Acts of Honor (16 page)

At home, living her own life, she had been blissfully ignorant. She hadn’t known, or even thought about, what the men in Braxton and their nonsequestered counterparts did day in and day out. But in her time here, she’d learned the realities of their sacrifices and the personal costs they paid to provide others with personal freedom. She owed them. It was that simple.

That simple, and that complex. Now, not only was she responsible for her own life and Foster’s operatives, in a very real sense she was also responsible for Brenda’s and Lisa’s, and for the lives of these men. They’d all acted to protect her. Now, she had to protect them.

And, God help her, she wasn’t sure she was up to the task.

Sara checked the nurses’ station.
Empty.
Looked both ways down the hall.
All clear.

She rounded the edge of the desk and sat down at the computer, eager to gain access to the records now that she had made the decision to do it. She keyed in her code and signed on to the system.

“What are you doing?” Beth appeared out of nowhere.

Sara jumped guiltily.
Think! Think!
“Just checking to see if the results on Ray’s EEG are back yet.”

Beth crossed her chest with her arms, crushing the front of her hunter-orange blouse. “They’re not.”

Damn it. Five more minutes, and Sara would have had access. Being stymied wouldn’t have irked her so much, but this was her third failed attempt. She glared at Beth.

Holding a canned soda in one hand and a package of cheese crackers in the other, she sighed. “If you’re done, Dr. West, then I can get back to work.”

Sara signed off the system and then left Beth’s chair. “Don’t you ever go home?”

“This is my home.”

Sara rubbed at her forehead, worked at making her voice less confrontational. “I meant, to your quarters.”

“Of course.” Beth slid down onto her seat. “Are you complaining about the quality of my work, Doctor?”

“No.”
Only about your constant presence.
Sara ground her teeth. “Just concerned that you’re putting in too much overtime.”

“My health is excellent,” Beth said stiffly. “So are my performance ratings.”

“Of course.” Sara swallowed down a gallon of frustration and checked her watch. Ten P.M. had come and gone. She might as well call it a night. With food and drink, Beth intended to settle in for a while.

For appearances, Sara jotted a note in Joe’s chart. He wasn’t happy with the changes she had made in his care, and she wasn’t happy with the amount of time she spent thinking about him.

That, she didn’t note in his chart, but it worried her. He was the one, and knowing it drew the woman in her like a magnet. To the professional Dr. West, that magnetism was deplorable. She leaned a hip against the desk’s edge. Actually, it was worse than deplorable. He was her patient. Her mentally diminished patient.

With Beth covertly watching her every move, Sara closed his chart and slotted it in the metal file holder with the others. Her first four days at Braxton had been long and eventful. Her throat still hurt, and so did her feet. She’d been on them more here than during her residency at Tulane. But neither came close to the emotional workout she had been suffering with Braxton’s rigid protocol and restrictive conditions. Her patience was shot, and she was fed up with the staff giving her the cold shoulder about William. At least, she thought the reason was about William. At Braxton, it was damn hard to tell. But the people here hadn’t thawed toward her at all. They ignored her, refused to answer friendly greetings in the hallway, and still avoided her gaze.

Privacy proving as nonexistent as free speech inside Braxton’s walls only added to her frustration. It didn’t matter where she went or when, someone else was always around. For all her attempts, she still hadn’t managed to see Fred or to get any damn time alone at the computer. If she was going to commit a felony—and she was—she’d just as soon do it without an audience of witnesses.

Beth punched away at the computer keys, irritating Sara even more. Trying to melt the throbbing knots of tension in her muscles, she rubbed at her neck. More than anything, she wanted to put a serious dent in some junk food, take a long, hot bath, and see if she couldn’t get herself a better attitude.

She made her way down the hallway, intending to drop in on her patients once more before heading to her first-floor quarters for the night. Maybe, just maybe, she’d get lucky and finally corner Fred. So far, she’d heard nothing but lame excuses for why she couldn’t see him. But at this time of night, where would he be except in bed?

Lou’s room was closest. Holding out little hope for him, she ducked inside. Accepting his condition as permanent carved a hollow in her heart and a gaping hole in her confidence. She’d work with him. She’d do everything she could think of to do, but in the end, she feared Lou was in Braxton for the long haul.

Ray wasn’t much better off. Lying on his side in his bed, he babbled and drooled. Sara tried talking to him, keeping her voice low and soothing, but he didn’t respond to her. Not even involuntarily, by blinking. At times, he had talked almost coherently, but about things that had to have happened eons ago. Things she could easily enough apply to a young child, though why they devastated the man remained a mystery to her. None were traumatic, or even discomfiting. And while profound, the changes in him since she’d discontinued the 70/30 insulin hadn’t proven to be his only challenges. His confusion ranked far too intense for just that recovery. Yet nothing else in his chart or his behavior gave her a clue as to why he kept mumbling, “Betrayed.”

Fred was again absent from his room, though he evidently had been there. Earlier, the military-stiff sheets on his bed would have withstood the bouncing-quarter test. Now, they were mussed. Weary and tired of minding her manners, she wondered if Fabulous Fontaine had a rule about that. Okay, she conceded, so some of his rules were valid. But, bluntly put, some were control-freak asinine.

Something blue flashed at the doorway. Sara glanced over and saw William. Wearing surgical gear, he headed toward the nurses’ station at a good clip. She called out to him.

He stopped and looked back at her. “Yes, Major?”

“Where is Fred?” Four days and at least two dozen attempts to check on him, and she still hadn’t seen her elusive patient. If she didn’t know better from Shank, Sara would swear the man was a phantom.

William cast her a blank look. “Who, Major?”

“ADR-22,” she informed him. “My patient. Fred.”

“ADR-22 is in hydrotherapy. He’s showing some breakage in the skin along his backbone. Dr. Fontaine has increased his sessions to q.i.d. to prevent bedsores.”

Four times a day? Well, right before bed probably would relax Fred so he could sleep better. She’d like to take exception to Fontaine’s interference on her turf, but already she’d learned the hard way, via William and his demotion and fine, that the director covered his ass. On paper, he either had issued the orders before Fred had become her patient, or Fontaine had backdated the orders to read that he had. As it happened, this time, she agreed with his orders so she’d let his interference slide. “Thank you, William.”

“Major?”

William too seemed fixated on the “sir” stuff, only his took form in rank. Considering he’d just been unjustly stripped of some of his, she supposed she understood that. Compassion softening her gaze and her voice, Sara looked back at him. The stethoscope hanging around her neck gouged against a sore spot on her throat. Hissing in a sharp breath, she removed it and tucked it into her lab coat pocket. “Yes?”

A frown creased the skin between William’s heavy brows. “I don’t think Dr. Fontaine would approve of you giving the PTSD patients actual names.”

Fontaine’s staunch ally issuing her a warning? Now what was she to make of that? “Thanks for your concern.” She meant it sincerely. “But the loss of identity creates a problem with their therapy, and I’m responsible for them, so I have to do what I think is in their best interests. That includes giving them fictitious but actual names.” She offered him a smile. “I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

His lips pinched down into a flat line. “Is that a direct order, Major?”

“Only if it must be for you to cooperate.”

He shot her a cool glare, and then walked on.

Sara refused to sigh. She wanted to—adversaries crawled out of the woodwork at an alarming rate around here—but she refused to let them get to her. William had just reasons to be upset, and as soon as she found out what could be done to correct his situation, she would talk with him about them. Until then, thanks to Foster, she had far more to worry about. Still, she wondered. Why was everyone except Shank so prickly?

William’s demotion and fine could be part of the reason, but not all of it. The big freeze had started as soon as she had arrived. Fontaine had power and influence here, but the staff members feared him, they didn’t respect him. Tagging him “Fabulous Fontaine” proved that. The freeze couldn’t be due to anything as simple as research money. So what was it? What was making people avoid her?

Maybe from the beginning the staff had pegged her as a security risk. And maybe they didn’t want to appear to be her allies and get sucked down with her.

Possible, but not certain. Sara walked on to Michael’s room. He was asleep. So were Lou and Ray. It’d take a while for the heavy sedatives to work out of their systems. Sara left Ray’s room and headed toward Isolation to see Joe.

She paused outside his room, leaned back against the rough wall, and shut her eyes. “Okay, Sara,” she whispered to herself. “Squelch everything that isn’t focused on resolving his challenges.
Everything.”

She ran down the laundry list. He resented being locked in and wanted out. He mentioned that on every visit—and wanting to see the sun. Maybe a control issue spurred his bouts of episodic rage
 . . .

So check it out. Give the man some control.

Ignoring the buzzer signaling her inside, Sara knocked on the door.

No answer.

Was he testing her, seeing if she would enter without being invited? She knocked again.
He is the one.
Why him?
Squelch it.
She stuffed a shaky hand into her pocket.

Still no answer.

“Joe?” she called out. “May I come in?”

“Why not? Everyone does whenever they choose.”

“I won’t come in if you don’t want me to,” she said. “Is it okay?”

“Yeah. It’s okay, Sara.”

Smiling at the little victory, she walked inside.
Sara.
God, but she liked the way he said her name.

He stood in the middle of the room, staring at her as if she’d committed the ultimate betrayal. “Why did you knock?”

He didn’t appear even remotely fierce now, or capable of committing murder. Looking at him, she could almost convince herself the choking incident never happened, except for her raw throat and the bruises still peppering her neck. But he did look and sound extremely confused by her knocking. “You’ve asked me to leave here several times in the past few days. I wanted to make sure I was welcome. This is your room.”

His expression softened some more, and his eyes weren’t the color of steel, she realized, but a gentle dove-gray. “This isn’t a room, it’s a prison,” he said. “And I know what you’re doing. I’ve seen you watching me. You’re playing mind games with me. Damn it, I hate mind games.”

“Braxton isn’t a prison,” she said calmly. “It’s a mental health facility, and I’m not playing games. I never play games with my patients. They deserve better, and that’s what I give them. My best. Sometimes it’s enough. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s always what they get from me.”

“You’ve watched me.” His eyes glittered. “I’ve seen you.”

“Yes, I have. I believe in treating the whole person, Joe. Mind, body, and spirit. To do that well, I have to observe you.” Sara tilted her head and looked up at him. “It’s been a long day, and my feet are killing me.” Her day had started at an ungodly five A.M. That alone could do her in. “May I sit down?”

He backed away from her, as if the commonality of the question had surprised him. Automatically glancing down to her feet, he hesitated a long moment, and then nodded. “Floor’s all yours.”

The straitjacket looked extremely uncomfortable. Sara had put one on once just to see how it felt. She’d experienced her first symptoms of claustrophobia since the boa constrictor incident, and the sensation had steadily grown until now she went into cold sweats in any kind of confinement. She fought it—always fought it—but even being in the Isolation Wing, much less in a windowless padded room, made her uneasy as hell.

She sat down and watched Joe lean back against the far wall and then rub, as if trying to scratch his back. “Got an itch?” She smiled up at him.

“Yeah. It’s driving me crazy.”

Good sign, that terminology. Patients who believed they were crazy avoided the word as if it carried plague. She could remove the jacket. It’d be a great opportunity to build trust. Of course, he could attack her again. But unlikely, as he’d insisted she leave on three occasions when he could have attacked her on any or all of them. He had chosen not to hurt her. Mmm, maybe trust needed to come from both of them. “You’ve removed the jacket before. Why haven’t you taken it off now?”