Page 6 of So Insane

“I’m good too, thank you,” Faith added.

Michael shrugged. “More for me. Be back in ten… thirty minutes.”

He left, and an awkward silence settled over the room again. Fatih looked down at her hands and found her fingers twisting the front of her shirt into knots. She forced them to separate, then forced her eyes back up to David's. "How have you been?" she asked.

“I’ve been good,” he said, “work’s been keeping me busy. I had a lot of patients to catch up on.”

Faith shifted her feet uncomfortably and nibbled at her lower lip. A month before West put Faith in the hospital, Faith had discovered a note left with the body of her colleague and friend Gordon Clark, West’s most recent victim. That note had threatened David, Michael and Ellie explicitly as West revealed for the first time his desire to break Faith’s will.

After reading that note, Faith had pressured David and Ellie into leaving Philadelphia temporarily. David had complied on two separate occasions, the first time for two weeks and the second time for nearly a month before he finally insisted that he had to return home. The last conversation Faith had with him before going after West, he had made it clear how frustrated he was with her for interrupting his relationship with his patients.

“How are you?” he asked, breaking another uncomfortable silence. “You look good.”

She laughed. “Don’t lie, I look like I feel, and I feel like shit.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, “Well, you don’t look like shit, anyway. I can’t help how you feel.”

His tone was light, but Faith could detect a hint of bitterness behind it. She lowered her eyes again and was grateful when Turk barked and gave them an excuse to break away from each other.

“You came just in time,” he said. “I was just about to take a look at him.”

He moved to the table and said, “All right, boy. Let’s see what the damage is.”

David was a competent veterinarian. Faith wasn't surprised that Turk trusted him, but it still impressed her how the big German shepherd complied with him, allowing him to check his fur, look in his ears and eyes, and palpate his body for any sign of broken bones, internal bruising or herniated bowels. Turk seemed unfazed by the vet's touch, though every so often, he would stiffen as David found another bruise.

She was in the hospital when David returned. He had visited once, but Faith was under the influence of a lot of morphine and didn’t remember much other than that he had seemed eager to leave during the entirety of his brief stay. When she was released, he called her briefly to congratulate her on her recovery and promised to get together soon. It felt to Faith more like a perfunctory well-wish from a distant relative than the words of a concerned boyfriend.

Did they even have a relationship now? She didn't really want to broach the subject. She didn't want to know the answer.

You know the answer, she thought. You just don’t want to hear it.

“All right,” David said, “there’s some moderate bruising, especially around the abdomen, but nothing seems to be out of place. We’ll want to take some X-rays just to be sure.”

Turk whined, and Faith placed a hand on his paws. "Don't worry, boy. I'm right here."

Turk calmed immediately, his big brown eyes gazing trustingly at hers as David readied the machine. Faith saw that trust, and her heart broke from guilt. It was her fault he was here, her fault that he was injured in the first place. She had led him into danger because she needed to capture West herself. If Faith wasn’t in the picture, Turk would probably be trotting around Quantico in the company of a grizzled old K9 instructor, the only danger he faced the chance that the cafeteria’s meatloaf might disagree with him.

“It’ll all be okay,” she said, more to herself than to Turk.

David took X-rays of the dog's legs and feet to check for any problems or injuries that might have gone undetected through touch alone. Afterwards, he placed the stethoscope against Turk's chest, listening to the heartbeat with a focused intensity that reminded Faith of why she had been so drawn to him in the first place.

David took a large, boxy camera out of a cabinet and put it against Turk's head. The dog waited patiently. "You can't usually do this," he said, "because dogs won't let you. Usually, we have to sedate them."

She nodded, struggling for something to say and finding nothing. She hated this. After months apart from the man she thought she loved, she was here with him now, but instead of feeling close to him, she felt farther than she had when thousands of miles separated them.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, David finished up by injecting Turk with some vitamins and antibiotics.

"I have some swabs to run, and I want to see if anything changes after those injections I gave him," David said. “I’ll need a stool sample too, before he leaves, but the X-ray should tell me if he has parasites or not. He has a broken tooth, but I don't think it needs any treatment. No dentin is exposed. The X-rays will tell me if there’s anything else we need to be concerned with, but overall, it looks like Turk is more or less in good shape, other than being pretty severely underweight. I’ll put a diet together for him too.”

He moved to leave, and she caught his hand. “Thank you, David. I really appreciate it.”

He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed and squeezed her hand. “Of course. I should be back in fifteen minutes or so."

He released Faith’s hand and left the room. She stroked Turk's head and asked with smile, "Did you leave a nice souvenir in West's leg?

Turk’s eyes hardened. He growled menacingly, and Faith laughed just as menacingly. "Good," she said. "I hope it hurt."

CHAPTER THREE

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