The Broken Hearts Club

Seventeen. The Game is On

Daughtler got to his car, unlocking the door and sitting down. He started the car and fished Nico's ID badge out of his pocket.

    "You aren't the only guy who has moves in this family, Nico," he said, as he smiled.

He drove towards Virginia General and parked in the visitors lot before going in. He bypassed the front desk but came back when the woman sitting there called him.

    "Where are you going to, sir?"

    "I'm Nathan Daughtler. My brother, Nico Daughtler, is a doctor here."

    "Okay?"

Daughtler tried to think quick on his feet.

    "He's out with the flu and he wanted me to come by and grab some files from his office so he didn't get behind with his patients."

The woman narrowed her eyes as Nico's ID started to become soaked with sweat in Daughtler's palm. Luckily, the woman smiled and nodded.

    "How nice that you want to help your brother. Do you need a key?"

    "No, he gave me his badge."

    "Alright, then. I hope your brother feels better."

    "Thank you so much. Have a good day."

Daughtler continued down the hall and towards the elevator. He got on and instead of riding it up to Nico's office, he got off on the floor where the records room was and keyed Nico's ID inside. He immediately locked the door and made his way to the cabinet that held the patients with the last name of D. He quickly flipped through the folders until he found his father's. He put his brother's ID back in his pocket, turning on the desk light as he set the folder down. His eyes scanned the pages. He knew something was wrong, he just didn't know what it was. Yet. People didn't just have heart attacks and be completely fine, suspiciously too fine, especially people of his father's age. Whether it was his brother or another doctor, they were covering something up.

    "Yahtzee," he breathed as his eyes rested on the medication history. He read a few he recognized but when he came to a placebo, he stopped. Why would his dad be taking a placebo? He continued reading and flipped back a page to look at the dates. "Son of a bitch," Daughtler scoffed.

A small primitive part of him had been hoping that what he had suspected wouldn't be true.

No such luck.

It was unusual that they wouldn't have work every day and Conrad wanted to take advantage of it. He had the whole day planned out, starting out with a trip downtown. He leashed up his golden retriever, Belle, and locked his front door as he started the trek towards the shops. The dog began to pull a little bit as she started to sense where they were going- the butcher's shop was always welcome to toss her a small sausage or hot dog. And Conrad appreciated that it calmed her down. There were perks of living in Virginia and being just a fifteen minutes drive from work and downtown was one of those perks. Conrad had been granted a nice, non-cloudy day to spend his day off.

    "Whoa, okay, girl, okay," Conrad smiled as they reached the butcher's shop and the retriever put her big paws up against the glass and Sam, the butcher working that day, laughed and tossed the dog a sausage.

    "Thanks a million, Sam."

    "Of course, C. Belle's a sweetheart."

    "That she is. But she's also a troublemaker. Don't let her face fool you," Conrad said goodbye to the butcher but ran into something on his way out as he tried to fix the golden dog's collar.