Dark Heart (DARC Ops Book 3) (9 page)

They dropped the topic as a team of paramedics rushed in. They asked him the usual questions. Had he hit his head? What name? What city? State? Date?

Jasper wanted to talk his way out of all that, out of the preliminaries, the vitals checks. He knew he was fine. He could feel it.

But they were professionals. They insisted.

And he played along. Fine, fine.

They also insisted he ride along with them to the hospital. Maybe he’d get a CT scan.

Why the hell not? It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

He stood, ready to refuse transport, when his legs almost went out from under him, causing Jackson to grab his arm and haul him up, complete with another string of cursing. Maybe it was about time he experienced things from the other side of the stethoscope, Stateside, anyway. He could consider it like a vacation.

S
he had
a few other life-support cases to worry about aside from her sister. There were two of them on her rounds that morning, two nonresponsive heroin overdose cases. A man and a woman. Both young, both relatively good-looking. It went against what Fiona was taught about drug abusers, heroin especially. Maybe they were new to the game.

The sad truth was that they were seeing it spread to more people. Sometimes people she’d just treated a year or two ago. They’d be sent away from the hospital after surgery, armed with a prescription for painkillers. And then, when the prescription ran out, and the money ran out, they’d come back to the hospital after their street solution backfired. Sometimes overdosing on their first try.

It was the first hour of her shift and Fiona was still feeling groggy from a mostly sleepless night. That, coupled with the worries of her sister, and of these two others, meant that the day’s first screwup was just waiting to happen. She could almost tell it was going to happen.

What would it be this time? Another catheter clamp?

Incorrect medications?

Falling asleep while standing?

Her head felt like a goldfish bowl: heavy, water slopping around with each movement. Her feet felt like two little bricks, shuffling along the hallway, in and out of various rooms. Her voice, when prompted to be loud and cheery for its audience of patients, struggled against sleepiness and melancholy, a slide into monotone dreariness. She dealt with her sickest patients first, the two coma victims. They wouldn’t require much conversation. Nor would the elderly patients, who were as sleepy as she. Or that guy who didn’t like her enough to want conversation.

Someone like Marva, certainly, was out of the question. Fiona would need a few coffee breaks before waking up enough to be on Marva’s level. To give her the care she needed and the support she deserved. What Marva needed, also, was that insulin pump. Fiona wasn’t very excited about coming to see her again empty-handed. The cries about the injections and the blood tests were beginning to wear on her.

Fiona could think of a few other people she’d like to torture. Death by a thousand pricks.

“Hi, Fiona.” It was Dr. Wahl, smiling, walking toward her in the hallway. There was one of them, right on cue. There was no escape.

“Hi.” She winced a smile at him as he approached.

“How’s everything? Good?”

She nodded.

“Good morning so far? Um, I just wanted to . . .” his voice trailed off, and then lowered in volume as they both stopped awkwardly in the hallway. “I just wanted to ask about your sister. I heard about it from Wendy. So terrible. How’s she doing?”

Fiona kept smiling, offering up the same stock answers that he seemed to be looking for. Yep, she’s hanging in there.

“Does she need anything?” he asked quietly.

“Like what?”

“How about you? Do you . . . need anything?”

She needed him to back away and leave her the hell alone.

“Do you need some time off?” he asked.

“No, I’m . . . I’m fine.”

“Let’s take a walk,” he said, motioning down the hall.

The two of them set out awkwardly, Fiona forgetting where she was even trying to get to in the first place.

“You know,” he began, talking quietly and mysteriously, as if they were both in some secret club. “I was in the same predicament with my mother.”

She hated how he used the word “predicament,” as if her sister was Fiona’s problem, rather than the coma being her sister’s problem. Whatever. She let him continue.

“She was very sick, near the end. Very frail. She slipped into a coma for seven days. Complete vegetative state.”

That’s where she was supposed to be. Room 422D. Arthur Alphonso. Post cataract surgery. She and Dr. Wahl were walking in the opposite direction, toward the elevator. Maybe Fiona would just head straight to the break room, dive into her book, and try to recover at least some semblance of sanity.

Would the doctor follow her there, too?

“It’s such a difficult decision,” he said, staring down at his feet as he walked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes it is.”

“She had brain activity, so it wasn’t brain death. But one has to question what that really is.”

“What, brain death?”

“No, the activity. What is that really? Is it really activity? Or perhaps just some residual energy?”

Fiona nodded, not really sure what to say.

“I play the electric guitar sometimes,” the doctor said. “And when I'm done and I turn off the amp, there’s that little die-off type sound that fades away even after the power cuts off.”

He was comparing his mother to a guitar amp?

“Do you know what I mean?” he asked. “Or maybe like an old-fashioned TV?”

“Well, she still responds to my voice. So, you know, that’s the good thing.”

“Yeah,” he said, almost sounding like it wasn’t a good thing. “Anyway, I just want to offer my condolences.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh,” he said, stopping. “Were you headed to break?”

She didn’t know. Was she? Her main priority was to break free of Dr. Wahl. She stared at the elevator as if it were a trap, asking, “Do you have something else for me to do?” There was always something.

“I’ve been told that we have a priority patient,” he said. “Room 314. Do you know anything about this?”

Priority patient? It sounded like Wendy’s warning about the undercover evaluators was coming true. But she didn’t expect their covers to be blown so early, and by the head doctor nonetheless.

“Priority in what way?” she asked, trying to sound casual about it.

“That’s what I’d like to know. I’d like it if you could keep a special watch over him.”

She might as well. After all, he’ll certainly be keeping a special watch over
her
. She’d have to watch the watcher, while at the same time watching her own ass even closer. What a great work environment.

“Sound good?” asked Dr. Wahl with a smile.

* * *

D
r. Wahl’s
priority patient was asleep when she entered Room 314. Rolled to one side, his muscular back facing her. She could tell by his frame, the solidity of his shoulders, that he was young and well built. Most likely in the prime of his life. A departure from her usual patients. She expected to see some sniveling little weasel of a man. But he was not skinny, or bald, or awake, as she’d expected. Perhaps that was part of the plot, the mask of the decoy, the unexpected appearance. He probably wasn’t even sleeping. Most likely he’d been lying there, awake and alert and surveying her actions.

She glanced at the name on his charts, Rick Delaney, which was as unfamiliar as any fake name should be. And what was wrong with Rick today? Dislocated shoulder that he’d fixed himself? That sounded pretty fishy. He was waiting on the results from a scan of his arm and wrist. Complications from a slip-and-fall accident.

“Mr. Delaney?” she called quietly. Though she’d really rather not be so polite about it. She wanted to grill him about his injuries. Who he was, where he was from. How he could in good conscience spy on someone so small in the grand scheme of this major hospital, how he could ruin someone who was just struggling to make a dollar. The more she thought about that last part, the more she had wished that his arm was in actually broken—and broken badly.

She watched for a moment as his shoulder rose and fell with each deep breath. He wore a tight black tank top, his bare tanned and toned shoulder sticking out of the sheets to expose the top half of a tattoo. It wasn’t like that was anything new. It was common these days, especially with her younger patients.

But there was something about this tattoo that caught her attention. The design was unusual, unique. Where had she seen that before? On another patient? Perhaps the design was more common than she thought. Perhaps even a template at a local tattoo parlor. And she wanted to just pass him off in that same way, as just another patient. But something about the design . . . It had captivated her.

She’d seen it before, yes. But not in the hospital.

Fiona called his name again, and after another lack of response, she walked closer to get a good look at her spy. Maybe his face would jog her memory. She crept around the bed silently, her eyes now taking in every inch of his freshly exposed real estate. Over his smooth shoulder and around, over his chest and to the stubble forming on his chin, his relaxed mouth, the warm tan of his skin, the depth of his closed eyes. There was something almost frighteningly familiar with it all. Especially his unmistakable red hair. And that damned tattoo.

It was horribly awkward, staring at the man as he slept. And she’d begun to feel a creeping anxiety, a fear that he would suddenly wake up and catch her ogling him like a sexual predator. No, that wouldn’t do. She’d definitely hear about it at the next meeting.

She moved to turn around, quickly—too quickly—and on her way she knocked into the table. She immediately swung back to check whether he was still sleeping, to check his eyes, which were now wide open. And that was when she remembered, or thought she remembered.

It was his eyes that did it, that jogged her memory, that deep, dark emerald green. She stumbled into the table again, this time not turning back on her way out of the room.

In the hallway, holding on to the railing, Fiona tried to regroup her thoughts. They raced through her mind, the questions, the worries. Then there was the overwhelming embarrassment, that she was caught hovering over and staring at him like that. But there was also some deeper, not-yet-understood reason. She thought again of the tattoo. She’d seen it before, in a medical setting. But it was dark. Night. And exhilarating.

The name Rick Delaney didn’t ring a bell. But there was some connection that she couldn’t quite place her finger on. She knew the man, whoever he was, spy or not, who was now lying on the bed in room 314.

Fiona followed the handrail back to the doorway, looking around to make sure that no one was watching. Then she peeked her head around the corner of the door frame, stealing one last glance at her patient. He was sitting up now, yet facing away, that strong, muscular back showing through his tank top. She could see the tattoo again.

He’d had short cropped hair back then, military style. She remembered that. It had grown out some now. And his long, thick arms. She remembered those too. In low light. And his muscles flexing underneath her hands as she clasped on and explored and devoured more and more of him. She felt a rush of wetness at the memory. But as much as she wanted to see his face again, she turned away, shakily, and began walking away.

She needed to regroup.

Rethink.

Relax.

He might not have been a spy, but he was still more than she bargained for.

S
itting upright came with a price
—the sensation of an ice pick wiggling into his spine. It wasn’t a surprise that he was even stiffer and tenderer than the previous night. The endorphins had had a chance to wear off and despite whatever drugs they’d pumped into him, the pain had a chance to firmly establish itself.

What exactly had they used on him? He wanted to read the chart to find out, to get the inside scoop and to perhaps evaluate their strategy. But this information was miles away, on a clipboard hanging off the foot of the bed.

He resigned himself to lying back down in the bed with a soft groan, with the back of his head digging into an uncomfortably large and puffy pillow. Where had that nurse gone? He could have used a new pillow. And his questions—even the most basic—could have used some answers. Even just something straightforward, like when his CAT scan results would be released. He’d been scanned upon admittance, and then had his shoulder and arm looked at. By the time he’d been fitted with a brace, the sun was just about ready to crest the jagged tops of skyscrapers. And by then, he was sufficiently tired and doped up to finally get some rest.

How many hours did he sleep? Four?

He checked the time on his phone, groaning again, not out of pain but out of the sad realization that he’d barely slept. What had woken him up? That nurse? Although he didn’t expect privacy in a hospital, there was just something about the way she had stared at him . . . It was more than simple voyeurism. He felt something from her, plus she looked vaguely familiar. Or was it wishful thinking, his nurse having such a pretty face? Of course, it could’ve also just been from the combination of pain killers and lack of sleep.

Maybe he’d find out. Might as well. What else was there to do?

Jasper lowered his hand down around the edge of the bed, finding a remote to click for the nurse. He pressed a button, and moment later, she arrived.

Only she wasn’t the right “she.”

“Hi, Mr. Delaney,” the nurse said sweetly. “Do you need a hand with anything?”

He was hoping for that same doe-eyed nurse who’d interrupted his sleep. But this person seemed older, and a lot less peculiar.

“I was just wondering, um . . .”

“Yes?” she asked with a polished, institutionalized boredom.

“When is the doctor back on call?”

She was looking at his chart, saying, “He’ll be back to see you this afternoon.”

“Thank you.”

“Mhmm,” said the nurse. “Is that all you needed?”

No, it wasn’t. But he said yes anyway, letting her go about her business and on to more important matters. He, too, should move on to something more important than identifying some nosy nurse. Despite his injures, he had work to do at the hospital. In fact, his injuries only made it easier to lie to the staff. He could now lie low and observe things at the hospital as a patient. Just an ordinary patient. He had the brace to prove it. Not that it would be staying on for long if the scans came back clear. It made mobility too difficult, should his services be needed in an emergency. He could let his shoulder heal later.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been his shooting hand.

Jasper rolled over in his bed, going easy on the wrist, trying to squeeze an ounce of comfort out of the stiff hospital bed that was barely an iota above the plush luxuriousness of an army cot. He might as well try to catch up on some sleep. He wasn’t officially supposed to be at the hospital until the next day, when he and Jackson were to run some diagnostics on the equipment.

Perhaps he could get an early start on his profiling the staff. Get familiar with the faces, especially the nurse in question. Get a feel for the kind of people that worked at the hospital. Know them well enough to be able to spot any new faces that might pop up just prior to the prince’s arrival. Was that possible in one day?

Jasper checked his phone again. Research would require moving. Maybe he’d make do with some mindless Internet surfing instead. Maybe something to get him tired again so he could escape for a few more hours. But there appeared to be no Internet connection. He worked at it for a minute, trying to not only connect to a signal, but just
find
a signal. There was none. He couldn’t even find any restricted networks.

He rolled over again, gingerly, and reached for the landline phone by his bed. He placed the plastic receiver to his ear. No dial tone. Then he looked down at the wire, following it all the way into the wall. Sometimes they might come undone by a clumsy nurse, or the cleaning person. Or maybe no one had reattached it since painting the room five years ago. With every patient having a cell phone, who would ever notice?

When the nurse returned to check his vitals, he asked about the spotty service, the Wi-Fi, the phone. And her face went as blank as the wall across from his bed. Her expression turned into a frown when he’d asked her to check her own phone.

“We’re not allowed to have our phones in patient areas,” she said, her hand slipping into her pocket unconsciously.

“They don’t want you Facebooking on the job, huh?”

“They claim it’s for your privacy,” she said sourly.

“How so? So you can’t take my picture or something?”

The nurse shrugged.

“Well, that’s no fun.”

“We should have Wi-Fi though. For you.”

“And how about the phones?” asked Jasper.

“What about them? That phone doesn’t work either?”

Jasper shook his head.

“I’ll have to let someone know,” she said before leaving, not looking overly concerned about it.

“Wait,” called Jasper. “Will it be that nurse who was in here earlier? With the red hairband?”

“Umm . . .” She made a grimace.

“Blonde hair? Hairband? Red hairband?”

She finally brightened up with, “Oh, maybe you mean Fiona?”

He knew a Fiona. Or he had, one time long ago.

“Yes,” he said, “Maybe I mean Fiona.”

But the odds of her being
that
Fiona . . .

“So, what about her?” she asked.

“If you see her, let her know that Jasper was asking about her. Jasper in room 314.”

She was squinting. “Not Rick?”

Fucking Jackson and his security protocols.

“No. Not Rick.”

* * *

I
t took
him awhile to fall asleep after that, waiting for his plan to come to fruition, the perhaps overmedicated expectation that Fiona,
his
Fiona, would promptly arrive. But she hadn’t. And after an hour of waiting, fatigue had set in to override the excitement he’d once had about the possibility of meeting an old friend. If that was even her. What he was really trying to do was just stay somewhat amused. Stuck in a hospital bed, for now, and with no internet. No escape into the sports recaps or hiking forums, and no stopping the bad guys. Why not play out some sophomoric fantasy with his real-life predicament? He might even get to know some of the nurses in the process. Wasn’t that the point of his staying there in the first place?

He supposed he had a new and an equally important reason: his health. The integrity of his bones and his brain. He could tell there was nothing fractured, but he couldn’t so easily dismiss the possibility of an intracranial hematoma. He’d have to wait on the CT scan results for that. And for the results, he’d have to wait for some doctor to stop by. That’s what being a hospital patient was all about. The waiting. He hated being on this side of things. Being powerless.

With each hour, the fatigue and boredom—and the loss of hope of seeing Fiona—further set in. His eyelids began to weigh heavily, sliding down, closing. And then he was back at Fort Bragg. In the goat lab. This was before PETA and social media blew up in some uproar about live-tissue training. Back when medics got a real education, performing surgery on living beings. Moving, breathing, sentient patients that had feelings. Not just a piece of plastic with a face molded onto it. A $75,000 mannequin.

The goats made you nervous. And rightfully so. They made you respect the animal, and what you were doing to it. It humbled you and made you thankful. And it made a proper medic out of a greenhorn recruit. You could mimic surgery on a simulator all you wanted, but until you felt that warm splash of arterial blood on your face, you were never really prepared for the real thing.

It also weeded out some of the guys who weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. If they couldn’t perform trauma care on a farm-raised goat in the quiet comfort of Fort Bragg’s goat lab, how could they possibly deliver any care to their fallen brethren in the heat of battle?

Jasper could see his brother was there with him, in the lab, laid out on an operating table next to one of the bleating goats. Kyle was bleating as well. Bleeding. Bleating. Calling for help.

And then someone was grabbing Jasper. He could feel the pressure, someone wrestling with him. Hands. Voices. Someone shaking him from some faraway place.

He awoke to find Jackson staring down at him. Jasper’s eyes were still unfocused, but slowly bringing the rest of the room’s details into view. Jackson was sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling.

“You were talking,” he said.

“What?” Jasper said groggily. “Was I?”

Jackson nodded.

“What was I saying?”

“Nothing intelligible.”

That was a relief. He’d rather not have Jackson hear him talking about goats, or anything else. Especially details about his brother Kyle.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just tired.”

“Me too.” Jackson lifted himself off the bed and walked to a nearby chair. He dragged it over and slumped down hard into it with a sigh. “It was a wild night, huh?”

“Yep.” Jasper reached for his phone again. “It was a little more action than I was expecting.” He checked for an internet connection, but it was still down.

“I bet that hacker felt the same way,” said Jackson.

“Any news on him?”

“Nothing yet. We’ll have to talk to some people, once you’re feeling up to it.”

Jasper frowned. He wasn’t particularly excited to “talk to some people.”

“I know, I know,” Jackson said. “But you should probably stay away from active shooters. Just for a day or so.”

“So what’s with the internet here?” asked Jasper, happy to change the subject.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s down.”

Jackson gave him a weird look, scrunching his brows. “I was just using it.” He grabbed his phone, checking it. “I have service. Maybe it’s your phone. It probably got damaged.”

It was a distinct possibility. Jasper checked his phone once again to be sure, swearing under his breath when he saw the Wi-Fi signal bars all lit up.

“Maybe it’s not your phone that’s fucked up,” Jackson laughed. “Maybe it’s your head.”

“I don’t get it . . .The land lines were down, too.” Jasper reached for the phone and heard a dial tone. He hung up.

“Yup,” said Jackson. “Definitely showing some signs of head trauma.”

Maybe he was right. Between his head, the drugs, fragmented or no sleep, and seeing people who apparently weren’t there, like ex-lovers . . . Maybe he imagined the whole no-internet thing. It could have been just another dream, something that came before the bleating goats of Fort Bragg.

Jackson was still smiling. He seemed to find the whole thing very amusing. “And to think, all this time I was worried that you wouldn’t be convincing enough as an undercover patient.”

Jasper stared at him. “So did you come in here and wake me up for a reason?”

“Sure,” he said. “I just wanted to check on you. See if you needed anything.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Jasper. “I’ve really got a hankering for some shitty hospital food. Think you can bring some up?”

“Maybe you should ask your nurse about that one,” Jackson said, checking his phone as compulsively as ever. “I have to get going soon. I just checked on a bunch of things here and now I have to . . .” he looked up at Jasper again, his face easing with sincerity. “But how do you feel, really?”

“I feel fine. I bet I’m totally fine.” Jasper looked down at his brace. “Even this shoulder is not a big deal. I can almost use it.”

“You think you can hold a gun with that?”

“I’m left handed.”

Jackson snorted. “Until they come at you from the right.”

“By the way,” Jasper said. “How am I going to get my piece up here?” He reached over for his duffle bag that Jackson must have brought in, and plopped it onto his lap. “When does the prince get here?”

“Tomorrow.” Jackson pulled the bag out of Jasper’s fumbling hands. “Will you really be able to get around then? It’s okay if you can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘it’s okay’?”

“I mean, I’ll take you off the assignment. No biggie.”

“Ahuh.”

“You can stay here, take a little break from Fort Bragg.”

Eye rolling was becoming a bit of a habit around Jackson lately. “Tempting.”

“Take a break from all those brown-nosing recruits.”

“I just feel more tired than anything else.”

“And confused, coupled with the occasional hallucination. Involving goats, apparently.”

Nothing got past Jackson. Jasper should have remembered that. To his boss he just shrugged. It wasn’t as if he could deny it.