A Raging Dawn Read Online Free Page B

long?”
    “There’s been speculation that some alternative therapies may—”
    “Do I have time for speculation?”
    “Maybe.” She hesitated, her mind scouring a hundred checklists of variables.
    There are four stages to FFI. Stage one, your episodes of insomnia last a few days, resulting in muscle tremors, confusion, mood swings, anxiety, and irritability. All of which I had in spades. Which was why I’d finally quit the ER last month. I could no longer hide the muscle spasms that increased with stress. Plus, I’d experienced a few symptoms that weren’t listed in any textbook—things that might have put patients at risk. So, good-bye, career. Hello to the sheer hell of the absolute boredom of the unemployable.
    Most people with FFI die within nine months of exhibiting symptoms. My symptoms began five months ago. We’d already wasted three weeks waiting on the lab results. But I’d found a case report of a patient who had lived twenty-seven months by using a combination of stimulants, antioxidant supplements, sensory deprivation, and intense aerobic exercise.
    A single case, one man. But it was enough to give me hope. Silly me. You’d think anyone who’d spent her adult life working on the front lines of the ER would know better.
    “Angela?” Louise tapped my shoulder. I’d zoned out. I was doing that a lot lately. “Are you okay?” Frown lines born of concern crossed her brow.
    “I’m fine,” I lied. Last month I’d told Louise about my hallucinations—the echoes of color, the strange movements no one else saw, coupled with music so intense and soulful it would have made Mozart weep. They were a prelude to my fugue states, catatonic episodes in which my senses became hyperacute, while my body remained frozen and unresponsive. I’d even mentioned the symptom not found in any journal article or textbook: my newfound ability to communicate with patients who were in a certain type of coma.
    “Any more seizures?” Louise and her multitude of tests had decided my symptoms were variations of the unique seizures patients with fatal insomnia were prone to. Nothing to worry about because they weren’t real, merely hallucinations born of a brain riddled with holes. Especially that last, the talking with not-quite-dead people.
    All the science said she was right. That what was happening to me was impossible. I couldn’t bring myself to burst her cozy bubble of medical certainty and reveal the true extent of my symptoms. From a scientific standpoint, we’d already gone way past stage one right into the Twilight Zone.
    “No,” I lied. “The meds seem to be helping.”
    Louise scribbled refills for my prescriptions. Powerful stimulants. They were enough to make an elephant tap-dance, but they barely managed to keep me functional as my body burned through dosages designed for someone three times my size.
    “Do you want me to tell your sister, arrange for her to be tested?”
    Oh God. Evie. My stomach clenched so hard I felt my belly button slam against my spine. I never should have sniped at her this morning. I fought to keep my voice steady. “No. I’ll do it.”
    She tapped her pen against the prescription pad. “There is something else we could try. Totally experimental, but after what you told me happened last month—”
    “You mean PXA. No.” I pushed the stool back, putting distance between myself and the thought of using the drug the street had nicknamed Death Head. Paramethoxamine destabilized the chemical process the brain used to create pain. A fact that sadistic serial killer Leo Kingston had taken advantage of, using the tunnels beneath the city as a lair for torturing his victims with PXA. His unique formulation of the drug created pain so intense and unrelenting his victims would do anything to stop it. Anything he commanded of them.
    He’d used it on me before I killed him. I’d felt that pain. It was as if I was burning alive from the inside out. A pain that made you beg for