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| H E A L I N G O V E R N I G H T |
Chapter 4
antiseptic, before wrapping it in a light gauzy bandage. There was a reason she'd gone to law school and not medical school, but this was Lincoln and clearly tending to his injuries was the least of what she was willing to do for him. Through hazy eyes he watched her work. "I haven't had a chance today…" He looked down at his stomach and the sight of it caused him to clench his jaw. Quickly, his eyes found her face again. "…to tell you how good it is to see you. You're a sight for sore eyes." She bit her lip ruefully, she'd fought for two weeks to try and find the brothers and when she'd succeeded earlier that day, Lincoln had been in his current injured state. She absolutely hated seeing him like this, but it was certainly better than the visual of him sitting in the electric chair. Swallowing the emotion she felt at that thought, she instead forced a playful tone. "Even bald?" "Especially bald." He attempted to return the joke. "You know how they say couples start looking alike…" She managed a soft laugh and stopped what she was doing long enough to lean over to gently kiss his forehead. "You're a sight for sore eyes, too." "Even wrapped in barbed wire?" "About that… you don't need to try and prove you're tough by picking a fight with every chicken coup you see." At that he chuckled and then moaned. "Don’t make me laugh." "Sorry…" She whispered fiercely. "I'm sorry." She changed the topic to one that was decidedly not funny. "Michael's furious at me for getting Sara." "Yeah," Lincoln agreed as Veronica continued working. "I did what I thought was best." He managed a weak smile at her. "I know you did and I'm grateful. But you have to understand that Michael… "Michael what?" "He hasn't talked about it much, but I can tell he feels guilty as hell when it comes to her. He must have done a real number on her back at Fox River." "You think he was just doing a number on her?" "I don’t know." "Because I think if he was just doing a number on her, he would have had no problems calling on her to help you today." Lincoln let his eyes close and his head sink back on the pillow. "You have a point about that." *** Once Michael and Sara were back at the cabin they wasted no time getting to work. Veronica had done a good job cleaning up Lincoln's surface wounds. So while he was now covered in bandages, it was markedly better than the dried blood he'd been covered in before. Lincoln had fallen asleep once Veronica had finished with his arms. But he woke when they returned and was lucid enough for Sara to tell him what was going to happen and to promise him that she would try to make it hurt as little as possible. With care she injected the lidocaine directly into his abdomen. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing. Then with shaking hands, Sara gave Lincoln a shot of morphine for the pain. But immediately gave the hypo and bottle to Michael to put away somewhere. She didn't even want to know where the stash was. There was only really room for two people to move around Lincoln, but choosing someone to assist was a no-brainer for Sara. Despite her tension with Michael, he stood before her looking-- as always-- steady as a rock, while Veronica was still a bit shaky and emotional. Sara kindly sent her to the living room. Once they started working, the two of them fell into a natural rhythm-- cutting the barbed wire out bit by bit, looking for deeper injuries, cleaning the wounds and stitching him as they went. "This is going to leave a nasty scar. The wire has really torn the skin and I'm no plastic surgeon." Sara fretted after they'd been at it for about half an hour. "I think scarring is the least of Lincoln's worries right now." Sara just nodded and they continued working. "You're not squeamish." She noted a few minutes later. It was a statement, not a question. "Are you surprised?" "After the injuries you've sustained recently, I guess not. Maybe I'm just waiting for you to tell me they were all faked or self-inflicted in order to get into my infirmary and do… whatever it is… you were doing in there. Working me I guess." "You think I had John Abruzzi cut off two of my toes in order to flirt with you?" Michael asked with a low, almost humorous, rumble. At that Sara froze for a moment. It was the answer to one of the earliest questions she'd ever had about him. "Abruzzi cut off your toes?" "Yes." She went back to work, but asked with a trace of disgust, "And you still helped him escape?" "I needed him." Michael replied succinctly. "I see." She replied as she handed Michael the wire cutters and the bits of metal she'd just removed. As they continued to work, there was a loaded silence before she spoke again. "So, what, your entire plan hinged on finding ways into the infirmary so you could flirt with me and eventually get my key?" She pointed to a spot on Lincoln's stomach. "Put pressure right there." "No." He blew out a slightly frustrated breath as he placed his hand on Lincoln's abdomen where Sara showed him. "No, not at all. Yes, I faked the diabetes, because I needed to be in the infirmary every day." He continued the explanation in even, dulcet tones, telling her about the chemicals in the drain and how the replaced pipe had stymied him. "Sara, I swear to you the keys were a desperate Holy Mary at the end of the 4th quarter. The diabetes was the plan; my other injuries were all too real." "Hmph." Sara replied as she continued working. In truth, she couldn't help but be impressed with his meticulous planning and execution. "What?" Michael asked cautiously. "Not self-inflicted then?" However, she wasn't going to tell him that. Michael 'hmphed' back, realizing that although the injuries were real, he couldn't honestly claim that none of them were self- inflicted. "A few were self-inflicted." He wasn't sure what was compelling him to tell her things she didn't necessarily need to know. But being in her presence again, he had an urgent deep-seated need to regain her trust and it seemed the only way to do that was through brutal honesty. "Astonish me." Sara said without emotion, even though she gripped the needle she was holding ever so much tighter. He was silent for so long she had assumed it was just another inquiry from her that he was going to ignore. But then he did astonish her by answering, "The contusion above my eye." "The elbow playing basketball? You gave that to yourself?" She didn't look up from her work. "Banging my head against the cell irons so they would think Haywire attacked me." She gasped slightly, before asking tightly, "You framed another inmate?" Michael was beginning to think he had made a big mistake divulging that. But he set his jaw and continued. "Bellick yanked him out of psyche and put him in my cell on purpose. The guy didn't belong in gen pop. It was for his own good." "I see. And that was your clinical diagnosis?" She asked as she carefully pulled a stitch through Lincoln's skin and instructed, "Sponge up some of this blood here." "That was my diagnosis as his cellmate." Michael replied as he also complied with her request. "He was making it impossible to do what I needed to do. If I hadn't gotten him back to psyche, Abruzzi would have had him killed." "So really, you’re a hero." "I didn't say that." "No, you didn't," she admitted as an uneasy feeling began to overtake her. She remembered back to his own stay in psyche and his catatonic state. "So when you went to psych ward…" Involuntarily, he felt a bead of perspiration on his neck. This would not go over well, but he didn't back down. With a loud exhale he replied, "An act." At that she stopped stitching and looked up to met his eye. "An act?" "Mostly, an act." He flinched slightly at the look she was giving him. "Jesus, Michael." She shook her head in disgust before going back to her work on Lincoln. A second later she muttered, "What a fool I was." "You weren't a fool." He returned softly as he diligently dabbed up the blood around her stitches like she'd shown him a few minutes earlier. "What would you call it? Me, sitting on the floor of your cell patting your back like some school girl playing doctor." Leaning back, he watched her for a moment as she studiously continued working on Lincoln. With a genuine look of awe at her healing capabilities he replied, "I would call you incredibly compassionate and very comforting. There's nothing foolish about that." "Right." Her voice was clipped, disguising the lump in her throat. Now his heart clenched in his chest as he realized the truth, probably for the first time. That day, in that cell, he'd been closer to losing it than at any other time. Even though that realization left him feeling achingly vulnerable, he cleared his throat softly. "Just so you know, I didn't plan to end up with my head in your lap, it just happened. It'd been a rough day… really a rough couple of weeks and…. like I said you're compassionate and comforting. Maybe… I don’t know… that was just what I needed at that moment." She processed that, but wasn't sure what to make of it. Part of her wanted to believe him. If it was true that she'd given him some honest comfort, it made her feel slightly less foolish and she desperately needed that at the moment. "Why?" She asked a few minutes later as she concentrated on gently untangling Lincoln's skin from the next section of wire. "Why did you pretend to be catatonic? Just to get out of ad seg?" He had nothing to lose now and no reason to hide, at least not from her, so he answered her immediately. "The burn on my back had obscured part of the map I needed. Haywire was fascinated with it when he was my cellmate so I knew he could draw it. I had to get to him." "What map?" she asked with very real confusion. He steeled himself before replying. "My tattoo." Now she looked up at him again, her eyes wide with the first glints of understanding. "Your tattoo?" "Blueprints of the prison." Her jaw dropped open and she repeated with wonder, "Your tattoo is a blueprint of the prison." He nodded once and his piercing gaze didn't leave hers. "Then you planned this long before you were even arrested." "Sara, I committed armed robbery so I would be sent to prison. The robbery was part of the plan just like everything else. I needed to get in so I could get Lincoln out before the execution." Shock reverberated through Sara's very being at the revelation. The reason he'd never seemed like he belonged at Fox River was because he didn't. The funny thing is that she'd suspected it might be something along those lines, but it was still astounding to hear it confirmed. Who would do such a thing? Who would sacrifice everything for another person? Who was this human being in front of her who would go to such extreme lengths to save a brother? She didn't respond. How could she? What would she say? Instead she averted her gaze and went back to what she knew, what she was comfortable with. Medicine and working on Lincoln. Michael felt infinitely lighter finally being able to tell her that most basic truth, the thing that started it all. It was something he'd wanted to confide in her since she'd found out he was married. That had been the moment when he'd realized that it was crucially important to him what she thought. Right then he'd wanted her to know that it was a plan. That everything was a plan. That he wasn't a bank robber by nature or the kind of guy who belonged in a place like Fox River. During those weeks in prison, everything had been about Lincoln. So the revelation that he'd wanted to confide in her had disturbed him; forming real attachments was decidedly against the plan. Even before that he knew he was enjoying his job flirting with her way too much and that he was taking it too far, but it wasn't until the point when she was so disappointed in him that he fully realized he had miscalculated and was in deeper than he'd ever imagined. Feeling her silence, he asked in an abnormally unsure voice, "Aren't you going to say anything?" Sara met his eye for a moment and then the corner of her mouth twitched. "Maybe you belong in Psych?" "Touché." Michael allowed a small smile of his own, before clearing his throat to continue. "I also want… I want you to know that Nika was part of the plan. Bellick was right, about the green card and the credit card. But it was a business relationship. I never touched her. Not in that conjugal room, not before I went to prison." "It wouldn't be any of my business if you had." Sara's low, rough voice betrayed her. She wanted to believe him, badly. But she wasn't exactly sure why it would matter. She was only here for the night and then would probably never see him again. And it didn't change any of the other lies. Or the fact that she'd been played from the beginning. Michael watched the emotions play over her face as she continued to work on Lincoln. He was making inroads with her; he could tell she was softening towards him. But he had to question his current motives. What did he honestly expect from her? Even if he made her believe that his feelings for her hadn't just been part of the plan, where did that leave them? What could an escaped convict on the run offer anyone, let alone someone like her? She deserved better than this. Better than him. He should leave it alone. Be content with giving her answers and apologies. "What if I said I wished it were your business?" Apparently, he was unable to leave it alone. Taken aback, Sara was trying to find an answer when she heard Lincoln moan. She quickly looked to his face and found that it was contorted in pain. With all due haste, she turned her attention back to the partially-repaired wound across his stomach. Sure enough a fresh well-spring of blood had appeared. "Oh, no…" She muttered as she carefully, but hastily, cut open the last few stitches she'd just made and opened Lincoln back up. "Oh no… oh no…" "What's wrong?" Michael's usually unreadable expression became frantic as he shifted his gaze from the quick precise movements Sara's hands made at his brother's abdomen to her face, which was suddenly a mask of concentration. "Come on… where are you… where are you…" She didn't answer him but rather spoke to herself, putting everything towards locating the source of the bleeding. She grabbed a sponge and started soaking up the blood, but there was too much of it and it obscured her vision. Once sprung free, the blood diffused and left no trail to lead her to the injury. "Sara?" "I can't see it. There's too much…" It was impossible for her to find the lesion visually and there was no time. She had no choice; she would have to do it blindly, by touch. Michael went cold with fear as he watched her plunge the fingers of one of her latex covered hands deep inside of Lincoln. "Sara, what's happening!?" Michael demanded in a panicked whisper. As her fingers continued to work inside Lincoln's abdomen, she met Michaels' eye and whispered fiercely. "Lincoln is bleeding internally and if I don't find the source, he's going to die." TBC… |
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