Dancing on the Wind (44 page)

could do was bellow with fury and that he did, only to have the nurses come running.

“Get out!” he ordered them. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

But they hadn’t. They had been expecting his outburst and had come prepared for

it. The moment he saw the vac-syringe in the head nurse’s hand, he bellowed again but

they held him down and the drug was administered despite his weak struggles.

The last thing he remembered before the darkness flowed over him was Keenan

standing in the doorway with tears running down her pale cheeks.

224

Dancing on the Wind

“Are you going to give me a ration of shit or do you want to get out of this room for

a while?”

Fallon stared at the wheelchair for a hateful second then looked up at the

Supervisor with narrowed eyes. “Why can’t I have crutches?”

The Supervisor folded his arms over his chest. “Do you think your leg is healed

sufficiently that you can take a chance falling on it? If you do, then I’ll have crutches

brought, but if you fall, if you re-injure the leg, you’ll be in here even longer. Wanna

gamble another month’s stay before I have you carted off to the Island?”

Glaring once more at the wheelchair, Fallon sighed deeply, his shoulders slumped

in surrender. He said nothing as the orderly lifted him from the bed and sat him in the

wheelchair, hunkering down to position Fallon’s leg with its cast on the leg support.

The Supervisor gently backed the wheelchair out of the room, swung it around and

started down the hall. “How ’bout the solarium?”

“I don’t care,” Fallon said, but he was privately thrilled to be out of the

claustrophobic room with its medicinal smells.

“You’re the only patient up here right now,” the Supervisor reported. “We had an

appendectomy patient a few days ago but he’s already gone back to the dorm.”

“Whoopee,” Fallon growled.

“I’ve scheduled you to leave for the Island day after tomorrow. They have state-of-

the-art rehab equipment there and the very best physical therapists, so we should have

you back on your feet in short order.”

Because of the rainy weather, the solarium wasn’t as bright and cheerful as it

normally was. When the Supervisor rolled him over to the windows, the Reaper stared

intently at a trickle of rainwater as it wriggled down the outside of the glass pane. He

ignored the Supervisor who pulled up a plastic chair and sat beside him.

For nearly half an hour neither man spoke. They watched the rain falling, the low

clouds streaking by and the Canada geese that flew through them.

“I’m sending Keenan with you.”

Fallon flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I know you do, but it’s a done deal.”

The Supervisor got up and started away.

“Where are you going?” Fallon asked.

“Talk to her,” was all the Supervisor said, and despite Fallon yelling at him to come

back, continued on his way.

225

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Alone in the solarium with his right leg and left arm in casts, Fallon had no way to

maneuver the wheelchair. Besides, he didn’t think at that moment he had the strength

to push the wheels. He was still weak and in more pain than he was prepared to admit

to his caretakers. Hanging his head, he clenched his teeth, squeezed his eyes tightly shut

with frustration and waited for Keenan to join him.

* * * * *

“Sit,” the Supervisor ordered.

Keenan did as she was commanded. Over the course of the last two days she’d

come down with a late summer-early autumn cold and felt miserable. Her head ached

and every bone in her body felt as though it were being attacked with tiny little

hammers.

“I left him in the solarium about an hour ago,” the Supervisor said, “with

instructions that no one was to go in there. He’s too weak to ply the wheelchair on his

own and I seriously doubt he’ll start yelling for help until another hour has passed.”

“The object of this exercise is to make it clear to him just how powerless he is right

now,” the third person in the room said softly.

“And you think he needs that brought home to him?” Keenan snapped. “You don’t

think he already feels powerless enough?”

“What Dr. Vardar is saying is that Fallon needs to look upon you as his savior when

you arrive to take him back to his room,” the Supervisor commented. “He’ll be relieved

and thankful and more inclined to talk to you.”

“He’ll be pissed,” she corrected. “Believe me he will, and much less inclined to talk

to me.”

“I disagree,” Dr. Vardar, the Exchange’s psychiatrist, stated.

“Keenan, we’ve seen this kind of reaction before when an agent has been subjected

to the kind of traumatic experience Fallon experienced. Not only do we need to

rehabilitate his body, we need to heal his mind. At the moment, his mind has suffered

far more damage than his body did.”

“At the moment, Agent Fallon is feeling a great deal of shame. He…”

“Shame?” Keenan interrupted the psychiatrist. “Why should he be feeling shame?”

“Because he found out he wasn’t as invincible as he believed himself to be,” Dr.

Vardar replied. “He has always viewed himself as being strong, unbeatable and

indestructible—if you will—and completely in charge of every situation. He was

helpless to prevent what happened to him, and helplessness to a man like Mikhail

Fallon is completely unacceptable. Oh, he’d taken beatings in the past. His stepfather

abused him at every turn so he was no stranger to pain, but the pain he was given by

Martiya was much worse than anything he’d ever endured before and it crippled him.

It drove him to his knees and in some dark place within him he believes he surrendered

to it. Although the creature didn’t break him, it did tear something vital inside him.”

226

Dancing on the Wind

“And this perceived surrender is eating away at him,” the Supervisor added.

“He is undergoing a very severe case of posttraumatic stress disorder,” Dr. Vardar

said. “He has most of the symptoms—depression, irritability, emotional detachment,

difficulty paying attention, hypervigilance—have you seen him staring out the window

as though he expects something to come at him?”

“Yes,” Keenan said, looking down. “I have.”

“In the last few days, he’s also experienced nightmares,” the Supervisor told her.

“That is, when he can sleep at all.”

“Loss of appetite, anxiety, being easily startled,” Dr. Vardar continued. “All classic

symptoms.”

“And you want to make him feel even worse by leaving him alone in the

solarium?” she questioned.

“You are his Extension, Keenan,” the Supervisor reminded her. “These feelings of

disassociation he’s having should not include you. You are his lifeline and we want him

to acknowledge it.”

“What if he blames me for what happened to him?”

“How could he?” the Supervisor queried.

“Do you believe he does?” Dr. Vardar asked.

Keenan dug in her pocket for a tissue to wipe her runny nose. “It’s the way he looks

at me,” she said. “He looks angry.”

“Oh well, that’s part and parcel of the PTSD,” Dr. Vardar said.

“Just go to him,” the Supervisor said. “Try to get him to talk about what happened.

He won’t discuss it with me or Dr. V., but he might open up to you.”

“It will be good for him to get it out there,” Dr. Vardar said. “Until he

acknowledges what happened to him, he can’t move past it.”

Keenan wasn’t sure it was a wise thing to open up the wounds she felt Fallon was

trying to close, but she kept her thoughts to herself as she left the Supervisor’s office

and took the elevator up to the solarium. The soft music playing in the background

aggravated her and she blew her nose noisily to block it out. When the elevator doors

opened, she hurried out and away from the canned tune that had her wanting to thrust

her fingers into her ears.

He was sitting in front of the windows, but she was fairly sure he was sleeping. His

chin was tucked down and his hands were resting limply on the wheelchair’s armrests.

As quietly as she could, she took the chair positioned beside him and released a soft,

wavering breath, passing her gaze lovingly over his profile.

To her, he was such an extraordinarily handsome man. With the thick black hair

and the tawny complexion, the amber eyes and straight nose, full lower lip and the

determined chin, he could pass for a matinee idol. There were no razor nicks to mar his

flesh.

227

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“They heal quickly,” he’d once said to her when she asked if he never cut himself

shaving. “The scar on my brow I got when I was four. If I’d gotten it after the

Transference, my hellion would have healed it. She doesn’t like imperfections.”

As she sat there, she switched her attention to his back beneath the hospital pajama

top and realized the scarring there would have occurred when he was young. That

knowledge hurt her deeply and she clenched her hands together in her lap and looked

away.

She lost track of how much time passed as she sat there beside him. At one point he

whimpered and she saw his eyes moving rapidly back and forth beneath the lids and

knew he was dreaming. His fingers twitched in his lap, but the moment she reached

over and put her hand protectively over his, the nightmare ceased, the twitching

stopped and he subsided into dreamless sleep once more. Content just to touch him, to

have her skin close to his, she kept her hand there and returned her attention to the

rolling Iowa hills.

A few moments later he woke with a start, drawing in a harsh gasp, blinking

against the dull gray of the rainy afternoon. A vein in his neck throbbed rapidly and his

chest rose and fell quickly—an indication he had been thrust from an unpleasant place

into the realm of reality. He swallowed hard and looked down, eyes narrowing as he

noticed her hand closed over his. Slowly he turned his head to look at her. When she

smiled gently at him, he looked away again but did not attempt to move his hand from

under hers.

“Do you want to talk about the dream?” she asked softly.

He closed his eyes as though in great pain, and when at last he opened them, stared

straight ahead. She didn’t think he would answer but he did, his voice was husky.

“I got the hell beaten out of me by that thing,” he rasped.

Her hand tensed on his. “Yes, but you survived.”

He didn’t look at her. “Did I?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

A low snort accompanied his answer. “For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot to me.”

Some time passed before he spoke again.

“I had my ass handed to me, McCullough. That bitch stomped me good.”

His gaze was roaming the dark skies constantly, and with each flash of lightning, he

flinched.

“You are safe here. You do know that, don’t you?”

“She’s out there. Waiting. She didn’t finish what she started and will try again until

she is stopped.”

“We will find it and…”

228

Dancing on the Wind

“No!”
he shouted, his head snapping toward her. His eyes were glowing with fury.

“You will stay the hell out of this, Keenan!”

“Fallon…” Keenan was almost afraid of the man sitting beside her. There was

murderous rage in his steady glare and it sent ripples of unease down her spine.

“This is between me and that bitch!” he snarled. “She’ll come for me again and

when she does, I
will
put her fucking slimy ass down!”

She wasn’t so sure Fallon could win in a fight against something as powerful as

Martiya. The creature had nearly destroyed him, had hurt him in ways she knew she

couldn’t begin to comprehend, and the continuing influence on him was exacting a

terrible revenge.

“Don’t shut me out,” she said. She twisted in the chair so she could place her free

hand on his cheek. “I love you. Don’t close yourself off to me, Fallon.”

Fallon seemed to slump in the chair. “I’m tired,” he said. “I need to go back to my

room.”

There was more that needed to be said, things that needed to be asked, but she

could sense him withdrawing and knew she’d get nothing else from him. She lowered

her hand, eased the other one from beneath his and stood.

“Do you want me to take you back to your room?”

He nodded.

Moving behind him, she looked down at his bent head then pulled the chair from

the window, turned it and started out of the solarium.

“Did the Supervisor tell you we would be leaving for the Island in a couple of

days?”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged curtly, making it clear he didn’t want to discuss it.

So she didn’t. She pushed his chair down the hallway and into his room. His bed

had been freshly made and a nurse was pouring an iced tumbler of water at the bedside

table. The woman said nothing but left quietly, returning almost immediately with a

burly orderly.

Knowing Fallon wouldn’t want her to see him being lifted into bed like a child,

Keenan bent down and kissed him on the top of the head.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Whatever,” he mumbled.

Keenan exchanged a look with the nurse—who shook her head and shrugged—

then left. Once in the hall, she collapsed against the wall and buried her face in her