She was right about the reticence. No matter how long and loud I had argued with VA services for an appointment, my throat squeezed shut at the thought of answering her truthfully. We had spent a cautious forty-five minutes, she and I, dancing toward this moment. I had not expected her to ask for honesty quite so soon. I sipped from my glass of water as I considered how to say what I needed.
“More isn’t the right word,” I said at last. “Better. I deserve better.”
She nodded. “Tell me what better means to you.”
I allowed myself another sip of water. Felt the cool liquid slip down my throat, which was raw and thick from a night spent weeping. I considered asking for a refill, but I knew I was avoiding the moment.
You might find it hard to talk with me at first, Faith Bellaume had said. And I won’t make you.
No, she would not. But for all her gentleness, she was as stubborn as I was. I indulged myself with one last sip of water, then set the cup to one side. “Okay, then. I want—I deserve a better device. I’ve earned one. Ten times over. And not . . . not just . . . not just for what happened in April.”
I pressed my lips together and glared at the carpet. My fingers had twined themselves together, metal and flesh, and I felt a sharp ache traveling along an arm and hand I no longer possessed. The room was blessedly quiet for several more moments, without even the hum of electronics I had come to expect throughout the VA Medical Center. I could almost imagine myself back in apartment 2B, with Sara absent and even the infrequent traffic on Q Street muffled by the thick glass windows.
“And what did happen in April?” Bellaume said softly.
My fingers unlocked. I slammed my fist against the table. “I served my country, dammit. That is what happened.”
All at once a black cloud fell over me. I launched myself to my feet. Shouting. Swearing. My voice, already hoarse, cracked as I cursed the VA and the rebel soldiers. Cursed the troops who had failed us for days and days. Cursed the politicians who blamed us for their failures, and the squirts and feeds that used the story to boost their ratings. Faith Bellaume did not stir from her chair until I took to clawing at my device. She grabbed my right arm. I wrenched myself free and punched her in the chest.
We faced each other, both of us breathing hard. Tears were running over my cheeks.
“I am so angry,” I whispered. “It frightens me.”
My knees folded and I collapsed to the floor. Faith knelt beside me. Not touching me, but there, palpably there with me. “You are angry,” she said. “I am not surprised. You lost an arm. You lost . . . a sense of yourself.”
Yes and yes.
I was trembling now. My stump ached ferociously, and I felt the sting of electricity through the cloth sock. Vaguely I wondered if I had damaged my device. If I had, would the VA grant me a new one? Or had I destroyed even the small, small victories of these past few weeks?
“I can’t say anything more,” I croaked. “Not about the war. Not about anything.”
She shook her head. “Not until you’re ready. Make an appointment for tomorrow,” she told me in that soft, stubborn voice of hers. “We can talk about proper medication then. But not,” she added, “about the war. No, tomorrow I want you to tell me about Georgia.”
Georgia. Oh, well, that made a difference. Talking about Georgia meant talking about my childhood. About the farm and my grandmother, and the whole history behind my parents leaving the South for DC. These were difficult topics as well, but not nearly as difficult as the war.
I did not resist as my therapist helped me to my feet, then led me into a smaller room somewhere in the maze between her office and the outer world of the VA Medical Center. The room was an empty cube, sunk in quiet and painted in a soothing pale green, with a padded bench along one wall. Bellaume brought her hand up to my shoulder, not touching me. I suppose we said good-bye to each other, and I suppose I promised to make an appointment for the next day, but I found it difficult to track one sentence to the next. My pulse echoed loudly in my skull, and it felt as though my thoughts had turned fragile, crumbling into fragments and spinning away into darkness.
Abruptly I sat down and concentrated on not throwing up. I heard the door open and a soft conversation between Bellaume and another woman. The other woman disappeared momentarily, only to return with a cup of water and damp towel. Then I was alone.
My stomach heaved. I sipped the water slowly. Pressed the towel against my eyes. The rage had vanished, leaving behind an ache and an emptiness. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I told myself. My stump continued to throb and tiny electrical impulses flickered through flesh and metal, like the aftermath of a storm. Moments ticked by. Gradually I found myself, and with that, a measure of badly needed control.
“Captain Watson.”
The assistant had returned. She waited until I acknowledged her, then collected the empty cup and the towel. Her movements were unhurried, as if she were handling a frightened cat. Well, perhaps she was.
“Do you need more water?” she asked.
I shook my head. She vanished again, only to return with the receipt for my visit and an appointment card already filled out. “Tomorrow?” she said. “Same time?”
“Tomorrow, yes.”
* * *
Jacob Bell waited for me in the corridor. Or rather, he leaned against the wall while he chatted with one of the janitors. His hair stood up in all directions, as though he’d been grabbing at it in frustration, and he wore a set of ugly green scrubs and white running shoes.
The janitor poked his arm and pointed at me. Jacob grinned. “Hi, Captain. Thought you might treat me to breakfast.”
“Don’t you have a job?” I said.
My throat felt like raw hamburger, and my voice came out barely above a whisper. The janitor shook her head and continued to push her mop down the hall. Jacob shrugged. “I’m working the midnight shift these days.”
I wanted to throw a brick at the man. Or hug him tight and cry. I settled for checking my watch. Damn, 8:37.
“I need to run,” I told him. “Thompson wants us on station by quarter of.”
“What about dinner? I have the night off.”
Oh, dinner. Yes. Holmes had taken to vanishing without warning. And I had promised myself to treat Jacob. “Meet me outside after my shift,” I said. “Four thirty—no, make that five. You choose the place.”
* * *
The new wing, which housed physical therapy and the counseling services, dated from ten years ago, but the elevators were just as slow and crowded as the rest of the hospital. I skimmed past the bank of doors and ran down the six flights of stairs. The electronic clock outside our wing blinked eight forty-five as I pressed my electronic ID against the reader at the employee entrance. Five minutes to change into my scrubs and bang the locker closed. Giulia Antonelli, one of the senior med techs, whistled softly as I hurried past her station to my own interview room.
Where Thompson waited for me.
“Five minutes late,” she said softly. “No, don’t make any excuses. I can guess why—I heard something through the grapevine—so I won’t give you a warning. Not this time.”
I felt the rage piling up in my chest. Not the black cloud, but bad enough. I swallowed and nodded. “Thank you.”
Her mouth twisted into a smile. “You’re welcome. I prepped the room. All you need to do is check the inventory list and sign it. And, Watson . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Do what you must. But tell me first, please. I hate surprises.” With a glance over her shoulder, she said, “Log in. Quick. You have a patient.”
I fumbled through the sign-in, my electronic pen tapping all the wrong choices at first, until I stopped and closed my eyes and breathed, breathed, just as they told me back in the Alton hospital. Okay, then. Log-in name. ID. Password. Thumbprint.
The almost inaudible clock hummed. Eight fifty-seven. I glanced up to see my first patient standing in the doorway.
It was Belinda Díaz. I nearly did not reco
gnize her.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her face had taken on a pasty gray cast, and the bones of her face and neck stood out, as though someone had scooped away the flesh. She stood unsteadily, one hand gripping the doorframe, and stared at me.
It was that look of desperation that plucked me from my own self-pity.
“I remember you,” I said. “Come in, Private.”
Díaz nodded once and fixed her gaze on the examination table, as if it were an enemy stronghold. She pushed off from the door and limped toward her goal, her prosthetic leg clicking and thumping over the tile floor. A few steps away from the table, she stumbled and had to lunge toward it. She missed and grabbed the edge of the counter. Slowly she pulled herself upright, breathing hard, and turned back to the examination table.
I did not attempt to help. I knew better. Instead I watched as she hauled herself onto the table and let her shoes drop to the floor. Her T-shirt was soaked through with sweat from her efforts, but she offered a smile for me. “I know you. You’re the doctor who’s not a doctor.”
I flinched and hurried to cover my reaction by scanning her patient history. Díaz had visited the medical center the week before. Hicks was the med tech who screened her. Turner was the physician on duty. Turner had ordered a basic panel of blood and urine tests, and prescribed a refill of Díaz’s medication for stress-related symptoms, ten milligrams daily with the comment to try a second half tablet when needed. She had also added a new script for a combination hydrochlorothiazide to lower her blood pressure. There was the usual recommendation for counseling and a note that the patient was advised to take aspirin at night for pain relief. Nothing unusual. Nothing that explained Díaz’s strange transformation.
When I looked up from the screen, I found Díaz watching me anxiously. “I’m sorry I offended you,” she said. “Only, the nurse outside told me you were a doctor once.”
“I was,” I said. “Back in Alton. Maybe again, someday. But let’s talk about you.”
I ran through the required list of questions. Belinda Díaz answered as quickly as I asked. Perhaps she too heard the clock humming toward the quarter hour and the end of our allotted time. With three minutes to go, my pen hovered over the observations field. What could I ask that I had not asked before? Anderson was on duty today. He would see the difference himself. Or would he?
“Talk to me,” I said. “Tell me what’s bothering you. You haven’t slept much, have you?”
That was not part of the standard list, and she knew it, because she hesitated.
“I’m tired,” she said at last. “Tired and . . . and angry.”
I nodded. “Like a black dog hunting you.”
Her eyes widened and she nodded back. “Yes. Except I can’t sleep, and I didn’t used to be so angry. Not until . . . It’s like everything went wrong one damned day.”
The day an enemy IED blew up her leg and her life. I held my breath, willing her to continue talking. Eventually she did.
“We did good,” she said softly. “We did real good, me and my squad. They told us after . . . after what happened that we were heroes. I believed them. I had to. But I guess we weren’t heroes, after all. Not really.”
She paused, and her gaze turned blank, as though she were watching those invisible memories. I nearly told her she probably was a hero. I didn’t. She wouldn’t believe me anyway. Just as I didn’t bother to ask her what had taken place that day with her squad. She wouldn’t talk about it, same as I didn’t want to talk about Alton.
“Goddamn war,” I murmured.
Díaz shook her head, but I could tell she wasn’t listening. “They warned us,” she said. “Those counselors back in the unit. You act all fine a couple months, a year even, they said. Then it’s like someone ripped you to pieces. You can’t remember the good, you can’t forget the bad. Dr. Anderson gave me those pills, but they don’t do shit. They used to, back in Tennessee, but now? One isn’t enough. I tried two and that went better. I could breathe. I could . . . I could almost sleep a whole night. But I got scared because Dr. Turner said that wasn’t safe. The doctor back in Tennessee said the same thing. She said—”
Her voice broke off and she was holding her head in both hands, weeping.
“It hurts,” she said. “If it only stopped hurting, I could sleep.”
They told me, back in medical school, and later, in my residency, that sympathy was a dangerous thing, that my patients would suck all the empathy from me, then die anyway, no matter how much I cared.
Belinda Díaz deserved better. Even as a lowly med tech, I had mechanisms, much like the swords of knights of old, at my disposal. I only needed the courage to use them.
“Díaz,” I said. “You are sick. I know that. Will you let me find out why?”
Her gaze flicked up to meet mine. “Can you?”
Truth—that was as important as hope.
“I think so. But I can’t guarantee anything. It’s like war, Private. We make the best plans we can and see what happens.”
That calmed her, I could see. She submitted to the blood pressure cuff, and then a blood draw and a urine sample. The blood draw left her dizzy, which bothered me, so I told her to sit quietly while I filled out the necessary screens.
A few clicks brought me to the laboratory portal. Capitol Diagnostics had two entries for Belinda Díaz, both from her visit the week before. The blood and urine tests had not flagged any obvious problems. I checked off that option anyway and worked down through the more specialized tests.
Lipid profile. Creatinine levels. More tests for hormone levels in adrenal and thyroid. And because I couldn’t rule it out, the standard run of toxicology test panels to catch any drug addictions. Every single order required authorization from an RN or doctor before the medical center would transfer these samples to the diagnostics lab. I couldn’t be certain I’d get that authorization, but I had to try. Goddamn it, if I had the authority, I would have added in an ultrasound and ECG.
The clock was ticking toward 9:28 by this point, almost fifteen minutes past the maximum allowed for each visit, but I didn’t care. I clicked OK for the last form, labeled the vials, and headed out to find Thompson. It turned out I didn’t need to go very far.
“Watson.”
Thompson pinned me with that hawk gaze just as I exited the interview room.
“You have samples,” she said. “When did I authorize that?”
“You didn’t. Or at least not yet. I thought—”
“You thought. Did I authorize that, too?”
I closed my eyes and counted to twenty. Thirty.
“Well?”
The rage hovered at the back of my skull. I told it to wait. Díaz needed me.
My eyes flicked open. Thompson flinched back. A part of me noted that for later satisfaction. Very calmly I held up the tubes of blood and the plastic container of urine, all carefully labeled with patient ID and a bar code for the requested tests. “I am a doctor,” I said. “Whatever you think. This patient . . . She’s lost twenty pounds in the past two weeks. Her blood pressure is up twelve points. The medicine is not doing her one fucking bit of good. I want her blood and urine tested and the results sent back to Anderson, Turner, and any other doctor who happens to wander by, tagged vital and cc’d to you. If that means another black mark, I do not care.”
Thompson regarded me for a long count, her expression strangely puzzled. Then she laughed softly. “No black marks. And no arguments from me. Get back to your patient, Dr. Watson. I’ll make sure those test orders go through.”
Interstitial
October 2.
Promise me you’ll go back tomorrow, Jacob said.
We were in a cheap hole-in-the-wall place. Dirty linoleum. Bad lighting. The cook with his locs tied back, smoking cigarettes and sweating hard as he worked over the grill. Best damned food in DC, Jacob had told me when we met outside the medical center. I don’t even know if it had a name.
Jacob had started off talking about nothing in part
icular. What he thought about his supervisor. What he thought about presidential candidate Donnovan and the man’s speechifying during the latest debates. But then, in the middle of that, his face went old and grim. Promise me, he said. Say you’ll go back tomorrow, and the day after that. Say you won’t quit, Captain.
He would not shut up until I said those exact words. Why do you care? I almost shouted. Right off I wanted to smack myself. I knew why he cared.
Turns out I only knew part of the story. Jacob told me the rest.
It was Hannah, he said. I had my own troubles. You know about them. I come home to Portland and nobody fit me and I don’t fit nobody else. So I come down here and get this job. Doing better, I told myself. Don’t need no counseling. I even met this woman. Hannah was her name. She was service like me. Had a tour in Syria before things went bad in Oklahoma. She came home to the Texas border until her squad got ambushed. They took Hannah. Did to her what they did to me and then some.
She told me she didn’t need help, that she was getting better, Jacob said. She told herself that same story right up to the day she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. That goddamned war left her ragged inside. You know how that is.
I did. That I did.
But then he told me something I almost couldn’t believe.
I nearly did the same thing, he said. Told myself Hannah died because I didn’t do enough. It was Sara Holmes who got me through the worst. She stuck with me. Listened to me when I needed that. Talked when I didn’t. Kept quiet when it mattered. Funny that. I never thought I could talk to a rich woman. At least, she comes from a rich family, which isn’t the same thing. Times they remember her. Times she remembers them. Is she giving you trouble?
No more than you do, I told him.
A Study in Honor Page 9
