Wake for Me (Life or Death Series)

by Irons, Isobel

  “Wow,” Sam said. “You’re definitely keeping busy.”

  “Well, I’ve had a lot of time.” The tone of her voice might have been light, but there was acid underneath.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had no idea that your psychologist would recommend a 72-hour extension. Dr. Chakrabarti didn’t foresee that happening either. But I’m glad you’re doing okay. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come check on you.”

  “Thanks,” she said, looking down at her books as she carefully arranged them in a symmetrical stack. “I appreciate you taking the time out of your…incredibly busy schedule.”

  Okay, so maybe Sam’s first instinct hadn’t been wrong. Viola was furious with him. But unlike him, she had a lifetime of practice at hiding her true feelings. At least, that’s what Jacques had told him. Damn, was he ever going to get those stories out of his head?

  Claiming the seat next to her, Sam pretended not to notice her veiled accusation. “I also came up here because I wanted to tell you something. Dr. Chakrabarti said he’s planning on choosing me for the peripheral neuropathy study.”

  “Congratulations, Sam.”

  “Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I definitely couldn’t have done it without your encouragement, so….”

  But that wasn’t entirely true, because Sam hadn’t actually followed her advice and asked to be considered for the study. Instead, he’d gone along with Dr. Chakrabarti’s and Jacques Gosselin’s plan to take away Viola’s freedom. It seemed that betrayal had been a tipping point which had set off his career.

  “Yeah,” she joked, rolling her eyes. “I’m pretty great, for a crazy girl.”

  Sam felt like the world’s biggest jerk. He probably was the world’s biggest jerk. “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?” As she looked at him, her eyes held defiance. “Everyone in this place keeps trying to make me feel like I am. Why shouldn’t I give in? Why shouldn’t I just cave, like you did? It would be easier than fighting, wouldn’t it?”

  “Viola, I….” Sam trailed off, because there was nothing he could say now that wouldn’t be a lie, or a half-truth. And she was right: he had caved. He hadn’t fought hard enough to keep his promise to her.

  But what could he do to make it up to her, now that he was no longer her doctor? She was officially out of his hands, and he had nothing to give her that would help her situation. Since the day Viola had woken up, Sam had wished for things to be simpler between them, but in his usual naïve and bumbling way, he’d ended up complicating things past repair.

  For the first time in his life, he was actually close to getting everything he’d wanted. Or, everything he wanted that was within the realm of human possibility, anyway. He was well on his way to becoming a doctor, he’d just landed a coveted position as Dr. Chakrabarti’s assistant for a very important medical research project, and he’d finally met a ‘girl next door’ type who was nice, gainfully employed, and not in any particular hurry to get married. Even his mom seemed less worried about him. Now, if he could just cut the invisible bond that seemed to tether him to Viola, Sam’s might actually have a shot at being normal. Happy, even.

  But that was easier said than done, and as it turned out, it was pretty damn impossible to say.

  Instead, Sam opened his mouth to say the same thing he always did.

  “Viola, I am so sor—“

  She moved so fast, he didn’t have time to react. Before he could even finish saying the word ‘sorry,’ her hands were circling his neck, sliding up to bury themselves in his hair as her lips collided with his. Startled, he leaned back, and Viola used the opportunity to climb into his lap. Sam automatically reached up to steady her as she laid siege to his unsuspecting mouth, sucking his lower lip between her teeth and biting down, hard.

  It was the second-most unsuspected and violently erotic thing that had ever happened to him, and once again Sam found himself being mentally swept off his feet. No matter how many times he’d secretly fantasized about her lips crushing against his, nothing could ever prepare him for the reality of being kissed by Viola. It never got less intense.

  This time though, he at least had the presence of mind to kiss her back. As his tongue played with hers, something inside him crowed. The pressure, the tension, he’d been feeling between them, it wasn’t one-sided. The wall of doubt he’d erected inside his mind exploded into a pile of volcanic rubble.

  And, just when Sam’s zing of elation turned into an insatiable and reckless hunger for more, harder, now—Viola ended it, just as violently and suddenly as she’d started it.

  “Actions speak louder than words, Sam,” she panted angrily, into his ear. “Stop telling me how sorry you are. Prove it.”

  Without so much as another look in his direction, Viola jumped off his lap, gathered her books, and stalked out of the room.

  Straightening his scrub pants hurriedly, Sam stood to follow her.

  But before he could reach the door, someone stepped in out of the hallway, filling the frame. The guy in the doorway was almost as tall as Sam, but twice as thick, and three times tanner. He was wearing white scrubs, and his nametag simply read ‘Kevin.’ He must’ve been an orderly or a tech.

  “That wasn’t what it looked like,” Sam said, frantically trying to come up with a cover for the completely inexcusable lapse of judgment on his part. “I mean, I know how it must have looked, but….”

  “Don’t worry about it, Doc.” The psych tech folded thickly muscled arms casually across his huge chest, while maintaining a straight face. “I saw the whole thing. That crazy girl jumped you, against your will. I was gonna step in and try to restrain her, too. But then I was like, nah….”

  Sam couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He’d almost made it to the main exit, when Dustin Perry caught up with him.

  “Hey, Sam,” he said, in that annoyingly upbeat, yet totally calm way he had. Some people were destined to be shrinks, and Dustin was clearly one of those people. “Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “What?” Sam froze in his tracks, turning to face his former schoolmate with what was undoubtedly the world’s guiltiest expression on his face. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh,” Dustin looked mildly perturbed. “Didn’t you call ahead and ask the secretary if I was working tonight? I just assumed that meant you wanted to talk to me about something.”

  If there had been a desk in front of him, Sam would’ve slammed his head down on it. Repeatedly.

  “Right. Sorry. I completely forgot. I was just going to ask you…if you knew how long my former patient was going to be staying here. We had some…blood tests we wanted to run, and her follow-up exams are scheduled for the end of the week. So….”

  “You mean Viola Bellerose?” The psych intern scratched his tiny, blonde, peach-fuzz beard. “Gosh, I don’t know. She’s not really one of my cases, I mean her family psychologist is pretty much calling all the shots. But he’s got privileges here and he’s been practicing for like forty years, so, Dr. Perugia—that’s my attending—he pretty much just stays out of the way.”

  “Wait.” Sam mentally waded through the sea of pleasantness, trying to reach the actual point. But Dustin hadn’t really answered his question, he’d just created a whole bunch of new ones. “Are you saying she’s not being treated by our in-house psychiatrists? Then why is she even here?”

  “Well, because she was admitted.” Ya silly goose. The addendum practically hung in the air. Flanders Junior, that was what Brady used to call him, Sam remembered it now.

  Sam had never come closer to shaking a colleague. “Did Dr. Pirogue—or whatever his name is—even see Viola?”

  “I think so, when she first came in. But now, she’s basically a voluntary admit, and there’s no court order keeping her here.” Dustin furrowed his brow, before returning to his default smile. “Not that we’re complaining. I personally find her delightful.”

  No way. Sam shook his head.
“Does she know that? That she can basically sign herself out?”

  “Well, she can’t sign herself out, but she can request to be released. It’s not like anyone here is trying to have her committed, so all she’d need to do is write a three-day letter.”

  Finally, a silver lining, Sam thought. This was a golden chance to make up for his last few mistakes. “I think I’ll just make sure she knows that.”

  But when Sam walked back toward the ward, he was once again faced with the bruiser tech, Kevin.

  “Sorry, Doc.” The big guy’s voice was equal parts mellow and menacing. “Visiting hours are over.”

  “I’m a doctor,” Sam practically sputtered.

  “Well, you’re not her doctor. Not now. And she already told me she doesn’t want to look at your face anymore today, so….” Kevin made a subtle flicking gesture with his hand, clearly unafraid of any violence or punishment that Sam might be able to dish out. “Off you go.”

  “Fine.” In any other case, Sam told himself he’d knock the guy’s lights out if that was what it took. But knowing Viola, if she’d said she didn’t want to see him, she wouldn’t even listen to what he had to say. Even if it was the key to her freedom. She was just that stubborn.

  “Could you at least do me a favor? Please?”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “I might.”

  “Tell her that she can get out of here. All she has to do is write a three-day letter. Tell her to ask Dr. Perry what that means.” And to make sure the tech did what he asked, Sam added another heartfelt, “Please.”

  “Alright, I’ll let her know.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam turned and stalked out of the ward, alternating between shell-shocked and victorious with each step.

  When he got to the locker room, he practically dove into his sweats, planning on making a beeline for the gym and working out in the pool until he couldn’t lift his arms anymore. Three days. Viola could be out of the hospital in as soon as three days. Then, maybe, Sam would finally have a chance to explore the insane reality of his feelings for a girl who was damaged, dangerous and impossible to predict. A girl who could make his boring, white-walled, white-bread, starchy-white-coated life explode into vibrant Technicolor with a single touch of her lips.

  Even after spending two hours at the gym, Sam’s mind was still buzzing. He picked up a six-pack of beer on the way home to his apartment, thinking to quiet his electrically charged brain with a few bottles of nature’s best mental hamster wheel dampener. But when he got into the apartment, the silence assaulted him. All he could think about was how Viola’s fingers had tightened in his hair, pulling his head back in a not-so-subtle invitation to drop his qualms and participate.

  In the dimness and the silence, he could almost hear her voice repeating what she’d once said to him about experimenting with BDSM. Sam’s sex life to date was so vanilla, he’d had to look the term up. And, Jesus, now he had a brand-new, 3D, surround sound fantasy to go with the definition. He’d never be able to sleep again, if he kept up this line of thinking.

  Sam tried turning on the TV, flopping back onto the couch and cracking open a Sam Adams. Football. Damn it.

  As much as he’d been raised a warm-blooded, straight, American male, Sam couldn’t bring himself to watch football. Not without thinking of Ben. Or worse, his dad.

  Searching between the cushions for the remote, Sam quickly changed the channel. But the damage had been done. His mind was already cueing up the reel of Sam’s All-Time Greatest Hit Mistakes. Starting, of course, with the first big one: the day he’d quit the swim team, his junior year of high school.

  It was less than a week before state finals, and Sam had already more than qualified. But his grades were dropping steadily as he spent more time at practice, and he’d been forced to choose between gambling on the slim chance of receiving an athletic scholarship or putting all of his eggs in one basket—relying solely on his grades to pay for college and eventually, hopefully, medical school. As a result of that decision, he’d earned a full-ride academic scholarship for all four years of his undergrad and a partial scholarship to med school.

  Unfortunately, though, because he’d chosen that exact day to quit the swim team, that was the day he’d also come home from school early, just in time to watch his dad drive away for the last time.

  Sam still vividly remembered how hunched his shadow had looked against the pavement as he’d walked home that day, head down as he tried to console himself that he’d made the right decision. His dad had been laid off from his coaching job at the high school a few months before, and it was looking more and more like he wasn’t going to get another job anytime soon. Ben’s death had hit Dad doubly hard, because he wasn’t just suffering the loss of his oldest son, but also his star football player. Ben had been his favorite, in every possible way.

  Later, Sam would tell himself that it was for the best, the fact that he’d gotten home before his mom had that day. That he’d been the first one to see the empty closets, and the note on the kitchen table in Dad’s handwriting, which simply read, “I can’t be here anymore.”

  Because of that painful but opportune fact, Sam was able to give his mom a better version of that day to remember than the one he’d lived through. He was able to burn the note, and temporarily soften the plain, cutting truth: that her husband of twenty years had walked out and left her on the one year anniversary of their son’s funeral. Because he just ‘couldn’t be there’ anymore.

  “Dad said he couldn’t handle being surrounded by all of these reminders of Ben every day,” Sam had told her later, lying straight-faced to his own mother as she’d cried over a cup of tea at the kitchen table. “He left before you came home, because he loved you so much, and he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to go if you were here. But it’s not fair to us, he said. He doesn’t feel like himself anymore, like the husband and father we deserve. So until he can figure out how to deal with…everything, he’s going to take some time. Alone.”

  Of course, like most of his attempts at saving people, Sam’s good intentions hadn’t succeeded in bettering the outcome. Because of his gallant lie, he’d had to watch his mother wait, year after year. Watching for the day when her husband would come back, after he was finally finished ‘dealing’ with everything. But that day would never come. Because Dad hadn’t left for them. He’d done it for himself. Because it was easier than staying and actually ‘dealing.’

  Flipping through the channels until he settled on some pointless comedy—the kind so lame it came complete with a laugh track so you knew when it was supposed to be funny—Sam downed the rest of his beer and opened a second.

  Even though he wasn’t scheduled at the hospital until six tomorrow night, he’d undoubtedly find himself back in the psych ward, first thing in the morning, on his own time.

  Because really, Viola deserved to know that she wasn’t crazy. Hell, she was probably even right—she’d pegged him from the first time she’d opened her eyes. Sam was a caver by nature. A textbook quitter. Was it really his fault, though?

  Giving up on people he loved did seem to run in the family.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.” –Sigmund Freud

  “Let’s talk about your mother.”

  Viola rolled her eyes. With his walrus-like face and jagged yellow tusks, Dr. Horace seemed to wait on her reply like a fish from the hand of a marine trainer. God, he was wearing on her patience.

  “Isn’t that a little trite?”

  She looked around the room, at the pale green of the walls—probably meant to be soothing, but only looking like a slightly more sea foam-tinted asylum—the gray steel filing cabinets, the cheap industrial desk and chairs. No location had ever been less likely to make her want to spill her secrets. Least of all the ones she’d never even really admitted to herself.

  “In what way?”

  “Well, come on.” Viola cro
ssed and uncrossed her legs, re-crossing them again at the ankles. “Every passé head-shrinking session in every movie uses the same line. It’s always about the mother.”

  “In my experience, it’s true more often than not.” Dr. Horace smiled, giving her that ‘I’m way older than you and therefore you should automatically believe everything I say’ look. Viola had always hated that look. It reminded her of Sister Baylor, her sixth grade home economics teacher.

  “Alright,” she said. “You want to talk about my mother? I’ll tell you a…story about…my mother.” Furrowing her brow, she looked at the ceiling and counted to three. In her mind, she pictured a giant, old-fashioned typewriter. Whereas before, her brain had been a badly-alphabetized dictionary with a few missing pages, now she could pull the words she needed out of thin air, letter by letter. If she remained calm, and kept her focus, of course.

  “The first time I got into trouble at school, I was thirteen.” Viola smiled, not because the memory was a good one, but because she was proud of the fact that she hadn’t struggled over a single word. “I talked back to a teacher, nothing major. But Sister Baylor sent me to the mother superior’s office, and they called my mom.”

  “What did you say to the teacher?”

  Viola fixed Dr. Horace with a direct stare, wanting to watch his reaction as she told him, because she had a feeling he would side with Sister Baylor.

  “She told us that every woman needed to learn how to cook, because someday…she would be cooking for her husband and children. I asked her why my husband couldn’t learn to do his own cooking. Then I asked her…for that matter, why she was assuming that all women wanted to get married and have children in the first place. After all, she was a nun.” She smirked. “It wasn’t as if…the Lord cared whether or not she knew how to cook.”

  “And that was when she sent you to the principal’s office?”