Saturday, September 23, 2000 (7:30 PM)

       Frank forced himself to breathe, forced himself to focus past the droning buzz in his ears of panicked people and friends.  He felt too helpless to help his brother.  He couldn’t see Joe, he couldn’t figure out how to help him.  For a moment, the panic that he heard in the voices of others threatened to overwhelm and consume him, until he felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder and heard Connor.  Connor was talking to 911, asking for assistance for Joe.  Mandy’s voice cut through as well and he heard her talking to their parents, telling them that something new had happened to Joe and that she had no idea what was going on. 

       “Frank?” another voice, Samantha, said his name and he realized she had been trying to get his attention for a few minutes now.  “Frank?  Frank?  Talk to me, Frank.”

       Frank took another breath and reached to his shoulder to grab her hand.  He squeezed it and found his panic subside, his reason returned an instant later.  He reached down, groping for Joe and found his brother shuddering, convulsing.

       “We need to put something between his teeth,” Frank said.  “To keep him from biting his tongue or worse.  Hold his shoulders down as tight as you can without hurting him.  Is he still breathing?”

       He tried finding his brother’s mouth with his hand but came up short – or Joe was not breathing. 

       “He’s breathing but not well,” Vanessa said in a shaken voice.  “What’s wrong with him, Frank?”

       “I don’t know,” Frank admitted.  “Van, do you smell something on his breath?”

       There was a brief pause before Vanessa spoke,  “No, just the onions he had on his pizza.”

       Frank sighed.  He knew, he just knew Joe had to have been poisoned.  He hadn’t been injured badly enough to warrant any kind of convulsions, not so quickly.  He, however, had no idea if his theory was right and was afraid to take any action that would further endanger Joe.

       A few minutes later a paramedic unit arrived.  Samantha and Frank stood to one side, Frank listening to every word the paramedics said while they worked on Joe.  The paramedics sounded as mystified as Frank felt.  Samantha’s grip on Frank’s arm tightened as they waited.

       “We’re going to have to take him to the hospital,” one of the paramedic’s finally said.  “We don’t have any idea what’s wrong with him; they’ll have to look him over at the hospital.  How long has he been unconscious?”

       “Ten minutes or so,” Vanessa said in a shaky voice.  “He went into convulsions first.”  

       Frank heard nothing else for a few moments except Mandy whispering to Vanessa and Vanessa whispering back to Mandy, until the paramedic announced that they were taking Joe into the hospital. 

       “What’s wrong with him?” Mandy asked in a shaky voice.

       “We don’t know,” the paramedics said.  “His pulse and blood pressure are shallow, the convulsions are worrisome and he’s diaphoretic with pale coloring.  It doesn’t really match up to anything we can identify.  The doctors should be able to tell you more.”

       “Can I ride with him?” Vanessa asked. 

       “Sure,” the paramedic said.  “Come on, we’re going now.”

 

       Connor drove the rest of them to the hospital in his Blazer, something that proved to be a tight squeeze with five of them.  Frank sat in the front seat, leaned his head against the window of the Blazer, and prayed again that his brother would be all right.  The day that Joe had collapsed in his room after his experience in the woods had been frightening enough.  This was just as frightening if not more so.  They had no idea what happened to him this time. 

       Frank’s parents were already at the hospital by the time the rest of them arrived and Frank felt someone’s arms go around him in a hug, his mother by the scent of her.  He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair as she buried hers in his shoulder.  He wasn’t quite sure who was comforting whom but he didn’t care.  Laura finally led Frank to a chair and pushed a lock of his hair out of his eyes.  Frank smiled over at her and felt her pat his cheek as she often did when he was young.

       “I seem to be destined to spend my life in the hospital,” Laura said with a sigh as she straightened.  “And I seem to be destined to spend my life worrying about someone.  Do you have any idea what happened this time, Frank?”

       Frank shook his head.  “No, mom.  We were at the Victory Party at the End Zone and he just collapsed into convulsions.  I don’t think it’s natural.”

       “Poison, Frank?” Fenton Hardy asked his son.  “Or something else?”

       “Poison is what comes to mind,” Frank told him.  “I just don’t know about opportunity.  Nobody else was poisoned, at least, not anyone that I know about.”

       “I don’t think anyone else was poisoned,” Mandy offered.  “Just Joe.  And we don’t know that it’s poison, Frank, that’s just a guess.”

       “I know,” Frank said.  “But I’d actually put money down on my guess being right.  I can’t think of any other reason he’d have that reaction.  He’s not allergic to anything; he wasn’t hit in the head by anyone.  There are a number of poisons that do cause convulsions and the other symptoms the paramedics told us about.”

       “Let’s just wait for the doctor’s word on things, before we go jumping after conclusions,” Fenton said.  “I’m inclined to believe you, Frank, but I’d rather know for sure what it is before we take anymore steps.”

       Frank nodded and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.  If he could see, he reflected, he just might have had a better idea what was happening to his brother.  If he could see, in fact, he might have prevented it.  He normally saw a lot during the course of a day, especially when on a case.  He saw, in some cases, what others missed.  Now, however, everyone saw more than he did.  He was learning to rely on other senses, like his hearing and his sense of smell and touch, but so newly blinded, he wasn’t confident in those other senses yet.  He had a long way still to go.

       “Do you want something to drink?” Samantha asked him a few minutes – or an hour – later.  He had no idea; he had been too lost in thought to keep an eye on his internal clock.  “I’m going to the vending machines.”

       “I’d love some tea, if they have any,” Frank told her.  He was too edgy to drink even decaf coffee but tea would soothe him. 

       Samantha squeezed his hand as she stood and untangled her arm from his own.  He heard her high-heeled shoes clomping along the floor as she moved across the waiting room.  Frank sighed and leaned his head back.

       “Penny for your thoughts?” Mandy asked him as she sat down in the chair next to him.  “You have that penetrating look on your face, the one you get when you’re about to declare who the murderer is.”

       “Actually, I’m just tired,” Frank admitted.  “And worried.  And scared.  And clueless, too, if you must know.”

       “We’ll find him,” Mandy said, confidently. 

       “I hope so,” Frank sighed.  “And soon, before he does more harm.”

       “Here,” Samantha interrupted a moment later.  She placed a cup into his hand.  “They had DaJong.  I thought you’d like that over the regular or orange spice.”

       “Thank you,” he said to her.

       “Mr. and Mrs. Hardy?” Frank heard someone calling his parents and felt his mother stand.  “I’m Doctor Klelin, an attending in the ER here at Bayport General.  I’ve been examining your son, Joe.”

       “How is he, Doctor?” Frank’s mom asked the doctor. 

       “He’s still unconscious,” Doctor Klelin admitted.  “And he’s had another case of convulsions since he was admitted to the ER.  We’re running an extensive series of blood tests on him as well as a cat scan and an MRI.  We want to rule out any kind of brain damage that he might have suffered.  The young woman that came with him, Vanessa Bender?  She stated that you were at a party.  Is there any chance that your son might have been taking a drug of some kind?”

       Frank stood in protest even as both Laura and Fenton protested. 

       “I’m not saying that he does drugs,” the doctor said.  “I’m ruling out possibilities.  His case is very curious and to treat him, we need to know exactly what has happened to him.  It’s very unlikely that this is a drug of some kind, it doesn’t quite match the symptoms of overdose for something like crack or heroin.”

       “It won’t, either,” Mandy retorted in a hostile voice.  “Joe doesn’t do stuff like that.  None of us do.  We have too much going on to kill our brain cells like that.”

       “I will let you know when the results of the tests come in,” the doctor said.  “They are running them as fast as they can.”

       Just then, the doctor’s pager went off and Frank jumped at the sound.  He shook his head in shock. 

       “I’ll be back,” the doctor said.

      

       He didn’t come back for another half-hour or so.  Samantha was holding onto Frank’s hand, her head resting on his shoulder as they waited and Frank stewed.  Drugs.  Like Joe would be caught dead doing drugs.  He was too proud of being an athlete, of solving cases, to come anywhere near that stuff.  Frank knew that, the doctors would know that too.

       Finally, the doctor returned, sounding a little frazzled.

       “We’ve already got the results of his tests back,” the doctor said.  “They found an unknown substance absorbed into his blood stream.  They’re still running tests to match the substance but best bet is that it’s a poison of some kind.  We’re treating him with a sort of universal treatment that is used for most common poisons, such as household cleaners.  We’ve managed to induce vomiting in him as well, so that he won’t ingest anymore of the stuff into his blood stream.  We’re hoping to delay what has been absorbed with the treatment.”

       “Will he be all right?” Laura Hardy asked again.

       “It’s our hope,” the doctor said.  “He’ll be staying in the ER for another hour or more and then we’ll move him to Intensive Care.  I’ve already started his treatment.”

       “Thank you,” Laura said in a worried tone.

 

       It was another hour or more later when someone else came into the waiting room where they all still waited.  Frank was listening to Kaitlyn and Chet talk about one of the classes that they had together and about a return trip they both wanted to make to Australia during the winter break.  Frank half-dozed in his seat, worry causing him to tire.  He sighed as he felt Samantha kiss his cheek and he squeezed the hand he still held.

       “Excuse me, Mr. or Mrs. Hardy?” this time it was a female voice.

       “That’s us,” Frank’s dad said to them. 

       “Dr. Klelin asked me to come and let you know that the poison has been neutralized.  Your son is still unconscious but he should not sustain any more damage from the poison.  He’s been moved up to the ICU; they’ll want to keep him until he wakes up and then for observation for twenty-four hours after that.  If you go up to the ICU waiting room, they’ll let you know when you can see him.”

       “Thank you,” his mother was polite again, if anxious. 

       Samantha led Frank up to the ICU waiting room and remarked that she was getting just a little too used to seeing this room for her own personal good.  Frank smiled at her, grateful that she was just teasing and not meaning it as Callie had.  For some reason, Samantha never minded the trips to the hospital that came invariably in Frank and Joe’s cases.  Callie, on the other hand, made a big deal out of it every time.  It was just as well that he and Callie had broken up before she went to school in San Francisco. 

       They were allowed in to see Joe a little while later.  Laura led Frank into the room and whispered that Joe was still unconscious.  His mother told Frank that Joe was hooked up to two IVs, one probably for hydration and the other probably some kind of medication.  Frank touched his brother’s hand; it felt cold.  Frank sat down in a chair.

       “All right, little brother,” he said to Joe in a no-nonsense voice.  “It’s about time for this to all stop.  You need to come home.  Don’t let that goon beat you.  Fight this, Joe!”

       He heard his mother chuckled and he smiled up at her.  Frank knew, from experience, just how to get Joe going again.  Just the very hint that someone might be ‘beating him’ would make Joe use all he had to win.  Joe hated losing!

       Finally, the kids all went back to the University, while Laura agreed to spend the night in the hospital with her son.  Frank wanted to but knew he couldn’t.  He would come back and see Joe in the morning.

 

       “All right, let’s go over what we know,” Mandy gazed over at her brother as Frank sipped on a cup of tea obtained from the snack bar in the Student Union.  They had not really forgotten his father’s prohibition against public meetings; Frank thought if they met here they could try and get an idea on who was reporting to the large man that they were still working on the case.  “Someone is after Joe or Joe and myself.  There seems to be a gang involved in this somehow; they are how Joe got involved in this in the first place.  I’m starting to lean rather heavily toward the revenge angle…”

       “Revenge angle?” Mandy asked.  Her brother could sure leap to conclusions in about five seconds.  “Why do you think that?”

       “Nothing else really adds up,” Frank said.  “I think their wanting us to not investigate just a smokescreen.  They know we have no idea what they’re up to or why and haven’t from the beginning.  They could have let Joe’s rescuing of Anna go and we would have been none the wiser if we never saw those gang members again.  I don’t think us stopping is really the point.  I think they’re actually after us, but playing this cat and mouse game to try to gain the upper hand before they kill us.”

       “That’s too weird,” Connor said and Mandy looked up at her boyfriend.  “Why go to all the trouble if they want you dead?  There’s been any number of chances for them to do that.  I mean the guy could have just killed Joe when he took Joe into the woods that night.  And, don’t take this wrong, Frank, but they could pretty much come after you anytime, if they’re quiet enough.”

       “That’s all true,” Frank admitted with a sigh.  “But, I don’t know.  I still think it’s revenge.  I don’t know why I think that.  Van, do you still have those lists?”

       “Sure,” Vanessa said and Mandy thought she looked confused too.  “They’re back at the dorm, though, let me run and get them.”

       “I’ll go with you,” Connor told her.  “Remember, none of us are supposed to wander around alone.”

       Mandy watched her boyfriend and best friend walk swiftly out of the student union and out into the quad, going in the direction of Eldridge Hall.  Mandy turned her attention back to her older brother.  Frank was drumming his fingers on the table as he thought things over.

       “So you don’t think this has anything to do with the Governor’s visit?” Mandy asked him.  “You really think someone’s after us?”

       “I really do,” Frank commented.  “Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions since I have no idea what’s going on but I’d like to think I’m going after the right conclusion.  We just need to figure out who this is.  That’s what it keeps coming back to.  Who.  If we can figure out who, we have a much better chance of figuring out why.”

       “If you mention this to Joe he’s going to blame it all on Uncle Derek,” Mandy said, softly.  “Not that I blame him for wanting to blame everything on Uncle Derek but we haven’t seen him lately.  We should establish that right now and make sure Joe knows it too.”

       “It’s not Uncle Derek,” Frank said.  “He’d be after Joe, alone, and not me or you.  I just wish we knew who that large man was.  He doesn’t look familiar to you, Mandy?”

       “No,” Mandy said, certainly.  “I’ve never seen him before.  I wish I had seen him before, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

       Frank was silent for a while longer, thinking through other aspects of the case, obviously.  Mandy couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses he wore but she knew he’d have that intense look he often head when chasing leads in his head.  She sighed and leaned back, sipping on her soda and thinking about her twin.  She never liked it when Joe was injured or ill and especially not when he was unconscious.  It was hard to explain to others, but she could sometimes feel things that he felt.  Not always and not with any kind of intensity, but she did feel it.  She always knew when he as really angry or really sad.  Right now, with Joe unconscious, she felt nothing at all.  That was disconcerting.  She was too used to being able to feel that connection with her twin.

       Vanessa and Connor ran back into the SU, Vanessa carrying her backpack.  They slid into place at the booth and Vanessa handed the stack of papers to Mandy, who read them out loud, again.

       “None of them seem to match up,” Frank said with a sigh.  “But we do have a few potential enemies that weren’t ever put in jail.  The Assassins are broken up now, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t individual ones out for revenge.”

       Mandy was grateful that the Assassins were broken up and that her brothers had not tangoed with them for the last year and a half.  That was one group of people Mandy hoped to never see or hear about again.

       “All right, let’s break this apart.  Vanessa, did you see anyone, anyone at all, who had an opportunity to spike Joe’s drink or food?” Frank asked Vanessa.

       Vanessa shook her head, then, remembering, said, “No.  I got his last drink myself after Anna spilled his last one on him.  I got his food, too.  She went with me, once.  I just took random slices of pizza off of the table, like everyone does.  There’s no way they could know which one was Joe’s or which drink was Joe’s for that matter.”

       “Did you get separated at any point?” Mandy asked her.

       Vanessa frowned as she thought it over, closing her eyes for a moment.  “Yes, actually, now that you mention it, we did.  I stopped for a few minutes to talk to a friend of mine from the computer department and Joe went over to talk to some of the football players.  I ducked into the bathroom at one point too… just after we got the new drinks.”

       “That had to be it,” Frank said.  “Did you see anyone near him when you came out of the bathroom?”

       Vanessa’s forehead wrinkled as she thought.  “Just Anna Phillips and her snob of a boyfriend walking away, laughing about something.  Joe looked totally irritated with them.  He didn’t tell me what they said, though.  That was the second time we’d run into them that night.”

       “She keeps turning up in this,” Frank said, frowning.  “And the large green-eyed man.”

       “What are you thinking, Frank?” Samantha asked him as she snaked an arm around his shoulders. 

       “We need to identify that large man,” Frank said.  “Mandy, I think you and Connor should go by the police station tomorrow and have a look at their computers, see if you can ID that large man.  If we can ID him, we might be able to actually figure out who’s behind this.”

       “We can do that,” Mandy agreed.  She, like her twin, liked it a lot more when there was something definite to do.  Inaction and talking were OK for a while but it didn’t usually get much accomplished.  “What else?”

       “We’ll have to do what else when Joe wakes up.  Ask him who had a chance to get near him and poison him.  Maybe there’s something up with that new boyfriend of Anna’s.”

       “Or maybe it’s Anna,” Vanessa muttered.  “She’s been awfully close to a couple of the attacks, hasn’t she?”

       “Van…” Frank said, slowly and Mandy saw Vanessa sigh and turn away.

       “I know,” Vanessa said.  “I can’t help it, she drives me nuts.  She drives Joe nuts too.”

       “That doesn’t mean she’s not involved,” Mandy commented.  “I mean, what if she is?  We’re taught to look at every angle, right, Frank?  So, let’s say she’s involved.  Why?”

       “I wouldn’t…” Frank was about to say when loud screaming near the front entrance of the student union interrupted them.  Mandy turned to see Anna Phillips standing there, her eyes wide, her clothes half-ripped from her body and blood pouring from a split lip. 

       Mandy and Connor stood and raced over to the girl.

       “What happened?” Mandy asked her, softly, feeling guilty that she had just accused Anna of being involved in the attacks on Joe and Frank.  “Anna?”

       “I was attacked!” Anna exclaimed. 

       And, suddenly, her legs seemed to give out under her and she fell forward, right into Connor’s arms.

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).