THE PRICE OF FOCUS

CHAPTER 4: THE TEST

St. Gregory’s Chemistry Lab – 11:47 PM

The chemistry lab at midnight was a cathedral of shadows and silver. Moonlight fractured through the beakers, casting prismatic scars across the titration tables. Daniel's breath fogged the air—too quick, too shallow—as Evelyn backed him against the emergency shower, her gloved hands cradling a graduated cylinder like a sacred relic.

"Let's test your hypothesis," she whispered. The liquid within swirled, viscous as spinal fluid, catching the sodium vapor lights in mercury-bright shivers. *0.5% succinylcholine solution*—their last experiment perfected to lethal purity.

Her tools gleamed in meticulous array:

- **22-gauge needle** (bevel up, for clean penetration)

- **Tourniquet** (neatly coiled like a sleeping snake)

- **Stopwatch** (already ticking at 00:00:47)

Daniel's pulse jumped as she pressed the cold steel barrel against his basilic vein. "Muscle paralysis follows a fascinating cascade." Her voice was a clinical caress. "First the levator palpebrae... then the masseter..." The needle flashed. "...finally the diaphragm. You'll retain full sensation throughout."

The wall clock's second hand stuttered:

- *23:48:03* – A drop of sweat traced his sternum

- *23:48:29* – His trapezius twitched like a frog's galvanized limb

- *23:48:47* – The taste of copper flooded his tongue

Across the room, his unguarded backpack gaped open. The Gatorade inside—*his* Gatorade, *his* ritual—glistened with unnatural condensation. The seal was broken, the lip threaded with crystalline residue.

Evelyn's loupes reflected his widening pupils as she depressed the plunger. "Three minutes to diagnose yourself, Doctor." Her smile was brighter than the emergency shower's chrome. "Does death come first to the hands... or the heart?"

The fire alarm screamed at precisely *23:49:00*, but the sprinklers never activated. Only the scent of jasmine and burning wire followed them into the dark.