"Just what am I supposed to be looking at?" Matt Wilson
asked, massaging his temples with both hands as he walked.
Fairview Hospital was one of his least favorite spots on
earth, even if this was just a courtesy visit. Psychiatrics
wasn't his job anymore, and he was certainly glad he'd
veered from that into regular police detective work, in
spite of the similarities.
Hell, the silence in this
one corridor alone could drive a person nuts. Although the
soundproofing was necessary for the sanity of the staff, who
had to contend with these security wards on a daily basis,
he was pretty sure that a complete lack of sound could
eventually tweak their sanity, as well.
"New case,"
Jenna James, the supervising doctor of the hospital, said
over her shoulder. A shoulder Matt knew intimately well and
wished he could be alone with for a few minutes now on her
office desk, as a precursor to having the rest of her. Dr.
Jenna James was not only a damn good psychiatrist, but a
great lover. So good, in fact, that Matt felt aroused just
looking at her.
He knew exactly how long it had been
since the last time he and Jenna were together. Three
months. Too long. A necessary hiatus, but odds were
good she'd be upset over the fact that he hadn't called her
since then. She'd be angry. Furious.
Maybe he should
confide in her about his current case, the one taking up all
his time. Maybe he should have called her, anyway, just to
let her know how strange his caseload had become lately, and
that it had been demanding his time 24/7. He might explain
to her that if he wasn't personally involved in this case,
he'd have been with her in a heartbeat. Daily.
Sort
of the truth, if withholding pertinent information wasn't
considered lying.
He closed his eyes for a second.
Hell, if he couldn't get himself together for sex, he was
working too damned hard.
"I think you'll like this
one." Jenna, her five-foot-six frame drop-dead gorgeous and
alive with energy, swung her hips provocatively as she moved
off in front of him, sexy even in her white lab coat. Her
long, shapely legs caught his attention from beneath the hem
of the coat, silky legs he'd had his hands all over twelve
weeks ago. Legs that seemed to go on for an eternity, and
which now ended in a pair of black suede pumps.
He
almost smiled. If he had, it would have been the first light
moment in a long time, and there was no doubt in his mind
that this sexy psychiatrist knew exactly what effect she had
on him. No doubt whatsoever. And he probably shouldn't be
thinking about these things right now, or of what he might
do with that body if given another opportunity.
No,
most definitely he shouldn't be thinking about that. Finding
time for this visit, agreeing to come to Fairview, had been
hard enough. Besides wondering what Jenna might think of
him, he had some pretty strange garbage to swim through
these days, and problems that boggled his mind.
Jenna
hadn't looked him in the eye once since he had
arrived.
"We've kept this patient isolated, as much
for her own good as anything else," Jenna said in her usual
low-toned register that was a toss-up for the
sexiest-part-of-her contest.
"Suicidal?" Only mildly
interested, Matt tried to make a showing for Jenna's sake.
Maybe she would take him up on a long lunch afterward?
Engage in some afternoon get-reacquainted time? As much as
he hated to admit it, what he really needed was someone to
talk to. Someone with a similar background and an open
mind.
Maybe Jenna would forgive him.
"She
might be suicidal when she realizes what's going on. If
she realizes it," Jenna said, fishing out a ring of
keys, choosing a particularly draconian-looking one and
inserting it into the lock of an iron-banded
door.
Monster ward. That's what the staff
called this area of the hospital. The worst mental cases
were housed behind that door, now and then, making what lay
back there the modern-day medical equivalent of a medieval
dungeon.
The hair on the nape of Matt's neck
prickled. He wanted to rub his forehead again, but
refrained. With the word monster, in conjunction
with the place they were about to see, one would have
expected the door to creak. It didn't. A guard on the far
side stood to attention when it opened soundlessly. This
guard, more casually known around the hospital as an
"attendant," had been sitting on a wooden, straight-backed
chair. No padding. Nothing remotely comfortable. Not even a
magazine to kill the time. The guy nodded to
Jenna.
Matt reluctantly slid his gaze from Jenna to
the long corridor beyond. Polished white floors, white
walls, white ceiling. Sanitary-looking. Antiseptic.
Fluorescent lights were inset, and high up. Cameras in white
casings had been placed every few feet along the ceiling
line, flashing tiny red beams indicating recording in
process.
The doors in the walls were also white,
making them difficult to see from this angle, although Matt
knew there were twenty in all, and that so much whiteness
could be deceiving when it came to what might lie behind the
doors. His hands were already closing into fists.
He
tossed the white-uniformed guard a brief nod of
acknowledgment.
Back to Jenna. "Straitjacket?" Matt
asked.
"Can't get one on her." Jenna replaced the key
ring in her pocket. "Can't get close enough."
She
walked off again, making it impossible for Matt to see her
face. Checking out the sizable stature and build of the
guard as they passed him, Matt said, "He's not big
enough?"
"Two of him wouldn't be big
enough."
"You said 'her.' Can't get one on her.
Whoever is in here is a very big girl?"
"Well,
not really a girl at all, maybe."
Not really a
girl?
Futilely, Matt counted the doors they were
passing. They were headed toward the far end of the hallway.
Pesky hairs at his nape bristled again as Jenna stopped in
front of the most ominous-looking door of all, the one set a
little apart from the others, ruining the symmetry of ten on
each side. Matt knew what this meant. Something conceivably
worse than the other worse things.
Jenna turned to
face him, her hands hanging helplessly at her sides. She
carried no clipboard or file folder, nothing but a dangling
pair of light blue cat's-eye-shaped glasses she used for
reading and had probably forgotten to leave on her desk. The
blue frames matched her eyes—eyes that were trained on him
seriously, studiously, at last, as if waiting for him to
play catch-up.
After contemplating the door, he said
tentatively, "She's really a he?"
"No."
"You
want me to keep guessing out loud, or shall we move into
charades?"
"She's a she, all right," Jenna said. "Or
was."
"Was?"
"She is something else altogether
at the moment."
Okay. Now Jenna had his attention.
"Split personality?"
"If so, this would set a
precedent."
"Why?"
"There are… physical
changes."
"What kind of changes?"
"Everything.
Everything of what she once might have been is going, if not
gone already."
Frowning, not quite sure if Jenna was
yanking his chain for those weeks of silence, Matt ventured,
"Dare I use the word 'insane'?"
Jenna shook her
auburn-haired head. Her hair was tied back into a sleek knot
at the nape of her neck, usual protocol in this hospital.
Long hair was dangerous in the fingers of some of the
patients. Jenna had glorious hair that could cascade past
her shoulders in heaven-scented waves, waves he'd let slide
through his fingers quite frequently, once upon a time.
Burnished strands of loose curls that had brushed over his
face.
He zeroed in on Jenna's expression, found it
set and somber. Her lush mouth, full-lipped and, after
hours, frequently painted red, was at the moment as pale as
the rest of her, and didn't offer up so much as a hint of a
smile.
"When I said 'something else altogether,' I
meant just that. Literally," she said.
Considering
her reply, Matt decided that if Jenna wasn't joking, she
might be exaggerating. He had never seen this particular
room, in this particular ward, occupied. Before bailing on
the job as director of this facility, he'd worked at
Fairview for three straight years and could count the
patients housed in the monster ward on one hand, with two
fingers. Though criminally insane patients were housed here
occasionally before being transferred to a more permanent
facility, even a brief stay was rare. No one under his watch
had been hidden away here.
Lowering his voice,
deciding to test Jenna one more time, he said, "We're
talking…alien? Because I've seen The X Files,
and—"
Jenna's facial expression cut him off.
Frustration. Slight creasing of her brow. Reevaluating
quickly, Matt frowned, said, "You're not
joking."
"Never been more serious in my life. I
called you because your specialty was once anomalies of the
psyche, and I've never seen anything like this before. Your
take on it would be truly appreciated before we bring in the
big guns."
"You've called the FBI?"
Jenna
nodded. "I was about to, and would have, if you didn't
come."
"I come whenever you call. You know
that."
Jenna looked him over, probably searching for
evidence of a double entendre, and sighed. "Do you want to
see her?"
"Yes. Absolutely." How could he not, after
the vague and intriguing hints she'd dropped so far? Jenna
had no doubt seen a lot since she'd taken over his position,
and yet she'd seen nothing like this before?
Again,
he took stock. Jenna's mouth, a mouth he had kissed, tasted,
reveled in, taken full possession of in all sorts of wicked
ways, was drawn up in a tight line. Her sky-blue eyes were
huge, with traces of red weaving through the whites. She'd
had little sleep lately herself. Because of
this?
Reaching up to shoulder height, she used her
long fingers to press open a panel, fingers that just weeks
ago had been wrapped around his lustful body parts, fingers
that had made him writhe in delight. Matt felt a buzz of
recall as she hit a small black button in the door of the
cell they were facing.
Yes, cell was the
better term. These were no cushy prison holes, no normal
spaces.
"New thing?" he said, ignoring the sudden,
inexplicable roil in his stomach as he alluded to the glass
revealed in the opening.
"One-way glass," Jenna
explained. "We can see in, but whoever is inside can't see
out. If you want her to see us, we press another button. If
you want her to hear us, there's an intercom. I suggest,
though, that we keep the noise to a minimum. I'd like you to
observe her first, if that's okay?"
"Fine."
He
stepped in front of the door, in front of the nonbreak-able,
nonpenetrable glass, and swallowed hard. Looking in, he
blinked a few times in rapid succession, then actually felt
his face drain of color. His hands went up and against the
door with an audible thud.
Jenna James watched Matt's
face closely, not bothering to peer over his shoulder at the
thing in the room beyond. She had observed this room's
activity until her heart just couldn't stand any more
pain.
It had been a full twenty-four hours since the
patient had been brought in by anonymous drop-off. Six hours
since she'd called Matt, knowing he would come, and that
what resided in this room was, in a way, bait. The dangling
carrot necessary to see Matt again,
face-to-face.
Now, she felt a pang of guilt. His face
had lost expression.
He seemed to have stopped
breathing. Was it because he hated this place, or because of
what he was seeing inside that room?
Since Matt had
left Fairview, she had never spoken to him of her work.
Besides, when they'd been together, talking had always been
kept to a minimum. More physical activities had precluded
chitchat. Activities that usually included a king-size
mattress. It was a fact that they were never able to keep
their hands off each other, that their attraction was almost
surreal in intensity. It was also a fact, she had realized
lately, that anything other than small talk could have made
for a charged situation, producing fear on both
sides.
For me, the fear that Matt might close up
tight and that I'd lose him in the end.
For
him, fear of what? Commitment? Confiding? Being too close to
the job he'd despised?
Losing him altogether was
not an option she cared to contemplate. She had been in love
with Matt Wilson since their first meeting, on her first day
on the job at Fairview. She had instantly been drawn to
everything about him: his rugged looks, dark, shaggy hair
and perpetual five-o'clock shadow; his rangy, six-foot-two
body; the way his green eyes, so light in his tanned face,
seemed to see everything, take in everything.
The way
those eyes of his had searched her up and down, as though
they found nothing about her lacking.
For a long
time, Matt had been absorbed in his work at Fairview. These
days he was absorbed elsewhere, mainly with the Miami Police
Department, where his medical accolades had been tossed in a
drawer. She had been supportive of their time apart for a
while, even made excuses for him. But lately her gut
instinct told her that he was hiding something important
from her, hence the distance, the quiet.
Matt had
gone from an immeasurably hot pursuer to unreachable,
overnight. From lover to…nothing, without so much as a
glimpse of the old Matt's soul, something so necessary in a
true connection.
Was it clichéd to believe that
talking would serve the major purpose of setting things to
rights?
Had it been wrong of her to invite him here?
She could hardly breathe around him.
Had it been
wrong to keep what was in this cell?
Matt's hands
kept him supported now. His knuckles, on either side of the
glass, had gone white. She should say something, but
couldn't. Touch him? Every nerve in her body warned her not
to.
Hating the awkwardness, Jenna waited a few
moments more before looking into the cell.
Damn!
Matt stared at the thing pinging around in there, and
felt his own body react with a ripple of pure
terror.
The thing inside of this padded cell was a
woman, all right.
Barely.
It was hard to get a
good look. She was thrashing uncontrollably. Hitting the
walls. Ramming herself right and left, on her feet and then
on her knees when she'd fall. She rolled, lunged, tore at
herself with her hands—hands that weren't really hands
anymore, that were more like an animal's paws that had been
bound tight with surgical tape.
Her body was
grotesquely out of proportion, as though she'd been
stretched by some evil demon. She was naked, sort of. In
actuality, her body appeared to be producing its own furry
covering, though the process hadn't been completed…yet. The
thing in the cell was raw, and nearly completely mad. She
was half bare skin, half fur. Half human, half animal.