Hiccups

Chapter Seven: Pushed to the Limit

The patients at Mara's were startled when the door flung open with a loud bang. They barely had time for their heart rates to slow before a Cliff Smedley was wheeled in on a stretcher, family and friends following close behind.

"Stay back!" Mara was saying, her hand outstretched. "I can't get a good look at him when you crowd around me like this."

"What's wrong with him?" blurted out the boy's mother, Thalia.

Cliff let out a low groan and shifted slightly on the stretcher.

"Listen to me," Mara said, sauntering over to Thalia as Finn and Erick helped lift Cliff onto a bed, "I need you to calm down, Thalia. Panic won't help him."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"Just calm down. Take some deep breaths." Mara put out her arms in a placating gesture. "Vernon, please."

Vernon Smedley put his arms around his wife and stroked her hair. This seemed to have a calming effect on Thalia, who seemed to melt in his embrace, tears falling silently down her face.

"Hiccup, I need you for a second." Mara beckoned to the Hooligan chief and opened the door to a back room. "Inga, keep him stable, okay?"

"Okay." Inga replied, putting some cloths on Cliff's forehead.

Hiccup found himself shoved into the empty room. Mara shut the door a bit too loudly behind her.

"Do you know who would want to poison Cliff?" she asked solemnly once the noise of outside was safely blocked out.

Hiccup felt his stomach clench. "Poison? No."

Mara pulled out a small vial of liquid from a nearby drawer. "Ipecac." she said simply, placing it into Hiccup's hand. "It's meant to induce vomiting. In small doses, it's harmless but that amount in Cliff's drink..."

Hiccup held up the liquid. "So why put it in? Not your conventional poison. It's not even poison, really."

"I suppose an overdose could be dangerous but Cliff seems to have expelled it, thank Thor." Mara said with a sigh of relief. "He should be okay."

"So why are you asking me this?"

"Because I don't want to put Berk on alert." Mara replied. "This could be an accident. Perhaps it got in there by mistake. I don't know but if it was deliberate, that means one of us did it. Someone from Berk. Unless there have been foreign visitors?"

Hiccup tensed, thinking of Roscoe, but quickly pushed the thought from his mind. "There were but they never went near the Great Hall. Far as I know, they left before lunch."

"Then it was one of us." Mara said darkly. "Do you want to go public with the information?"

"No." said Hiccup. "Not yet. Like you said, we want to wait and see. I'll tell the council and Cliff's parents and friends but I think we need to keep this secret for now. If we start pointing fingers, we could cause a riot and no one wants that. Not after..." he stopped himself from mentioning the events of two years previous.

Mara seemed to understand what he had almost said. "All right. Let me go care for my patient. If you don't mind, could you clear out the space? I want to give him some air and he can't get that with people pressing in on him."

"Of course." Hiccup said with a small smile, mostly relieved that Cliff would recover.

They exited the room and were instantly bombarded with questions.

"Later." said Mara firmly. "Now I want the teens to step out. Vernon, Thalia, come with me."

"But Mara-"