Page 85 of Heart of Danger
She pulled down the neck of the hospital Jonny, placed her hands over Ward’s heart and closed her eyes. For the first time, she tried to push her thoughts into someone else’s head, tried to control instead of read. Though the skin of her palms lay lightly against the man’s emaciated chest, she felt as if she were pushing through his skin, down past bone and muscle, to reach into his chest cavity and seize his heart.
She squeezed, hard.
A rattling gasp of air and the man arched in Mac’s arms as if given an electrical shock.
“Jesus!” Mac tightened his grip on him as if on a slippery fish as he arched and twisted.
Catherine went deeper, pushing herself into Ward’s psyche, as if going spelunking. Deep, deeper, plunging down until…ah.
Your men need you. Help us.
I…can’t.
He was awake! Aware, on some level of his being.
Yes. They will die without you. How do we get to level 4?
He twisted wildly, arms flailing.
Help us help your men. They need you, Colonel.
Silence in her head.
He writhed wildly, seeming to want to reach back to the bed, clawed hands reaching for the sheets.
Was this the dying throes of a man who wanted nothing more than to die in bed?
She pushed him harder, feeling his heart beat wildly, muscles twitching, wondering if she was killing him.
Dull moans came from him, then grunts, as his feeble muscles tried to claw his way to the bed.
“What’s going on?” Mac demanded. “I don’t want to hurt him but he’s out of control! What the fuck does he want?”
To die in bed, she thought. That’s what he wants.
But—but that didn’t make sense. Everything in that ravaged emaciated face spoke of discipline and duty. There was nothing in that face that spoke of a man whose greatest wish was to die in bed.
He was like Mac.
What would Mac do? Whatever Mac would want to do, Catherine would want to help him do it. “I don’t know why, but he wants to get to the bed.”
Under her hands she could feel Ward’s withered muscles straining. Under that, iron will straining…Bed…
The clawed hands fell, grasping…
Bed.
Something in the bed.
Catherine leaped.
“What?” Mac grunted as he tried to calm Ward without hurting him. “What are you doing, honey?”
She was scrabbling madly in the sheets. The bed, the bed…echoes of what she’d heard as if a faraway scream sounded in her mind.
The bed.
She stripped the sheets off, shook them out.
