The day after Christmas, Dean came down with a fever.
When he woke up in the morning, he could feel that something was off in his body. His head was splitting with pain and his limbs felt weak and without strength.
He leaned his hand against his face and knew he must have a fever.
Last night, he and Jerry secretly drank a lot of alcohol at his aunt's house, and then he stood out in the snow with Reed for quite a while around midnight.
So now the aftereffects had arrived, and the plan he had prepared to perfect Price's List would have to be put on hold.
"Dean, you need to exercise," Peter said as he walked in early in the morning with cold medicine in hand.
"Dad, what I need now is to replenish energy, so what are we having for breakfast?" Despite the fever, Dean couldn't stay idle. He was flipping through a computer magazine while leaning against the headboard.
"Oh, I thought you'd be reading 'Penthouse' or 'Shaved' or something," Peter said, somewhat disappointed to see his bookish son looking at such boring stuff.
"Please, Dad, I've got a fever right now, I'm not in the mood for that," Dean casually tossed the magazine aside.
"Okay then, let's wait until after we've replenished your energy," Peter said cheerfully as he set down what he was holding with a thud.
"What's that?" Dean widened his eyes as he saw what was on the table clearly.
"Beer, heated up," Peter said proudly, feeling pleased with his thoughtfulness.
"What's in your other hand?"
"Cephalosporin," Peter replied matter-of-factly. Don't think he's an unreliable dad; he still knew the common sense that you take cephalosporin for a cold.
"Dad," Dean looked at Peter speechlessly, "are you planning to murder your genius son?"
"WTF? This is a loving breakfast I prepared for you with care, I even heated the beer up especially!"
"Hmm," Dean gestured for him to continue.
"So this is how you treat a dad who gave up going to an unlimited drinking party at the pub with Edwin and the others, just to take care of his own son?" Peter felt a great injustice.
Seeing his hurt expression, Dean couldn't help but laugh. "Dad, didn't anyone ever tell you that you can't mix cephalosporin and alcohol?"
"What?" Peter was startled at first, only realizing the mistake as he looked at what he was holding.
"Oh, shit! Sorry Dean, this stuff used to be Caitlin's job..." Peter explained, flustered, and both he and Dean grew quiet at the mention of Caitlin.
"I'll... I'll go pour some hot water again." Peter got up, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.
"Dad, tell me about Reed," Dean said.
"What?" Peter stopped and looked towards Dean, who was calm.
"Reed's story," Dean sat up straight, "You never told me how he ended up like he is now. I only know he suddenly lost his job and later moved out of the house. But I have no idea what happened in between."
At Dean's question, Peter fell silent. But quickly he lifted his head and shrugged, "Alright, let's talk about that then."
Reed was two years older than Dean and graduated from Wilson High School two years ahead of him. Unlike his talented younger brother, his grades were very average.
So, like many children from working-class families, Reed got a job early on and entered society.
But he was luckier than some people in that he had an uncle, or rather former uncle, who was well-connected.
Yes, that's Debbie's biological father, Bill Drepper. Bill served in the forces during the Vietnam War as a communications soldier and for a while after his discharge, he returned to Youngstown.
Because of military connections, he got a mid-to-high level position at Republic Steel. Even the former general manager of Shimel Hospital in the east part of the city was his war buddy, so thanks to this relationship, Reed got into Shimel Hospital's pharmacy as a pharmacist assistant.
In America, pharmacists need to pass a licensing exam and even have certain educational requirements, but a pharmacist assistant does not.
So Reed, ambitious as he was, hoped to one day get his license and become a pharmacist, a profession with a decent social status.
Seeing his ambition, or perhaps his naivety, a pathologist from the hospital approached him at that time. He claimed that he was conducting a study on addictive drugs.
The study required a volunteer to test the drugs on themselves and report daily on everything from psychological to physiological changes.
In return, once the research results were published, the volunteer's name would be included in the credits under the section for research assistants.
Moreover, after learning that Reed's mother suffered from asthma, the doctor promised to refer a New York specialist in asthma to consult for his mother.
Then the gullible Reed was tempted. If his name could appear in a top scientific journal, wouldn't a pharmacist position be easily within reach later on?
His mother had suffered greatly from asthma over the years; perhaps some big shot in New York could find a solution.
Naive as he was, he didn't even bother to check whether that doctor truly had such a project in his name, or whether any of it made sense, because it all seemed too childish.
As for the final outcome, it goes without saying that the doctor had left Youngstown for a Southern city long before Reed's drug theft was exposed.
Yes, once a dependency on addictive drugs developed, the person involved often did all sorts of unimaginable things.
Reed first bought medicine from colleagues in the pharmacy department, or committed theft by taking advantage of his position, until eventually even the hospital's patients became his "suppliers."
He was willing to pay a high price of 3 US dollars for a Vicodin pill, but later he didn't need to buy it anymore, he just stole it straight from the drugs allotted to the patients.
In the hospital, Reed would take the "DuraGesic" patches used for chronic pain patients, extract the fentanyl component with a syringe, swallow it or inject it directly into his own body, and then stick the empty shell of the patch back on.
Without their pain medication, patients could only moan weakly in their beds. Until one day, colleagues found him with his eyes closed tight, his body swaying back and forth like a rocking chair. They sent him home to rest and then inspected the DuraGesic patches, which, indeed, turned out to be completely drained.
Reed's supervisor asked him to take a drug test, and the result was, of course, positive. The truth came out, and Reed was fired by the hospital.
At that time, no one could help him; his former uncle-in-law, Bill Dreper had already left Youngstown. When Peter received the call from the hospital, he exploded in a furious rage, grabbing the hunting shotgun from home and chasing him for two streets.
Later, Reed went to the east side of the town, and everything slowly started to slide into the abyss.
"That's pretty much it, his foolishness led to everything you see today," Peter was deeply disappointed with Reed, but it was a disappointment based on disillusioned hopes.
"I saw Reed yesterday," Dean recalled the figure from the corner of the street last night.
"I know."
Dean looked up in surprise.
"He's always like that, sneaking back like a thief. Caitlin has told me more than once," Peter didn't ask what they had discussed; he just needed to know that both were unharmed.
"Dad..." Dean began, but Peter raised his hand to stop him.
"Son, I know you've made quite a bit of money lately. But still, the same old advice..." Peter stood up, looking over at Dean by the bed. "Don't make me come visit you in prison, and if there really is something unavoidable, then let it be me to handle it."
"Ha!" Dean tossed the cough medicine Peter had brought into his mouth, and then just chewed it up and swallowed it dry. "F*ck! This medicine is so damn bitter!"
"Get well soon, kid. I told you I'd take you to see a strip show, don't make me break my word," Peter said leisurely as he left the room with a beer in hand.
Well, although this family was a bit of a mess, it wasn't beyond redemption.
Dean picked up the cup from the table, took a careless sip of the water he had poured last night, and immediately shivered from the icy chill.
It was cold, but it also revived his spirits quite a bit.
Putting on a sweater, Dean approached the desk. Christmas had passed, and it was time to check the customer feedback for Price's List.
He turned on his computer, logged into his email, and in an instant, Dean was inundated with all sorts of messages.
"Dean, I need a section to find girls!" -- from Roger.
"Why are there no posts for game sharing? I've finished all the Nintendo games you downloaded for me~" -- from Jerry.
"My good friend Bennie said she wants to sell her spare bags on the website. She asked me to check with you—how much commission would you charge if someone wants to buy?" -- from Debbie.
"Great site, at least it looks a lot more interesting than the monotonous BBS. But the site doesn't seem popular, and the load times are also too slow—opening a link takes nearly thirty seconds.
Also, the site's filtering function is not very user-friendly; it seems like there's a problem with the algorithm. I'd personally recommend re-examining the Unix code using the UUCP protocol." -- from Sergeant Pepper.
Sergeant Pepper? He was one of Dean's geeky online friends, and his suggestions were often quite professional.
Dean continued scrolling, most of the other emails were various demands for the website, and many were requests for account registration.
Taking note of each issue, Dean began to process the account registration emails.
However, Debbie's friend wanting to sell stuff on Price's List might not be feasible for the time being.
Because the network was still nominally under military management after all, since the internet's inception was born out of the need for "a distributed network for survival after a nuclear war"—a defensive project.
The predecessor of the internet, "ARPANET," was now renamed the National Science Foundation Network, with the government still as its overseer.
Before the government lifted its restrictions, using the network for commercial transactions was clearly a violation of its usage policy.
Although such actions weren't allowed, early internet commercial activities had already spread throughout the country.
Turning a profit with Price's List might still be possible, but it would require careful consideration.