“Oh.”
“People are unpredictable,” he warned, “and here… more unpredictable than other places.”
“Yeah…” Which made sense, of course. Tamara had been lulled by the apparent lack of danger in the unit. But convicted criminals in a forensic unit were probably not the best people to trust, even if they seemed harmless on the surface. “But… isn’t she… treated?”
“Everybody in this unit is being treated,” the guard pointed out, “but we still have cameras and armed security staff.”
“Oh…” Tamara nodded. “Yeah.”
He drew back from her, looking toward his partner who, from the sound of it, had Brinkley properly secured. He pulled Tamara’s door shut as he walked out, and she heard the lock engage.
24
TAMARA AWOKE GROGGILY to her arm being shaken. She forced her eyes open, trying to figure out who was waking her up in the middle of the night. Had Brinkley gotten past her locked door, planning a midnight escape? It didn’t make much sense, but it was the first thing that came to Tamara’s mind. She had been involved in a previous prison-break, though it certainly hadn’t been by choice.
“What is it?”
“Time to rise and shine. Up and at ’em.”
Tamara blinked, struggling to bring everything into focus. “What…?”
“Reveille bell has gone, and I happen to know they didn’t let you sleep in over in General.”
“No.” Tamara stared blearily at the nurse. She rolled onto her side and tried to push herself up, but it was still a massive effort. “I’m sick. Those meds. Can’t get up.”
“You took your last meds twenty-four hours ago. Now you’re just milking it.” The nurse helped her to get propped up into a sitting position. It was easier than it had been the previous day, but still an effort.
Tamara rubbed her eyes. The nurse brought over a breakfast tray and set it on the bed beside Tamara.
“Make sure you eat. I don’t want you taking pills on an empty stomach. That’s probably why you reacted so strongly yesterday.”
“I ate yesterday.”
“Not enough, obviously. Your breakfast had barely been touched and you didn’t eat anything the rest of the day.”
Tamara closed her eyes to rest her heavy lids. “Couldn’t. I was too tired.”
“Keep your eyes open. Come on.” The nurse snapped her fingers in front of Tamara’s eyes, making her jump and tense to protect herself, eyelids flying wide open. “That’s better. You have something to eat, and get up and move around. That will help. And a shower.”
Tamara didn’t know where the showers were, but she was pretty sure they were too far away. Anything out of her room was going to be too far away, and she wasn’t going to stick her head in the toilet bowl to wake herself up.
“Eat.” The nurse pointed at her tray.
Tamara looked up, frowning. “I will.”
“I want to see you eating now. Something in your stomach before the meds.”
“I can’t take them today.”
“You can and you will.”
“I’m still sick from yesterday,” Tamara whined. She didn’t care that she sounded like a six-year-old. Dr. Sutherland had promised her that they would find something that wouldn’t make her feel like a zombie. He said they would take care of it if there were any problem with the meds. “I can’t take them again today.”
“They’ve been adjusted today. Not the same as yesterday. Sometimes it takes a little while to figure out what will work. But I think yesterday was a pretty fair indicator that we didn’t get it right the first time. Have some toast. Some of those lovely eggs. I want you to have something in your stomach.”
Tamara gazed dubiously at the gray eggs. She somehow doubted that was what the nurse had eaten for breakfast. But the nicknames that the inmates had for the reconstituted eggs and other slop they were fed would probably not go over well with her.
She moved her thick, heavy arm and picked up a slice of toast. Her fingers tingled, and she dropped it like she’d been shocked.
The nurse frowned and looked at Tamara’s face. “What was that? You didn’t burn yourself.” She would have known very well that food was not served hot. Too much of a risk it would be used as a weapon. They were lucky if it was anything more than lukewarm when they got it.
“I slipped.”
“You slipped.” The nurse picked up the piece of toast and handed it back to Tamara. The rough texture still felt foreign against her skin but, braced for a shock, she didn’t jump the second time. Tamara smiled reassuringly at the nurse and lifted the toast to her mouth.
She was worried at what would happen when she took a bite, but her fears were unwarranted. It was just toast. Just the same as it always was, and she didn’t need any special intervention. Tamara took three bites of the toast but, after the third, couldn’t stomach any more. She laid it down on the plate, her nose wrinkling and mouth twisting itself into a grimace of disgust, even when she was trying her best to keep her expression blank.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s… bad…” Tamara shook her head. “It has a bad taste.”
“It’s just the same as always.” The nurse looked down at the piece of toast, studying it and then picking it up. She held it to her nose, but Tamara noted that she did not take a bite to make sure it was okay and didn’t taste bad. “Nothing wrong with it. Do you want something on it? Jam? Peanut butter? Most of the girls just put the eggs on the toast, but if you don’t like them…”
Tamara shook her head. “The eggs are disgusting even when I’m feeling well.”
The nurse didn’t argue with this evaluation. She had probably never tasted the reconstituted eggs. She’d probably never been tempted. Despite her calling them ‘lovely,’ she didn’t seem to believe that they actually were.
“You need to eat something more,” she encouraged.
There were some sausage patties that Tamara never touched, a second piece of toast, and the juice. Tamara wrinkled her nose. “Just the juice.”
“No, you need more. Some of the sausage and eggs? A full piece of toast?”
“I can’t. I’ll puke.”
“I’m sure you didn’t get any special treatment over in General. You eat what you get, just like you’re used to.”
“Didn’t really eat breakfast in General either.”
“What about oatmeal? Mostly, we don’t bother putting it on the trays because no one eats it.”
Tamara shook her head.
“More of the toast, then,” the nurse insisted. “I’ll put some jam on it for you.”
Tamara didn’t say anything. The nurse picked the untouched piece of toast up, and went back out to her cart full of trays to get a package of jam, which she scooped out and spread over the toast with a plastic spoon.
Tamara did her best, but after a few bites of the toast, she was gagging and couldn’t get any more down.
The nurse eyed the two pieces of partially eaten toast and sighed. She handed Tamara a cup with pills in it and removed the top from her juice for her.
“What is it this time?” Tamara asked, looking down at the pills.
“Just swallow them, and hopefully, they won’t bother you like the others. But you should get up and walk around. Shake off the cobwebs.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re quite the entitled little princess, aren’t you?”
Tamara was shocked. She stared at the nurse, mouth open, unable to think of what to say.
“You think we should just cater to you? You should get to eat what you want, lie around all day?”
“No… I just don’t feel good. I didn’t want the stupid meds and they made me sick.”
“You need to do what we tell you to do. This is treatment, and you’re not going to get better if you don’t follow through on what you’re told.”
“I can’t get up.”
The nurse eyed her. “You certainly can.”
Tamara glared back. If the nurse felt like p
hysically forcing Tamara to walk, she was welcome to try. Like Burgess the day before, she was likely to get more than she bargained for. Finally, the nurse shook her head and retreated to the hall, where she pushed her cart down to the doorway of the next room.
Tamara breathed out. She closed her eyes and let herself drift back off to sleep.
The adjusted meds were an improvement, so that Tamara recovered over the next few days to the point that she was able to get up and walk across the room or to the other end of the unit. Her food continued to taste bad, not just the toast, but everything she ate. Dr. Sutherland visited her a couple of times, reassuring her several times that they weren’t going to keep Tamara on drugs that made her sick, though it might take some time to find just the right cocktail.
He didn’t bring Tamara her books. Nobody did. But on the new meds, Tamara didn’t have the motivation to read a book anyway. She found she didn’t have any interest in leaving her room most of the time. It took one of the nurses bullying her or Brinkley begging her before she would get up off of her bunk to make the trip down to the common room to watch TV or to go to one of her scheduled group therapy sessions. She didn’t see any difference between sitting in her room staring at the wall and sitting in the common room zoning out to the TV or daydreaming in group. While it wasn’t as dangerous in Forensic as in General, there was an added layer of challenge caused by the meds and the different procedures.
“French, you’ve got group,” Burgess barked, entering the common room to find her.
Tamara didn’t move. Any movement would just take extra energy, and she wanted to conserve as much as she could.
“Don’t have group until tomorrow,” she murmured.
“You have group today.”
“No, Friday.”
“Today is Friday.”
Tamara thought about that. Had she missed a day? Miscounted? Had she spent an extra day sleeping without even realizing it?
“Group,” Burgess snapped again. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Tamara got her feet under her and rose slowly. She glanced around for Brinkley, but the other girl wasn’t around. They didn’t share a group therapy session, so she must be somewhere else. Burgess grabbed her arm impatiently, trying to hustle her forward. Tamara got her feet tangled up and nearly fell, only saved by Burgess’s hold on her arm.
“Slow down,” Tamara urged.
“How about you speed up?”
“I can’t.”
She shuffled along and he was forced to go at Tamara’s pace, a fact that obviously galled him, so Tamara slowed down a little more, just to rub it in. By the time they got to the therapy room, Burgess’s face was red, his irritation obvious to everyone around him.
“Well, glad you could make it, Tamara.”
Tamara ignored Worth, the group therapy leader, and stared at the wall.
“Maybe you could contribute something today. Why don’t you tell us how you’re feeling?”
Tamara gave no response, waiting for him to move on. Worth stared at her, waiting for her to fill the silence. But Tamara was on to him. She didn’t care how long he sat staring at her. That was just less time she had to listen to him and the rest of the group fill the air with their meaningless chatter.
“Maybe you could tell us about what happened when you were last in court,” Worth suggested. “When you were supposed to be testifying against your old friend, Spielman.”
Tamara looked at him. She hadn’t expected that he would actually look at her file or any of her history. He seemed to operate the group session just by drifting from one person’s comments to another, trying to get everyone talking around the same topics. Things didn’t get personal, unless people wanted them to be that way. Unless they brought something up themselves.
Worth smirked at her, obviously having scored a point by knowing something personal about her and mentioning it before the whole group. Tamara swallowed and looked away from him again.
“Spielman was your cellmate for a long time, wasn’t she?” Worth prodded. “The two of you were very close.”
Tamara clenched her teeth. She tried to keep her mouth shut and not say anything, but it festered. People always assumed that she was friends with Glock, because they had shared a cell and because that was the way Glock behaved. But they weren’t friends. They never had been. That had never been part of the package.
“So what happened? What made you turn on her?”
“I didn’t turn on her,” Tamara snapped.
“That’s not what I hear. From what I understand, you stabbed her and said more than once that you wanted to kill her.”
The other inmates were turning to look at Tamara, interested in her story for the first time. Usually, no one paid any attention to anyone else. They just talked about themselves and their challenges. Or stared off into space, pretending they weren’t there.
“I shoulda killed her,” Tamara asserted. She ignored the dramatically surprised expressions of the other inmates. “Should have killed her the first time she laid hands on me.”
Worth’s expression was comical. His pencil hovered over his notepad, but he couldn’t seem to decide what to write.
“What do you mean? What did she do?”
Despite the heavy oppression of the meds, his words unlocked a flood of memories. Tamara clutched at the sides of her seat, trying to stabilize herself.
She saw herself with Glock. Saw everything she had suffered through, like it was a high-speed movie on the wall in front of her. At the same time, she saw and heard Glock in the courtroom. Her mocking laugh, the smirk as she looked at Tamara sitting there, trying to testify against her.
You would have gone if I told you to. Just like you always did what I told you to.
She had listened to Glock, just like she had tried to obey the Bakers and do what she was told. Trying to survive. Trying desperately just to make it from one day to the next.
“Why don’t you tell us about it?” Worth’s sympathetic voice urged. “I’m sure that the others will relate to what you have gone through…”
“I did what she said,” Tamara whispered. “Why do I always do what they say when it just gets me hurt anyway?”
“That doesn’t seem very fair, does it?”
“Doesn’t seem very fair?” Tamara echoed. “When you do what you’re told, it’s all supposed to work out. That’s what they say. Do what you’re told. Toe the line. You’ll be rewarded. Take this pill. Go to that therapy!” Tamara’s voice rose to a shout. She knew Worth wouldn’t like it. Worth wanted her to talk about feelings and coping skills and healing from trauma. He didn’t want to hear the truth. The way it really was in juvie and everywhere else.
“Tamara, I think we can all agree that life isn’t fair sometimes. Sometimes we make the right choice, and something bad still happens as a result. Does anyone want to share an experience—”
“I’m sharing,” Tamara cut across him. “Why should I take meds and come to therapy, just because you say? You and Dr. Sutherland and all of his lackeys? I’m not sick, except from the stupid drugs. It’s the drugs that are making me sick.”
There were affirmations from some of the other participants. Tamara wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be on the prescribed protocols.
Worth put up both of his hands to stop her and motion for her to be calm. “Tamara, I’m going to stop you there. Let’s not blame your treatment for—”
“Put your hands down,” Tamara hissed.
Worth was so surprised, he froze, staring at her with wide eyes.
“Just put them down and don’t threaten me.”
Worth’s hands lowered slightly as he became aware of his body language. “It wasn’t meant to be a threat, Tamara, I just wanted to stop you and say—”
“You wanted me to share. So I’m sharing.”
“I was hoping you would tell me about Glock—”
So he did know Glock’s preferred name, and probably more about her relationship with Tamara than he wo
uld have her believe. He’d just been waiting for the opportunity to ask her about it, to dig down deeper and find out all of the tantalizing details.
“You want me to tell you about her?”
He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward in his chair. “Yes, certainly.”
There was silence in the room, everyone waiting with baited breath. Tamara jerked her head slightly, motioning for Worth to come closer. He hesitated, then stood up from his place in the circle and walked close to her, leaning on a desk to look casual and open rather than standing over her. Tamara leaned slightly forward in her seat. He mirrored the movement, leaning toward her.
With a flash of insight, Tamara understood why he was asking about Glock. As he stood there in front of her, she saw that he was Glock. All of the time he’d been trying to draw her out in group and get her to talk about herself, it was because he was Glock. Trying to reconnect to her. Trying to get close again so that he could manipulate her and make her do whatever he wanted her to. Tamara couldn’t understand why she hadn’t seen it sooner.
He wore dark slacks and a blue dress shirt with a white lab coat over top to make him look professional and trustworthy, even though Tamara was pretty sure he wasn’t really any kind of a doctor, just some college student they had hired to run the group sessions. They had apparently warned him not to carry pens in his pocket while on the unit, and the pencil he gripped awkwardly was short and stubby, like a golf pencil, without much of a point on the end.
But he was wearing an expensive-looking silk tie.
Tamara grabbed the tie as he leaned toward her, whipped the long end once around his throat and pulled both ends tight. She didn’t have the energy to walk across the room to confront him, but he had solved that problem by walking to her. All she had to do was pull the tie tight and keep it that way.
The room erupted into screams and shouts. Worth’s eyes bugged out. He grabbed Tamara’s wrists, trying to force her back away, but she kept a hold on the ends of the tie, so attempting to force her hands away just tightened the noose around his neck.
Just like you always did what I told you to.
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