"This is the part where I don't answer your question."
The words echoed in Sara's mind. Why was Michael not talking to her? Why was he covering for the person that was hurting him.
Lincoln. That was why. She had heard all about the delay. She had examined Lincoln, at the Warden's request, after the phone call from Kessler. She had been the one that recognized that Lincoln was in traumatic shock and recommended that he be allowed to see his brother before being returned to solitary. The contact, she had hoped, would pull him out of shock and prevent a cardiac incident. Not to mention that the anxiety of the night's events could have sent Michael's blood sugar into a tailspin. Letting him see Lincoln would stop his shock as well. At least that was the theory she had presented to Pope and he had accepted as plausible and worthy of acting on.
But at the same time, Lincoln was not going to be happy that his brother was hurt again. Something was going on. Something, Sara feared, that was going to get Michael Scofield seriously hurt or even killed. And she had made a promise to Lincoln. She swore, and she fully meant it, to take care Michael for Lincoln. She knew from her visit with his therapist that Michael was not an emotionally stable person. He was a danger, not to others, but to himself. But if he wouldn't talk, how was she going to protect him. How was she going to keep her promise.
Sara reached for the medical file. All her notes about Michael's various injuries were neatly typed up and waiting for her review. Photographs of his injured foot and now his back were clipped to the pages. As Sara stared at them, pondering the riddle that was Michael's silence, something caught her eye. She picked up a photo, taken before she excised the damaged skin from Michael's back. She had been so concerned with treated Michael quickly that she hadn't noticed the bit of black stuck in the wound.
Sara pulled on a pair of gloves and dug into the fortunately unemptied biohazard trash. She laid the swatch of skin in a tool tray and reached for a pair of tweezers. The black was fabric.
"White t-shirts, blue shirts and pants, grey sweatshirts." Sara counted off to herself. There was nothing she could think of in the prison's limited wardrobe that was black. Everything was white, grey or navy blue.
"Good night, Doc." One of the rookies leaned into the room and waved at her.
"Night." Sara waved back. A thought hit her.
"Hey Katie." Sara called down the hall to her head nurse, who was filling out paperwork at the front desk. "Could you come here for a moment?"
"What's up, Doc." The older woman teased.
"Could you take a look at something. Tell me what you see." Sara pointed to the microscope where she'd put a thread sample on a slide.
Katie nodded. "Looks like fabric. Black." She leaned back and spotted the tray. "Is that?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Something is off. He is being really quiet about what happened."
"A prisoner gets jumped, seriously hurt and he keeps his mouth shut to avoid getting jumped again when his attacker finds out he narc'd. Not that stran--" Katie stopped. "Sara, you don't think?"
"Scofield being attacked by his cellmate does explain last night. Except for that." Sara pointed at the microscope. "As crazy as it sounds, my theory explains that, last night and Scofield's missing toes with no answers." Sara stood, scoping up the sample and the file. "I have to see the Warden."