He was sure that he was looking at juvenile-onset diabetes, technically known as “Type 1,” or “insulin-dependent” diabetes mellitus-usually called IDDM. Patients who did not get insulin died.

And there were other complications. Mandrake’s dehydration was advanced. He was drinking as much water as he could, but the sugar in his urine was carrying out even more than he could take in. Soon he wouldn’t be able to drink enough to keep up. That would bring on a coma and, eventually, death.

He was also losing potassium, which had its own spectrum of ugly side effects, including paralysis and respiratory failure. That, too, could be fatal.

Then there was a rarer nightmare, but perhaps the worst of all, and one seen most often in kids-cerebral edema. The brain swelled, compressing the brain stem, and causing death within a few hours. It was treatable if caught in time, but that required sophisticated equipment.

Monks had no accurate way to measure how close Mandrake was to a crisis, either. But his gut told him that even if he had insulin, even if he could deal with all those factors and stabilize the boy’s condition, it would only be for a matter of days. And something as simple as a cold or an infection could quickly destroy the precarious balance.

He was staring at Mandrake in the room’s dim light when he heard the lodge’s door open, then footsteps cross the main room. The old wooden floor telegraphed the sounds, a series of creaks and hollow thumps.

Monks moved quietly to the bedroom doorway and peered through the hanging blanket. The newcomer was Marguerite, apparently done with Captain America. She was kneeling at the fireplace, setting a metal cook pan on the glowing coals.

She stood, shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, and paced, her head bowed as if in concentration. After half a minute, she went to the table and poured a glass of wine. She drank it down in a few fierce swallows, then poured another.

It seemed that she was troubled.

Monks went back to his chair. A few minutes later, he heard her footsteps approach the bedroom. She stepped into the doorway, carrying a tray with a covered plate and a mug. But she did not come in. It occurred to Monks that she was staying beyond the radius of his fetter, as if he were a vicious dog.

“I warmed you up some food,” she said.

He hadn’t eaten since lunch, and the savory smell of roasted meat started his belly growling. But he was not yet ready to succumb. It added to the mean edge he was harboring toward his captors.

“You don’t feel strange about serving dinner to somebody who’s chained to the floor?” he said.

“Look, this wasn’t my idea.” She kept her head half turned away, as if to hide behind the long hair that covered the side of her face.

“That’s what the Nazi camp guards claimed after World War Two. Watch a movie called Night and Fog sometime.”

“You don’t understand, man,” she said, dropping back into the defensive mode that he had seen earlier.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Freeboot’s not like other people.”

“I understand that.”

“I mean-he doesn’t go by the same rules.”

Monks thought about pointing out that people who made up their own rules tended to be called “felons,” but he decided to back off-not out of compassion, but in the hopes that he might be able to win her confidence and use it to his advantage.

“You’re the only one here who seems to give a damn about him,” he said, nodding toward Mandrake.

“It’s not that they don’t care. It’s just that everybody’s…wrapped up in other stuff.”

“So I’ve gathered,” Monks said.

Monks got the water cup and sat on the bed, coaxing Mandrake to drink. Marguerite hesitated a little longer, then walked in and set the tray on the table.

“If you want to crash, I can take over that,” she said.

“I’m all right for now.”

She went to the doorway, but lingered, one hand resting against the jamb.

“I couldn’t believe what you did back there,” she said. “Tasting pee.”

“Practicing medicine’s not always pretty.”

“It freaked Freeboot out totally,” she said. “It was like you read his mind. He’s terrified of diabetes. He had an uncle who went blind. The doctors didn’t help him any.”

Monks registered the information. That probably figured into why Freeboot had reacted so strongly.

“Sometimes there’s nothing that can be done,” Monks said.

It took him another minute to get an adequate amount of water into the little boy. Marguerite was quiet, and he thought she had gone, but when he stood up, she was outside the doorway, watching. She beckoned to him with a timid wave.

“Could that happen to Mandrake?” she asked quietly. “Going blind?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Monks said. “Unless he gets to a hospital, he’s not going to live anywhere near that long.”

Twenty minutes later, the blanket was pulled roughly aside again. Monks was surprised-he hadn’t heard footsteps approach this time. Freeboot strode into the room with a small duffel bag full of stuff, which he dumped on the table. He was still barefoot.

“Here’s your insulin,” he said triumphantly.

Monks was surprised by this, too. After the couple of hours of driving on back roads, he had assumed that the nearest town big enough for an all-night pharmacy would be a long round trip.

He got up from his chair to look. There were two bottles of insulin, both manufactured by Eli Lilly. One was Humulin RU-100-regular insulin, 100-units-per-milliliter strength. The other was longer-acting Humulin NPH. There were also a handheld glucose meter and strips for measuring blood sugar, disposable lancets for drawing the blood drops-and packets of Monoject 1-cc syringes, available only by prescription.

The explanation came clear fast. The plastic caps that sealed fresh insulin bottles were missing. The bottles and packets all had been opened and were partially empty.

“You got this from a diabetic patient?” Monks said.

“Somebody we know. Don’t sweat, we paid for it.”

“I’m not worried about that. This medicine is that person’s lifeline. They need it.”

“We need it, man. She can get more.”

Monks hesitated: push had come to shove. Now was the last moment when he could simply refuse to cooperate. It might call Freeboot’s bluff-force him to take Mandrake in for treatment.

If not, Mandrake was as good as dead.

Reluctantly, Monks hefted the two bottles, one in each hand, as if that could help him gauge the dosage. In the ER, when someone came in critically ill with IDDM, the insulin was administered intravenously, with the blood sugar constantly monitored. There was always the grave danger of the insulin driving the sugar level too low, which could bring on hypoglycemia, convulsions, and brain damage.

He knew the appropriate dosages and procedures for those situations, and in the ER he carried a personal digital assistant for calculations and information that wasn’t at his fingertips. But here, it was going to be a very dicey affair.

Freeboot was watching him intently. “You got a problem?”

“This isn’t straightforward, like an antibiotic,” Monks said. “There’s a lot of factors involved. How about finding me some rubbing alcohol.”

Freeboot’s eyes narrowed, and Monks realized again that even such a mild demand was an affront to that huge ego. But he had plenty to worry about without having to pussyfoot around.

“We don’t keep anything like that around here,” Freeboot said.

“Vodka, then.”

Freeboot stalked to the door. “Marguerite!” he barked into the other room. “Bring me a bottle of vodka.”

Monks went through the flow chart in his head once more. An adult patient would typically take both kinds of insulin together, morning and evening-perhaps ten units of the regular, to help metabolize meals, and twenty units of the NPH long-term, for general stabilization. But the NPH was of no use to someone in crisis, and ten units of the RU-100 would be way too much. Mandrake weighed no more than fifty pounds, and, sick as he was, the risk of overlowering his blood sugar outweighed the possible benefit of a high dose.