Angels Weep

by C. J. Lyons

  Redemption. That was the word. Jenna was searching for a chance at redemption.

  As Morgan was overtaken by sleep once more, she wondered at that. It meant Jenna really had changed, really did blame herself for what had happened to Morgan. If a narcissist like Jenna could change…her mind grasped at the concept, sluggish to accept it but refusing to let go…then maybe, just maybe, there was hope for Morgan?

  The last thing she remembered before her brain slipped into its slumbering haze was Andre’s voice reading a story, a fairytale about a wooden puppet learning how to become a real boy…

  Chapter Eight

  Morgan woke feeling groggy, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Damn PEG—the nurses must have used it to add a sedative to her feeding when they did their rounds last night. Of course no one asked her; they never did. She was no one, powerless, had no right to have a say in her own care.

  Then it hit her. She was the one thing she’d vowed never to allow herself to be. Worse than a Sheep. She’d become a Victim.

  The thought brought her fully awake. She opened her eyes to see Nick standing, knapsack in hand, at her bedside.

  “I was afraid I’d miss you. I’ve got an early client.” Nick divided his trauma counseling sessions between the rehab facility at the VA, where he’d created his own form of talk-exercise therapy, and private sessions at his office. He was dressed in sweat pants and an UVA T-shirt, so today had to be Monday. Or Wednesday. Or Friday.

  She sighed, realizing her once-sharp deductive abilities—part of what had kept her alive and out of situations like this, where she was under the control of others—still weren’t back. She’d only been awake for a little more than a week. Micah had done the research, had told her a lot of coma patients never progressed after waking, at least not as fast as she had. Many remained in the same limbo of agitation in which her roommates who’d been awake for months remained trapped.

  Of course, they weren’t focused on escape. Not like she was.

  Nick, because he was too damn good at his job, effortlessly read the emotions behind her thoughts. He rested his hand on her arm, a simple gesture but one filled with comfort. “Jenna said Lazarus told you about the custody issue.”

  Interesting. He didn’t call Lazarus by his title. Nick was usually scrupulously polite—part of his Virginian upbringing, plus he was simply a nice guy. Morgan wondered why he’d deleted the doctor’s title, but as she turned to ask, the light from the windows behind him stabbed at her eyes, making her wince.

  Without saying a word, Nick positioned himself to block the light, found the glasses Micah had brought her, and slid them onto her face, smoothing her night-sweat-tangled hair away from her face. Another simple gesture, but the way he did it so automatically, without any thought whatsoever, made something inside her tighten with regret.

  What would it have been like to have grown up surrounded by love instead of blood? It was a question she never allowed herself to ask, but now her defenses were down, and she couldn’t help herself. To have had a father who cared for her instead of making her cower, certain that her survival, the very next breath she took, was dependent on how well she could convince him that he was the center of the universe and that she would never, ever betray him.

  She fumbled at the glasses, pushing them farther up her nose even though they were fine where they were. Used the movement to hide her face from Nick—at least she hoped she had. At least she had the blue tint of the sunglasses to shield her from the rest of the world. If she were lucky, it would work both ways.

  Because this wasn’t one of Andre’s fairytales—she could never change who she was. And, despite her curiosity about how her life might have been, she could never be anyone but who she was: the girl who’d killed her father and ended his reign of terror. The girl who’d made the world a safer place for real girls, like Nick’s own daughter.

  No. Not a girl. A Wolf. A predator who’d rather gnaw her own arm off than remain in captivity.

  “Now, don’t go plotting your escape yet,” Nick said. Damn the man, he knew her much too well. How had she let that happen? “You’re not ready, either physically or mentally. Use your time here to get better.” He patted her arm. “We’ve got your back, Morgan. You can trust us. Jenna has hired a great lawyer to find an alternative to foster care. I even asked Lucy—she’ll never let you stay with us, and you know why.”

  She blinked fast, trying to remember. A memory of a knife—hers—a man’s blood spraying, Lucy watching, too late to stop her. She’d crossed the line. The man had needed to die, but he’d been Lucy’s prisoner, and Morgan had crossed a line when she’d executed him. At the time, Morgan had thought she was doing the right thing; but now as she viewed the memory through the haze of time, she realized that moment, that look of…disgust…on Lucy’s face, that was the moment she had decided to give up killing. To find a place among the Sheep. But it was much, much harder than Morgan had ever dreamed. How can you disown your own true nature?

  “Lucy is talking to a friend at the US Marshal’s office. It’s not a done deal, but if you want her to pursue it, she might be able to work out a way for you to stay at one of their safe houses, in exchange for telling the FBI everything you know about your father’s crimes.”

  She jerked upright at that, her body protesting as barely healed scars stretched and not-quite-healed rib bones torqued. “No jail. No. I can’t.”

  “No jail. No charges. You’d have immunity. And since Clint’s dead, you wouldn’t be testifying. It would be solely for the purpose of finding the victims he killed, their bodies, to give their families closure.”

  The brightly lit ward with its cheerful plants and patients smiling as they worked hard to raise a spoon and swallow or to shuffle with a nurse to the bathroom or to touch the right icon on their communication board—it all suddenly vanished. Replaced with blood. And screams, so many screams. The flash of knives, the smell of burnt flesh…and worst of all, gleeful laughter. Not from her father; from her.

  Her flesh crawled at the revolting memory. Not because of the blood and pain—she was immune to them. She was disgusted at the girl she’d been. Yes, that was years ago, when she was young and easily manipulated. But to have allowed Clint to take control of not just her body but her mind, to have allowed him to convince her she had a choice about what they’d done together, that she’d wanted to do it, that she…enjoyed it. She pulled away from Nick, bile burning her throat, retching and gagging.

  Nothing came up, but even so, he surprised her. Instead of pulling away, fearful she might vomit, he leaned over the bedrail to pull her close into a tight embrace, one hand soothing her hair. As if he’d seen her memories come to life.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said softly. “I told her it might be too much to ask. Don’t worry. We’ll find another way. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  He sealed his vow with a kiss on the top of her head. An act so innocent and loving—how could a girl who’d done the things she’d done, how had she ever made it to a point where people like Nick and Andre and Micah and even Jenna and Lucy cared so much about her? Why did they care? They weren’t stupid; they weren’t Sheep, like most of the rest of the Norms wandering blindly through their pathetic, empty lives. They were protectors, each and every one of them.

  Didn’t they realize she was the enemy? That she was a monster? Just like her father?

  They’d seen what Clinton Caine had done to his victims. They’d seen what Morgan was capable of. Still, they didn’t run. They stood. With her.

  It was a strange feeling, an unfamiliar feeling, a feeling that filled her with dread and terror.

  She didn’t deserve their loyalty, much less their love. What if she failed them?

  She wanted to push Nick away, to leap from the bed, to run away. That was her first instinct. But she fought her primal reflex.

  Instead, she pulled him tighter and said two words she could not remember ever saying before. “Help me.”

  C
hapter Nine

  After her moronic, helpless breakdown—she hadn’t even been able to tell Nick about Honey, to see if he could ask the nurses, find out more—Nick had quieted her down, and once Morgan was calm, left to meet his client.

  Breakfast arrived. Morgan hated eating in front of anyone. She still hadn’t mastered using a fork or knife; since her fine motor control was lacking, the spoon she used had an extra large handle with a special grip; and she tended to dribble, even with the extra-thick oatmeal and scrambled eggs that were meant to teach her how to chew and swallow again.

  She preferred her humiliation in private, thank you very much. Especially today. Her breakdown with Nick had left her sobbing, literally leaking her emotions into body fluids escaping her control for anyone to see. She never cried—not real tears, not like this display of weakness. Might just as well hang a neon sign over her head: Predators, here’s your prey, weak and vulnerable. Come and get her!

  Swallowing salty tears with her bland oatmeal, she tried to hide her face and keep as quiet as possible so as to not alert the aides helping the others—meals were a dangerous time here on the ward of misfit children. Chewing and swallowing without choking, navigating utensil from bowl to mouth without poking an eye out, focusing on each bite instead of being distracted and flinging your food across the room as you whirled to look or had an intrusive thought. There was a good reason why bath time came after mealtime.

  The other kids’ antics and mishaps brought no joy to Morgan. She felt no superiority that she could at least now eat without an aide hovering by her side—it had taken her days to get to this point, even if she left half her food wasted on the towel that served as her bib. Rather, watching the other kids, kids who’d been awake weeks to months longer than she had, made her sad. Did no one else see that they weren’t progressing? Seemed to have all reached a plateau? One of them, Andy, a teenager who’d been snowboarding without a helmet, he was maybe even regressing, his attention worse, losing the few guttural words he’d mastered, more fits of agitation requiring sedation and soft restraints.

  Had any of them ever been as awake as she was now? Would she lose everything she’d worked so hard to get back? Maybe she was doomed to end up like them.

  Fierce determination blazed through her, drying her tears as she tightened her grip on her spoon and resolved to work even harder. She was getting out of here. On her own. Before they could send her to some wretched foster home or let the FBI lock her up as a witness. Damn Lucy for even thinking that could be an option.

  She pushed her tray away, dropping her spoon with a clatter. The other kids all jerked up, searching for the noise. Their focus was especially fragile today, and she had a good idea why. The same hummingbird of something’s not right that kept flitting and flirting with her own attention: Honey’s empty bed space.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed. She miscalculated the distance to the wall where her walker waited, though. It took her three tries to maneuver herself close enough to pull it in front of her and then leverage herself up to a standing position. The effort left her soaking with sweat. All the other kids had quieted, watching her with wary intensity.

  An aide glanced up, a question in her raised eyebrow, but Morgan waved her off before she could ask it. She’d noticed that many of the staff treated her with guarded concern—not that they were indifferent to her suffering or struggles, but rather they were uncomfortable approaching without her permission. Good survival instincts, she diagnosed.

  She gathered the folds of her gown and clutched the walker, not bothering with the work of putting on her slippers. Honey’s bed wasn’t far—it was just across from Morgan’s, both nearest the ward’s entrance. Or escape, as Morgan liked to think of it.

  The first thing she did once she reached Honey’s bed was draw the privacy curtain, and immediately the tension filling the ward eased. The other kids calmed, their world settling back to normal once again.

  Morgan leaned heavily against her walker. Not because she was out of breath—this was nothing compared to the workouts Kristyn, her therapist, put her through—but because she had no idea what to do next. Frustration was a mudslide, threatening to bury the few clear thoughts she had. A few deep, slow breaths helped. Hard to believe that only a month ago, analyzing a space, using it to paint a picture of what had happened there, would have been second nature. Today it was exhausting and tedious, hard work.

  It didn’t help that the medical debris along with Honey’s personal items had already been stripped from the space. All that remained was the empty bed, mattress naked and pillow gone, and the nightstand beside it. Morgan started with the nightstand, opening its top drawer. Empty except for a plastic comb still in its plastic wrapping.

  The larger cabinet space below the drawer contained only standard issue child-sized hospital gowns and a collection of unused towels and washcloths. Sighing, she pushed the door shut. What was she thinking? She had no idea what she was doing, much less what she might be looking for. She hadn’t even been awake to see what had actually happened to Honey. If the adult whose footsteps she’d heard earlier in the week—she was almost certain it was a man—if he’d been there, she’d slept right through it.

  She rolled her eyes, irritated at herself. But she wasn’t giving up. There had to be something…

  Her gaze caught on a circle of white stuck to the lower bed frame, half-hidden by the mattress and the side rail. She pressed the latch and lowered the rail, revealing a tiny disk, maybe an inch wide. It had adhesive gel on its backside and a small metal knob on the front. An electrode. Made sense—the first thing the nurses would have done if Honey were in distress would have been to hook her up to a monitor. Morgan still had red patches on her chest from where she’d had monitor leads attached during the weeks she’d been in a coma.

  But this lead was different—smaller, a different gel pad than the ones she’d seen on the monitors. She frowned. Tried to concentrate. She’d seen a lead just like this, could feel the way it felt stuck to her skin, the weird popping sensation when it came off, the residual gel she’d rubbed away, an electrical tingle.

  Neuromuscular electrostimulation, that’s where this electrode came from. Kristyn used NMES to help Morgan regain her muscle strength and coordination—and she’d told Morgan that while she was in a coma, they’d stimulated her muscles at night in order to prevent atrophy.

  Honey had been like Morgan, minimally responsive, so of course she would have also had muscle stimulation. Which meant the electrode was meaningless. Morgan was about to drop the electrode into the empty trashcan beside the nightstand when she stopped.

  Why would the electrode be stuck to Honey’s bed up near her head? Wouldn’t it be down near her legs, or at least her arms? Maybe it wasn’t an NMES electrode at all but something to monitor Honey’s seizures, an EEG electrode?

  She frowned at the tiny disk. So many sensations scrambling her thoughts, trying to force her off target. After Honey’s seizures grew worse earlier in the week, they had put her on a brain wave monitor. She’d watched the nurses apply the EEG electrodes—the pretty, brightly colored wires had fascinated her—each ending in a tiny electrode they’d glued to Honey’s scalp through a special cap. Nothing like these.

  Clenching her fist around the NMES electrode, she shuffled through the curtain and back to her bed. Carefully, she folded the electrode inside a piece of paper torn from one of Micah’s sketchbooks and hid it inside a pair of socks in her own bedside drawer. Then she lay back down, mentally exhausted.

  She had no idea what the electrode meant, if anything. It was infuriating because she knew she should know—or at least know the right questions to ask next—but her mind was muddled by the myriad sensations bombarding her as the other children finished their meals.

  She lay back and stared at the ceiling, focusing on the black dome immediately above her bed. As her mind began to drift, she blinked, trying to bring her attention back to the shiny black dome…it was important…
she should know—she did know—but she couldn’t dig through the detritus of competing stimuli to remember why it was important. It had a name…no, it had a job…a reason. Why was it there?

  She’d ask Jenna later, was her last conscious thought before she drifted to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  Morgan woke from her nap just as Kristyn arrived with a wheelchair. Usually, she tortured Morgan by forcing her to use her walker to shuffle her way to the therapy room—ensuring that Morgan would be exhausted before they even began the more intense work on regaining muscle strength, fine motor coordination, and balance. And that was just the physical therapy. Even more tiring was the cognitive therapy, designed to help Morgan regain her language skills, memory, and eventually function independently again.

  “Good morning, Morgan,” Kristyn said with a grin—she was always smiling and grinning and cheering and applauding each tiny success. Kristyn’s joy seemed genuine, at least to Morgan’s not-quite-recovered BS detector. It was yet another essential survival skill she needed to regain—her ability to read people beyond superficial appearances. “I’ve got a treat for you today.”

  Morgan moaned. Kristyn’s “treats” took the form of legalized child torture. A new exercise, a new piece of equipment to stimulate Morgan’s weakened muscles, a new test to gauge the next level of therapy.

  And she was powerless to do anything except push past the pain and frustration. It was her only way out of here.

  Kristyn helped her change into a baggy pair of sweatpants and a loose-fitting T-shirt—because of her wounds and the damn PEG, she hated anything touching her skin. She would have preferred to wear a gown. Morgan didn’t believe in modesty, wasn’t embarrassed by her body even with its new scars, but she’d made a mistake when she first woke from her coma. Kristyn had showed her the pants and a gown and asked which Morgan wanted to wear. Morgan, still cloudy from drugs, her brain as fermented as sour mash, had gotten lost in Kristyn’s words, jumbled bright balloons floating past, and she’d grasped the first one she could, echoing, “Pants.”