Super Meals: Part Thirty Three

            “Bismuth?”

            Doctor Ralph actually said the word out loud. He couldn’t believe it, but saying it aloud didn’t make it any more believable.

            It had taken over an hour to perform all of his experiments on the remaining sample of Walter’s vomit, and the results were basically the same. There were traces of the chemicals from the “food” Walter had eaten for breakfast (which Doctor Ralph had been able to isolate rather easily since he knew what they were already), the standard helping of bodily fluids that were standard in such a sample as this, and…

“Bismuth.”

Saying it aloud again still wasn’t making it any better.

He’d further isolated the compound and ran it through the assorted machines again, this time on its own. While the analysis was going on, he pulled up “Bismuth Subsalicylate” online and checked the chemical formula.

This was where things got…weird.

He started with Wikipedia, then cross-referenced it against the listing from the Mayo Clinic, and again at the online drug reference library. Every site, without fail, listed it as C7H5BiO4.

But that wasn’t the same compound as the sample.

The sample from Walter’s stomach was C7H6BiO4.

There was an extra hydrogen molecule.

Doctor Ralph practically leapt from his chair and threw himself across the room at the mass spectrometer that was analyzing the sample and froze. He waved his hands at it in frustration, as if that would make it somehow go faster. He bounced from foot to foot, making little grunting noises. He slapped a hand on the side of the machine. He refreshed the results screen every thirty seconds for five solid minutes.

Then, finally, when the multi-million dollar piece of equipment had finished analyzing the chemical compound that he had placed within it, he had his results.

C7H6BiO4

Adam was feeling better.

He had crawled from the alleyway and, while sticking to the side streets, made it to the local college campus. The entire way was blisteringly hot for him, and the lab coat he had stolen from the morgue had long since gone from white to burned brown, but he was off the concrete and laying on the grass now, and the perfectly manicured, cool lawn felt soft against his skin.

Students walking by were quite taken aback, however, at the half-naked man lying in a patch of dead, burnt grass, mere feet from the fountain in front of the old music building, but Adam didn’t care. He’d gone from a cold hard slab to melting garbage and asphalt to soft grass. In his eyes, things were looking up.

A small group of students had gathered around him, and one of the braver young men stepped forward and squatted down to ask, “Hey man, you okay?”

Adam opened one eye and looked at him for a long second before mumbling, “Yeh… M’good.”

The young man leaned in and said, “Can we get you some help?” as he extended a hand, but as soon as it touched Adam’s shoulder he snapped it back, hissing at the pain. “Goddamn, dude! You’re burning up!”

“I said m’good…” muttered Adam. He was more awake and conscious now, aware of the crowd around him, but largely ignoring it all in favor of the water pouring over the lip of the fountain ahead of him. He heaved his arms underneath himself and pushed up, sliding his knees under himself before finally stumbling upright.

He left two blackened handprints in the grass, but didn’t notice.

 Several of the students commented on his near-nakedness, but he wasn’t listening. He lurched forward, one heavy foot at a time, until he reached the stone basin of the campus fountain, and fell in.

“You sure you wanna eat that?”

Mimi was halfway through her own meal already, but Walter hadn’t even taken a bite of his. They were sitting at a hard plastic table identical to the thirty others in the fast-food restaurant, on hard plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor. Walter had ordered something called the “Suicidal Rodeo Clown” that consisted of four “beef” patties, eight strips of “bacon,” four “onion rings,” four slices of “cheese,” and served open-faced so as to show off the artistic skills of the “chef” who had used a mix of “ketchup,” “mustard,” “mayonnaise,” “barbecue sauce,” and the restaurant’s signature secret sauce to draw a clown face on the top bun.

When he got it back to the table, Walter flipped the top bun over and smooshed it down with his hand, causing the assorted sauces to cascade over the edge of the rest of the burger.

He was no longer sure he wanted to eat it.

“Not really,” he said. “At least not here. What if something happens?”

“Well,” said Mimi, finishing off her own burger, “wrap it up, then. I gotta go have a quick word with the manager and then we can go.”

“Where to?”

“I dunno, actually. It’s probably not a good idea to go back to the park, so try to think of somewhere while I go have a chat.”

Walter thought while wrapping up his burger.

Mimi walked around and then behind the counter. One of the older workers approached her and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I can’t let you be back here,” while blocking her path. Mimi put on her best “Don’t fuck with me” face and held her badge up in the girl’s face, and she immediately stepped aside.

As she walked past her, Mimi said, “Where’s the manager?”

The girl pointed towards the back of the restaurant, at the broom closet that was now an office, and Mimi went towards it. She knocked on the door, and SaraBecca opened it.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Detective Mimi Spatchcock,” said Mimi, holding her badge up again. “You had a gentleman here this morning working at the drive through window…”

“Timmy?” said SaraBecca.

“Is that the name he gave you?” said Mimi, taking her phone out of her pocket.

“Well, yes. That’s the name his caretaker gave us, at least. Why? Was there something wrong with your food?”

“No,” said Mimi, “the food was fine. What caretaker are you talking about?”

“Timmy’s caretaker. He’s one of our special needs hires. He works the window in the mornings, but we only let him hand food to the customers because he’s not able to get his food handler’s card. In the afternoons he cleans. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Wait, you’re telling me that this man is mentally or physically handicapped in some way?” Mimi had pulled up a picture of Doctor Ralph on her phone and showed it to SaraBecca.

“Oh! No, that’s Doctor Quinlan. He’s one of the head chefs from the corporate kitchen. Why? Did something happen to him?”

A few minutes later Mimi rejoined Walter at their table, where he had wrapped and bagged his special burger. He stood up when she approached, and asked, “Are we all set?”

“Yeah,” said Detective Mimi. “I have an idea about where our assailant from this morning might be staying in town and got confirmation of his identity. You think of a place you wanna go eat?”

“Yeah, actually,” said Walter. “There’s a bunch of wooded areas off the beaten path over at the college. Why don’t we go try there?”