Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) (22 page)

Viola nodded. “Yes.”

But it was a lie. Viola had barely gotten a slap on the wrist for what had happened to Hannah. Her father had spoken to the mother superior, and all of it had just…gone away. No, what she’d really been expelled for was what she’d done a month later. To Dorian Van Allen.

That hadn’t made it into any school records, of course. Viola didn’t expect Dr. Horace to know about that, because not even Jacques had known about it. And there was no way in hell she was going to expose that dark little secret to either of them.

“If you could go back to that time,” Dr. Horace asked, “knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?”

Oh, so many things. But that wasn’t really what Dr. Horace was asking. Viola knew this was a test. He wanted to see if she understood that her actions had been wrong. He wanted to try and prove that she was a sociopath, or at the very least, suffering from borderline personality disorder. She’d been doing her homework, though, so she knew the right answer.

Yet, she just couldn’t resist getting in one last dig.

“You know,” she told the psychologist, casually and dispassionately. “Freud defines guilt as a symptom of the superego, which basically comes from parental examples. I’m not going to blame my parents for the way I turned out, even if some old German guy says it was their fault. I know that Uncle Jack”—and Viola actually used air quotes as she said the nickname—“likes to say that I wasn’t disciplined enough as a child. But do you think Hannah’s parents care about that?”

Dr. Horace wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

Viola spelled it out for him.

“Hannah was an honor student. She was captain of the equestrian team. She would’ve had a full-ride scholarship to…anywhere she wanted to go. Instead, because of something I said, she ended up at one of those fake spas for b-list celebrities. I heard…she makes pottery now.” She paused for effect; fixing the psychiatrist with that same, condescending look he seemed to love using on her. “Do you think she cares if I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know, Viola. Are you sorry?”

Viola shook her head. God, but she really had been a monster. What would Sam think of her, if he knew?

“I can’t change what I did in the past. I can’t change the person I was.” Slowly, carefully, she uncrossed her arms, then her legs. Then she stood up, fluidly, without a hint of disability. “But here’s what I can do. I can use every last ounce of strength that’s left in my body, to make sure that anyone…who had anything to do with my parents’ death…is more sorry than they ever could have imagined. And when I’m done? I’ll go back…and try to make penance for all the mistakes I made…when I was young and stupid.”

The pompous psychologist—who Viola was now pretty sure was taking orders from Jacques—cleared his throat, then looked down at his notebook as he wrote something down. Was it her imagination, or did he look a little bit scared?

Turning on her heel, Viola went for the door.

“Good talk, Dr. Horace,” she said, over her shoulder, as she left. “See you next week.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” –Sigmund Freud

Sam was losing it.

After three days of being left with nothing but work and the torture of his own thoughts, unable to talk to Viola or gain any insight into what had happened between them, he was almost on the verge of faking a psychotic breakdown—just so he could be admitted and find out what the hell was going on with the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Then again… As he angrily struggled out of his scrubs in the locker room, slamming doors and muttering curses at the knots in his shoelaces, despite the growing number of people giving him sideways glances, Sam realized he might not have to fake it if things continued the way they had been.

Every night, he fell asleep thinking about her voice in his ear, telling him to ‘prove it.’ Every morning, he woke up with a fresh resolve to find a way to show her that he could, without breaking half a dozen laws to bust her out of there. And every day, when he tried to go see her, she refused to let him in. Even Dustin, who was usually so willing to help, had thrown up his hands and told him he had no idea what was going on. For the past twenty-four hours, she hadn’t allowed any visitors. Not even her supposed ‘family psychologist,’ Dr. Horace. And as far as the psych intern knew, she wasn’t being released anytime soon.

Sam was starting to seriously wonder if she was working on something much more nefarious than a simple escape plan. God willing, she wouldn’t do anything drastic, like take somebody hostage. Or if she did, please, God, let it be him.

“Okay, that right there?” Brady grabbed his shoulder, startling him. “That Daniel Day Lewis,
There Will Be Blood
look you’ve got going on right now? That is why the nurses have started asking me to walk them to their cars at night.” He smiled, while Sam scowled. “Thanks for that, by the way. Whatever form of mania you’re contemplating, keep it up. I think even Candace has started coming around.”

“Glad I could help,” Sam told him testily, slamming the door of his locker as hard as he could. The few day-shift interns who had still been in the area quickly left, pulling on jackets and shouldering bags as they booked it to the door.

“So, uh….” Leaning against the lockers—casually, as if he’d decided to pretend like his best friend wasn’t acting like a psycho—Brady tapped his watch. “Happy hour?”

Snorting derisively, Sam stared at his friend’s wrist.

That was when the idea hit him like a ton of bricks. The grand gesture, the ultimate sign of penance. Oh, it was so simple, how could he not have thought of it before? Because it was insane, that was why. His brain had probably just been waiting for the moment he would finally abandon all restraint.

“Not tonight,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s something important I have to do. But if you’re game to break a few rules, I could use your help.”

Brady closed his eyes, smiling as he bit his lip in mock rapture. “Oh, I cannot tell you how long I have waited for this moment.”

Ten minutes later, Sam stood outside the doorway of the security office on the first floor. It was a plain, steel door. Unassuming. No windows. Behind the door, there was a reception desk and a few other steel desks with short cubicle walls, and behind that, a small break room.

Sam only knew the basic layout, because he had needed to come here to get his badge picture taken on the first day of work. But Brady had been in there quite a few times. For various complaints and misunderstandings, which he always seemed to be able to miraculously clear up, with no apparent lasting consequences. Like the time last October, when Brady had been caught carrying a huge box of hospital toilet paper to his car, and he’d told the security guards it was a donation for the Boy Scouts of America’s ‘Build a Mummy’ project.

Okay, enough stalling. It was time to do this. Taking one last deep breath, to calm his nerves, Sam knocked on the door.

The security guard who opened it was an elderly guy with white hair and a mustache. His first name was Ken, or maybe Kent. Sam knew he was a retired traffic cop, because his wife worked as a nurse up on the seventh floor—Beverly. She was always showing Sam pictures of her grandchildren.

“Hey Dr. Philips.” The guard’s smile was friendly, and Sam felt bad that the guy remembered who he was, despite the fact that he wasn’t wearing his scrubs or his name tag. “What can I do you for?”

 “Uh…” Sam felt his face heat with shame as he hovered in the open doorway, but he played it off as embarrassment. “Actually, I think I might have lost my security badge.”

“Oh,” the old man’s smile turned into a stern frown. “Well, that’s a serious problem, son. In the wrong hands, that badge could be used to cause all kinds of trouble. Someone could get into the pharmacy and steal a bunch of drugs, and your name would be the only one on record.”

Sam froze, as a bead of sweat dripped down his back. This was an outcome he hadn’t considered, the fact that he could get into serious trouble for pretending to misplace his badge. Never mind the other thing he planned on doing.

The guard laughed, slapping him on the back.

“Calm down. I’m just kidding son. It won’t take more than a few minutes to deactivate the old one and print you out a new one. With this new computer system, it’s as easy as printing out a hotel key.” He looked over his shoulder, lowering his voice as he jerked a thumb at the other officer in the room, a very overweight and sweaty individual with a military buzz cut, who sat hunched over a desk in front of a security monitor. “Just don’t let Steve find out I told you that. He likes to make a big to-do about losing badges, and he’ll always charge you twenty bucks for a new one.” He winked, as he rounded the reception desk. “Between you and me, I think you’re better off putting that money into your mountain of student loans.”

Sam laughed, allowing himself to relax slightly. “That’s right, I forgot. Beverly said your oldest daughter just got into…was it St. George’s?”

The older man smiled proudly, and Sam finally snuck a look at his nametag. Ken.

“Actually, she’s our youngest,” he said. “But since the other two are already settled down with children and such, I’m guessing she’s going to be the only doctor in the family.”

“That’s great,” Sam told him, feeling genuinely happy for the man even as his trepidation about ‘the plan’ continued to grow.  “Does she have any idea what specialty she wants to go into, yet?”

Ken shook his head, as he tapped a password into the desk computer. “No, she’s thinking maybe emergency medicine or OBGYN. Personally, I’d rather she stuck to family practice, though. It’d give her more time to settle down and get married. But Kendra isn’t really the settling type. What’s your ID number, son?”

Sam rattled off the number, as his phone buzzed in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said, fishing it out. “I hope they don’t need me back upstairs. I just got off a 24-hour shift.”

The text message was from Brady, of course.
What the fuck is taking you so long?

Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Sam texted back.
Give it 2 more minutes, then go.

Sliding his phone back into the pocket of his jeans, Sam looked up and met the guard’s eyes, forcing himself to keep a straight face. “Fellow interns, just going out for drinks.”
Laughing, Ken shook his head. “I’ll never understand how you kids find the energy, on top of all that stress and the hours you work. Just thinking of the partying my daughter will be getting up to when she’s in school, it gives me heart palpitations.”

“Well,” Sam made a face. “You can always say no to the partying, but then you run the risk of fusing with your study desk.”

“That’s a fair point.” The guard smiled, as the printer started whirring.

A few seconds later, he handed Sam a shiny new badge.

“Thanks, Ken,” he said, glancing up at the clock above the desk. By his calculations, he had to kill about thirty more seconds. “Oh, hey. You wouldn’t happen to have any extra clips, would you? You know, the kind with the little zip spool on the end? I’d be happy to buy one.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Ken said, reaching to open the top drawer of the desk. Sam casually glanced down, and there it was, in the front tray of the top drawer. The key. “Here you go.”

As Sam reached to take the badge clip, the desk phone rang.

Ken picked up the receiver, smiling as Sam stalled at the desk, fiddling to attach the little plastic clip to his new badge.

As the old security guard’s face went from friendly to dead serious, Sam could only imagine the amount of drama that Brady had added to the plan.

“Come on Steve,” Ken barked over his shoulder, after he’d hung up the phone. “We’ve got a code yellow in the lobby.”

As Sam and Ken watched, the chubby guard almost knocked over his chair in his attempt to get up and do some actual, almost police work. Somehow, he got the feeling that Steve wasn’t ex-military or retired anything, but had taken this job more as a hopeful stepping stone to a future career in a more dangerous section of law-enforcement. Sam stepped to one side as Steve barreled past him with an excited look on his face. Ken hung back, gesturing to the door.

“After you, Dr. Philips.”

In spite of his nerves, Sam didn’t hesitate. He followed the husky security guard out of the office and watched as Ken pulled the automatically-locking door shut behind him. Then he waved and took off down the hallway, in the opposite direction the guards had taken.

Thirty seconds later, he circled back, heart pounding. After double-checking to make sure that no one else was in the hallway, he pulled open the door to the security office and pulled off the small strip of duct tape he’d put on the doorjamb to cover the deadbolt hole. It was something he’d learned back in undergrad, when he’d lived in the dorms. All the guys had used that trick to keep from having to use their keys on the auto-locking doors whenever they left the room for short periods of time.

Stepping quickly inside the office, Sam went behind the reception desk and pulled open the top drawer, fishing out the small metal key before quickly walking to a tall gray filing cabinet at the back of the room. Brady had assured Sam that there were no cameras inside the security office, and that if anyone discovered the item in question missing, they’d probably just assume it had been picked up by the owner, since their inventory system for the lost and found and confiscated items drawer was practically non-existent.

When Sam had asked Brady how he knew where the valuables were kept, he’d simply shrugged. “I’ve been known to lose a lot of expensive shit.”

Opening the filing cabinet as quietly as possible, Sam sifted through a small pile of rubber-banded plastic bags before finding the thing he’d been looking for. Shaking his head, he wondered if any of the people whose hands it had passed through had considered stealing it. Then again, this was New York. So maybe everyone had just assumed the designer watch was an impressive Canal Street fake. He probably would’ve too, if he didn’t know its owner as well as he did.