Like a digital clock, memory flipped over from past to present. I caught my breath, remembering the day before, the night before that. Then, as the air escaped my lungs, I tensed again, recalling my strangely muted dreams, then the dark void of deeper sleep that was empty of nightmare—empty of any dreams at all, as though someone, or something, had switched off my brain without my consent.
I lurched upright from the depths of the couch and surveyed the parlor with bleary eyes. The hour was early, the apartment still washed in shadow, though the sky had taken on a silvery cast. A full moon hung low over the horizon. By that faint light, I could make out Sara Holmes lying curled around herself in one of the overstuffed chairs. A metallic gleam caught my attention. It was a gun, tucked between her bare feet. Her hand rested on its grip.
My guardian demon.
The hiss and surge of waves grew steadily louder. I finally located the source of the noise—a portable alarm clock on the table, surrounded by the remains of our dinner. Very carefully, I reached over and switched off the alarm. The display read 6:12. I had slept almost twelve hours.
I rubbed a hand over my face, recalling more details of the previous day. Holmes had rescheduled yesterday’s appointment with Faith Bellaume until next week. Good. I was fresh out of the ability to examine my soul. Thompson expected me back today. That I could manage. I had to. I braced my right hand on the arm of the couch, ready to launch myself, however unsteadily, into my day.
And froze.
Holmes’s eyes were open, bright and glittering in the rising dawn. The gun had vanished, and she was studying me with that self-satisfied expression I had come to know, as if I were one of many game pieces that she had maneuvered for the win.
My good intentions of getting to work, of managing, vanished. This was a conversation that could not wait. “You,” I said softly. “You drugged me.” More clues shifted into place. “You drugged both of us.”
She smiled that ghost of a smile. “It was safe enough.”
“That’s not what I meant. I—” I stopped and felt all my muscles tighten into knots. “Why did you drug me? You’d already locked me up. You jiggered security and made damned sure I couldn’t call anyone.”
You even stole a part of my body. A part constructed of metal and wire and plastic, but that doesn’t matter. You treated me as a thing.
Holmes must have guessed that last thought, because she dipped her gaze in uncharacteristic agreement. “I apologize. But I’m not sorry,” she added. “You badly needed the sleep.”
The breath trickled from my lips. True enough. It still did not erase the sense of violation.
“What about you?” I said. “Did you need the sleep too?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t certain you’d take the drink otherwise.”
In spite of everything, I had to suppress a snort of laughter. It was so typically Sara, buying a whiskey that cost $80 or more, and serving it to me in a crystal goblet, just to deliver a knockout drug. I remembered the seal crackling as I broke it. She must have replaced the seal herself after doctoring the contents with . . . something. I swallowed but tasted nothing beyond a smoky memory of the whiskey itself. Whatever kind of sedative she had used, it had acted slowly and left no residue behind, only a deep dark void of memory.
“What did you give me—us?” I said.
“It won’t affect your work,” Holmes said at once. “Trust me. I’ve used it before.”
Another clue, another hint of her character. But I had already wasted enough time on the mystery of Sara Holmes. Thompson and the VA hospital expected me at eight forty-five. “We finish this conversation later,” I told her. “Tonight. Tomorrow. And no games with counting questions.”
I didn’t wait for her to answer but stalked off to my bedroom.
My tablet was still missing from my desk. My device, however, lay in the center of my bed, next to my cell. Curious, I switched on my phone. The screen flickered a few times before it displayed the message “Limited Service.”
Oh yes, we would definitely have a conversation tonight, Sara and I.
I showered, then hurried through the drill of tending to my stump. In another of the many contradictions that made up her character, Sara had laid out all the necessary items for restoring my arm—powder, antiseptic, a fresh cotton sock—on the counter. Once I had secured the device, I let myself breathe a moment, and I could let myself feel . . . almost whole.
The mirror was still cloudy from the steam. I wiped a circle clear and stared at the blurred reflection of my face. The swelling along my jaw had subsided, leaving behind a mottled trail of bruises, like purple shadows lurking beneath my dark skin. I worked my jaw carefully from side to side. It twinged, but not as badly as I’d feared.
I took stock of the rest of my injuries. My stump still felt raw from the abuse it had received, and the knee would give me trouble for a day or two, but the rest was bearable. Scrapes and bruises. Minor stuff.
What my coworkers would say was another matter. They would gossip, in whispers that died whenever they saw me. I knew what that gossip would say, too. When I told them I’d been mugged, they would remember all the times a patient rushed to explain how they weren’t in a fight, no, not them. It was some stranger who had attacked them for no reason at all. Or the others, who didn’t want to talk about the lover who beat them.
Sara and I weren’t lovers. We weren’t even friends.
But she saved your life.
I shivered. Of all the images that had remained of the attack, the clearest ones were of Holmes, like a deadly viper, striking hard and fast at the enemy.
As I headed toward the kitchen, I heard a soft melody from behind Sara’s closed door. A quiet, thoughtful piece, with long pauses between measures. In the kitchen, fresh coffee and an omelet waited for me, both steaming hot. Next to the plate was a heap of five-dollar bills and a note that read, Take a taxi. Thank me later.
The bills were crumpled and worn. Several had coffee stains, and when I sniffed them curiously, I smelled a whiff of clove cigarettes. They were perfectly anonymous, these bills. Almost too much so, as though she had manufactured them for the occasion.
For every clue you give me, you add a dozen mysteries.
I used the apartment landline, now restored, to call a taxi. By eight o’clock, I had finished my omelet and the last of the coffee. I set the dishes in the sink, packed my duffel bag with clean scrubs and a paperback. It only took me two go-arounds to convince the driver that I was the person who had called.
Outside the hospital, Jacob Bell waited next to the employee entrance. He had taken the familiar parade rest stance we all knew, even the medicos. As I turned away from the cab, he rolled onto the balls of his feet. He looked alert and angry. “Captain. I heard you had some trouble a few nights back.”
The accusation was clear: You were hurt. You didn’t call.
I didn’t bother telling him I was fine. Or that Sara Holmes had made it impossible for me to call him or anyone else.
I sighed. “Look, I was stupid. I walked home late at night, and I wasn’t watching. I was lucky we made enough noise the neighbors opened their windows. Damned lucky, and I know it. He ran.”
It was the truth, I told myself. Or pieces of it. As much as I hated to lie to Jacob, certain aspects of that night concerned secrets I knew I wasn’t allowed to share.
Jacob cocked his head and studied me with narrowed eyes, as though he suspected the direction of my thoughts, if not the exact details. “Damned lucky is right, Captain,” he said softly. His gaze flicked down to my left arm, hidden, except for the hand, inside my jacket sleeve. He looked about to tax me with more questions, but then he shrugged. “Let me know if you want to have dinner tonight.”
I nodded. He took a step back, and I walked around him and swiped my security card. The door hissed open.
Just beyond the entryway, Faith Bellaume had set up her own roadblock. Before she could say anything, I held up a hand. “No. I’m sorry, but I can
not be late to work. We can talk Tuesday.”
Her stare was uncomfortably like Jacob’s. “I can hardly wait. Until Tuesday, then.”
“Until Tuesday,” I repeated steadily.
After she left, I allowed myself a moment to breathe, breathe, Watson, before I hurried on to the locker rooms to change into my scrubs. The clocks were just clicking over to 8:43 as I slid my employee badge over the reader and pushed through the double doors into the wing.
Three med techs and two nurses clustered around the duty desk. Medina was handing out paper cups from the Ethiopian coffee shop on Irving Street. Hicks was telling another story about her boyfriend and his dog. For one infinitesimal moment, I had a picture of a quite ordinary day, with its strictly laid-out hours, routine questions, and complaints shared with my coworkers, who had gradually begun to follow Antonelli in treating me like just another tech and not a surgeon temporarily displaced from her world.
Hicks happened to glance up. Immediately she gave a soft exclamation. Everyone else noticed me and went silent.
“I was mugged,” I announced, a bit too loudly. “I still have a headache.”
The silence continued a heartbeat longer. Then . . .
Medina grinned. “So you’re saying if you screw up, you don’t want us yelling at you.”
“Especially you,” I replied.
“And what about me?” Roberta Thompson said.
Like a thin brown ghost, she had materialized from around the corner, clipboard in hand. She was smiling that edge of a smile that passed for amusement with her.
It was because of her smile, and my giddiness at the fact that, yes, I was alive, and yes, I would spend a perfectly dull and ordinary day, that I replied, “Oh, you. I wouldn’t dare tell you what to do.”
And that was all. The other med techs vanished to their own interview rooms. Thompson gave me my assigned station, then left me on my own. I was grateful for that. I wanted, badly, those fifteen minutes alone in between the surreal quality of the past two days and my most ordinary job.
Checklist reviewed. Supplies counted and ticked off one by one. The quiet routine, the sharp familiar scents of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant, steadied my nerves. My job was boring, but right now, boring looked marvelous.
“Watson.”
Thompson loomed in the doorway.
“Did you file a police report?” she asked.
I shook my head. A few excuses flashed through my brain. The light was bad. I couldn’t see his face. He got scared off before he could steal anything. None of them sounded believable.
Thompson made a grumbling noise. “Just as you like.” She turned to continue on her inspection tour but paused on the threshold. “By the way, you’re eligible for sick leave for yesterday.”
That startled me. “How? I thought—”
“Regulations, Watson. Overtime. Combat injuries.” Her mouth twisted into a smile. “Don’t get so excited. It’s not for the whole day, just a couple hours.”
She was gone before I could do more than stare.
She was lying. She had to be. Unless she had uncovered some obscure exception, a subparagraph of a subparagraph, located in the several pages of addendums that lawmakers and special interest groups had grafted onto the original legislation. But that meant . . .
“Watson.” Alice knocked on the doorframe. “Wake up, Watson. Private Jenkins to see you.”
I jumped. Alice grinned at me as she ushered my first patient into the interview room. Private Jenkins, twenty-two years old. Blinded in one eye by shrapnel when rebels attacked his outpost in Ohio. We were seeing more of these injuries from outdated weaponry. Some of the nurses and med techs believed this meant we had broken their supply lines, at least for armaments. Others, including most of the doctors, said it didn’t matter.
I recorded the details from Jenkins’s previous visit and his most recent symptoms. Headache. Phantom images when he shut his good eye. The nightmares we all had. Within ten minutes, I had shunted him through the doors to the next waiting room.
* * *
My giddiness at having such an ordinary day lasted until noon. My gratitude remained, but more a shadow than the substance. Better than the other choices, said a thought in my sister’s voice.
Grace, dear Grace. For such a little sister, she sure liked to lecture me. Times were I liked her better in the abstract. Still. We hadn’t talked for over a year, and that was all about our parents’ house and her plans to move west.
Memo to self: Buy a new cell on the way home. Don’t tell Sara.
By four thirty, I had reviewed all my cases and updated their records where necessary. Everyone else from my shift had gone, except for Antonelli, who waved at me absentmindedly as she stared at her screen. Ah, no. RN Thompson was reviewing the newest med tech’s work, while the newbie herself hovered in the background, looking anxious. Poor newbie. I hoped she would last.
I was in the locker room, changing into my street clothes, when I heard the buzz from my duffel bag.
Sara’s text device. She must have sneaked that into my bag last night. I fumbled through every pocket and zipped compartment, until I finally located the damned thing. It had stopped buzzing, but a green light flashed the new message signal. I tapped the screen and whispered, “Sara?”
The screen turned bright. A message scrolled past. Hurry up, it said.
I hissed in irritation. “What the hell do you mean, hurry up?”
As if the thing heard me, another message scrolled past: You said you wanted to talk. Let’s do it.
Within ten minutes I was racing out the side door of the hospital, the text device clutched in my left hand. The sidewalk was empty, the skies rapidly fading into an inky dusk. One by one, the streetlamps blinked on, like stepping stones of light around the medical loop. My breath caught in sudden apprehension, even as I told myself that Sara liked to play games.
I stuffed the text device in my jacket pocket. Fine. I would take the bus home. Nice and regular.
A few hundred yards away from the entrance, the device buzzed again. Make a left at the next intersection. Do not pause, do not look behind you.
By now my pulse was thrumming in my ears. I forced myself to continue at a normal pace down the loop to First Street, where I turned left as instructed. Soon I heard the ring of footsteps behind me. I stumbled, caught myself, and kept walking. The footsteps continued to trail me from a distance, slowing down to match my pace, so that we made but one set of echoes along the pavement.
When I reached the turnoff for the Children’s National Health System, I deliberately dragged my feet, not quite coming to a halt. I heard a huff of laughter, then my shadow companion overtook me.
“Are you hungry?” Sara asked in that low rough voice that said she was amused.
“No,” I said.
“You are. You just forgot. Turn right ahead, then stop by the reservoir.”
“By the reservoir? Won’t that look odd?”
“Not your problem. Just do as I say.” But when I shook my head and stubbornly planted my feet, she glanced around. Nervously? Yes. I had not mistaken that flicker of apprehension. Perhaps the amusement was more to reassure me, or even herself. “Very well,” she said. “We walk together, you and I.”
She hooked her arm around mine and we continued together. We turned right onto Michigan Avenue. Half a block ahead, an ordinary yellow cab waited underneath a streetlamp. Sara spoke to the cab’s driver while I stared over the reservoir in the direction of Howard University, where I had spent four years.
An image of my younger self came back sharp and strong.
Who was she? I wondered. That tall and stocky girl who dragged her suitcase up the stairs that hot and rainy August afternoon? Would we recognize each other?
Nostalgia had a funny sharp edge when you came down to it. I liked that young girl with her attitude and her belief she could conquer the world. I wasn’t so sure she would like me back.
Finally Holmes finished her conversat
ion with the driver. Within moments, we sat in the cab’s enormous backseat as it sped west toward our apartment. The driver flicked on the radio and reggae music vibrated through the vehicle.
“Takeout or diner?” Sara asked. She had to speak directly into my ear before I could understand the question.
“Does it matter?” I said.
“Of course it matters. I discovered a few interesting things about a friend of yours. I need to investigate them, but they’ll take me out of state. Would you like to come with me?”
My breath stopped in my throat. “Is it part of—I mean, why?”
“Reasons.”
A passing streetlamp reflected off Holmes’s eyes as she glanced toward the driver. So. More secrets.
“I need to hear those reasons,” I said. “Over dinner.”
“That means takeout.”
She pulled a cell from her pocket and spoke into the receiver. Then she punched in a second number, where she rattled off . . . an order for food? Directions? I couldn’t identify the language. She clicked off before we crossed Sixteenth Street. For the remainder of our ride, she stared out the window, arms crossed and her body tucked into the corner. Remote. I almost told her I had changed my mind. I didn’t want to know her reasons. I didn’t want to know anything about her life or her work.
But I didn’t say anything. It was a different kind of challenge, one I couldn’t refuse.
Faith Bellaume would have something to say about challenges and risks, and the thin divide between them.
A battered black Hyundai waited at the curb by 2809 Q Street. Sara paid off our driver with what looked like a fifty-dollar bill. I had my hand on the door latch when her hand closed over my wrist and she leaned close. “I’m going to push you out,” she whispered. “When I do, say San Juan. Make it a question. Make it angry. Then shut up.”
A Study in Honor Page 13