Chapter Twenty-Nine
Olivia
The results were in.
I waited with bated breath in Dr. Donnelly’s little office on the first floor. He’d called our room ten minutes ago to tell me to come in if I was free, and I’d hightailed it down here immediately.
Dec was hanging out with Mark (they wanted to try some sort of fishing with some locals while we had a free day from filming), so he hadn’t heard the call and thus had nothing to worry about. I hadn’t told him about my concerns yet. I figured I should wait till I had the official results, otherwise I might get him excited or freaked out about something that turned out to be nothing more than a stomach bug.
“So your results just arrived,” Dr. Donnelly said, pushing his glasses farther up his nose as he frowned at the computer screen in front of him. “You aren’t pregnant, Olivia.”
I widened my eyes. “I’m not?”
“No. Definitely not.”
I had to admit, I felt a pang of loss at that, even though there’d never been a baby to begin with. I knew then and there that once this was all over and Dec’s sham marriage to Mom was annulled, I wanted to start a family with him as soon as possible. “Oh,” I said softly. “So it’s just stress? Or a bug?”
He shook his head. “No. That’s part of the reason I wanted you to come in immediately. This is all very strange.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Strange?”
He shifted in his seat. “Do you use hand sanitizer, Olivia? More specifically, do you use a lot of hand sanitizer?”
“No.” I frowned.
“The tests showed an abnormally high level of something in your system called triclosan. It’s an antibacterial agent. Common hand sanitizer ingredient. Usually harmless, but it can occasionally cause hormonal changes. Regarding estrogen modulation, specifically.”
“Er… What are you saying, exactly?”
“You had such a high level of triclosan in your system that it caused you to have hormonal symptoms which mimicked pregnancy. Nausea, tiredness, breast tenderness. A missed period.”
“Why would it be so high? Like I said, I don’t even use hand sanitizer.”
Dr. Donnelly frowned and leaned forward. “I really don’t know. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this. Honestly, I’m quite sure that for such a high concentration to be found in your blood, you’d have to actually ingest the stuff. Not just put it on your skin.”
“Like…it could happen if I drank a bottle of hand sanitizer?” I said, wrinkling my forehead.
“Not a whole bottle. But yes, it’s almost as if you’ve accidentally dropped some in your food or drink. I cannot think of another way for so much triclosan to get into your system.”
My mind immediately flashed to Andrew. He’d already tried to make me sick once before, when I wouldn’t help him out with his stupid plan, so who was to say he wouldn’t do it again?
I gritted my teeth for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Could someone have dropped a bit of hand sanitizer in my food a few times? A small enough amount to mask the taste, but still large enough to eventually build it up in my system to make me sick like this?”
“It’s possible, yes. But Olivia, there’s no reason someone would do that. At least none I can think of.”
“They could’ve done it to make me sick. Maybe to make me leave the show.”
He shook his head. “If someone was actively trying to make you sick enough to make you leave the show, I doubt they’d use something like this. Like I said, this stuff is mostly harmless. Even with a high concentration, as it is in your case, the worst it can do is cause hormonal shifts, leading to the nausea and other symptoms you’ve experienced. It could never make you seriously ill, let alone be life-threatening. I’d say this is purely accidental. Are you sure you don’t use any sort of hand sanitizer?”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Dr. Donnelly cast a suspicious gaze on me. I could tell he didn’t believe me, and he probably thought I was crazy for thinking someone might try to make me sick. But it’d happened to me before, so it could easily happen again. “Do you really think someone might be out to harm you?” he asked, disbelief still flashing in his eyes.
I shrugged. “Well, one of the contestants put laxatives or something similar in my food when we went on that yacht thing several weeks back. There are some real assholes on this show.”
His eyebrows shot up. “My god. Really?”
“Yep. I was vomiting and having diarrhea for two straight days. I know the guy did it because he damn well told me.”
Dr. Donnelly shook his head in disbelief, but at least this time, the disbelief wasn’t aimed at me. “That’s disgusting. It’s unbelievable what some people will do to win a show like this,” he said. “But look, as I said, triclosan isn’t deadly. If this isn’t accidental, which I’m sure it is, then whoever has been feeding it to you didn’t want to kill you. They just wanted to make you sick, but it’ll be out of your system within a few days or so. No long-term damage.”
“And if it isn’t accidental?”
“Obviously if someone has been trying to make you sick, then we need to do something about it. But we need to be sure before we can report it. So I’ll need you to come back in a week for more tests. If it’s still in your system in a high concentration, then we can be certain that you’re being purposefully exposed to it. That’s when we can report it and try to find out who’s behind it.”
I nodded. “Sounds fair.”
“I’m sure it’s accidental. I really hope it is,” he said. He reached over and patted my shoulder. “I’ll see you in a week. Make sure you don’t go near any hand sanitizer just in case, all right?”
I gave him a grateful smile. “I’ll try. Thank you.”
I left the doctor’s office deep in thought. It had to be Andrew behind this. Asshole. He must’ve wanted revenge for what happened all those weeks ago on the cruise ship, when Dec went and ‘spoke’ to him. I still had no idea what exactly went down between them, but obviously Andrew didn’t like it, and he’d finally built up the courage to go after me for sending Dec after him.
I didn’t want to wait till next week to confront him. I wanted to get this done right now. Frowning, I doubled my pace and headed upstairs to the second floor, where I knew he shared a room with his fake wife, Yvonne.
I rapped on the door a few times, but there was no answer. Frustrated, I shifted from one foot to the other. I suddenly needed to pee, but I didn’t want to leave until I got hold of Andrew and told him I was onto him.
“Liv? What are you doing?”
I turned at the sound of a familiar feminine voice, and I smiled as I saw Isobel heading toward me. “Hey. I was just looking for Andrew.”
She frowned as she drew closer and stopped. “Andrew? Don’t you remember? He and Yvonne got voted out two weeks ago. They aren’t here anymore.”
I cocked my head to the side in confusion, and then it all came back to me. Crap, how could I forget? They had been voted out a few weeks ago, after the viewers clearly decided they were done with Yvonne’s bitchy attitude and Andrew’s arrogant assholery and let them know that in the online polls. So there was no way Andrew could be the one slipping drops of hand sanitizer in my food. That meant… Shit, that meant someone else was trying to make me sick.
But who? And why?
“Livvy, are you okay?” Isobel asked. “You’ve gone all pale again. Just like you were the other day in the garden.”
I shrank back, suddenly afraid of her. Of everyone. When it came down to it, I couldn’t truly trust a single person on this island apart from Dec. I didn’t want to suspect Isobel of doing anything untoward, especially after we’d become so close so quickly after our conversation a few days ago, but I had no choice. Like Dr. Donnelly said, some people would do anything to win a show like this, and I’d already seen firsthand evidence of that with Shayla and her antics. For all I knew, Isobel—or any of the other remaining contestants—could be secretly out to sabotage everyone else. Just like Shayla.
I forced a smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “I just really need to pee. I’ll catch you at dinner later?”
“Oh. Sure, see you then.”
I took off down the hall towards the stairwell, desperate to get back to my room so I could hide from everyone for a while. I could feel Isobel’s eyes on my back, and when I reached the stairs, I briefly glanced back over my shoulder. She was still standing there looking at me, her face twisted with confusion. Or was it suspicion?
I didn’t wait around to get a closer look. I quickly fled to my room and locked the door. Dec wasn’t back from his little fishing expedition with Mark, so I was all alone. With shaky legs, I stepped into the bathroom to pee, and upon removing my panties, I groaned. My late period had finally decided to arrive. Figures.
I balled up some toilet paper and stuffed it in my panties to stem the flow until I could grab a tampon, and then I crouched down and opened the bathroom cabinet. I rummaged around, frowning. Where were the damn things? They were nowhere to be seen.
I wondered if I might’ve accidentally put them on Dec’s side of the cabinet, so I leaned over and looked there. My heart began to thud painfully fast in my chest as I pushed some things at the back aside in my search for the tampon box. Sitting behind some shaving cream and aftershave was a bottle of hand sanitizer. Wait, no…two bottles of hand sanitizer. It wasn’t on my side, and I’d certainly never brought any into the room.
It was definitely Dec’s.
With trembling hands, I grabbed one of the bottles and turned it around so that I could check the ingredients label. Maybe this was just a coincidence; maybe this was another sort of sanitizer that didn’t even contain the chemical that was so abundant in my system right now. But even as I thought it, my eyes confirmed otherwise as they skimmed over the ingredients list.
Contains triclosan.