Page 2 of Sucker For You

“I’ve been talking up Hydromotinzate to UCSF’s head of neurology,” Chase said, with his patented grin and a slug of bubbles. “I’ve got a potential roster.”

“And it’s still only September!” A clap on Chase’s shoulder reverberated through Isabel’s body, too. “Glad we stopped by. Also, congratulations. Now—after this thing’s over, any plans?”

Whywerethe BioPulse reps here?

Maybe Karen Meyer had invited her son’s colleagues—doctors in the San Francisco Medical Center’s neurology ward, a few hospital administrators, and the pharmaceutical representatives—to make up for Isabel’s own lack of approved additions to the guest list. She could number the people she knew tonight on little more than five fingers. That included Chase, his parents, plus Chase’s younger brother, Ethan (“awkward loner”)—a soft-spoken physicist with a firm handshake and a service golden retriever—whom she’d met that afternoon, and Ethan’s partner, Dr. Erin Monaghan (“ball-buster”).

Ethan and Erin had barely stayed for the toasts before vanishing into the yacht club’s pool room. When Isabel had slipped away to the balcony, she’d spotted them elbowing each other over the felt-topped table to take shots, arguing and laughing about momentum, velocity, and who wasn’t playing fair.

She’d left the pair trying to retrieve a cue ball from Ethan’s dog, and retreated.

Now she scanned the dining room, seeking any other familiar faces while Chase’s networking continued, peppered with interjections about San Francisco’s best nightlife options.None. But the photographers were getting bolder as the alcohol poured freely. The noise level kept rising, Chase downing yet more champagne while discussing the red tape of conducting experimental drug trials at UCSF.

“Working in a private practice will make these kinds of trials easier. Better and faster care for patients, and more—”

“—lucrative for you.”

“A good deal all around. UCSF’s got so much bureaucracy, and I know I can—”

She didn’t hear the rest of his plan. Not when a new photographer thrust a camera straight into her face.

Flash.

Her vision sizzled a second time. A vein of feverish warmth crept over her scalp, under her eyelids.

No—not tonight!

She exhaled slowly, fighting her own heartbeat. “Chase, I’m going to. . .”

“Can you grab a couple more prawn cups, babe?”

Nodding, she slipped from under his arm, before immediately ducking lower still to dodge a catering tray of bruschetta slicestopped with baby octopus tentacles. The meat was flushed red and scarred with grilling.

“Oops, sorry!”

Bile surged into her throat. She’d get the prawn cups later. “Uh—bathroom?”

“Down the hall on your right.”

She swerved to avoid additional photographers, through the dining room doors, and past a decorative aquarium in the hall. The water burbling through its pump smelled sour, recognizable as the scent of sea anemones in distress. The tank’s LED lighting was tropically bright. But maybe the water chemistry was the wrong pH for its organisms? She almost paused.

Her temples throbbed.

No—no time to waste by searching for crushed coral additives.

“Sorry,” she whispered while she pushed through the club’s recessed bathroom door, into a lounge with piped-in classical music and orchids, then through a second door to the stalls and sinks. She fumbled in her clutch. Her clammy fingers located a medicine bottle.

“Ceretobicin: Patent Pending.”

She tapped out a pill for BioPulse Pharmaceuticals’ experimental migraine medication and washed it down with water from the tap. Her hands shook. Splashing droplets speckled the sink’s marble counter. The cold seized in her throat. She drank again. She couldn’t afford an episode. She couldn’t afford the blindness and the excruciating nerve pain.

Not tonight.

The expiration date on her medicine vial was August of next year.

Her visa expired in that same month.

Karen had scheduled Chase and Isabel’s shower for the first night of September. Their wedding was booked at the Officers’ Club in the Presidio for the thirtieth. Isabel’s own immigration timeline was unforgiving, too strict to admit disruptions or delays; Chase’s irritation with the United States’ protracted red tape processes wasn’t unfounded. Because even if everything went according to Karen’s plans and her own, there were still ten months of paperwork and waiting after the ceremony before she would be safe, could besure—