really dead, and she would never approve of him turning into a criminal for her sake. If, as he feared, he lost control with Eve, then sooner or later, he'd have to tell the woman he loved that he was now a murderer.