New Year Island (25 page)

Julian continued to speak in voice-over, like a newsreel announcer. “Even as a young boy, Brent Wilson knew he wanted to be a doctor.”

Just like a TV documentary biography—an A&E special
, Camilla thought as the picture changed. Now a twenty-something Brent, his hair dark, stood in black cap and gown with a row of others dressed the same way. A commencement exercise.

“Graduating fourth in his class from the prestigious Johns Hopkins medical school, Brent specialized in emergency medicine. His early career was spent in ERs throughout northern and southern California.”

Images drifted across the screen: Brent in scrubs and white coat leaning over a curtained hospital bed. Brent in a group of other doctors and nurses, pushing a gurney.

“Brent Wilson epitomized the American dream. He married his high-school sweetheart, and they had a son together, who was soon studying to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

“Hey,” a deep voice rumbled from behind them. “What’s this?”

Standing in the doorway, his face white, Brent stared at the pictures of himself up on the screen. “Wait a minute. I never said they could—”

“But then tragedy struck,” Julian’s voice continued, talking right over the interruption. “Following a bout with a life-threatening illness, Brent spiraled into a pattern of narcotics dependency—a problem all too common in the medical field.”

A picture of an angry Brent appeared on-screen, raising an arm to cover his face as he ducked back through the glass doors of a hospital.

“Stop!” Brent shouted. “You can’t do this. It’s wrong…”

But Camilla thought he looked scared beneath the anger. And guilty, too.

“Scandal followed when a patient’s family sued. Brent soon found himself defending against charges of medical malpractice. His problems with drugs and gambling worsened after a bitter divorce in 2005, when his wife of twenty-four years left him, and he became estranged from his son. But he would not give up his family. A court-mandated restraining order was necessary to ensure that they could resume their lives in peace.”

“You son of a bitch!” Brent shouted, rubbing at his left shoulder. “I’ll sue you!”

Julian’s upbeat newsreel-style narration continued over a still picture of a hospital entrance sign. “In October 2006, under a shadow of scandal, Brent was summarily dismissed from the staff at Highland Hospital. There were accusations of moral turpitude. In April 2007, the medical board permanently revoked his license to practice medicine, for conduct unbecoming a physician.”

The MRE that Camilla had eaten felt like a brick in her throat, tasting of chemicals and grease. Julian had no right to do this to Brent. No right.

Her breath caught. Did their host have a similar profile of her, too, cued up and ready to play? Oh god, what did
hers
say?

“You son of a bitch…” Brent’s voice trailed off, weakening. He swayed, leaned against the doorjamb, and dragged a hand across his cheeks.

Julian’s face reappeared. “I hope you’ve enjoyed this first contestant profile. Perhaps we’ll make these into a regular feature over the coming days. And now, I wish you all a pleasant night.”

The monitor went blank.

“T
hat was illegal.” Brent spoke with a shaky voice. “Wrong, malicious, and illegal.”

The others stared at him and he stared back, the silence stretching, filling the darkened room.

Camilla stood up. Julian could take his stupid game and go to hell, for all she cared. Enough was enough. “Brent, we all want you to know that—”

He held up a hand, stopping her. Running a trembling palm across his cheeks again, he reached back to grab the door frame behind him with his other hand and slid down into a seated position on the floor.

“What he said is more or less true.” Brent cleared his throat. “A one-sided picture, granted. But it’s true I had some problems. In 2004, I was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare and highly malignant form of cancer. The five-year survival rate is less than ten percent.”

He looked out a window, into the darkness beyond. “When you’re a doctor, you can get to believing you’re above the laws of nature. You determine who is sick and who is well, who will live and who will die. It’s magical thinking, but you don’t realize that until afterward.

“Now I was the patient. The chemotherapy was brutal. It took its toll on us all. I wasn’t very easy to live with. Mary, my wife, left me. She took my son…”

“I’m so sorry,” Camilla said.

“
Are
you?” Brent glanced at her and then looked away. “A five-year-old girl died on the operating table because I was high on Versed at the time and couldn’t see what I was doing.”

Her gut tensed as if he had punched her. All she could think of was little Avery’s face, and her other kids. She had
trusted
Brent? Thought he was keeping them
safe
? She wanted to throw up.

“The drugs I self-prescribed let me carry on with a semblance of normality,” he said. “After a while, they were the only thing that kept me going at all. My addiction spiraled out of control, but I kept it hidden—until I killed a little girl.”

He stared up at the screen, defiant now.

“Somehow, even with all of that, I found the will to survive. I beat the odds. I beat the mesothelioma. Then I beat the drugs. If your ‘profile’ of me was any good, you’d know that, Julian, you slandering son of a bitch.”

The screen remained blank.

Lowering herself to huddle against the wall again, Camilla turned away from the others and pressed her nose against her upraised knee. Everything was so ugly now. She didn’t want to listen to any more. She wanted to go home.

“What about the gambling?” Mason asked.

Just shut up.
She rocked her forehead against her kneecap, not wanting to hear the answer. But needing to.

“Doctors gamble with human lives every day,” Brent said. “Doing it with money instead was a poor substitute. Even so, I found the gambling harder to stop than the drugs, but I got control of that, too.”

Heavy shuffling. She felt the floor creak as he stood up.

“The mesothelioma almost took my life, but I’m a survivor,” he said. “I learned that about myself, the hard way. I made some terrible mistakes, and they cost me a lot. But they cost others more. I don’t blame my wife and son for never wanting to speak to me again.”

Nobody else said anything.

Heavy footsteps moved away, and Camilla looked up as Brent stopped in the doorway. He spoke with his back to them.

“I’m sorry for misleading you about still being a doctor. Pride, I suppose, and God knows I don’t have very much to be proud about anymore. I’m going upstairs now. Tomorrow, I’m going home…” Turning toward the blank screen, he raised his voice. “…and getting a good lawyer.

“I’m truly sorry I lied to the rest of you.” His eyes swept the room. “But you should be thinking about this: whose turn is it next time? And what’s Julian going to say about
you
?”

L
eaving her upstairs room in the Victorian house, Natalie found Travis leaning up against the wall outside her door. Dropping her eyes, she tried to scoot around him but he pushed off the wall, blocking her way.

“Natalie. Hold up a minute. We need to talk.”

She stopped and stood staring at her toes.

“You saw the scores down there,” he said. “You and I, we’re not doing too hot right now.”

She pushed at the floorboards with the toe of one black Converse high top. “Maybe things’ll get better tomorrow,” she said.

“See, that’s exactly what I mean. You and I need to work together. Otherwise, neither one of us stands a chance of winning this thing.”

She edged away. “I’m okay on my own.”

Putting one palm against the wall, Travis leaned over her. He was much taller than she was. Feeling his breath on the top of her head, she put her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and went very still. He was going to touch her.

“I got some ideas how we can turn this thing around together,” he said. “You need me, Natalie. I can help you.”

Yeah, she needed him, like she needed that cancer Brent had. She had heard this one before—far too often.

“Leave me alone.” Hunching her shoulders, she ducked past him and slipped down the stairwell.

L
ying on her back on her cot, Lauren stared at the ceiling in the semidarkness. She was thinking about earlier in the day, when the elephant seal had come charging back. She hadn’t meant to run, but instinct just sort of took over.

Nobody said anything about it afterward, but later in the day she had caught a look between JT and Juan that she didn’t like. She was sure they had been talking about her.

Thinking about it, she felt her abdominals tense. Tomorrow’s competition was probably going to be teams again, and she needed to make sure those two clowns didn’t get any ideas. Her red team needed a win.

She pictured Jordan’s face and made a fist. So right now, that walking, talking Barbie doll was the front-runner of the overall competition? Tomorrow, Lauren would change that—teach the snotty cheerleader bitch what it felt like to lose. And if Jordan wanted to do something about it? Well, that would be fine with Lauren, too.

She stuck her hands in the pockets of her cargo pants, surprised to feel something damp and crumpled. With a jolt, she remembered the letter she had found up on the wrecked tower. In all the excitement with the water and the food, she had jammed it in her pocket and forgotten all about it.

Christ.
The letter had gotten soaked when she and Juan went after the water jugs. It was all wadded up in there, falling apart.

Unzipping her pants, Lauren slid them carefully down her legs. She straightened the half-dry cargo pants on her lap and held the pocket open loosely, probing with her fingers. Easing the envelope out of her pocket, she gritted her teeth in frustration as chunks of paper came loose.

She hoped all the ink wasn’t washed away, but it was too dark to see now anyway, and she would have to dry the letter before trying to open it.

“Like a washing machine filled with rocks…”
She remembered Juan’s description of the whitewater they had crossed. She had done this before—accidentally left papers in her pockets before when she put clothes in the wash. There was only one thing you could do when it happened.

Spreading the closed envelope on the driest area of the floor, next to her cot, she smoothed it against the boards in the half-darkness. In the morning the letter would be dry. Or drier, anyway.

But would it be legible?

With a sense of growing unease, Lauren considered the return address she had seen on the envelope:

Department of Corrections

Monday: December 24, 2012

“S
ecurity.” On the monitor, Julian held up two fingers. “Security defines the second level of Maslow’s hierarchy of survival needs, which come right after the first-level requirements for physical survival. Security is the focus of our next challenge. It’s a team competition.”

A ray of pale sunlight filtered through a window, striping across the screen, making their host hard to see. The morning sounds of seals and birds filtered in from outside. Camilla glanced at Brent. She had tossed and turned all night, torn about what to do. She wanted to talk to him—to try to understand—but she was afraid she might say something they both would regret. Even now thinking about it made her stiffen with anger. She turned away.

Brent was still here, though—he hadn’t asked Julian about going home. Mason had explained it to her this morning, telling her why. As ugly as it was, Julian’s little player profile had been perfectly legal. Brent couldn’t sue anyone for slander because he had basically admitted that all of it was true.

It was disgusting what they all would tolerate for a chance to win that money. Last night, she had come to a realization about herself, too. She was sticking this out. Even if it got nastier. Even if she found that nastiness directed at her. Tied for second place with Brent, she couldn’t quit now. She would never forgive herself if she walked away from the chance to turn her little joke of a foundation into something real.

“Today’s event is a zero-sum game,” their host said. “For every point someone gains today, someone else loses one. At the end of the day, some of you will have more points than you have now, and some of you will have fewer. During today’s challenge, everybody’s points are at risk.”

Camilla stood up straighter and tightened her jaw.
Be honest,
she thought.
There’s another reason you can’t quit now.
Whatever Julian had in his profile of her, she refused to let him threaten her with it, or let it dictate her actions. She would not be cowed.

To quit now would be to admit she was afraid.

At her side, Jordan shifted restlessly from foot to foot. She hadn’t eaten for almost three days now. Her eyes looked a little sunken, but Camilla saw a weird hyperactive energy on her face. Manic.

Julian smiled from the screen. “There are different kinds of security, but I think we’ll all agree on what kind of security matters most right now: protecting those all-important points. The player with the highest point score wins five million dollars. That makes your points valuable indeed.

“The team that is victorious out there today guarantees its end-of-day point totals. They gains the security of knowing those points can never be lost again.

“For members of the losing team, there will be no such assurance.”

He clapped once and leaned forward.

“The challenge itself is a fun one. It’s a live-action game of capture the flag, with our lovely island home as the arena. Here’s how it works.

“Each team’s territory includes half the island. The border between red territory and blue territory is the seal barricade. Deep in the heart of each team’s territory, you’ll find a base with the team flag. The red team’s flag is red; the blue team’s is blue.