Page 2 of Only the Small Bones
Most of the activity on the tenth floor came from the Federal agents and officers positioned around. Some were giving orders, while others were carrying them out. I recognized one of the men as someone Davidson considered a friend. He tipped his head to me, expression grave. I returned the sentiment. Wins like these were always hard to celebrate when they were accompanied by so much devastation.
The squeak of my wet shoes against the linoleum echoed as I trudged to the double doors up ahead. Davidson came into view as I pushed through them.
“This way,” he said once I’d caught up to him. “How was your flight?”
“Agonizingly long.” I’d only been airborne for a little over an hour, but it might as well have been days.
“Yeah, well, I appreciate you coming.” He squeezed my shoulder.
“Of course.”
Medical staff chatted in hushed tones behind the nurses’ station, combing through what looked like patient charts. Machines hissed and beeped from behind doorways and curtains.
I followed Davidson to a closed room at the end of a hall. He relieved the officer stationed there, motioning for me to lookinside once we were alone. I stepped up to the plexiglass window but didn’t look in. Not yet. I needed to gather my strength first.
“I would’ve called you sooner, but it’s been non-stop madness ever since.”
“It’s okay. How’d you get them here?” I peered around at the skeleton crew of people.
“We airlifted them here after determining their external injuries were minor.”
“You’ll be moving them all to Safe Haven, I assume.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Hopefully, until we can track down their families. Right now they’re being treated for dehydration. The doctors are also running a battery of tests to make sure there aren’t any other health concerns that need immediate attention. They’ll live, though,” he assured me, opting not to say they’d be okay. They’d learn to live with what happened, but they’d never be okay again.
He motioned to the room again, face solemn. “This is the one I told you about over the phone. We can’t get him to cooperate. Wouldn’t let anyone touch him. Whatever he’d been given to make him compliant wore off by the time we arrived here. He turned feral shortly after. Thought you might be able to work your magic.”
Noticing me stalling, looking everywhere but the room on my right, he took on a fatherly tone. “Living a life in service to others can be hard, but what you’re doing here matters, William. It helps to focus on all the people you’re helping, rather than dwell on the many still out there.”
Davidson had it wrong. It wasn’t what I did now that mattered. At least not to my conscience. It would forever be what I didn’t dothenthat haunted me. I wondered what he’d think if he knew it wasn’t a life of service I lived, but one of penance.
When the outside world looked at me, they saw a successful, ambitious man doing good for humanity. They didn’t see thetruth beneath the facade. The real me would emerge the moment I entered that room. It always did. My guilt made it difficult to hide from them.
I swallowed hard, nodding before turning to the window. My breath caught in my throat, and without thought for the barrier blocking me, I moved closer, the toe of my shoe grazing the door.
A young man with a shock of jet black curls and pale skin waited inside. I couldn’t see his eyes. They were focused on the wall in front of him. From what I could see of his profile, though, he couldn’t have been any older than his mid-twenties.
His clothes were askew, dirt and dried blood covering the arms of his white shirt. His angular jawline too. I didn’t want to know where the blood came from.
My gaze dropped to his hands. They were handcuffed to the railing of the gurney he was sitting on. “Yourestrainedhim? Was that necessary?” My hand flew to the door knob like I could run in and save him. But I knew it would take much more than being free from his restraints to be saved.
“He attacked one of the nurses trying to take his vitals.” Davidson sighed when my head whipped toward him. “He doesn’t want to be touched,” he explained. “They had to sedate him before we could get the cuffs on. He’s still coming around from it.”
“So he’d been drugged by his captors, and then drugged again for trying to protect himself,” I hissed.
“We didn’t want to do it,” Davidson said. “He left us no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” Turning back to the room, I noted how lifeless and slender he looked. “Is he hurt?”
“No. At least not that we can see. The blood isn’t his.” A male nurse walked by then, wearing a bandage over his brow. Davidson gave me a pointed look.
“Has he said anything?”
“No. Other than snarling, he hasn’t said a word.”
“So we don’t know his name, then.”
“Ryan,” Davidson said, and I threw him a questioning look. “A few of the others told us, and he responded to it.”
