He doesn’t look at her, or give any sign that he’s heard her. He only looks out the window at the parking garage across the way. But he does hear her, she’s sure he does, and his failure to acknowledge her in any way infuriates her more. When she talks, people are supposed to listen.
“Am I to believe you popped the buttons on my uniform this morning by some kind of mind control?”
Nothing.
“I know better. I’d been meaning to replace that one. The bodice was a bit too tight. You may fool some of the more credulous staff members, but you don’t fool me, Mr. Hartsfield. All you can do is sit there. And make a mess in your bed every time you get the chance.”
Nothing.
She glances around at the door to make sure it’s shut, then removes her left hand from her knee and reaches out with it. “All those people you hurt, some of them still suffering. Does that make you happy? It does, doesn’t it? How would you like it? Shall we find out?”
She first touches the soft ridge of a nipple beneath his shirt, then grasps it between her thumb and index finger. Her nails are short, but she digs in with what she has. She twists first one way, then the other.
“That’s pain, Mr. Hartsfield. Do you like it?”
His face remains as bland as ever, which makes her angrier still. She bends closer, until their noses are almost touching. Her face more like a fist than ever. Her blue eyes bulge behind her glasses. There are tiny spit-buds at the corners of her lips.
“I could do this to your testicles,” she whispers. “Perhaps I will.”
Yes. She just might. It’s not as if he can tell Babineau, after all. He has four dozen words at most, and few people can understand what he does manage to say. I want more corn comes out Uh-wan-mo-ko, which sounds like fake Indian talk in an old Western movie. The only thing he says that’s perfectly clear is I want my mother, and on several occasions Scapelli has taken great pleasure in re-informing him that his mother is dead.
She twists his nipple back and forth. Clockwise, then counterclockwise. Pinching as hard as she can, and her hands are nurse’s hands, which means they are strong.
“You think Dr. Babineau is your pet, but you’ve got that backwards. You’re his pet. His pet guinea pig. He thinks I don’t know about the experimental drugs he’s been giving you, but I do. Vitamins, he says. Vitamins, my fanny. I know everything that goes on around here. He thinks he’s going to bring you all the way back, but that will never happen. You’re too far gone. And what if it did? You’d stand trial and go to jail for the rest of your life. And they don’t have hot tubs in Waynesville State Prison.”
She’s pinching his nipple so hard the tendons on her wrist stand out, and he still shows no sign that he feels anything—just looks out at the parking garage, his face a blank. If she keeps on, one of the nurses is apt to see bruising, swelling, and it will go on his chart.
She lets go and steps back, breathing hard, and the venetian blind at the top of his window gives an abrupt, bonelike rattle. The sound makes her jump and look around. When she turns back to him, Hartsfield is no longer looking at the parking garage. He’s looking at her. His eyes are clear and aware. Scapelli feels a bright spark of fear and takes a step back.
“I could report Babineau,” she says, “but doctors have a way of wiggling out of things, especially when it’s their word against a nurse’s, even a head nurse’s. And why would I? Let him experiment on you all he wants. Even Waynesville is too good for you, Mr. Hartsfield. Maybe he’ll give you something that will kill you. That’s what you deserve.”
A food trolley rumbles by in the corridor; someone is getting a late lunch. Ruth Scapelli jerks like a woman awaking from a dream and backs toward the door, looking from Hartsfield to the now silent venetian blind and then back to Hartsfield again.
“I’ll leave you to your thoughts, but I want to tell you one more thing before I go. If you ever show me your middle finger again, it will be your testicles.”
Brady’s hand rises from his lap to his chest. It trembles, but that’s a motor control issue; thanks to ten sessions a week downstairs in Physical Therapy, he’s gotten at least some muscle tone back.
Scapelli stares, unbelieving, as the middle finger rises and tilts toward her.
With it comes that obscene grin.
“You’re a freak,” she says in a low voice. “An aberration.”
But she doesn’t approach him again. She’s suddenly, irrationally afraid of what might happen if she did.
11