Authors: Vicki Hinze
The phone rang.
Irked by the interruption, and as stressed now as when she’d gotten into the tub to de-stress, Sara grabbed a towel, wrapped it around herself, and then rushed to the kitchen phone, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.
On the third ring, she snatched up the receiver, hoping this wasn’t bad news about Ray. His sugar had been fairly stable, but his eating patterns were totally out of whack, which meant he required micromanaging to avoid wild sugar-level swings. “Dr. West.”
“My office, tomorrow morning at eight hundred,” Fontaine said. “This is a direct order, Major.”
More military clout-and-clutter troubles. Oh joy, oh rapture. She had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Fontaine to stuff his direct order and his bugging device up his orifice of choice. “Yes, sir.”
Crackling tension, she slammed down the phone. What Fontaine wanted, only God knew. It could be he had decided on his means of torturing her for filing Ray’s incident report, or it could be he had been informed that she’d found the bug and ditched the damn thing.
Sara toweled herself dry, not certain which would bring her more trouble.
At eight o’clock sharp,
Martha ushered Sara into Fontaine’s office.
The smell of pine cleaner made her nauseous. Almost as nauseous as Martha’s pitying look. The woman was about as sincere as a campaigning politician. She’d known what she had been doing, giving Sara the white lab coat, and nothing in this world would convince Sara otherwise. Martha might fear Fontaine, but Sara damn well didn’t. His vindictive manipulations were bad enough, but electronically bugging her? That, and this summons were outrageous. The electronic surveillance was downright illegal.
In a civilian community.
Surely tapping someone was illegal at Braxton, too.
Careful. Get caught and you’re on your own. Totally. No support and, if you blow it, no knowledge. Other people are depending on you.
Hearing Foster’s voice inside her mind, Sara clenched her jaw and silently murmured, “Oh, shut up.”
Fontaine fingered his tie. It was a god-awful shade of orange. She’d heard in the rounds that Mrs. Fontaine always matched his clothes, and she had gone on a European vacation. All of Braxton should rejoice on her return.
Fontaine checked his watch. The blatant intimidation attempt irked Sara. She slung him a halfhearted salute for appearance’s sake and then sat down in his visitor’s chair, not waiting for an invitation. If she was going to be challenged here—and she was—then she would face it from equal ground and on her own terms.
He frowned at her and stood up. “I understand that you’ve altered the therapy on the PTSD patients, Major.”
She nearly smiled. He wasn’t conceding his perceived superiority in his position jockeying game just yet. If he had known her better, he’d have kept his seat and spared them both the ritual. “Yes, I have.”
“Why?”
She arched a brow, letting him know she owed him no answers. Her patients were her domain. “I’ve implemented methods proven effective.”
“They’re unorthodox, not proven.”
He was irritated. “They’re proven to me.” She smiled up at him, knowing it would only irritate him more. “That is why I was chosen for this project, Doctor. Because I’m unorthodox
and
effective.” She rubbed a fingertip over her temple. “Didn’t we cover this already?”
He grunted, and a muscle under his right eye ticked. “I strongly suggest you reconsider your choice of treatment. The changes in ADR-30’s treatment are radical.”
“ADR-30 is
Joe.
And in my practice, these changes are not radical, they’re standard operating procedure.” How many times had Foster thrown that maddening term her way? “But if you’re looking for reassurance, you’ve got it. Under the provisions of my research agreement with the Department of Defense, I have full authority over the therapies I choose to incorporate and full responsibility. I’m within the defined parameters.”
He grasped the back of his chair and squeezed, denting the leather. “I’m well acquainted with your agreement, Major,” he said sharply. “My point is, we have reasons for not using these patients’ names.”
“Security risks. Yes, I know. But there’s nothing to worry about, sir. The assigned names are fictitious. Of course, they have to be. I don’t know my patients’ real names.” Not yet. But she would. By God, she would.
“We prefer numbers.” He moved behind the chair, putting it and the desk between them as barriers.
Interesting. Sara tilted her head, looked sideways at him. “Why?”
His eyes widened at being questioned. “Because it’s my policy, Major, and I’m the director of this facility.”
“I see.” She leaned forward, spread her slack-clad thighs, and braced her hands on her knees. “Well, I’m sorry to have to breach your policy, sir, but stripping PTSD patients of their identity is in direct conflict with my mission.”
He folded his arms over his chest. His jacket gaped open. “What
exactly
is your mission, Major?”
She answered simply, free of guile. “To heal my patients, sir.”
Incredulous, his jaw dropped open. “You expect to heal these people?”
“I expect to give it my best shot.”
“But you’ve evaluated them. How can you reasonably expect to cure them?” He let out a rushed breath. “Dr. West, are you delusional?”
Now, he’d gone too far. “No, Dr. Fontaine, I am not delusional.” Sara chilled her voice to cool the outrage piping through her veins. “I’m doing my job.”
“Incredible.” He shook his head, lifted and dropped a hand, slapping the leather chair. “This, they funded.”
“Yes, they did.” Sara stood up. “If you have a problem with that, I suggest you contact your superiors, sir, because until they stop funding, I’m going to continue to do my job. I’ll make every effort not to conflict with your policies, and I’m certain you wouldn’t expect it, ask it, or even suggest it, but for the record, I will not compromise the potential for recovering a patient due to your rules.”
His brows flattened to a slash. “What I expect, Major, is for you to do everything humanly possible not to disrupt the normal operations of this facility. Because while you have full authority over your patients and their therapy, you do
not
have any authority over my facility.”
He was going to continue running roughshod over her at every turn. Sara folded her arms over her chest. “If you feel my presence here is a disruption, sir, I have a solution.”
“What?”
“Sign the papers to transfer my patients to a facility in Pensacola. That would be more than acceptable to me.”
“I will not.” He spat the words at her.
“Fine.” She stood up. “So long as we understand each other, I won’t requisition such a transfer.” She moved toward the door and paused, cupping the doorknob in a death grip. “I respect your authority here, Dr. Fontaine. But my first concern is the same as any doctor’s: my patients. I hope you understand that.”
“Oh, I understand you, Dr. West.” Hatred brimmed in his eyes. “Completely.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir.” Though tempted, she didn’t get in a dig by mentioning the bug. He knew that she knew about it, and that he had planted it on her. That was enough. “I answer directly to the DoD, and I don’t think the people there would appreciate spending their money only to have someone deliberately sabotage their efforts. As I hear it, bad attitudes really piss them off.” She gave him a false smile and a sassy salute. “Have a good day, sir.”
Sara left the office and returned to the second floor still fuming.
Not that it would do her any good, but tonight she’d be calling Foster. If he wanted results, then he had better find a way to get Fontaine off her back. At least now she had a valid excuse to yell at Foster, provided her damn throat got well and she had voice enough to yell at him.
With the conditions of these five patients and all that was at stake, she didn’t need the added stress of an anal-retentive facility director, but she certainly had one. She didn’t need the added stress of a cold-shouldered staff, or the worries of whether or not Fontaine’s forged peacock-blue notes were going to be enough to get her and her patients out of Braxton alive, either. But she had those things to contend with, too.
She turned the corner into the main hallway. She’d also better call Brenda and talk to her and Lisa tonight. Brenda had agreed not to marry H. G. or G. H., whatever-the-hell-his-name-was, Williamson—for now. But Sara had been forced to stoop to blackmail to get her to agree, and God, but she hoped Lisa never found it out. She was the closest thing to a daughter in Sara’s foreseeable future, and already Lisa thought Sara was a worthless failure of a shrink. She didn’t want her niece’s opinion of her sinking any lower—provided it could. Her professional instincts were screaming that she was running out of time with Lisa.
Panic stabbed at Sara’s stomach. She pressed a hand over it, warning herself to calm down. The last thing she needed was
more
stress.
She paused at a water cooler and got a drink. The icy cold felt good in her throat. Foster had promised she would find her answers about David here. So far, she hadn’t caught Foster in any lies, so she would give him the benefit of doubt—and leave no stone unturned in checking for information. Maybe this would be her lucky day, and she’d find out something about David, see Fred, and get access to the computer.
Her mood lightened at the prospect, and she swung by the nurses’ station.
Shank was on the phone, taking lab results. She pointed to Sara’s patients’ charts, tapping them with her pen.
Sara reviewed them, starting at the top of the stack, though everything in her urged her to look at Joe’s first. She really had to get a grip on her personal feelings. All five men were her patients, and no one man deserved more attention than the others. An imbalance would be extremely unprofessional—and unacceptable.
So sayeth Sara, model of propriety, caught in the throes of a serious crush on a patient—a mentally diminished patient she instinctively knows is the one.
Biting a frown from her lips, she scanned the new notes in Michael’s file. No significant changes. Fred had enjoyed a comfortable night. Maybe the late-night hydrotherapy was helping him to sleep better. Ray hadn’t been so lucky. Episodic paranoia, flashbacks of the trauma, hypervigilant. She checked his medication listing, allergies noted, and then prescribed a lighter sedative. The man was still loaded on downers. Until she got him off the drugs, she couldn’t do much for him. But his sugar had stabilized. That was good news. The EEG results still weren’t back from the lab. The guys there were either slow or swamped.
She closed his file, opened the next, and then scanned the notes. Lou had isolated himself in the bathroom inside his room, and no matter how often William had returned Lou to his bed, on every check, he was back in the bath. Attempts to remove him had been met with “extreme resistance.” For his own protection, he had been restrained in his bed. In a sense, this too was good news. In four days, she hadn’t seen Lou so much as blink. That he’d gotten to the bath to isolate himself was reason to celebrate. It seemed certain that the sedatives were working their way out of his system. That sparked a little hope for his recovery.
She skimmed the rest of William’s notes—they were as worthless as Fontaine’s—and then saw one Shank had added. On seven-thirty A.M. nurses’ rounds, Lou appeared semicognizant. Asked why he had isolated himself, he said, “Everyone’s turned against me. They lied to me.” Asked what he meant, he replied, “The enemy. Betrayed.”
A cold chill swept through Sara.
The enemy. Betrayed.
Just like Joe and Ray.
Betrayal had to be a key in all of this. But what kind of betrayal? She closed Lou’s file and set it on the “reviewed” stack. What did all five cases have in common?
On seeing Joe’s file, an expectant tingle swam through Sara’s chest. She flipped the binder open and then read the notes. Shortly after she had left him yesterday, he had ripped out a section of the padding from the wall in his Isolation room. He’d refused the cream-based soup brought to him at dinner. Complained about the irritating music. And attempted to stuff the therapist working with him on relaxation exercises into the trash drum William had brought back into Joe’s room as a safety barrier. Orderlies removed the shaken but uninjured therapist and the drum, and then straitjacketed ADR-30—William, damn him, refused to use the name Joe—and Joe had huddled in the corner for the next five hours. He had not slept.
Subsequently, the therapist had notified William she would not be working with ADR-30 again.
Several things were exceedingly clear. Joe had protected Sara on multiple occasions. When he had felt the rage coming, he had ordered her to leave the room. Yet, he was not reacting similarly—or well—to anyone else’s presence. The attachment was solely to her, which meant that her only hope of helping him was to work with him personally on every phase of his therapy—and to keep the resistant William away from him.