Without remorse - Tom Clancy [204]
'Billy and Rick,' she said next, remembering again. Memory for Doris was a variable and spotty thing, mainly the recollection of pain.
'They're not here,' O'Toole assured her. She paused before going on, and to her surprise found satisfaction in the words: 'I don't think they'll be bothering you again.'
There was almost comprehension in the patient's eyes, Sandy thought. Almost. And that was encouraging.
'I have to go. Please -' She started to move and then noticed the restraints.
'Okay, wait a minute.' Sandy removed the straps. 'You think you can stand today?'
'... try,' she groaned. Doris rose perhaps thirty degrees before her body betrayed her. Sandy got her sitting up, but the girl couldn't quite make her bead sit straight on her neck. Standing her up was even harder, but it wasn't far to the bathroom, and the dignity of making it there was worth the pain and the effort for her patient. Sandy sat her down there, holding her hand. She took the time to dampen a washcloth and do her face.
'That's a step forward,' Sarah Rosen observed from the door. Sandy turned and smiled by way of communicating the patient's condition. They put a robe on her before bringing her back to the bedroom. Sandy changed the linen first, while Sarah got a cup of tea into the patient.
'You're looking much better today, Doris,' the physician said, watching her drink.
'I feel awful.'
'That's okay, Doris. You have to feel awful before you can start to feel better. Yesterday you weren't feeling much of anything. Think you can try some toast?'
'So hungry.'
'Another good sign,' Sandy noted. The look in her eyes was so bad that both doctor and nurse could feel the skull-rending headache which today would be treated only with an ice pack. They'd spent a week leaching the drugs from her system, and this wasn't the time for adding new ones. 'Lean your head back.'
Doris did that, resting her head on the back of the overstaffed chair Sandy had once bought at a garage sale. Her eyes were closed and her limbs so weak that her arms merely rested on the fabric while Sarah handled the individual slices of dry toast. The nurse took a brush and started working on her patient's hair. It was filthy and needed washing, but just getting it straightened out would help, she thought. Medical patients put an amazing amount of stock in their physical appearance, and however odd or illogical it might seem to be, it was real, and therefore something which Sandy recognized as important. She was a little surprised by Doris's shudder a minute or so after she started.
'Am I alive?' The alarm in the question was startling.
'Very much so,' Sarah answered, almost smiling at the exaggeration. She checked her blood pressure. 'One twenty-two over seventy-eight.'
'Excellent!' Sandy noted. It was the best reading all week.
'Pam…'
'What's that?' Sarah asked.
It took Doris a moment to go on, still wondering if this were life or death, and if the latter, what part of eternity she had found. 'Hair ... when she was dead... brushed her hair.'
Dear God, Sarah thought. Sam had related that one part of the postmortem report to her, morosely sipping a highball at their home in Green Spring Valley. He hadn't gone further than that. It hadn't been necessary. The photo on the front page of the paper had been quite sufficient. Dr Rosen touched her patient's face as gently as she could.
'Doris, who killed Pam?' She thought that she could ask this without increasing the patient's pain. She was wrong.
'Rick and Billy and Burt and Henry ... killed her ... watching ...' The girl started crying, and the racking sobs only magnified the shuddering waves of pain in her head. Sarah held back on the toast. Nausea might soon follow.
'They made you watch?'
'Yes ...' Doris's voice was like one from the grave.
'Let's not think about that now.' Sarah's body shuddered with the kind of chill she associated with death itself as she stroked the girl's cheek.
'There!' Sandy said brightly, hoping to distract her. 'That's much better.'
'Tired.'