Page 8 of Atone in Darkness
His eyes were once again refusing to work, his body’s way of telling him he needed to rest. He also had no desire tocontinue this discussion about a hopeless situation.
“Need to sleep now.”
Marisol nodded and walked away again. She returned seconds later to cover him with a heated blanket, which felt ridiculously good. “Rest will do you good. Meanwhile, I’m going to give you an IV. I know you hate them, but you need the fluids. It also means I can start you on an anti-inflammatory to help accelerate the healing.”
Normally he wasn’t a fan of pumping a bunch of drugs into his system and refused to let her administer them. He’d make an exception this time. If the guards did have another session planned, he would need all the help he could get.
•••
MARISOL GLANCED ATthe clock and recorded her latest observations along with the date and time. Twenty-four hours ago, Chase had been weak as a kitten, barelyable to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a stretch. What a difference a day made. He’d gone from absorbing all of his nutrition through a needle in his vein to shoveling food into his mouth at an impressive rate.
She’d tried to refuse when he’d demanded she let him out to use the gym equipment, arguing that he needed to take it easy and give his body a chance to heal. But had he listenedto her? Of course not. Instead, he’d started doing calisthenics in the limited area of his cell. She’d immediately caved and agreed to let him out, but only if he let her monitor his vitals while he went through his routine. And if he insisted on overextending himself, she could always slip him a tranquilizer in his energy drink. She’d hate to trick him like that, considering he already had troublebelieving that she really had his best interests at heart.
So far, though, he continued to show off much of his usual amazing resiliency. The only problem was that she could see a small but steady deterioration in his readings over the past two weeks. His reaction time, endurance, and strength still scored above average, but they weren’t as high as they used to be. The question was how long hecould continue to bounce back from the constant abuse.
Would the guards or her employer even listen if she tried to intervene? That would be venturing into dangerous territory, but her conscience was insisting that it was her duty to try.
“What are you thinking about so hard, Doc? From the way you’re frowning, it can’t be anything good.”
She hadn’t noticed Chase’s approach, and his commentstartled her to the point she almost fell off the tall stool where she’d been sitting. His big hand shot out to steady her as she stood up, trying to pretend that had been her intention all along.
Rather than tell him about the negative downturn in his readings, she lied. “Actually, I was doing math in my head.”
He snorted and gestured at all the electronic equipment that cluttered up the counters.“Really? With all this fancy stuff around, and you’re going old-school on the arithmetic?”
Before she could admit he’d caught her in a lie, he leaned past her to study the graph on the computer. Her first impulse was to turn off the screen, but she didn’t. After all, they were his test results, which in her mind gave him every right to see them.
His expression hardened as he studied what thenumbers spelled out. While he might not have the medical expertise to decipher what the lab tests meant, it didn’t take a genius to figure out his scores had changed for the worse.
“Explain what I’m seeing.”
He snapped out the order as if he were used to giving commands. While she didn’t usually respond well to such demands, she found herself pointing at the screen. “These tests reflect thecurrent status of your liver, kidney, and cardiac functions. As you can see, your baseline numbers have always been at or above the optimal levels of a male in peak condition. Until now, the tests right after you returnfrom a session with the guards have bounced back to those numbers within a few hours.”
She moved her finger farther along the line. “More recently, however, it is taking longerfor your numbers to rebound, and even then they don’t quite match the original test results.”
“In other words, every time they beat the crap out of me, I lose ground.”
Smart man. He understood the horrible truth on the first try. “Yes.”
He leaned in closer as if the array of numbers was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. As his grim silence continued, she found herself trying to thinkof something to say. Finally, she pointed at three sets of numbers that stood out from the others.
“What I haven’t been able to figure out was why these outliers are so different from any of the others. The readings from right before them are within your normal parameters, but clearly there was something different about your body’s response to... your interactions with the guards.”
Chasesnorted, his expression anything but amused. “Since when isinteractiona euphemism for torture? Just what do you think goes on when they gas me and then drag my unconscious ass down to the gym?”
When she didn’t answer, he proceeded to fill in the blanks for her. “We usually start off with two of them holding my arms while the others take turns beating the crap out of me. And that’s just thewarm-up. After that, the fun continues as they put batons, Tasers, and even their steel-toed boots to good use.”
There wasn’t a bit of emotion in his deep voice as he continued. “There have been a few times they’ve strung me up by the neck and left me hanging so that only my toes touch the ground. No matter how strong you are, eventually you lose out to gravity and start choking to death. That’sfun. Or they lash me to a pole and have fun tossing knives at me. They place bets and keep score, winner take all.”
As he spoke, he rubbed his throat as if trying to soothe the pain and terror that he must live with on a daily basis. Her stomach churned at the images he was creating. She’d suspected—no, that was a lie. She’dknownall along that it was bad. After all, she’d seen the bruises,burns, and lacerations. But until now, she’d been able to focus on treating the wounds, not the truth about how he came by them.
“There are no words for how vile those men are.” She fought against the burn of tears as she turned to face him directly. “Chase, you have to know that I would’ve never taken this job if I’d known this is what it would entail.”
She wasn’t exactly asking for his forgiveness,more like a little understanding. She’d made a stupid mistake, one she had come to regret every minute of every day, but she might as well have been talking to the wall for all the reaction she got from him. Not that she could blame the man. She might have made the wrong decision by coming here, but it was obvious that he’d been given no choice at all. She finally asked the one questionshe should’ve asked when he’d first appeared locked up in that cell.
“How did you get here, Chase?”
“What’s the matter, Doc? Your conscience suddenlykicking in? I’ve gotta tell you, it’s a bit late for that. We both know all you really care about is the big bucks they’re paying you.”
