But not only did Gray continue to breathe normally, he slipped off his headphones and dropped them on his stomach. Cursing, Sara stabbed at the emergency-shutoff button and sank back in her chair. So, he was getting sick of this, of the tests, of the trials and the experiments? Well, so was she. Tough shit.
She reached out and pounded her fist on the console. What were their other options? Suicide? Sitting around staring into space, heavily medicated for the rest of his life? Not going to happen.
For more than three years, Gray had been a docile patient, wanting her to fix him and bring him back from wherever it was he mentally resided, but in the past six months things had changed—he had become sullen and uncooperative, as if he didn’t want to get better. As if he’d given up.
She leaned in and pressed the button that released the table, watched as he slid out of the scanner, as he sat up and faced her through the glass. Their eyes locked. He was going to fight her—he was going to resist her attempts to help him.
She picked up the phone, dialed. “Tommy, I need a pickup in MRI. I’m done with him for today. I have Lotera and Mills scheduled for scans later this afternoon; you can bring them together.”
When she looked up again, through the glass, Gray was holding the headphones. In under a second, he had them behind his head and in under two, he chucked them right at her. They hit the glass with a bruised thud and dropped to the floor.
Sara stood there, curbing the urge to run into the magnet room and scream at him as though he were an uncontrollable child. He wanted it too—she could see it in his eyes. He wanted her to get angry, to lose control.
He wanted her to fail.
Thankfully, Tommy arrived. He came in to the magnet room and took over. Sara left the console room before them and headed over to the juvenile wing, her nerves frayed. It was part of the job, failures and successes. Couldn’t have one without the other—couldn’t recognize one without the other, but it was a hard truth to accept.
“Hey, Jerry,” Sara said, coming down the hall and pausing outside the door of one of her new patients, Pearl McClean.
The short, stocky male nurse looked up from his charts and smiled. “Doc.”
“How’s she been?”
“Real quiet night. Took her meds. No drama.”
Something Sara always liked to hear. “Any visits?”
“No.”
And something she didn’t. It was another tough truth, but kids who consistently acted out at home, self-mutilated, lied to their parents and were in and out of treatment tended not to have too many visits. Mom and Dad stayed away for a while, to catch their breath and regain their sanity.
Sara pulled back the door and walked into Pearl’s room. She saw the girl right away, lying on her bed, looking up at the ceiling, her straight, pale hair spread around her head like the rays of the sun. At first glance, she appeared peaceful, but as Sara drew near, she noticed that the girl’s body was tense.
Sara sat down on a chair next to the bed. “Hey, Pearl.”
The girl said nothing, kept her eyes skyward.
“How are you feeling today?”
No response.
Sara glanced down at the girl’s chart, checking to see if labs were back and if there had been any communication between Pearl and the nurses during the night. Nothing on the former or the latter, but Sara did see a note regarding the impressive physical improvement of Pearl’s cuts.
“I’d like it if we could talk for a few minutes,” Sara said, reaching out and touching the girl’s shoulder gently. “What do you think about that?”
“Don’t. Touch. Me.” Pearl yanked her arm away, turned her head, and pinned Sara with a venomous stare.
“No problem.” Sara said the words calmly, as though she’d said them a hundred times before. And she had. She gestured toward the girl’s legs with her chin. “I understand you’re healing nicely.”
Pearl’s eyes lost all of their fight and she looked very sad. “How do you know that?”
“The nurse who checked you this morning.”
Pearl’s light brown eyes filled with tears.
“You don’t want your cuts to heal?” Sara asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
The girl shook her head, but said nothing.
“Pearl,” Sara began, her tone gentle, calm. “Do you want to talk to me? Tell me what happened.”
“No.”
“I know you must be feeling scared—”
“You don’t know shit.”
Wow. Okay. Sara shrugged. “I know you’re angry.”
Pearl turned away, fixed her eyes to the ceiling once again.
Sara continued. “I just want to help you.”
“I don’t want your help.”
Sara sat back, tried a different tack, one based solely on the truth. “Just for the record, I know what it feels like to be alone and scared, yet have to keep up some hard-ass front so you don’t look weak.” She saw Pearl’s fists unclench. “I know how it feels to hurt—and honestly, being hurt by someone you care about is—”
“What is it, Dr. Donohue?” Pearl interrupted, turning to look at Sara again.
Sara shrugged, but her tone was all seriousness. “It’s wrong, and it’s not your fault.”
Something flashed in Pearl’s eyes, but Sara didn’t stop to analyze what it was. She was getting somewhere, getting through the girl’s metal-hard exterior and she needed to stay on the path. “You didn’t cause this or ask for it,” Sara said evenly. “I know it may feel like that, but—”
The girl’s laughter halted Sara’s attempt at a dialogue. “You’re embarrassing yourself, you know that?”
“Really?” Sara asked. “How am I doing that?”
Grinning, though her eyes remained cheerless, Pearl lowered her voice to a whisper. “These.” She reached down, ran her hands up her thighs in an almost blissful sweep. “These are my emancipation.”
“Your emancipation from what?”
“Life.”
That was the look in her eyes, Sara realized. Pleasure. Those cuts on her legs had nothing to do with punishment or releasing pain. They were all about creating pleasure.
“Pearl, did you cut yourself?”
The girl’s grin widened. “Not telling.”
“If you talk to me,” Sara assured her, “tell me who did this to you, I promise I can keep you safe.”
“I am safe.” Pearl’s brows lifted. “But if you push me any more on this, Doctor, I’m not so sure about you.”
Sara exhaled heavily, grabbed the file from the side table, and jotted down a few notes. Threats were a common form of mental illness in teens, even on the smallest of scales. Gaining Pearl’s trust would take time, as it did with most.
After she left the room, Sara headed back to her office, making a quick stop at the nurse’s station to get the number of Pearl’s social worker. “Can you get Melanie Abrams on the phone for me?” she asked one of the nurses. “I don’t have her direct line at my desk.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
Sara barely had the time to take in the quiet solitude of her office before the call came through.
“Ms. Abrams on three, Doctor.”
“Thank you.” She picked up the receiver and punched in line three. “Hey, Mel, it’s Sara Donohue over at Walter Wynn. I wanted to see if you might be coming by this afternoon.”
But the voice that came through the receiver was not female. “Sara.”
No. It was all male: deep and sensual and so comfortingly familiar that her shoulders relaxed down into their proper place for once.
“You left without saying good-bye, woman,” he growled.
Sitting back in her chair, Sara couldn’t help but smile. “You were gone from the room when I woke up.”
“Duty called,” Alexander said, his tone regretful. “I wish I had been there with you, beside you. I wish I was there with you now.”
Me too.
“But have no fear, there is someone watching over you.”
Sara sat up abruptly, her shoulders back up near her ears once again. “What?”
Alexander chuckled. “Just to make sure you’re safe in my absence.” His voice dropped. “Sara?”