Chapter 54
Chris fought to stay where he was, even though the darkness was eerily quiet. At least here he felt pain free and no one could reach him. Whelan’s taunting voice
didn’t quite reach him here and he felt he could hide forever, never having to face his friend’s betrayal or the pain it caused.
“Chris.”
‘No!’ he thought as he heard someone call his name, turning his head away from the tiny light at the edge of awareness.
“Now, Chris, we have some work to do. It’s time to open your eyes.”
“No!” he said, this time the single word erupted angrily from his dry throat.
“Alright, Chris, it’s your choice whether you open your eyes or not but we do have to get working on your Physio again.”
“No!”
“Feeling a little stubborn this morning are we? Now shall we start with the left or the right hand?”
“Go away!”
“Now, Chris, you know I’m not going to do that. I mean I have a job to do and so do you,” Peggy told him.
“J...job?” Larabee asked, finally opening his eyes.
“Sure. You and I both have jobs to do,” she said with a grin. “Your job is to help me keep my job.”
Larabee looked at her, irritation on his face, “Your job?”
“My job is to work with you. Get you mobile again. Show you how to take care of yourself and build your muscles back up. Now if I can’t do something as simple
as that then I don’t deserve the job. So, will you help me keep my job?”
Chris closed his eyes, nodding slowly.
“Is that a yes?”
“Y...yes,” he said slowly. He’d forced the memories of the morning’s broadcast to the back of his mind in an effort to forget the pain.
“Thank you, Chris, I really like my job and I’m so glad you’re going to help me keep it. Now, which hand would you like to start with?”
“Left,” he answered simply.
“That’s great. Now if this gets really painful for you all you have to do is tell me. I can have the nurse give you a shot of morphine when you need it, ok?”
“Ok,” Larabee said as she began working his swollen fingers. He hissed as the pain gained momentum and asked for the morphine before she started on the second
hand.
Carol Locke, who’d been standing to the side, inserted the morphine into the IV.
“Are you ready to begin again?” Peggy asked a few minutes later.
“Yes,” he answered.
Slowly she worked her magic on his hands, arms and legs. She carefully moved each limb in order to keep them mobile. “All done, Chris,” she said as she covered
his trembling body with a sheet and blanket.
Chris heard her but didn’t have the energy to answer. He closed his eyes and let his mind seek out the dark, quiet, spot where nothing or nobody could find him.
The meeting of Larabee’s doctors, nurses and therapists took place in Stacey Midland’s office as usual. Everyone was pleased with the way things had gone during
the physiotherapy session.
Kathy Leonard was still concerned about the lack of nutrition Larabee was getting.
Susan James ordered that the suicide watch be continued. She knew he’d made some strides by answering Peggy’s simple questions but made sure everyone
understood that he was far from healed.
Midland and Parker informed them of the progress made on the physical injuries, including the damage done by the convulsions.
Carol Locke suggested they have Larabee’s men sit with him as often as possible, making sure they continued to keep him abreast of life outside the hospital.
The next few days passed in the same way. Chris would let people do things for him but he ignored their pleas to eat, drink, or take his medications. To him it was
the only way he could be punished for what Whelan had convinced him he’d done. His nightmares were the worst, a continually unchanging reel of eight milimeter.
An endless dream in which he murdered his wife and son. A constant reminder of the pain and suffering he’d caused the two people he’d professed to love.
Sitting next to his bed, Jake would sometimes hear Vin Tanner’s name screamed as if it was the vilest name in the English language. Other times it was said with a
quiet longing as if the blond needed to hear it. The softly spoken name sent shivers down Taylor’s spine and he felt nothing but pity for the blond.
Chapter 55
Vin Tanner woke up a little after midnight, his eyes opening wide in fear, unsure where the feeling came from. ‘Chris,’ he thought as he threw back the blankets and
pulled the IV out of his arm. He groaned as his feet met heavily with the cold floor awakening the pain from the wound in his chest and thigh. He held the side of the
bed as a wave of dizziness assaulted his senses. ‘Dammit, Tanner, not now,’ he thought as he fought his way towards the door.
“Vin Tanner is the one causing all this, Chris. He’s the one who hired Whelan. He’s the one who paid for your torture. He’s behind it all. He knows what you did to
Sarah and Adam. He knows how you burned them alive. He knows how you murdered them and now he wants you to die.”
Chris heard the speech, the same one he’d listened to over and over the last few nights. His eyes were open but unfocused as he listened to the constant litany. Tears
filled his eyes as he pictured his family screaming as their bodies were burned in the fire that consumed everything around them. “No!” his pleaded as the speech
began for the fourth time that night.
Sharpe smiled at the look of sheer horror that covered the blond’s pale face. ‘This is working better than Wilcox thought,’ he grinned as the last of the message
finished. He pressed the rewind button and shoved the tiny device into his pocket.
“You’re pathetic you know that Larabee? Nothing but a pathetic bastard who murdered his own wife and son. Now everyone will know just what kind of coward
you are. A yellow coward who kills the ones he’s supposed to love. I hate people like you! People who can’t even take their own lives properly yet they can kill a
woman and a small child.”
“Get away from him you sick Son of a bitch!” Tanner screamed as he rushed into the room. He grabbed Sharpe’s surprised body and pulled him away from the pale
form on the bed, ignoring the sharp pain in his own chest as he swung his fist at the other man. Tanner hit the man again, driving him across the room, shouting angrily,
“The man you’re tormenting is my friend and so long as I’ve got breath in my body nobody will ever hurt him again. Do I make myself clear?” he screamed as he
rushed at the orderly once more.
Chris Larabee cowered in the bed, trying to make his body small enough so no one could see him. He’d heard Tanner’s words but only two of them had registered
in his troubled mind. ‘Hurt him,’ Tanner had shouted and Larabee’s shock drove him further into the murky world of darkness and despair.
“What the hell’s going on?” Wilmington shouted as he opened the door. “Vin?”
“This psycho’s been filling Chris’s head with lies,” Tanner shouted as he angrily pulled the man from the floor. “Get him out of here before I kill him!”
The ladies man grabbed Sharpe as a security guard stepped into the room. “What’s going on? Who are you?” he asked, quickly taking in the disheveled orderly, the
moustached man, and the longhaired man in the hospital gown.
“He hit me! I was doing my job and he hit me!” Sharpe shouted petulantly.
“Damn straight I hit you and you come near him again and I swear I’ll kill you,” Tanner said, swaying slightly.
“Vin,” Wilmington said as he grabbed the falling man.
“I said get him out of here,” Tanner repeated as Buck helped him to a chair.
“Jesus, Vin, you’re bleeding,” Wilmington observed. “Get a doctor in here!”
The security guard escorted the orderly out of the room, “I told the nurse to wait until I gave her the all clear. I’ll send her right in,” he said.
“Buck, check on Chris,” Tanner gasped as he clutched his hand to his chest.
“Chris?”
“Yeah, Sharpe was telling him lies! Calling him names. Oh, God, Buck, what if...”
“Don’t think that way, Vin, let’s wait until the nurse comes in,” Wilmington said. Moving towards Larabee’s bed but turned back to the younger man as he tumbled
from the chair, “Vin,” he cried as he placed the unconscious man on the floor.
“What happened?” a nurse asked as she entered the room.
“I’m not sure but I think it had something to do with that orderly the guard took out of here.”
“Tony?” the nurse asked as she checked Tanner’s chest.
“Yeah. I gotta check on Chris.”
“What happened to him?” she asked as she glanced at the bed.
“Vin said Sharpe was telling him things.”
“You go check on him. The doctor on call is on his way up here now,” she said.
“Thanks...”
“Sharon.”
“Thanks, Sharon,” Wilmington said as he stepped up to Larabee’s bed. “Chris?”
‘Hurt him!’ Tanner’s words echoed over and over in Larabee’s mind, so loudly that nothing else came through. He was alone, alone in a world where nothing else
mattered but his own guilt. The guilt he felt over the death of his family and now the death of his friendship to Vin Tanner.
“Chris, it’s me, Stud,” Wilmington said softly, terrified by the lack of emotion on the handsome face, the almost empty look in the glossy eyes.
“How is he?” the nurse asked as she continued to keep pressure on Tanner’s chest wound.
“I don’t know. It’s almost like he’s not here,” Wilmington’s voice trembled as he answered her.
They both looked up as a doctor and a second nurse entered the room. The doctor looked from the man on the floor to the man on the bed. His decision was made
by the amount of blood on the younger man’s chest. He knelt beside the nurse and had her remove her hand. “We need to get this looked after. Call Dr. Hastings
and have her meet me in Mr. Tanner’s room,” he ordered as he watched the second nurse checking the patient on the bed. “How is he?”
The nurse finished checking the vitals on the second patient and rattled off her findings, “Not good, Dr. Markel, heart rate’s at one twenty, blood pressure’s one fifty
over ninety. His skin is cold and clammy, pupils are about a three and reactive, his breathing is laboured. Chris, can you hear me?” she asked her patient calmly, but
received no answer as she placed the nasal canulas on his face.
“Damn, his chart said he was doing better. Give him five milligrams Haldol IV,” he ordered. “Who are you?” he asked Wilmington.
“Buck Wilmington.”
“Mr. Wilmington, I won’t bother asking what you’re doing here at this hour. Go find an orderly and tell him I need a gurney here right now.”
“Dr. Hastings is on her way,” Sharon told him as she returned to the room, an orderly and a gurney in tow.
Buck saw the orderly and decided to stay by Larabee’s side, talking quietly to him in an effort to bring him back from whatever hell he was in.
“Let’s get him back to his room,” the doctor ordered. As Sharon helped the orderly wheel the unconscious man out of Larabee’s room the doctor moved to the
second patient’s bed. “Has he responded to you at all?” he asked the nurse.
“No,” she answered.
“It’s like he’s not there,” Wilmington’s worried voice filled the room as his anger over the two injured men caught up with him. “Why the hell didn’t you people just
let us be sitters for Chris? We could’ve prevented this.”
“Mr. Wilmington, now is not the time for that discussion. Right now I’d like you to try and reach Mr. Larabee. Talk to him, but do it calmly. Don’t let him sense any
fear in your voice.”
“Damn, Doc,” Wilmington said as he turned away. “He was just starting to come around.”
“We’ll discuss all that shortly. Right now I need to check on Mr. Tanner and make sure Dr. Hastings got there. You keep talking to him. Debbie, stay with Mr.
Wilmington and Mr. Larabee.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Debbie answered as she continued to monitor the blond patient. “Talk to him, Mr. Wilmington.”
The ladies man turned back to the bed housing his long time friend, forcing a smile to his face before speaking. “Hey, Pard, ol Buck’s here. Come on now look at
me. Chris, I’m right here for you, Buddy. Right where I’ll always be. I’ll stand by you through everything. I always have haven’t I? Now you have to do something
for me. You have to look at me and tell me you want me to stay. Come on, Chris, I really need to hear you tell me you want me to stay. See these doctors and
nurses aren’t supposed to let us stay past visiting hours so it’s up to you to tell them that you want me here. Can you do that for me, Chris?”
‘Hurt him,’ the words reverberated around inside Larabee’s troubled mind. Those two words had been spoken by his friend to the man who’d been torturing him
mentally for two days. ‘Vin, it can’t be true. How can it be true. I couldn’t have been that wrong about you,’ he thought as the words continued to taunt him.
‘Oh, God, no, Vin, it can’t be you.” He drifted towards the darkness again, trying to rid himself of the nightmare that started so long ago. A night when he and Vin
Tanner had still been friends. A night when Vin’s blue eyes had been warm and friendly. Now all he could see was the icy hatred of the nightmare in Vin’s eyes. He
shivered as he wandered closer to the darkness but couldn’t complete the journey as he heard the voice of years of friendship reach out to him.
“Chris,” Wilmington said as he noticed the tiniest movement of the blond head. “You can do it. Just look at me, Stud and I promise everything will be ok.”
Larabee continued to fight the lethargy that seemed to reach out and encompass him, ‘Buck,’ he thought he said the word but the effort to speak cost too much and
he closed his eyes.
“Chris!”
“He’s ok, Mr. Wilmington. He’s sleeping. I’ll be here with him if you want to check on Mr. Tanner.”
Wilmington looked from the sleeping blond to the door and back to the blond, ‘God, he looks almost frail,’ he thought as he glanced across at the nurse. “You sure
he’s just sleeping?”
“I’m sure,” she reassured him. “The Haldol, the morphine, and his body’s own weakness have caught up with him. He should sleep through the night. I’ll stay here till
they assign a new sitter.”
“Oh no! No more sitters. From now on we take care of our own!”
“You’ll have to talk to the doctors about that. Meanwhile I’ll stay here,” Debbie told him.
Wilmington nodded and left the room, hurrying down the hall to check on the second injured man before he called the others.
He stood in the door and watched as Sharon reinserted an IV in Vin’s forearm, making sure it was running properly.
“Mr. Wilmington, please wait outside. I’ll talk to you as soon as I finish with Mr. Tanner,” the doctor injected a local in the area around Tanner’s chest wound.
Buck clenched his fists in anger at the pale face and sweat streaked forehead of the younger man. He closed the door and leaned against the wall as he waited for the
doctors to finish their work. It felt like forever before Dr. Markel and Dr. Hastings came out of the room. “Well?”
“Mr. Tanner should be fine. Some of the stitches in his chest had to be replaced. He’s awake right now and asking for you. Look, Mr. Wilmington, it’s against
hospital policy for you to be here but I don’t think Mr. Tanner will calm down until he talks to you. Just make sure you keep it brief.”
“Sure, Doc,” Wilmington said, the anger in his eyes not matching the calmness in his voice. He stepped into the room to find a very pale young man sitting on the edge
of his bed, arguing with the nurse.
“I need to talk to Buck.”
“You need to lie down, Mr. Tanner,” Sharon told him.
“I’ll make sure he does, Sharon,” Wilmington assured her.