Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) (31 page)

Just close your eyes, and everything will be fine….

It wasn’t my heart….

You shouldn’t be here.

Pulling onto the main road, Viola turned Sam’s car toward the city, and put the pedal to the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.” –Sigmund Freud

Sam woke up feeling colder than he should.

Breathing shallowly in the strange silence, it took him several heartbeats to realize what was missing: Viola. She was gone.

Don’t panic
, he told himself. But it was too late—he was already panicking.

After searching the house, he realized why it was so quiet. Not only was Viola gone, but his mom had already left for work. It was still mostly dark outside, but the clock read 6:00 AM. Was it possible that Viola had gone out with his mother? Maybe they’d decided to do a very early breakfast, instead of lunch? That seemed a little too bizarre to believe, even for how crazy his life had been lately.

Padding through the living room, Sam looked out the front window: his car was missing.

Any chance of him remaining calm, of not panicking, went out the window right then. Grabbing the phone off the kitchen counter, Sam dialed Viola’s new cell phone number. Heart in his throat, he listened as the ringtone died almost instantly, giving way to an automated message. Okay, so Viola had turned off her phone, but maybe she hadn’t gone far.

But then, his darker imagination kicked in. What if he waited? What if, as always, he erred on the side of caution? She could be halfway to the airport by now, or halfway to anywhere else. It would be too late.

That realization clinched it—Sam was done playing it safe. For good.

Pulling on his sweats, he flat-out ran to the middle school three miles away. His mom’s car was parked in the lot, right in front. She must’ve needed to come in early for some reason, because the school buses hadn’t even started to arrive yet. Without stopping, Sam ran into the building and down the hallway, toward the teachers’ lounge. The lockers and classrooms he passed were familiar, but miniaturized, like a weird dream.

When he pushed open the door, he found himself face to face with half a dozen startled school teachers—including Caroline. Awesome.

“Mom,” he panted, gesturing to his mother, who was apparently in the middle of a department meeting. “I need to talk to you for a second.”

After a muttered apology to the others, his mom followed him out into the hall.

“I hope there’s a good reason for this,” she said, after the door had closed behind her. “I already had a hell of a time convincing Caroline that my son wasn’t some kind of reprobate player. Now you show up looking like you’re on the lam or something.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and he meant it. “I don’t have time to explain. Viola took my car, and I need to borrow yours.”

Instantly, his mom’s expression turned from concerned to reproachful. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head. “At least, nothing that I know of. I just can’t shake the feeling that she’s about to do something dangerous.”

“Dangerous, how?”

“It’s complicated,” he hedged, not wanting to go into Viola’s stay in the psych ward, and not knowing where to start with her complex family drama. “I’m just worried.”

After staring at him for a few seconds, his mom reached into her purse and handed over her car keys. Sam took them and thanked her, planning on racing off to wherever he could think of to look first. If he had to make an educated guess, she was probably on her way to a lawyer’s office, but maybe she was on her way to buy a gun instead, to mow down her untrustworthy uncle. Because her pre-daylight disappearing act hadn’t included a note or any kind of warning, anything seemed like a possibility. His mom stopped him with a hand on his elbow.

“Son, before you go, there’s something you should know.”

“Yeah?” He quailed under her English-teacher glare. “I mean, yes?”

“I’ve taught hundreds of young women in my career. After a while, you start to realize that there are some girls that just have something about them, something that sets them apart from the others. As a teacher, you hope they’ll use their talents for good. But that’s not always the case.”

“Okay….” Sam waited for her to continue.

“Those girls, they don’t see the world as a place to fit themselves into. They see it as a place that can be made to fit them. That makes them a powerful force, either for good or bad, depending on what they decide they want to be.”

“Alright,” Sam nodded. “But what does that mean? What should I do?”

His mom smiled. “Honestly? If you knew what was good for you, you’d stay out of her way until she figures herself out.”

Reaching up to pat him on the face, she laughed. “Then again…something tells me that this might be the one situation in your life where you don’t do the smart thing. At any rate, let me know how it goes.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Sam said, backing away slowly. “I think.”

***

Four hours later, Sam screeched into his apartment’s designated parking space, cringing as his mom’s minivan almost took the back corner off of his neighbor’s BMW.

Giving the paint job a cursory glance, Sam shrugged and sprinted toward the stairs, taking them two at a time until he’d reached the fourth floor of his building. His plan was simple: he’d run in, grab his cell phone charger, change into something less sweaty, then go to the hospital and see if she’d shown up there. After that, he’d canvass all of the spots in the city that could have anything to do with her family business, her parents, her non-uncle…basically with anything that might have come up in conversation they’d had last night, right before she’d fallen asleep.

It had taken Sam almost the entire drive down to figure it out, and he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but the best hypothesis he could come up with was that last night he had said or done something to set this off. Whether it was another irrational episode like the one she’d had on the roof, or a memory that had shaken loose remained to be seen. Either way, Sam was determined not to let her go through it alone.

That was another thing he’d realized on the drive. Yesterday, he’d spent almost the entire day feeling relieved. Like he’d fixed something major, by managing to temporarily pull Viola out of her head and into his arms. But they hadn’t exactly talked about what was really wrong. It was like putting a band-aid on a severed limb. She might have been physically well, and she might have seemed sane, but that didn’t mean she was out of the woods. There were still all kinds of side-effects she might be going through as a trauma patient. Hadn’t he been the one to point that very concern out to Dr. Chakrabarti just a few weeks ago during rounds?

Once again, Sam understood that it all was his fault. That he’d failed her. If he’d treated her as a patient instead of as his girlfriend, she wouldn’t be in danger. She wouldn’t be lost.

Hurrying down the hallway to his apartment, Sam reached into his pocket for his key, but he pulled his hand right back out, empty. He didn’t have it. It was on his key ring. With Viola. God only knew where.

Swearing a black storm, he dug out his phone and called Brady, praying that he still had the spare key from the last time he’d crashed on the couch.

Before the call could even connect, the door swung open.

“What’s with all the cursing out here?” Viola said, looking mildly annoyed, like this was her apartment and he was a random stranger causing a ruckus in the hallway.

“Thank God,” Sam said, pulling her into his arms. “I thought I was going to have to chase you all over the city.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good plan.”

Too soon, Viola withdrew from his embrace. She turned and walked back into his apartment, heading down the hallway toward his bedroom. Feeling uneasy, Sam followed her, noticing how jerky and impatient her movements were. She didn’t seem to be hurt or upset, just incredibly unenthusiastic to see him. By itself, that wasn’t enough to make him doubt her mental state, but when combined with auto theft and leaving unannounced in the middle of the night? It all seemed a little bizarre.

When she reached his bedroom, she went straight to his study desk, littered with open medical textbooks and looseleaf paper. She sat down in front of it, rummaging through the pages like she was searching for something. Cautiously, Sam came to stand behind her, and noticed that on one corner of the desk, his laptop sat open, glowing dimly with various search engines: Google, Wikipedia, WebMD, MedLine Plus. It was like he’d tripped backwards and fallen through time, into his book years. Only now, Viola was the med student, and he was the outsider wondering what she could possibly be so obsessed with discovering.

The whole situation was totally
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
bizarre.

“Viola,” he asked, trying to sound both calm and supportive. “What are you doing?”

“Finding answers.” She didn’t bother to turn her head, answering his question in that same odd, emotionless voice.

Sam felt suddenly cold. He remembered once, during his psych rotation, when he’d met a patient with severe paranoid schizophrenia. The woman had exhibited almost total detachment from her surroundings, and when asked questions, had always responded in the same impatient tone. Like a robot who had been interrupted, mid-task—exactly like Viola was doing now.

The thought that the girl he loved could be headed down a similar road was a new kind of nightmare, because he’d be losing her again, but on a whole different level. He wouldn’t bring himself to believe it, though, not until there was some kind of proof.

“What kind of answers are you looking for, Viola?”

This time, she didn’t answer him. Instead, she reached into the pile and pulled out a large, red folder. Opening it, she ran her finger down the first page, comparing it to a graph in one of his books. No, not a graph, Sam realized—an EKG. The book’s illustration was of an atrioventricular block, but the EKG in the folder showed acute myocardial infarction.

“Viola, whose chart is that?” Sam asked the question, even though some part of him had already guessed the answer. When Viola ignored him yet again, Sam reached around her and pulled the folder out of her hand. She didn’t put up a struggle, as if she hadn’t even noticed. Instead, she turned back to the computer and started typing something into the search bar.

“Viola.” Sam repeated her name, hoping to wake her gently from whatever alternate reality she was currently living in. When that didn’t work, he finally gripped her chair and pulled it away from the desk. With a small cry of protest, she tried to stand and move it back. Throwing the file down on his bed, he reached over and pulled her up, pushing her shoulders against the wall with his hands and forcing her to face him.

“Viola, how did you get a hold of your father’s medical records? Those are restricted, and on top of that, they’re not allowed to leave the hospital.”

She exploded.

“What does it matter how I got them? Don’t you understand what’s happening here? All of this, everything that’s happened to my family, it’s all part of Jacques’ plan to take over my legacy! First, he tried to kill me, by crashing my car. Then, he crashed my parents’ car. Once they were gone, and I was still hanging on, he paid Dr. Chakrabarti to try and smother me, to finish me off. I remember now, because he didn’t just smell like cigars. He smelled like spices, Sam. He put his hand over my mouth, and I couldn’t breathe.”

“Viola, slow down,” Sam told her. Nothing she was saying made sense. But maybe, if he figured out what had triggered this delusion, he could help her unravel it. “Just take me through it from the beginning, okay? I need to know how this all started. What happened last night, before you left?”

At his condescending tone, Viola’s face immediately went from angry to disgusted. She shrugged free of his hands, and Sam let her go. But he didn’t step away, in case he had to restrain her again.

“I know how crazy I sound to you,” she said. “But I don’t need to explain how I know that I’m right. All I have to do is prove it—there.” She pointed at the file on the bed. “Somewhere in there is the evidence I need to show that my father was murdered. It wasn’t his heart. Or, if it was, someone gave him something. I don’t know, poison maybe. Something to make it look like a heart attack made him crash the car.”

There was so much conviction in her tone, it was hard not to question the facts surrounding Étienne Bellerose’s death. But Sam had already done that, and the answers had all added up to the same conclusion: it genuinely had been an accident.

Reaching out to take her face in his hands, Sam gently told her the truth.

“When your EMTs brought your parents in that night, I thought it seemed like too big of a coincidence, too, so I asked Dr. Chakrabarti if I could double-check. Because your parents’ files hadn’t been restricted like yours, I was able to go back and see everything.” He paused, taking a deep breath. He knew Viola would need as much detail as possible if she were to believe him.

“Six months ago, your dad was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He was taking ACE inhibitors, cardiac glycosides and diuretics, but he didn’t want to undergo surgery. He told Dr. Stone—his cardiologist—that he wanted to wait until he’d finished a very important business deal. But then, when you got in your accident, he stopped taking his medications as regularly as he was supposed to. Dr. Stone told Dr. Chakrabarti that the myocardial infarction—or heart attack—was sudden and acute. If he hadn’t been driving, if it had happened in the hospital, they might have been able to stabilize him. But because of the crash, there were added complications. His injuries put too much strain on his ailing heart, and he suffered sudden cardiac death. I’m sorry, but from a medical standpoint, there’s nothing suspicious about his death.”

“No.” Viola shook her head, either in denial or else undeterred by the facts. “He wasn’t sick. He would’ve told me. Those records had to be faked. My father never would have kept something like that from me. It’s wrong. It
has
to be wrong.”