Holding her breath, she straightened in her seat, pasting a smile on her face. She couldn’t let him see how afraid she was. She couldn’t let him know that she knew. Not yet. Not until she had a plan to make him pay for what he’d done.
She had to seem controlled. Calm. Like her father would’ve been.
“Hello,” she said, with her heart in her throat. His answering smile was tight and contrived. He was a liar, through and through. She’d simply been too stupid, or too drugged, to see it before.
Trailing on Jacques’ heels, Nurse Bouchard entered the room carrying a tray of hospital food.
“Oh good, you’re finally awake,” she said. “I told your uncle that visiting hours didn’t start until eight, but he said you had important business to discuss.”
“That’s right,” Viola said, swallowing much too loudly. “We do.”
Searching the room with his eyes, Jacques settled on the edge of the bed, because she was occupying the only chair. Viola could tell he was uncomfortable perching there, but she had no intention of moving.
“Nurse B.,” she said sweetly, not taking her eyes off of Jacques’ face. “Could you do me a favor and change the sheets?”
“Right now?” The nurse gave her a look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come back later and do it after visiting hours?”
“No, that’s alright.” Viola felt her hands starting to shake, and she folded them together tightly in her lap. “You can do it now.”
“Alright,” the nurse said, in a tone which indicated she thought her patient wasn’t just spoiled, but crazy to boot.
And maybe she was. Because when Viola finally let her gaze drop from Jacques’ face, her eyes trailing over his expensive suit that looked identical to one of her father’s, finally stopping on his hands, which were folded in the exact same position as hers—
Jacques was wearing her father’s ring. Just as he had been in the dream. In all the dreams.
“You bastard!” She screamed, standing up so fast that the chair fell over, crashing against the wall. Nurse Bouchard was so startled, she dropped Viola’s empty water jug.
Jacque’s face remained as calm and impassive as ever; the face of a villain.
“What’s the matter, mon chouchou?” He stood slowly, cautiously, as if afraid she would attack. But he extended a hand toward her anyway, keeping his back to the nurse, pretending to appeal to her in his sickening, soothing voice. “Shhh, c’est bien. Are you unwell?”
“Don’t you touch me,” she yelled, moving away until her back was against the wall, until there was nowhere else to go. “Don’t come near me! You killed them! Assassin! Meurtrier!”
Viola sobbed her frustration, unable to control her words as rage and terror took over.
“Vous êtes celui qui était dans ma chambre,” she cried, pointing at Jacques and looking at Nurse Bouchard, trying to make her understand. There were more people coming in now. Surely one of them would understand what she was trying to say. Viola’s eyes skittered around the room, searching frantically for Sam. He would protect her. He would understand.
“I think she’s having a breakdown,” Nurse Bouchard said, to one of the doctors in the room. Viola didn’t recognize him. He shook his head and yelled something into the hallway.
“No!” she yelled, pointing at Jacques. “He came…I was…cedar and smoke …smothering me…dying.” But her brain felt like it was short-circuiting. It was like being in another nightmare. She was screaming as loud as she could, but no one could hear her. No one would help her.
“Sam!” Two male technicians came toward her, with grim expressions on their faces. Jeff and Manny. She knew their names—that meant she wasn’t hallucinating. It meant she wasn’t crazy. Didn’t it?
“Please…” she begged, covering her face as they reached down to pick her up. She struggled, because every move brought her closer to Jacques, who was smiling at her. Grinning, behind their backs, where no one could see. “Please…you have to…find Sam…I remember…have to…help me.”
Someone else walked toward her. Jodi, the new nurse. She was carrying something in her hand.
“It’s okay,” Jodi said, smiling the same sickening sweet, fake smile that had made Viola hate her in the first place.
Viola barely felt the sting of the needle sliding beneath her skin.
“Don’t worry, c’est bien. It’s all going to be okay.”
With her last conscious thought, Viola wondered if a redheaded nurse from Idaho had really spoken to her in French, or if she’d just imagined it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility,
and most people are frightened of responsibility.” –Sigmund Freud
Sam glanced anxiously at the dashboard clock for the third time in less than five minutes, as if that would somehow make the numbers stop moving forward.
The lady in the car next to him was using the opportunity to change clothes, slowly trading in pieces of business wear for a more risqué nighttime ensemble. The guy in front of him looked to be arguing passionately with his wife, while the teenager in the rear view mirror was singing along with the radio.
The light changed, and only three cars made it through before it became red again.
“Oh, come on!” Sam yelled, pounding the steering wheel in frustration.
He’d never seen traffic this bad, but he’d also never tried to make the drive from his hometown to the hospital in less than five hours, during rush hour. It served him right.
As it was, the clock read 5:24 PM and Sam was still about two miles away from his destination. On the seat next to him, his ancient pager beeped again, for probably the tenth time in the last two hours. He’d accidentally left his cell phone at his apartment two days earlier, and the last call he’d made to the hospital had been from his mom’s house. All the switch board operator had said then was that Dr. Chakrabarti wanted him to come in an hour early for his 6:00 PM shift.
Sam had looked at his mother’s kitchen clock, done a quick travel time calculation, and then immediately taken off through the front door, not even saying a proper goodbye to Caroline and his mom. The way he figured it, if he got the spot on Chakrabarti’s study, he could call home from the hospital and share the good news. That would hopefully make up for any hurt feelings his rude exit had caused.
Unfortunately for Sam, it looked like by the time he actually got there, Chakrabarti would’ve already died of natural causes. And it pretty much went without saying that he could wave goodbye to any future promotions. There was one unbreakable rule of being an intern, and Sam had broken it. He’d let a page go unanswered—the ultimate sin.
When he finally pulled into the packed employee lot, it was 5:41 PM.
Swinging his bag over his shoulder, Sam locked the car and sprinted into the building. He didn’t bother to swipe in, since his actual shift didn’t start for about fifteen minutes, and who knew if he’d even still be working there when 6:00 PM rolled around? He’d never missed a page before, so theoretically anything was possible.
When he finally got to Chakrabarti’s office, Sam’s shirt was drenched in sweat. He was still wearing his oldest pair of jeans, which were splattered in paint. He’d never looked more homeless, or less like a doctor.
He knocked on the door, resigning himself to making some pretty fancy excuses.
But when the door opened, Sam was surprised to be facing not his attending, but Viola’s father’s business partner, the guy she called ‘Uncle Jack.’ He’d only seen the man once from afar, but since the only other French guy with cufflinks Sam knew of wasn’t around anymore, it had to be Jack.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I can always come back.”
“Come in, Dr. Philips.” Chakrabarti’s voice came from deeper inside the room. Without hesitating, Sam obeyed. The Frenchman eyed him with distaste and backed up a step, probably worried that some of Sam’s st
ink was going to rub off on him.
“Sorry I’m late Dr. Chakrabarti. I drove as fast as I could without breaking the speed limit.”
Okay, so that wasn’t strictly true. Sam had driven exactly nine miles an hour above the speed limit almost the entire way. He’d bent the hell out of that speed limit.
“It’s alright, Dr. Philips. Please, sit down.”
The moment Chakrabarti let Sam’s supreme tardiness slide, he knew something was wrong. He glanced to his right, but the Frenchman was still standing. The expression on his face was grim.
Oh, no. Sam looked back at Chakrabarti. “Has something happened to Viola?”
Please, he silently prayed. Please say no.
But instead of saying no, Dr. Chakrabarti nodded.
“Is she….” Sam couldn’t even bring himself to say the word ‘dead.’ But his mind filled in the blank with all kinds of terrible substitutes. Deceased. No longer with us. Passed away. Gone.
“No, nothing so dire,” the Frenchman said, answering before Dr. Chakrabarti could. Sam looked to him, waiting for him to explain more, but his face remained blank. You’d think that he’d at least look happy, Sam thought. Whatever had gone wrong, she wasn’t dead.
Unless… “Did she lapse back into a coma?”
“No.” Finally taking pity on him, Sam’s attending spelled it out. “But earlier this morning, she suffered a violent and delusional episode.”
“What?” Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Viola might be strong-willed, but he never would’ve suspected her of being violent.
“It is true,” the Frenchman said. “It was…very disturbing. And I am sorry to say, this was not the first time Viola has struck out at those around her.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr. Chakrabarti gestured for the Frenchman to explain.
“Dear Viola has had a problem with…shall we say, reality, since she was a very young child. Her parents were so loving, they were very sparing with their discipline. As a result, her harmless, childish stories soon turned to outright lies. When she was fifteen, she started a rumor about a fellow student. It led to a suicide attempt by the poor girl it concerned. Truitt, I think her name was.”
Sam shook his head, unable—or maybe unwilling—to believe that Viola would intentionally, let alone willingly, take part in something like that.
“And that was not the first time,” the Frenchman continued, ignoring Sam’s gesture of denial. “Six months ago, she accused a maid of stealing the Cartier watch her father had given to her as a present for her eighteenth birthday. The watch was found a few days later, but by then the maid had already been fired. Because her visa was sponsored by Bellerose Co., she was also deported back to Venezuela.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam rubbed his forehead, where a sharp pain was starting to develop. “But both of those…situations sound like they could have been misunderstandings. I don’t know why I’m here, but if you’re asking my opinion, I can’t say that the girl I’ve been treating is the same one you’re describing.”
“Please, Dr. Philips.” The Frenchman finally sat, easing into the chair next to Sam and crossing his legs. “Do not misunderstand me. I do not think that Viola is evil, or that she means to harm anyone. In her heart, I think she is a good girl. A sweet girl.” His mouth twitched upward in a pained smile. “When she was still in braids, she used to run to me and throw her arms around my neck, and give me a big kiss. And I must admit, she was such a pretty thing, no one could deny her. I tried to caution her father that too much freedom was a bad thing for a child, but he didn’t listen. To him, she was always his chaton—his little kitten. But because of his doting, she grew up into a chat sournois—a scheming cat. She spent her life learning to manipulate people to get the things she wanted, instead of working for them.”
Sam stood up, not wanting to hear any more. “Well, I’m not sure how I can add to this conversation, so if you’ll excuse me”—he looked at Dr. Chakrabarti for permission—“my shift starts in about five minutes, and I still need to change.”
“Sit down, Sam,” Chakrabarti said. “I’ll excuse you from rounds, just this once. Before you go, I paged you here to ask you a question.”
“Yes?” Sam waited.
“Has there been any instance, during your time with the patient, when you doubted her ability to tell right from wrong?”
Sam knew what he was asking—if Viola could be a sociopath, or something like it.
“Absolutely not.” He turned toward the door, anxious to shower and change so he could check on Viola, and make sure that she was okay. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” Dr. Chakrabarti said.
“No,” the Frenchman said, at the exact same time.
Sam stood by the door, trying to hide his growing impatience with the man. “Can I help you with something else?”
“I have a question as well.”
“Okay.”
“During your time with Viola, have you ever felt—even for a moment—that she could not tell the difference between what was real and what was not?”
Immediately, the image of a crumpled up paper towel popped into Sam’s head. The look of sheer terror in Viola’s eyes. Do you see it? He shifted uncomfortably. The Frenchman narrowed his eyes, suspicion brewing on his face.
Sam opened his mouth to lie. To tell his attending, and the patient’s legal guardian, that he had never once doubted Viola’s grasp on reality.
But before he could, Dr. Chakrabarti spoke.
“Dr. Philips, I think you should know that Mr. Gosselin has asked me to place Viola under temporary psychiatric observation, for her own safety. I have agreed.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sam said, finally letting his anger overrule his judgment. “Based on what? A few stories from back when she was a teenager, and what…a tantrum of some kind?”
“You were not there,” the Frenchman said. “If you had been, I’m sure you would not be so quick to dismiss it. She accused me of murdering her parents, in front of a nurse and several others.”
“What?” Sam stared, openmouthed, trying to imagine what could have possessed Viola to believe that her parents had been murdered. Maybe she wasn’t handling the news as well as everybody thought.
“This is why,” Chakrabarti said, “I believe it is in Viola’s best interest—and ours—to convince her to commit herself to a 24-hour psychiatric hold. In this way, she will be able to receive the help and intense counseling she needs to get through these recent tragedies, which admittedly would be very difficult for even the sanest person. If she will agree to this, I can guarantee that she will have more control over the treatment process than if she were committed by order. And because she trusts you, I believe you are the best person to explain to her why this is in her best interest.”
“Dr. Chakrabarti, you can’t seriously be asking me to help you talk her into this.” Desperation crept into his voice. She’d never forgive him. “I’m an intern, for crying out loud.”
“An intern,” the Frenchman said. “That is something like a doctor in training, yes?” He looked at Chakrabarti like ‘why in the hell do you even care what this guy has to say?’
Dr. Chakrabarti sighed. Sam realized that this was going to happen, no matter what he said. Calling him in to persuade Viola, to get someone she trusted to break the news to her, it had only been a courtesy. A way for the attending to feel slightly better about kowtowing to the whims of a wealthy potential donor. Whatever helped him sleep at night.
“Fine,” he said quickly, before Chakrabarti could change his mind and dismiss him, cutting him out of the loop for good. “I’ll do what I can. But if I’m going to take sides against my patient—who is legally an adult, by the way—I want to know that she can check herself out whenever she wants.”
“I’m sorry,” Chakrabarti said, “but once she has been admitted, that will no longer be an option. It will be up to her psychologist. If, as you say, she is not in any way unstable, then she will be di
scharged after the hold has lapsed. After that, she will be free to leave the hospital, or to continue to seek treatment as needed.”
“I don’t want to see her in pain any more than you do,” the Frenchman said. “I only want her to understand that this behavior is not helping. She must make peace with what happened to her parents, without trying to invent an imaginary villain to blame. Once she does, she will be able to grieve normally. To move on with her life.”
Personally, Sam disagreed with that statement. He disagreed violently. If he had a dollar for every time someone had told him to move on with his life and live normally after Ben’s death? After what had happened with his dad? Well, he’d probably be out of debt by now. The truth was, losing someone you loved? It changed you. Made you stronger in some ways, weaker in others, but it didn’t make you normal. He knew that from experience. You’d never be normal again.
In spite of his personal reservations, he nodded, feeling like he’d just made a deal with the devil.
“I can’t promise she’ll agree, but like I said, I’ll do my best.”
After Chakrabarti had dismissed him, Sam headed for the locker room, moving like he was on his way to the gallows. He no longer cared about being late. In fact, he’d do almost anything to avoid what he’d just promised to do.
He was in the shower, wondering if it was possible to drown while standing up, when Brady found him.
“Dude, where the fuck have you been?” He reached in through the curtain and punched Sam on the shoulder. Hard. “I’ve been calling you all day.”
“Left my cell at my apartment,” Sam said, through a curtain of scalding hot water. Maybe if he stood there long enough, he’d cook. Then his problems would finally be over.
“Well, your timing sucks, bro. Things around here have been def-con batshit since about oh-eight-hundred. Your coma girl’s up there, tied to her bed, which would be kind of hot if it wasn’t so goddamned tragic. She’s been asking for you all day.”
Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) Page 13