07 - Mallets Aforethought by Sarah Graves

07 - Mallets Aforethought by Sarah Graves

Author:Sarah Graves [Aforethought, Mallets]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-20T05:00:00+00:00


“Rat poison really only comes in two varieties,” said Victor an hour later.

I already knew this. But I’d asked him over here to get some information from him, and when you want information from Victor you have to listen to what he wants to say, first.

And at the moment due to recent local events he was hot on poisons. “You’ve got your coumarin-based compounds, warfarin, the blood thinners. Animal leaves the premises searching for water. Dies outdoors.”

He had another swallow of wine. “Then there are convulsants. Strychnine’s one. You’ve got to catch ’em within minutes of their ingesting the substance. People, the accidental poisoning cases, I mean.”

More old news. But he was getting up a head of instructional steam. No sense knocking the train off the track.

“. . . Catch ’em fast, charcoal lavage. You pump a slurry of the charcoal into the gut, it absorbs some of the poison. Pump it out again, support all the vital signs meanwhile, maybe you’ve given yourself half a chance. But . . .”

He wagged a warning finger at me. Once upon a time if he’d done that I’d have bitten it off.

But he had been on a fairly decent run of behavior recently. So I just thought about biting it off.

“But it’s not often a strychnine victim even makes it that far. Strychnine gets absorbed fast,” he continued.

“Is there an antidote?”

He shook his head. “Treatment’s supportive. Anticonvulsant drugs, try to keep ’em alive until basically the stuff’s excreted and the effect wears off. Which,” he added, “is why it’s become a registry-only substance.”

I raised an eyebrow, which was all he ever needed. He moved along in his lecture, which was what I needed.



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