Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) (32 page)

Letting go of her, Sam took a step back. His chest felt tight, like he’d been holding his breath underwater for too long. As much as he wanted to be on her side, to protect her from everything she was afraid of, he couldn’t protect her from what was going on inside her own head.

“You have to believe me, Sam.” Even as she said it, Viola seemed to rethink her statement. “I mean, I don’t care if you believe me. Because I believe me. But…it would really mean a lot to me, if you didn’t think I was crazy.”

Even as her tone played up how confident she was, Viola’s eyes seemed to plead with him. She needed him to say that he believed her. She needed to feel like she wasn’t alone.

But Sam couldn’t, in good conscience, lie to her.

“You still haven’t told me how you got this.” He pointed to the file again, changing the subject.

Viola shrugged, and her eyes took on that empty, driven look once more.

“Julia wasn’t at her desk. I used your security badge to get into Medical Records. I figured it would be pretty easy, since you were able to get away with stealing a thirty-thousand dollar watch right out of the security office.”

“You…you used my badge?”

Sam closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers to keep from losing his temper and shouting at her. Or, hell, maybe even crying. God knew, he felt like doing both. Unbidden, Jacques Gosselin’s voice came drifting through his head.
A scheming cat. She spent her life learning to manipulate people to get the things she wanted.

“Well, yeah, Sam.” Viola scoffed, like he’d just asked her the world’s dumbest question. Sam couldn’t bear to open his eyes and look at her, to see the carelessness written across her face. “How else was I supposed to get into the file room? It’s not like I could just ask Julia, and she’d just let me in.”

“Did it ever cross your mind,” he asked her quietly, “that I could lose my license? That I could go to jail, if anyone found out that you used me to steal private medical records?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” –Sigmund Freud

“Jail?” she repeated the word, as if it were an alien concept. It was a possibility she hadn’t even considered, that Sam could actually go to prison for what she’d done.

Viola took a step back, her body instantly recoiling as her mind tried to process yet another piece of overwhelming information. Like the idea that her father could have been dying, it didn’t make any sense.

Sam’s entire future could end, and it would be her fault.

Somehow, that fact seemed like it should have been terribly important to her, but at the moment, instinct ruled her—body and soul. No epiphany, no matter how earth-shattering, could possibly trump the burning in her chest that had led her to this place.

As if her brain was a giant typewriter, it stuttered in mid-thought and jumped to a completely new line.

‘Me.’ Sam hadn’t said, ‘you used my badge’ just now. He’d said ‘you used me.’

“Oh, I see where you’re going with this.”

Slowly, Viola processed this new thought out loud, fighting with everything she had to stay in control of her body. Of her face, which threatened to contort into an expression of terror over what she was feeling. Of her fingers, which wanted to pick up something fragile and hurl it across the room. Of her throat, which wanted to let loose an impotent scream of rage and disappointment, and just keep on screaming. Forever.

“You think I never had any feelings for you, right? You think that this was all just…part of the plan? To make you care about me, then use you for your privileges as a doctor? For a little piece of plastic that I could’ve taken off any other hospital employee? At any time? No, that’s fair. I totally get how you would think that. Especially since you’ve only really known me for…what, a couple of weeks? Just hours, really, if you want to take the time we’ve spent alone together and condense it into one, little, easy-to-digest pill.”

The throbbing in her head, which had started about an hour ago, was building to a fever pitch. Everything she thought she knew was exploding, right in front of her eyes. Her parents had been murdered. Someone had tried to kill her. Jacques was the only person in the world who could benefit from her death. Her father had never lied to her. Her father had loved her. Sam was the one person who could keep her safe. Sam trusted her. Sam loved her….

“Viola, I need you to calm down, okay?” He reached for her arm, and Viola flinched away. He was looking at her with completely new eyes, and in that moment, he was a completely new Sam. She no longer felt safe with him. He didn’t believe her. He thought she was crazy.

“I’m not crazy,” she told him, backing away faster now, toward the door. Her purse was on the kitchen counter, next to his keys. If she turned and ran, he might not see it coming. She might make it out the door before he could stop her.

“Dr. Chakrabarti,” she said, trying to convince herself now, as well as Sam. “He was the only one who could’ve done it. Jacques was in France, he was away when they died. He came back a few days later, to bury them. To bury me.”

Sam shook his head, moving toward her slowly, purposefully. The look on his face was the same look Kevin always had when he was talking to Naked Ronald. Calm and controlled, but always waiting for something to happen. Never trusting. Never letting his guard down.

“Viola, listen to me. Listen to what I’m saying. Dr. Chakrabarti could not have tried to kill you. No one tried to kill you. I was in your room when you coded that night. The room was dark. No one was there.”

“But the monitors…” she protested, almost to the doorway now. “Brady said they were off. Someone might have turned them off, so that they wouldn’t go off if I stopped breathing. If my heart stopped beating.”

“I looked into that, too. One of the nurses rolled the wheel of your bed over the EKG cord. Your pulse ox showed an apneic episode, but there were no other signs of distress. No airway obstructions, no broken blood vessels in your eyes that would indicate suffocation. For some reason, for just a moment, you just stopped breathing. It happens sometimes, Viola. Sometimes, the body just does things on its own. And it’s no one’s fault.” His voice was hard and thick now, like he was trying not to lose his temper. “Please, just let me help you. Whatever’s going on right now, it isn’t you. We’ll get you the help you need, okay?”

Viola couldn’t help but hear the promise beneath the pleading. He was going to send her back to the psych ward, only this time it wouldn’t be voluntary. This time, there would be no three-day letter, no getting out. No helpful techs or understanding doctors. She’d be treated like a prisoner. People would find out. Everyone would know.

“I can’t,” she whispered. Then she turned and ran.

Out of Sam’s room. Through the hallway. Past the kitchen counter, where she only had time to scoop up her purse before Sam had grabbed her arm again.

 “Viola, wait—you have to calm down!”

“No, I don’t!” Acting on pure instinct, Viola swung her purse at Sam’s head. He ducked, letting go of her for a split second. It was enough.

Ducking under his arm, she ran for the door. Wrenched it open. Flung herself into the hallway, and started running for the stairs. The hallway seemed to stretch in front of her for miles, and her legs felt heavy, like it had been far too long since she’d used them properly. Sam caught up with her easily, pinning her to the wall.

“No!” Viola screamed, fighting with every bit of energy she had left. Her muscles screamed in protest. She was so tired—how long had it been since she’d really slept?

“Calm down,” Sam told her again, repeating what was quickly becoming her most hated phrase. “It’s going to be okay, but you need to calm down!”

Viola sobbed, still fighting. There was nothing in the world, now. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for—nothing standing between her and a lifetime of locked doors and long, empty hallways. Just like Hannah Truitt, the girl whose life she’d ruined.

Except, she realized, the hallway was no longer empty. A man—one of Sam’s neighbors, undoubtedly alarmed by the commotion—was poking his head out of his doorway.

Without thinking, Viola screamed at him. “Help me! He’s trying to attack me! Get him away from me, please!”

“What?” Sam looked at her, his face incredulous. Then he turned to face the neighbor, who was barreling down the hall, directly toward them. “Wait. No, you don’t understand. This isn’t what you think, she’s—”

But Sam’s voice was cut off, as the neighbor grabbed him by the collar and yanked him backward.

Viola didn’t wait to hear Sam try to explain himself. He was a good person. She wasn’t. The outcome seemed obvious. He’d be free in a moment. Free to come after her, to make her go back.

So she ran. Down the stairs. Out the front entrance, and onto the sidewalk. For a few precious seconds, she stood, panting.

Sam’s car was parked on the street in front of a meter, but she didn’t have the keys. She started walking as quickly as she could without attracting too much attention. When she reached the corner, she turned and crossed the street, then walked four more blocks and crossed another. Until Sam’s apartment building was nowhere in sight.

Now what? Viola’s last remaining shred of logical thought nudged at her. Where was she going to go? What was her plan?

The problem was, Viola’s plan had been dependent on a lot of things. On finding the proof in her father’s medical file. On getting Sam to trust her, to side with her in case Jacques tried to tell people she was crazy. On Jacques being guilty of trying to have her killed, of having her parents killed. On being right. There were so many things she’d needed to fall into place, and they all seemed to be crumbling away beneath her. It was like a nightmare, but much, much worse.

Because now, Viola was awake.

Now, everything she did had permanent consequences. If she fell from a great enough height, she would die. If she stabbed someone to death with a fireplace poker, she would go to jail. And if she was wrong—if she truly was hallucinating, or going crazy, or both? Then, she’d managed to push away the very last person in the world who might have cared about her, who might have stood by her. Now, there was no one. She was finally and completely alone.

Eyes filling with tears, Viola looked around, at all the strangers who seemed to be watching her. Wondering about her. Judging her.

She had an urgent need to be somewhere safe. Somewhere less exposed. Somewhere she could sit down and think, until she figured out what was real and what wasn’t.

Flagging down the first taxi she saw, Viola practically threw herself into the backseat.

“Where you going, lady?” The driver asked, eyeing her suspiciously through the rear-view mirror. He also seemed to be wondering what was wrong with her. Maybe he thought she was crazy. No, Viola told herself, she was just being paranoid. He was just waiting for her to answer a simple question.

“I’d like to go home, please,” she said, in her sanest possible voice. Then she laughed nervously, realizing what she’d just said. “I mean, I’d like you to take me to my house.”

Very calmly, Viola told him the address of the vineyard house in Seneca Lake.

“Are you crazy?” The driver actually turned around in his seat to ask. “I’m a New York City cab, lady. I’ll barely go to the Bronx, let alone frigging Seneca Lake.”

Viola fought the urge to jump out of the car and run down the street. If she did that, he would definitely think she was crazy, he might even call the police. The police would come to take her, and she would end up back in Psych. She forced herself to laugh, like she wasn’t offended. Like the idea of her being crazy was both ridiculous and remote.

“If it makes a difference… I can pay you a lot of money.”

She reached into her purse, pulling out a stack of crisp one-hundred dollar bills.

The driver raised an eyebrow at her. “Honey, I don’t know how many cabs you’ve taken in your life, or how many movies you’ve seen, but I’m not going to take an eight-hour drive just because some rich girl offers me a big tip.”

“Oh.” Feeling her panic start to rise again, this time in the form of anger, Viola cast around for an acceptable alternative. Where was the last place she’d felt truly safe? The answer to that was easy: Sam’s house. Sam’s apartment. But she couldn’t go to either of those places, and she couldn’t go home. She tried to think of the last place she’d been happy, safe, content. Suddenly, her mind landed on a memory. The week before the accident, her father had surprised Viola and her mother with a spa retreat and a trip to the city. The three of them had seen a show, and spent a few nights at a hotel. It was the last time Viola had been alone with her entire family, together. “Can you take me to the Waldorf Astoria?”

The cab driver shook his head.

“Yeah, lady,” he said. “That, I can do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.” –Sigmund Freud

Even as Sam tried to reason with his neighbor, he knew it would be no use.

Mr. Sanchez in 4B—also known as Officer Sanchez, of the NYPD—already had a reputation for being a bit of a hothead. Add the fact that Sam had a habit of coming home at weird hours, and keeping to himself, the odds that the cop would assume he was an attempted rapist—especially when there was a well-dressed young girl practically screaming it at him—were extremely high.

That was why, when Sam felt himself being pulled away from Viola, he didn’t fight back. Instead, he let the shorter man shove him against the wall, his hands raised in surrender as both men watched Viola take off down the hallway and disappear from sight. When she was gone, Sanchez turned back to him with a question on his face.

“What the hell just happened, 4C?”

Apparently, Sam was the only creepy loner on the floor who bothered to learn his fellow tenants’ names.

“That was my girlfriend,” he explained, in a surprisingly calm voice. “She was just involved in a terrible car accident, and I think she might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I say that because I was one of the doctors who treated her after the accident. I’d show you my credentials, but she stole them earlier today and used them to break into hospital records to steal confidential patient files.”