The nurse’s dry humor didn’t make a dent in the skinny man’s earnest demeanor. “No, it makes me wake up at two o’clock in the morning, reliving that race over and over. I remember it like it was yesterday. The eyes of the nation were on me after years of training and sacrifice. Two thousand years of history and sportsmanship awaited my performance, but as I took my position at the starting line, I started worrying my left shoe wasn’t tied properly. I lost out to Belgium because that shoelace distracted me. Belgium! So now I’m here for the free room and board so I can train for the St. Louis Olympics in two years. There will be no fourth-place finish in St. Louis, and I will qualify for this study.”
“Step up on the scale, St. Louis,” Nurse Hollister said. “You’re on the scrawny side for this.”
Luke held his breath, hoping St. Louis would qualify. Anyone tormented by old regrets, even if it was only missing out on a medal, deserved his sympathy.
“You pass to the next round,” the nurse said. “Next.”
This was it. Luke stepped forward, praying he weighed enough to qualify for the next round.
“Take off your belt,” the nurse intoned when he tried to step on the scale.
Blast! He’d worn his heaviest belt buckle to gain a few ounces. He yanked it off and stepped onto the scale, resisting the urge to shift with the need to relieve himself.
“One hundred and sixty-one pounds,” the nurse announced as she marked it on his chart.
Thank the good Lord! He dared not ask to use the bathroom, lest she realize what he’d done. “Can I step outside?” he asked. “I saw a water fountain in the hallway.”
“Don’t be long,” Nurse Hollister said with a nod.
He didn’t even bother to tug his shoes back on, just ran down the hall toward the men’s lavatory in stocking feet. On his way back, he took a sip from the water fountain just to keep himself honest, but he was now ready to compete against the other men in earnest.
By the time he got back, most of the volunteers had been dismissed for failing to meet the basic physical requirements, but Luke, the two brothers, St. Louis, and twenty other men were still in the running. The brothers were arguing about who was a better sailor when Luke approached the taller of the two brothers and offered his hand.
“Luke Delacroix,” he introduced himself. “I won the two-man sculling contest three years in a row in college, and according to Nurse Hollister’s chart, my eyes dilated a second faster than both of you loafers.”
They were fighting words. Big Rollins challenged him to a rowing race after the trials, and Little Rollins said he had the advantage over all the volunteers because of his cast-iron stomach.
“That will be useful against the poison you people are going to feed us, right, Nurse Hollister?” Little Rollins asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say exactly what will be in the meals,” the nurse replied.
“Acid?” St. Louis asked. “Formaldehyde? Paint thinner?”
“Let’s not dwell on it,” Luke said. “It’s all poison.”
“Then we shall be your poison eaters,” Little Rollins said to the nurse.
“That doesn’t sound quite right,” the other brother commented. “Poison crew? Poison team?”
“Poison squad,” St. Louis offered, and Luke had to admit that name had a certain flair.
They were soon all ushered into a new room for the physical tests.
“In this room we will test for basic physical coordination,” a young doctor in a white lab coat said. “Nothing exotic and no hurdles, but we need to see if you can toss a beanbag from hand to hand for a full sixty seconds.”
Big Rollins snorted. “Let’s see if we can juggle for two minutes.”
“Deal!” Little Rollins said.
Luke was curious to see if they could actually do it, but these men were both young, healthy, and had obviously spent too much time in foolish competitions. They both juggled quite well, and the nurse tried to get them to stop after a minute, but they insisted on continuing to see who could outlast the other. Given their health and vigor, it was obvious these two would be selected for the study. If Luke could keep pace with them, surely he’d be among the men chosen too.
The brothers continued their frantic juggling, laughing as they tossed the beanbags in ever-faster motions to impress the nurse. Big Rollins won by twenty seconds and surrendered his two beanbags.
“That’s nothing,” Luke said. “I can do it with my feet.”
That got everyone’s attention, earning catcalls and howls of disbelief, but these people didn’t know him. When a man spent fifteen months trapped in a prison cell with little to do . . . yes, he had learned to juggle with his feet.
He was out of practice, so he only took one beanbag. He still had his shoes off, and he lay on the floor, propping himself up on his elbows and holding his knees in the air. After balancing the beanbag on top of a foot, he tossed it in the air, then caught it on top of his other foot. The nurse started the timer, and Luke continued batting the beanbag from foot to foot. The other men began applauding as he crossed the sixty-second mark. He could have gone the full two minutes if he hadn’t been laughing so hard, but eventually the beanbag went glancing off his foot too far for him to capture, and he sprang back to his feet, accepting congratulations from some of the men and even the doctor.
But not the brothers. “We’re going to have to kill him,” Little Rollins said.
Luke grinned and offered his hand. “You can’t kill me. After today we’re all teammates on the Poison Squad.”
Ten minutes later his assertion was proven correct as he, the two brothers, St. Louis, and eight other men were given the paperwork to become the inaugural members of the Poison Squad.
When Luke joined the experiment, he hadn’t realized the strain it would put on both Gray and his wife. After all, it was his body and his mission, but if he put himself in danger’s way, it affected others. Annabelle was tormenting herself for telling him about the study, and it was obvious Gray wanted him to have nothing to do with it. Today they were both helping him move into the boardinghouse where he’d live for the next four months. It was a slim three-story building only blocks from the Department of Agriculture.
Gray did his best to talk Luke out of going inside. “You haven’t signed any contract committing you to this study. You are free to walk away at any time. I say you walk away now. Before it even begins.”
Luke headed up the steps to the front porch. “I have to do it.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve already given enough of yourself.”
It hurt to see the expression on Gray’s face as he stood on the sidewalk with Luke’s trunk slung over his shoulder. Gray had been his lifeline over the past year, visiting him repeatedly in that Cuban jail and then tending him while he recovered his health. He didn’t want to repay that generosity by thumbing his nose at Gray’s concerns, but he felt called to this assignment.
“Here, I’ll take the trunk. You don’t need to stay.”
When he reached for the strap, Gray twisted past him and headed into the boardinghouse. A clerk in the foyer directed Luke to a third-floor bedroom he would be sharing with three other men.