Acts of Honor (7 page)

Uncertain, Sara followed the guard into an office where a meek-looking woman of about forty—Dr. Fontaine’s secretary, Sara presumed—sat at a desk covered with orderly stacks of files. “Dr. Sara West,” Reaston said.

The secretary nodded, dismissing him, and then ushered Sara through the sparsely furnished outer office into the director’s inner sanctum.

It looked as tired as the rest of Braxton’s interior. Two deep-green visitor’s chairs with worn leather seats, a well-used executive desk that had water rings and dull spots in its cherry-wood surface—which was amazingly empty of anything work-related—a credenza with a photograph of a woman, probably Fontaine’s wife, and a photo of a sailboat on the wall. Not a file, a computer terminal, or even a calendar was in sight. Even the obligatory green plant was absent. There was, however, a lot of professional wallpaper. Every degree—the most impressive from Harvard—and award the man ever had won was prominently displayed in a thick gold frame, at least a dozen of them. This was not good. Fontaine was an egomaniac. Sara had trouble relating to egomaniacs.

Fontaine had his back to the door and the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear. He wasn’t wearing the traditional uniform of dark-blue slacks and light-blue shirt or medical whites, but he still reeked of being military: precise, exact, and detached—just like Foster. Fifty and graying, Fontaine wore a brown suit and absently rubbed a nauseating yellow tie. She didn’t need to see his face to know the man was angry; his tone spoke volumes.

“Yes,” he said to the unfortunate person on the other end of the line. “I do understand the severity of your situation, but this shoestring budget is killing me.” He paused, listened, and then went on. “I know that, Carl. But I’m telling you I can’t perform miracles. I need money—now. We both want results, so give me what I need to get them.”

“He will only be a moment,” the secretary whispered and then left, softly closing the office door behind her.

Not invited to sit, Sara stood and waited, her duffel bag’s strap slung over her shoulder. So far, her bags and purse had been searched twice. That wasn’t uncommon in certain mental facilities, but the stringent checkpoints, advanced security systems, and wary expressions around here were very uncommon. Everyone inside Braxton looked as if they worked under a cloud of doom and gloom, which reinforced her uneasy feelings about the place. And considering Dr. Fontaine’s raging on the phone at the poor soul Carl, the mood around here appeared destined to grow more grim.

First, lock-down conflicts with her Foster-appointed phone-conference time, and now this. Well, Sara, you’re definitely batting a thousand.

“All I want to know is how much longer before we’re ready to go on this?” Fontaine held up a hand. “That’s all I want to know, Carl.” Fontaine swiveled around, saw her, and his face blanched white.

Clearly he hadn’t realized he was no longer alone. Trying to diffuse the tension, and his temper, Sara smiled.

He didn’t smile back. “I’ll, um, call back later.” Glaring at her, he slammed down the receiver. “Who are you, and just how did you get in here?”

“Dr. Sara West,” she said, knowing his secretary was in for one major ass-chewing as soon as Sara left. “I was escorted.” That was about as abstract as she dared to get.

“Dr. West.” He extended a hand over his desk. “You’re to do a little PTSD research, I understand.”

Sara nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Sir,” he corrected her with a tight smile. “You’re a doctor, but you’re also a major in the United States Air Force, and I’m a colonel—your superior officer. Don’t let the lack of uniforms here deceive you. This is first and foremost a military facility.” He blinked and softened his tone. “I realize your presence at this facility is merely a Department of Defense convenience, but Braxton and its patients will always be my responsibility. During your stay, I would appreciate your acting as a positive role model for others. Discipline is vital to performance, and performance is vital to our patients.”

Perfect. Another Foster-like, hard-core military man with an attitude. But Fontaine was right. Technically, she worked directly for the DoD, and Fontaine had no say about her coming here. If he had, would he have admitted her? “Yes, sir.”

“My orders are to give you a free hand with the PTSD patients and their therapies. I’ve agreed to that, but with reluctance.” He dropped his gaze. “You might as well know that I opposed this project and your research here.”

Now why didn’t that surprise her? His attitude certainly explained her frosty reception. Obviously, the man carried rank and influence inside Braxton that spilled over to its employees. “Any particular reason, Doctor?”

“It’s my job to protect Braxton and its patients. Frankly, your unorthodox methods create serious reservations about your techniques.”

Hard-core military and closed-minded. Realistically speaking, insurmountable obstacles. As a pioneer, she’d sadly encountered closed minds often. If not for her family and that operative, Sara would march right out of here and risk Foster pulling his worst. “If you were reluctant and opposed, then why am I here, sir?”

His tapping fingers stilled, and he flattened them on the desk. “Because you have enjoyed some success, and the DoD members involved in the decision-making process felt differently.”

Her eighty-percent success rate beat the socks off any other doctor’s, and they both knew it. But Sara didn’t need an enemy here, especially not the facility director, so she kept her comments to herself, and again silently cursed Foster. If she didn’t know how desperately he needed for her to succeed, she would swear he had deliberately caused her complications. “The patients’ interests are my utmost concern, I assure you.”

“Thank you.” Another tight smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes. “I expect to be consulted and updated on all matters pertaining to this facility and/or its patients.” Fontaine tucked his chin to his chest. “You’re a short-term guest here. Please remember that and conduct yourself accordingly.”

“Yes, sir.” Sara glanced at the awards on the wall. Bronze star. Meritorious service. Purple heart. Now, that one she recognized. Many of her patients had earned that award. So Fontaine had risked it all for someone else? Surprising act for an egomaniac. Obviously, she’d misjudged him. Could she really blame the man for resenting her being shoved down his throat and for wanting to protect the patients? If unprotective, he’d be a sorry director.

“The head nurse, Shank—Captain Maude Shepshank—has your charts.” He rubbed at his jaw. “I understand you only work with five patients at a time.”

“That’s correct.”

“Why so few?”

Sara bristled against the implication that she was incompetent to take on a typical workload.
Give him resentment and you give him power. Do you want to give him power?
Deciding she definitely did not, and that he could have inadvertently, not intentionally, stumbled onto one of her hot buttons, she smiled. “Intense therapy is more effective.”

“Very well, Dr. West.” He nodded toward the door. “My secretary will take you to Shank.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bitterness laced her words. She buried it beneath a forced smile and asked an inane question to prove she hadn’t been intimidated by his tactics. “May I ask whose airplane is in the employees’ parking lot?”

“Shank’s. She lives on the premises. Piloting the plane is her hobby.”

Sara let her gaze sweep along the wall back to him. “Must be difficult, taking off and landing without an airstrip. The road is full of potholes.” Hopefully, he would be honest and tell her there was one. It was a small test, but a telling one.

Fontaine’s expression hardened. “Please focus your interest on your patients and not on members of my staff, Dr. West. They sincerely need it.”

Sara wanted to blister his ears, but his expression and body language warned her that he felt threatened. To reassure him, she smiled, though it took more effort than the last one. His skepticism was typical, if irksome. Instinctively, she didn’t like the man, but then she didn’t have to like him. Every human being was a work-in-progress, and Fontaine just needed more work and progress than most. Yet she did need to keep him out of her way and off her back long enough to find out the truth about David and to rescue Fontaine’s operative. And under the bluster, she sensed his fear that she would harm the patients. That went a long way to redeem him in her book. “It was only curiosity, sir. Seeing an airplane in a parking lot full of cars is unusual. I found it amusing. That’s all.”

“As I said, please focus on your patients.” He stretched to buzz his secretary on the intercom. “Martha?”

“Yes, sir, Dr. Fontaine?”

Wary, he stared up at Sara. “Major West is ready to depart.”

“Yes, sir.”

Seconds later, the door popped open, and the secretary who had ushered Sara in, ushered her out, wearing an expression as stony as Fontaine’s. “This way, Major.”

Her stomach fluttering, Sara saluted Fontaine and then followed Martha, feeling more like an unwelcome prisoner at Braxton than a physician recruited to heal and rescue.

Martha escorted Sara
to the second floor nurses’ station. It carried the pungent, sickly smell common to hospital wards, but rather than bothering Sara, as it typically did, it comforted her. Yet the deserted ward was different, too. Eerily quiet.

Behind a curved white desk sat a short, solidly built woman of about fifty-four, wearing a blue-flowered lab coat. Her name badge dangling from the tip of her left collar, she dragged a hand through her short-cropped red hair, snagged a clipboard, and muttered something inaudible under her breath. Captain’s bars rested near the points of her collar, and laugh and worry lines creased her face.

With a curt nod, Martha turned back toward the elevator. Sara walked on to the nurses’ station. “Shank?”

She looked up and smiled. The skin under her eyes crinkled. “Dr. West?”

“Yes.” Finally, a friendly face. Sara extended an enthusiastic hand over the tall desk, her sleeve brushing against a short stack of files.

Shank stood up, firmly shook Sara’s hand. “Welcome to the facility.”

“Thank you.” The simple words were heartfelt. Until now, her reception at Braxton had been frigid.

Shank motioned to a young woman sitting at the computer terminal whose expression was as sour as her lime-green slacks and sweater. “This is our ward clerk, Beth.”

Expression aside, the twentyish woman had beautiful amber eyes. Cat eyes, Sara’s mother would have called them. Deceptive eyes. “Hello, Beth.”

“Hello.” Beth nodded, as cool as everyone else Sara had met so far, except for Shank, then returned to work—without looking Sara in the eye.

Picking up on the icy reception, Shank grunted and grabbed the stack of files from the desk’s ledge. “Let me give you the nickel tour.”

Relieved to get away from the tension, Sara followed Shank away from the desk. “We’ve got four floors,” Shank said. “You’ll only need to go to three of them. This one is where all the PTSD patients are housed. The lab, X
ray, and the like are in the basement, and of course, the last floor you’ll need is the first floor. Administration’s down there, and it’s the only way in or out of the facility.”

They passed two men in the hall. Both were dressed in white slacks and shirts with rank sewn to their sleeves. One glanced at Sara. She smiled, and he looked away. This avoidance wasn’t her imagination, and it hadn’t been directed against Reaston. For whatever reason, she was its target.

“Getting the cold shoulder, I see.” Shank hitched the files on her hip.

Sara liked her, and grinned. “I could ask if it was something I said, but the chill set in before I opened my mouth.”

“Yeah, I suppose it did.” Shank dropped her voice, looked around to make sure the only person currently in the hallway—a vacant-eyed man dressed in a plaid robe and shower slippers—was out of hearing range. “It’s envy. Flat out. Dr. Fontaine is revered, and he’s been wanting research money badly. They cut his budget to the bone and then hacked at it some more. When he heard you were coming in for a DoD-funded, short-term research project, he went through the roof.”

“Ouch.” Sara winced. No wonder he was ticked. In his eyes, she’d gotten his money. Considering that, he’d been reasonably civil.

A physical therapist rounded the corner, assisting a man in a walker. Shank dipped into her professional role. “We have two hundred twenty-seven patients in the facility. At any given time, four hundred employees are on duty or on call and accessible with a five-minute response time. Dr. Fontaine insists on efficiency.”

During the fifteen-minute tour, Sara noted oddities. Well, oddities when compared to what she was accustomed to seeing in an in-patient setting. There were no bulletin boards, no notices of social activities. And in the family-housing block, viewed from the west windows, no signs of a playground or any children. Tempted to ask why, she restrained herself. The reason could be something she was supposed to know.