“No! I’m not going to do it. You say ‘just one,’ but it isn’t just one. It never is.” Caleb could hear Vicky’s raised voice as soon as the elevator stopped on the pedi-atric floor. He shoved past the man and woman in front of him and turned down a corridor, guided by her voice. “You lied! You said we’d wait. No. Get away from me. No more sticks! No more sticks. No more sticks.” Vicky’s protests dissolved into sobbing screams. Caleb slapped the room’s door open without slowing.
In one glance he took in the cowering child squeezed between the bed and the nightstand, her tear-stained cheeks and terrified eyes, the elderly man, Fairchild, pulling the little girl’s arm, and the shocked young woman, her blue lab coat and carryall of vials and test tubes proclaiming her a lab technician.
“Stop,” he commanded. All three took his command to mean them. Vicky’s wails ceased, the technician took a step back, and Fairchild released Vicky’s arm. He stood and straightened the cuffs of his gray suit.
Vicky scrambled to her feet and launched herself at Caleb with a frantic cry. Not content to fling her arms around him, she tugged at his coat and belt as if she were to trying to climb him. He lifted her into his arms, and she immediately clung to him, arms around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist. Deep tremors shook the little body.
Little kids were his soft spot. He hated to see them scared, hurt, or neglected, and he had seen too many in Afghanistan. Many of the mountain villages were preyed upon by the Taliban- aligned forces, and terrible reprisals threatened for any resistance to their tyranny.
“You are interfering,” Fairchild snapped. His pale blue eyes glittered with dislike.
“Yes I am.” Caleb kept his voice light, as if the notion had just occurred to him. For now, Fairchild was powerless, and they both knew it. A pissing contest would only upset Vicky further.
Caleb carried Vicky to the bed. She tightened her arms into a stranglehold around his neck. “Easy, Little Bit. I’m not going to let go of you. I’m just going to sit on the bed, so you’ll be more comfortable.”
“Where’s Emmie? I want you, and I want Emmie.” Vicky sobbed. The breathless quality of her crying, and the way her little heart pounded against his chest scared him.
“Emmie’s coming.” He arranged her on his lap and cupped his hand around her head when she hid her face against his chest. “She’ll be here in a minute.”
The lab tech edged toward the door, a placating smile on her face. “If it’s all right, I’ll come back in a while.”
Fairchild ignored her. “You’re not doing her any favors you know.” He sneered at Caleb. “Sooner or later she will have to do as she’s told, and you’re just making it harder.” At face value his words might be reasonable, but Fairchild’s tone dripped contempt.
His presence challenged Fairchild’s authority. Caleb wondered if that was enough to make the older man dislike him. Not that he gave a shit what Fairchild thought. He had no intention of discussing Vicky with him. To Caleb’s way of thinking, Charlotte Calhoun was the only person with the authority to direct Vicky’s care. “Where is her mother?”
“Here,” said Charlotte from the door. Despite her smooth, imperturbable face, her deep brown eyes burned hot. The tech ducked behind her and escaped. “What happened?”
“The technician came in a few minutes after you left.” Fairchild adjusted the amount of white cuff showing at his wrists, again. “I saw no reason for her to waste her time. After all, we’re here to have these tests done. The sooner they’re complete the sooner she, and we, can leave. You, Charlotte, have spoiled Vicky. You have refused to set firm limits, and now she is paying the price. She has no respect for authority. I have told you again and again, and now you see the results. She refuses to cooperate even when it is for her own good.”
Charlotte let her leather bag slip from her shoulder. “Wait a minute. The technician came in to do a blood draw, and you let her? When you knew how hard I had worked to persuade Vicky to trust me? I had promised her nothing, nothing, would happen until Chief Dulaude got here.”
“You shouldn’t have to bribe her with rewards for being obedient.”
Charlotte tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing. “I was not out of the room for ten minutes- and the woman in admitting said I needn’t have come at all. She planned to bring the papers here. I’m putting a lot of things together, Edward. You said the Senator couldn’t be reached for several hours. You said it would cause speculation if Chief Dulaude walked into the hospital with us, and you talked us into arriving separately. You suggested I get the papers out of the way while we waited. You didn’t just disagree, you deliberately undermined me.”
“Charlotte, you’re upset about nothing-a child’s tantrum!”
Charlotte’s face turned hard and her voice very, very soft. “Get out. Do not come near me or my child again.”
“As usual you’re reacting emotionally. You’re being unreasonable.”
Apparently, Fairchild couldn’t grasp, “Get out.” Caleb thought he would have to add his persuasive abilities. Fairchild’s weapon was words, his favorite ploy driving like a tank over anything he didn’t agree with. Any SEAL worth his salt knew you didn’t engage an enemy where he was strong. The more he could make his point to Fairchild without saying a word, the more effective he could be.
“I’m going to put you down on the bed,” Caleb told Vicky softly. “You’re all right now.” Vicky’s arms tightened briefly, then let go. “Good girl.”
His size alone was probably enough to intimidate Fairchild, but Caleb didn’t underestimate small men. Neither Caleb’s height nor his spare build were necessarily assets in SEAL work. Many SEALs were average and shorter, and he’d had his ass kicked more than once. If there was going to be a confrontation, he wanted Vicky behind him.
Caleb stood. He smiled. Not a nice smile. He took a step toward the much older, much smaller man.
Fairchild fell back a step. Good. Caleb smiled again and jerked his head toward the door. The man’s pale blue eyes went to Charlotte. He caught the cuffs of his coat in his palms and jerked the sleeves tight. It made him look like a stick puppet.
He stalked to the door Charlotte had left open, but turned back to fire a parting shot. He didn’t see Emmie, who hesitated in the doorway, taking in the tense atmosphere in the room. “Charlotte,” Fairchild warned, “do not think this man is your friend. He’s trash. A low, manipulating opportunist.”
“That’s funny,” Emmie exclaimed from behind him as if she’d made a delightful discovery. “That’s what my grandmother said about you.”
“What?” Fairchild whirled around.
“Um- hmm.” Emmie gave him her most wide-eyed look. “‘Opportunist.’ That was her very word! Hey, Cha
rlotte-” Emmie peeped around Fairchild and waved. “Mr. Fairchild, you know when you said the other day that you and my grandmother were friends? I didn’t remember that, so it got me thinking about what I do remember. You know my grandmother liked to speculate about how people arrive at their places in life. She was talking about you one day. I wish I could recall more, but what I do remember her saying was, ‘I reckon Mr. Fairchild was useful to Mr. Calhoun-she always called people Mr. and Mrs.-of course, Mr. Calhoun was Uncle Teague’s father-but (this is what she said) ‘personally, I don’t see why Teague keeps the little toad around.’”
Caleb bit down on the inside of his cheek. Emmie was channeling Aunt Lilly Hale. Just when he thought her tone couldn’t get any blander, it did. And her eyes got wider. “Don’t you think that was interesting, Mr. Fairchild? I do. I’d be happy to tell you more about it sometime. Of course, like I said, I don’t remember much more she said about you.” Fairchild was edging away. “But I remember things she said about other people-oh, but you were leaving, weren’t you? Don’t let me keep you.”
Fairchild threw a glare at Caleb and Charlotte, and a look of disgust at Emmie, and stalked off.
“I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard!” Charlotte wiped her streaming eyes. “Look at that!” She examined the dark smudges on the balled up tissue in her hand. “Emmie, you’ve made me ruin my makeup. I haven’t done anything to destroy my eyeliner in public since before Vicky was born!”
Emmie chuckled to think a woman could live for ten or more years with perfect makeup. She was still challenged to remember to put on lipstick, and she knew she would never take it seriously. Somehow, there wasn’t a gap between her and women like Charlotte anymore. They were part of a continuum.
“Fill me in,” Emmie said, from her perch on the arm of the room’s easy chair in which Caleb sat. Anyone coming into the room would assume she was on his side. Well, she was. Sometime in the last few days, all feeling of existing at the edge of life, of being insignificant even to herself, had disappeared. She enjoyed feeling like a participant, and even more, she appreciated knowing she and Caleb could relate as a team. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. I had to go over to campus long enough to hand out exams. A graduate student will collect them, but I’ll need to go back soon. Talk fast. What did I just walk in on?”
Charlotte stroked Vicky’s hair. “Sweetie, tell us what happened before I got here.”
Vicky’s lip quivered. “She was already in here.”
“You mean the lab technician?” Vicky nodded. “When we came in downstairs,” Charlotte explained to the adults, “Edward suggested I stop by the admissions desk, and he would bring Vicky to the room. But the technician was already in the room. Vicky, are you sure?”
“Uh- huh. And I said I didn’t want to. I wanted to wait for you and Caleb. But they wouldn’t let me, and he said you wouldn’t come for a long time. And he said he would hold me down, but I got away and ran around the bed. Then he caught me by the arm-” Vicky hid her face against her mother.
“When I came in, Fairchild had her trapped between the bed and the nightstand.” Caleb’s voice was darker than Emmie had ever heard it.
“Caleb picked me up and didn’t let them get me.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. “How long was it until I got here?”
“About a minute,” Caleb replied.
“I never dreamed he would do such a thing. He won’t come near you again,” Charlotte reassured her daughter.
“Mommy told him to get out,” Vicky explained as she took up the tale, “but he was arguing, so Caleb stood up.” Her eyes got big, and her golden freckles danced. “It was scary. And fun. I thought Caleb was going to fight him.” Vicky looked quite satisfied. Now that she was safe and enjoying the attention of three adults, she was recovering fast. “And then you came in and Aunt-Lilly-Hale’d him to pieces. I didn’t know you could do that,” she said with admiration. “I didn’t know anybody could except Aunt Lilly Hale. Can you teach me?”
Emmie hadn’t realized it was possible to feel guilty and pleased with oneself at the same time. After all, every word was an out-and-out lie-and for the pleasure of watching Fairchild try to figure out if he had been insulted, and if so, by whom, she’d do it all again. “I didn’t know I could either,” she admitted, “until I did.”
“Did your grandmother really say that-that he was a toad?’
As a teacher entrusted with the task of guiding young minds, Emmie was always conscious of her need to set a good example. Admitting to Vicky she had lied and then telling her not to, wouldn’t fly. “Grandmother would have said it, if she’d thought of it.”
“Does that mean she did, or she didn’t?”
Her mother gave her an admonitory look. “That means, it’s something it would be better if you don’t ever repeat, young lady.”
Vicky looked mulish. “Well, he is a toad.”
“Vicky, when I heard him call Caleb ‘opportunist trash,’ it made me mad. But if I’d known what he tried to do to you, I promise you, Grandmother would have called him much worse!”
Caleb stood. Deep inside he still shook with rage at what he had witnessed earlier. He would do what he could to protect Vicky from Edward. First though, there was the need to protect her from the enemy inside her. “Charlotte, Vicky and I need to talk. It isn’t cold today. Is it okay with you if I take her outside the hospital?”
Vicky kicked at a pine cone. “Are we out here so you can tell me needles can’t hurt me, and I have to grow up, and not be a baby, and not upset my mother by making a fuss?”
Beyond one of the hospital’s parking lots Caleb and Vicky had located a landscaped area of lawn, pines, and magnolias where they had grass to walk on. It was as emotionally neutral as they were going to find.
He wanted to hug her. Vicky was no fool, and she was no coward. “No.”
“All right. What then?”
“Your name’s Victoria, isn’t it? ‘Victoria’ means ‘she who wins.’” At least, he hoped it did. Bound to mean something close, and it was too good not to use. “When I came into the room, you were on the floor, and you were losing.”
Vicky looked at him with deep disappointment. “That’s not fair. I’m just a little kid. I was kicking.”
“Yeah, we need to work on that. You need to learn how to kick so that you do some damage.” Vicky looked at him, shocked. Caleb shrugged. “No point in kicking if you’re not trying to hurt someone.”
“Will you teach me?”
“If you want me to.”
“And then anybody who comes at me with a needle I can fight and get away.”
“You’ll never win-not by running away.”
“I thought you said-”
“You weren’t losing to the people, Vicky. You were losing to the fear.”
“But it’s there. I can�
��t help it.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I hate needles too. People tell you it won’t hurt, or it won’t hurt but a little bit. And if you’ll be brave it will be over in a minute. You know that. You’re not afraid of the pain. It’s the needle-feeling, right?
Her eyes filled, and her lips quivered. “Yes.”
“You know exactly which feeling I’m talking about.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, don’t think about it anymore.” There were people who could faint from just remembering what a needle stick felt like. For some, needles caused a sudden drop in blood pressure called a vasovagal response. “I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page. You can’t control it, and you can’t make it go away. Trying to stop the feeling, not to have the feeling, will not work. Trying to endure it won’t work either.”
“Then how can I win?”
“There’s a way to win, but it’s not by fighting the needle or running away from it.”
“What else is there?
“You can have the problem and be bigger than it.”
“But I hate it.”
“Um- hmm.” If he said anything right now, she would look for ways not to do what he said. He set them in motion again.
He had understood Vicky’s temperament at a glance. It was clear her parents had little control of her and no realistic ideas of what she was capable of. She wasn’t the kind of kid who would ever be held by rules someone else made. Put her in charge, and she’d be steady as a rock. He understood her because he had been the same kind of kid. Anytime he didn’t agree with the adults’ rules, he’d done as he pleased. And usually gotten away with it. At the age of ten, he would have been capable of going out a three-story window.
Sealed with a promise Page 31
