Standard disclaimers apply. Airwolf and her crew belong to Donald Bellisario, et al; I just had a good time playing with them.
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"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." ‒ Confucius
Chapter One
He didn't like being here.
It didn't feel right, no matter what they told him about this being the safest place for him, the place where he would be looked after the best.
Wherever "here" was. He had only the foggiest memory of arriving, none at all of where he'd been before. Someone ‒ a doctor ‒ had told him he'd been in an accident, been badly hurt. He couldn't remember anything about that either.
But the biggest problem was, he had no idea at all of how he was going to leave "here" again.
It was a problem that had begun to bother him, off and on, for a while now. He couldn't even say how long, because his grasp of the passage of time was shaky. On a good day, it was easy ‒ minutes, hours, days, no problem. On a bad day, he only registered if there was daylight on the other side of the windows ‒ if they let him get near the windows.
Today seemed to be one of the in-between days, when he was content to just let his mind drift without trying to think too much about what was going on around him. He sat in his wheelchair in the lounge, a large, light-painted room with several groupings of deep, comfortable armchairs and sofas scattered around and sliding glass doors leading out onto a flagstone patio. Beyond the patio was a view of densely wooded hills, almost invisible now in a driving rain. Between the patio and the hills was a high chain link fence, discreetly electrified.
The wheelchair was pushed up next to one of the glass doors. The man in the chair wore a cotton shirt and pants, neatly pressed; his short-cut, light brown hair was combed and tidy. His hooded blue eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the hills, or on something even more distant. He ignored the few other occupants of the room, including the stout woman in floral-patterned scrubs sitting next to him.
Karen Moseby ‒ a freckled strawberry blonde with a small pursed mouth and hard little green eyes, overweight by a good forty pounds and habitually smelling of sweat ‒ looked at him and sighed with boredom. She'd spent an hour after lunch trying to interest him in books, a jigsaw puzzle, a game of checkers, to no avail. Elena Wojnowski, one of the other nurse's aides who looked after him, had said last week that she sometimes wondered if there was more going on behind that often-blank stare than he was letting anyone know; that it could be a smokescreen, keeping them guessing being the only sort of control he had over anything, considering that half his body and probably even less of his mind didn't work and he was trapped in a wheelchair, and beyond that within the regime of the clinic.
Not that it mattered a damn to Karen. She was being paid to look after him, to feed him, clean him, keep him occupied and out of trouble and to stop him from doing anything that would attract attention. Nothing in her contract about trying to figure out what was really going on in his head. And her job was a lot easier when he was staring blankly out the window than when he got into a tantrum and started yelling and flailing around.
Shame, though. He was a good-looking guy, and must have been pretty athletic before whatever it was had happened, and he'd ended up like this.
"String," she tried.
On one of his more communicative days, he'd insisted that his name was String. Nobody knew why; his real name was Tommy Vine. Maybe it was a nickname. He was skinny enough that somebody might once have called him String Bean as a joke. To humor him his caregivers tried to remember to use String, unless Dr. Fairling was around, if for no other reason than that it made their lives easier. Calling him Tommy or Mr. Vine tended to upset him.
"String, it's time for your nap." It was still a bit early, but she was fed up with sitting there watching the rain fall. If she could get him into bed she could have an extra hour to watch the soaps, and what difference did it make to him if he stared at trees or the ceiling of his room? Without further ado she grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and turned it smartly around, heading out of the room.
"I want to go outside," said String fretfully, choosing now to break his silence.
Without pausing she replied, "It's pouring rain out there. You'd get soaked."
"Don't care. I want to go out."
One of the nurses came down the hall toward them. Karen said sweetly, "You can go out tomorrow, if the rain's stopped. You don't want to catch your death of pneumonia, do you?"
There was a pause, then, strangely, he gave a bark of laughter. "Maybe." Then he put both hands on the arms of the chair and pushed, trying to get up.
Shit. Was he going to start getting difficult? The nurse disappeared into a patient's room and closed the door. Karen stopped and came around to bend over the chair. She pushed him back down ‒ she was probably as strong as he was ‒ then gripped his chin in one hand, holding harder than strictly necessary, to make sure he got the point. "You're going to go to bed and rest now, String. Don't give me a hard time or you know what'll happen."
He glared at her. She gave his chin a shake, then resumed pushing the chair, wondering if she was going to have to use the restraints again to keep him in bed, now that he'd started to get agitated. Of course, he hated that; he'd managed to make that perfectly clear. But he never told on her. Who was going to listen to him, anyway?
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The next day it was Elena's turn to look after him. String liked her better than Karen. She had a narrow face with sallow skin and lines beginning to show around her mouth and between her eyes; her long dark hair, which was starting to show a few gray strands, was usually tied back in neat braid. In spite of the habitual seriousness and intensity of her expression, which made her look rather forbidding, she was much more sympathetic than any of the others.
The rain had stopped and Elena pushed his chair outside onto the patio, next to one of the small tables. It was a cold day. She fetched a blanket to put over his shoulders.
After a while of sitting in his usual silence, he suddenly said conversationally, "The trees are different."
She looked up at the tree-clad hills, puzzled. "Different from what?"
"From where."
"All right then, from where?"
That seemed to stump him. He frowned, pushing a hand through his hair. "Don't know. Someplace else ‒ can't remember." He could see it, though, in his mind. The picture wasn't clear; it was like the tail end of a fading dream, and, like a dream, the harder he tried to hold the image in his mind the faster it slipped away. Evergreens instead of the trees he could see that were turning shades of yellow and red for the approaching autumn. A lake. An ‒ eagle?
Silence again. After a while, a humming noise in the sky had them both looking up.
"Just a helicopter," said Elena reassuringly, in case String was worried by the noise. He was staring up at the machine, which was so high it wasn't much more than a silver speck.
"Bell Jet Ranger," said String.
"What?"
"The helicopter. That's what it was."
Elena stared at him. "How did you know that?"
He looked bewildered. "Like the trees. It's from someplace else."
They sat on the patio for a while longer, but the helicopter didn't return, and String didn't say anything more. Still, Elena mentally filed the incident away for future reference. She'd mention it to Dr. Fairling the next time she saw her. Maybe this was one of those rare chinks in the wall that stood between String and reality.
She wheeled him back inside for his lunch. There was a proper dining room for the patients, but since String's moods tended to be unpredictable and sometimes downright antisocial, he was generally given his meals on a tray either in the lounge or his room. When he'd finished eating she managed to tease him into a game of checkers. After about a quarter of an hour, though, he began losing his ability to concentrate, and she took him back to his room. She helped him maneuver in the bathroom, then settled him in bed for his afternoon rest.
"Sleep well, String," she said, smoothing down the blanket over him. He nodded, his eyes closing docilely.
Well! she thought, leaving the private room and locking the door behind her. If only every day could be this easy.
At least she generally had fewer problems with him than did Karen or Luisa, the third woman who shared caregiving duties with them.
She knew why Karen had difficulties. Her idea of looking after String well was to treat him like a small child, speaking patronizingly and patting him on the head if he did what she wanted, threatening to punish him if he didn't. And if he got upset or misbehaved, her tendency was to punish first and ask why later ‒ if ever. Elena had seen that method in operation. She'd been sitting in the lounge one day with another patient, not long after String had arrived at the clinic, when Karen had brought String's dinner tray in. She still remembered what was on it ‒ meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and carrots. Simple, nutritious, and easy to eat with only a fork and spoon ‒ the patients were never allowed to have knives. A lot of them couldn't cope with cutlery at all.
String hadn't wanted the meat loaf. Karen had coaxed and cajoled, trying to maintain the friendly smile that she always wore when anyone was around to see it. That hadn't worked, and finally she'd tried to force the food into his mouth.
He gave a yell of fury and tossed the whole thing at her, tray, plate, food and all, showing more strength and dexterity than Karen had obviously expected.
Furious, the woman had immediately fastened the chair's restraints around his wrists, then wheeled him out of the room. He was still yelling and struggling when the door closed behind them. At least he could swear fluently, even if he didn't often speak.
Elena had sighed. She knew Karen would see to it that he'd be punished for that stunt; patients had to be taught that behavior like that wasn't acceptable. Still, it didn't seem fair. He'd acted virtually in self defense.
The next day it had been her turn to feed him lunch. She looked at him warily as she set the tray down in front of him, wondering if she might be wearing it next, and discovered him looking back at her with almost the identical expression on his face. He was obviously worried that she was going to treat him the way Karen had.
"Look, no meat loaf," she said. "I guess you don't like meat loaf."
No response, but after a good long look at the plate he picked up the spoon (he hadn't been given even a fork that day) and started in on the meal - canned tuna and mashed carrots, with a scoop of vanilla pudding for dessert. He ate most of it, and since she knew he didn't usually have much of an appetite anyway, she didn't nag him to finish the rest of it.
"I like fish," he'd said suddenly, when she was removing the tray.
He liked fish, he didn't like meat loaf. It was that simple. But Karen would rather try to stuff the food down his throat than accommodate him. She thought he was infantile; that he could be easily bullied into doing what she wanted him to.
Elena didn't know what was wrong with this man, any more than her co-workers did; but from what she'd seen, she suspected that his occasional outbursts of peevishness and bad temper most likely stemmed from his frustration about his condition and the lack of control over his surroundings. And she was sure that somewhere behind the habitually narrowed blue eyes was an intelligent man with a strong personality. So she was willing to treat him as such, even when his only response was a blank stare.
She dropped off her keys at the front desk ‒ no one was allowed to take keys home with them ‒ and headed outside, nodding at the arriving Luisa Rodriguez. Her shift was over, and Luisa would get him up from his nap and look after him for the rest of the day. All the patients were in bed for the night by eleven o'clock, and after that the night staff took care of any problems.
Elena headed for the parking lot and her waiting car. The Green Hills Nursing Home and Clinic was well out in the countryside, and as she drove through the New Hampshire hills on her way back to town she found herself still thinking about her patient. He had therapy sessions with Dr. Fairling every Friday morning. She wasn't normally scheduled to work that day, but maybe she would phone the doctor and let her know about the helicopter thing. She thought it was a good sign.
Strange, though. They'd been given no history at all about this man, nothing except for his name. He'd been in good physical shape when he arrived, even though he had no function in his lower limbs, and so they all assumed that he'd suffered a recent accident of some kind, that had caused serious brain damage as well as the paraplegia. But his condition had dwindled substantially as the weeks went on, and the doctor had ordered no physio, no therapy of any kind to help him regain the use of his legs. It was as if she didn't care if he got better or not. And yet three nurses' aides – each of whom had been told that Mr. Vine's presence at the Green Hills was to be kept strictly confidential, and under no circumstances was to be mentioned outside the facility – had been assigned to give him almost twenty-four hour personalized care. Not many other patients were so well looked after.
There were plenty of odd things about Green Hills, Elena knew. For instance, she'd gradually found out during her three years there that most of the staff seemed to have left previous jobs in disgrace, for various reasons; a few even had a criminal record. Minor offenses, but they were never going to get a decent nursing job again. That wasn't to say that some of them weren't good at their work, or didn't treat the patients with compassion. But it did mean that they weren't likely to comment on any lack of professional conduct, or even downright abuse.
She had her suspicions about Dr. Fairling, too. She seemed pleasant and professional the few times Elena had had any contact with her, but Elena couldn't shake the feeling that the woman really didn't give a damn what happened to String. And on the two occasions when she'd been there on a Friday, String had looked tense as a drum skin when she wheeled him into the doctor's office and wrung out afterwards. Whatever went on in there, it wasn't easy on him.
A car horn blasted behind her, and she realized she was sitting at a green light. Accelerating through the intersection, she tried to stop thinking about her patient.
Like some of the other staff at the clinic, Elena too had a criminal record. Shoplifting. Nothing major. But it was enough to make her appreciate the paycheck that came regularly from the clinic, and if she really thought about it, she knew that she wasn't being paid enough to take on the whole system on behalf of one man who did little more than sit and stare off into the distance.
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Dr. Carol Fairling looked across her desk at the man sitting opposite her in the wheelchair. She was a tall woman in her mid-forties, with long smooth reddish-brown hair that she kept pinned up and a face that was rather bland and somehow featureless. "Well, Mr. Vine, I see you've been doing well this week. No unpleasant episodes of any kind. Are you beginning to feel happier here, then?"
String's head raised a few inches, as if to nod yes. Then the gesture changed to a side-to-side, negative motion.
"Really? I'm sorry you feel that way. Everyone here is doing their best to look after you, you know. Can you tell me what exactly is making you unhappy?"
He said haltingly, "Don't like it here. Can't walk. Can't think right." One fist thumped on the arm of the chair. "Can't do anything."
"Well, of course you can't walk, Mr. Vine. I've told you before, you were in a serious accident. You hurt your back, and you are never likely to walk again. You are going to be helpless for a long while, and you must begin to accept that. You've made a good start. I'm very proud of you when you keep your temper and behave nicely, you know. And I'm sure you understand by now that throwing things and shouting at people only makes everything worse, doesn't it?" She waited for a moment, but there was no response. "Doesn't it, Mr. Vine?"
He nodded.
"Now then. One of your caregivers mentioned to me that you happened to notice a helicopter flying overhead the other day, and that you were able to identify it. That's quite interesting. Why do you think you were able to do that?"
"Don't know."
"Did you find it disturbing that you could tell what kind of helicopter it was, but not remember why?"
Another nod.
"Well, let's see what we can do about that. Think carefully, Mr. Vine. I need to know exactly what you think you remember about helicopters."