This is more a chapter devoted to some character development/explanation for Tess.  To help you understand part of what motivates her.  Hope you enjoy, and the next chapter will contain Sands, and possibly a tiny bit of hope for may seem like a hopeless situation.

Sorry for any mistakes when it comes to treatments for mental illnesses.  All information I'm getting is coming from a first year psych book.  If you know more about preventing/treating the symptoms of schizophrenia than I do, feel free to shoot me an e-mail, and I'll correct as much as I can without having to do massive amounts of re-writing.

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Tess couldn't believe he had actually shot her.  She had thought he was too far out of it to even remember he had a gun.  She should have known better.  For all she knew, this man was a mercenary who never forgot he had a weapon.  She sat in the chair she had collapsed in, her side having settled down to a persistent throbbing, and her mind extremely grateful that she had indeed given her patient the one weapon in the house loaded entirely with blanks.  Sure, they still could do some damage at close range, but they were ever so much safer than live ammunition.  Had she given him one of the guns he had come in with, she'd be dead now rather than minorly disabled.

   She still needed to tend the wound however, and that was unlikely to be fun.  Standing slowly, she started unbuttoning her caramel colored shirt.  Pulling it off her shoulders with the utmost care, she walked into the bathroom to have a closer look at her side without acting like a contortionist.  Which would also be painful.

   Just what I expected, she thought as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror.  There was some bleeding from a smallish wound about four inches above her hipbone, and it was surrounded with two to three inches of powder burn and soot.  That's going to be painful to clean.  She looked around for any supplies, then remembered that they were all located next to her patient's bed.

   She walked out of the bathroom in capris and bra, stripping off her rubber gloves as she went.  Kneeling down, she rummaged until she found what she wanted.  Some gentle yet highly antibacterial soap, several large gauze pads, and burn ointment.  Before returning to the bathroom, she checked in on her patient.  He was unconscious.  Or at least she assumed he was since he didn't respond to her gentle probing of any of his wounds, so she was ready to leave well enough alone.  She wanted to be angry with him, but had better sense than that.  She was the one who had given him the gun in the first place.  Stupid idea, that.  I'll not be trying that again.

Hours later, Tess was woken up by the mumbled protests of her patient.  She had finished cleaning and tending to his eyes two or three hours ago, a procedure that he had stayed unconscious for.  Shortly after that, she had set up and IV and then drawn a pint of her own blood to use as a transfusion for him.  That had been decided as soon as she had been able to search through the pockets of his jeans.  His wallet had been in his back pocket, and while it was not surprisingly short on personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, or anything else, it did have a medical care card which listed his blood type, height, weight, and any known allergies or medical conditions.

   Now she was tired from bloodloss herself, but she knew it was more important to get blood into him than it was to keep it in herself.  If all went well, she'd be able to repeat the process once more in 48 hours.  After that, he'd either have to make do without, or she'd have to contact a woman she knew who worked for the hospital.  She'd rather not do that just quite yet.  It might rouse suspicions that she'd prefer to avoid for the time being.

   Sands was restless in his dreams, apparently reliving the recent traumas of his life.  His hands were searching for something, the only part of his body moving.  The rest seemed to be locked in place by whatever was oppressing his dreams.

   Tess wasn't sure of what to do.  She hated to have to witness anyone in such physical or mental pain.  If it were anyone else, she'd take their hand and sit by their side for the rest of the night, but something about this stranger made that seem childish.  But surely that's better than nothing.

   She moved over to the bed where she had managed to elevate Sands into a semi-sitting position by using every single pillow in her house.  His sunglasses were back on his face, sitting over a layer of gauze, his countenance still free of blood after several hours, which encouraged her.  She cautiously moved onto the bed, sitting on the edge, facing the same way he was.  When he didn't wake up, didn't acknowledge her presence in any way, Tess let out the breath she had been holding.  Carefully, she slid her hand across the blankets until his questing hand found it.

   For a second it recoiled, and noises came from his throat.  Once again she held her breath – if he awoke and attacked her before remembering who she was it was likely he'd manage to kill her before coming to his senses.  They may have been the same height, but he was undoubtedly stronger than she was.

   Her fears were unbased in this instant, however.  A second after recoiling, his hand darted forward and grabbed hers, tightening almost painfully around it.  She could feel her fingers tingling, but she ignored them.  Her patient was actually relaxing, as if the contact she had initiated was acting as a lifeline back to reality, and now that he had found it, he could rest.

   "I would wish you sweet dreams, but I think that it would be better to wish you no dreams at all."  She sighed.  "Sleep while you can, get back your strength.  We can't stay here forever."

In her dreams she was eight again, and in the midst of being punished.  This time the cause had been getting a 98% on a geography quiz.  Nothing less than perfection was accepted by the man who controlled her life.  Anything else was a failure, and failure was weakness, and weakness was not tolerated.

   She had been blindfolded for the past two weeks, her eyes shut off from light for the entire time.  She tensed as she felt the hands behind her loosening the knot on the scarf tied over her eyes.  From past experience, Teresa knew that the first few minutes were going to be incredibly painful, the outside world of the noonday sun reflecting brilliantly off the white limestone courtyard just another reminder that her life depended entirely on the mercy of her father.  She contained a scream as the light hit her eyes, knowing that if she let out a single sound, she'd be whipped until she had no voice left.

   "You've disappointed me again, Teresa Adame."  Her squinting eyes sought and found the source of her father's voice.  He was the one dark spot in a sea of blinding glare.  His hair was dark, his skin dark from the sun, his eyes so dark a blue as to be nearly black.  She was convinced that he was just as dark inside as he was outside.  "I've given you back your sight and yet you cower and squint like a peasant child."  She heard giggles from her half-sister, standing nearby to witness the event.  Even two years younger, the girl had their father's complete support in a way that Tess couldn't imagine.  But then again, she was legitimate and Tess was not.

   Straightening her posture, Tess whispered, "I'm sorry, Father.  I will do better next time."  It was as useless now to protest that the tutor had never taught her the rest of the material on the test.  It didn't matter.  Excuses were not wanted.  She was expected to have known anyway.

   "Yes, you are.  I can't imagine what I was thinking when I took that whore's word that you were my child.  Look at your sister, even two years younger and she pleases me more in a day than you have in your entire life.  Lazy, stupid, selfish."  The words weren't new, but they still stung and struck and clung with a physical presence, tearing at her heart and mind.  "This time, though, this time your errors have effected someone else."  She didn't understand until she heard the pleas of her tutor coming closer to the group.

   No, I don't want to watch this again.  I'm sorry I didn't do better then.  But I learned my lesson, I did.  Don't make me see this.  She pleaded with her dream to let her go.  For a moment she thought she had swayed it, that it was going to release her.  Instead the setting changed.  She could tell that she was now an adult, but she was still at the house that had been the cartel's base in her childhood.  Was still in that hated courtyard.

   And the screams, the pleas, they were still ringing off the stone.  Looking around she saw her father, his face wrapped in medical gauze, his hand resting on the shoulder of her half-sister who was still six years old, still grinning, delighted that Tess was in trouble.

   "See what you've done now, Teresa Adame.  See the suffering you could have prevented."  Tess obeyed the voice and stepped forward, her body moving without her having to direct it.  Or maybe it was the dream that shifted around her and made walking unnecessary.  Whatever the means, she found herself staring at the back of a black clothed surgeon.  He was operating on a man strapped to a table.  The blinding light made it difficult to see for a moment, but as she squinted she saw the victim.  It was the man she had supposedly helped the day before.

   "Your fault, Teresa.  If you had stayed I would have let you drug him into unconsciousness.  I would have let you remove his eyes properly.  But you ran, and he suffered.  Too bad."

Tess woke in a cold sweat, her side burning, her face wet with tears, and her patient still blessedly asleep.  She squinted, light from the rising sun coming in through her bedroom window and blinding her.  Not again, she thought.  She couldn't deal with the dreams right now.  She had enough to deal with at the moment without having to relive the most hellish parts of her childhood.

   Missed sleep isn't even the worst part of it all, she mused as she walked to the bathroom.  The worst part is how dirty I feel in the morning.  And I can't even shower, not with this burn on my side.  She tried to keep her mind from remembering what had really happened that day when she was eight.  Maybe by tomorrow I can take a shower.  That would be nice.  It wasn't working.  Pictures of blood and echoes of dying screams were running though her mind.

   Tess gritted her teeth and tried to focus on other matters.  Should I go for a jog this morning, or not?  She looked at her patient and was reminded of her dream. No.  I don't think it's a very good idea to leave him alone quite yet.  Besides, I don't know if the fighting is over yet.  Surely it was.  Culíacan had a decent police force.  They must have quelled the fighting by now.

   The memory was rebelling against her control.  With undeniable violence it forced it's way to the front of her mind.  She felt her body slam against the wall as the memory took control of her psyche.  The tutor hadn't known what or who she was dealing with when she had taken this job.  Failure was not just laid at the feet of the student, but at the feet of the teacher as well.  What couldn't be done to a child being raised for a single purpose could be done to someone as expendable as a tutor.  Tess was made to watch as the woman was beaten within an inch of her life and was then executed.  All because she had taken more time to befriend an unloved child than she took to drill places and dates into her head.

   Tess had thrown up at the sight of a friend's blood showing with dramatic contrast on the white cobbles of the courtyard.  She was slapped hard enough to bruise both eyes and then sentenced to two weeks of bread and water meals for an unsuitable display of sentiment.  The next day she was forced to again don the hated blindfold.  Hated because all she could see against the velvety blackness of the material was her teachers broken body lying like an abomination in the sun, green grass and stately trees presenting a mocking backdrop to the scene.

   Young Tess decided that no one should ever again suffer for her mistakes.

The memory let her go.  She stood leaning against the wall, slowly realizing that the rising sun was warming her, giving comfort she hadn't known from her so-called family.  In the back of her mind she could feel other memories and nightmares stirring, encouraged by the success one of their number had had in escaping her control.  No.  Not again.  Not until I can afford it.

   Tess raced into the bathroom, urgency making her movements quick and precise the same way they were when she was performing surgery.  Opening the mirror door to her medicine cabinet, she grabbed the injection of dopamine inhibitor she always kept prepared.  It came in a gun-like applicator, one that held several dosages.  Quickly she pressed the apparatus up to her upper thigh and pulled the trigger.  She felt a pinch as the needle injected the medication into her body. 

   Rubbing the slight hurt, she slid down the wall to sit on the floor and waited for the drug to quiet the rebellion fermenting in her mind.

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Ok, here are the author thanks for those I couldn't reach by e-mail.  Please, next time include an e-mail address so I can reply that way.  Love you all.

Gypsylemon – I know, isn't the name 'Giovanni' great?  For some reason, it just popped into my head when I was thinking of the character.  I'm not sure how much an improvement it is on 'Sheldon,' but hey, I thought I'd go with Sands on this one.  He's kinda cranky at the moment.

Vera – cliffhangers are a writer's best friend as far as I can tell.  They keep the audience interested, and a host of possibilities of where to resume the story.  So I doubt that this will be the last one you'll be seeing from me.  I do promise not to leave you in suspense for too long though.

Lucky11 – yeah, I'm not so sure that this will be leading into "wink wink, nudge nudge" territory any time soon, simply because I'm not sure how to work something into the interplay between two such screwed up people, and it would give me an incentive should I ever want to write a sequel, in which my main characters would hopefully not be so screwed up and therefore easier to get into bed with at least a modicum of believability.