Fool In The Rain
MS Set after S1 'J-Cat'. She thought he would be the last person to end up in this place.
Disclaimer: Let's see, I own my Muse, my imagination, my dreams, the fangirl in me and not a whole lot else. Fox I worship the ground you metaphorically walk on.
A/N:- Just a short one-shot that I wrote after watching the episode in the very early hours this morning.
"Okay I can take it from here." Sara said putting down her kit and turning to face the guard.
"You know I can't leave you alone in here with him. He's mentally unstable and it's prison policy …."
"I said I can take it from here." Sara said forcefully.
The guard held her challenging gaze defiantly before shrugging. "I'll leave the door open an inch, shout when you need me." He said before walking down the corridor.
Sara turned to face Michael. He was seated on his bed staring straight ahead without moving a muscle or giving any acknowledgement of her presence.
She crouched down next to him. "I'm just going to change the dressing on your hand now." She told him but she might as well have saved her breath for all the response she got. She gently unwrapped the old bandage and looked at his wound again. He must have punched the wall any amount of times from fifty to a hundred to cause this much swelling and bleeding and for the tenth time that day she felt awash with guilt: He had told her earlier in the examination room that he couldn't answer her questions and when she had passed him in the Pope's office it was like he was pleading with her to drop the matter but she had reported it anyway and the Warden had had to follow it up despite the fact that there was little hope that Scofield was ever going to give names – the incident with the toe had proved that much. Of course that had led to Michael being sent into Solitary which had inevitably led to him being kept in the psyche room, surrounded by nothing by an endless sea of white.
So yes, she did feel responsible for all this.
She cleaned the wound with some disinfectant and he didn't even flinch from the stinging sensation. It was deathly silent and although she had dealt with her fair share of mentally ill patients in her time, seeing Michael like this really irked her. Interesting and attractive she seemed to recall admitting to Katie only hours earlier, a bad boy with, it seemed, more emotional problems than she herself could even want.
"What's going on Michael?" She asked the silent room as she unravelled a clean bandage. "The mysterious burn, the guard's uniform, all these things that have driven you to be here now. There's got to be some explanation." She muttered, more to herself than to him.
As she leaned down to tie up the loose ends of the bandage, she could swear she felt his eyes on the top of her head, but when she looked up Michael was still giving her the same glassy, empty look staring straight ahead. She looked at him for a moment. She used to think that as a doctor, she had learned some skill in reading people over the years, having had to deal with a multitude of patients faking illnesses, but it seemed that with Michael she had been severely mistaken. If anyone had asked her before today, she would have said that he would be the last person she had expected to go crazy in Solitary after only one day but yet here he was, right in front of her, his face almost as white as the gown he now wore.
"Michael, I want to help you." She said, touching his shoulder lightly. "Right now you're here in the psyche ward when I know that this isn't really you, you shouldn't be here, you don't belong here … What brought this on?"
She wasn't expecting to get any response but she was still silently disappointed when her questions were turned into rhetorical ones by the echoing quietness. She sighed and packed up her medical equipment and stood up to go when suddenly Michael grabbed her wrist so forcefully that it made her jump.
"Sara," Michael said quietly.
She turned to look at him and was surprised to see him making eye contact with her, the expression on his face completely changed from a moment before. This was highly unusual for a man with his condition to have a complete turnaround in a few hours. She looked at him closely. He looked like a man in control – but he couldn't ………… unless he wasn't really in need of psychiatric treatment. No, that was impossible, she herself had diagnosed him and he couldn't be that good and actor with nerves of steel to be able to put himself through all of this …. Could he? Besides why would he want to be admitted into the Whack Shack? She bit down on her lip. Another why question.
"I need to stop them killing an innocent man." Michael stated.
Sara frowned and touched his shoulder. "You're worried about Lincoln? Michael? Michael?" but it was almost as if she had imagined the whole exchange of words since his eyes had gone back to looking like lifeless pits of nothing and he was no longer staring at her but rather through her. What was she thinking? Of course he was going through a breakdown. It was crazy of her to even consider the fact that he might be faking it all.
It was only when she was out in the open air again, walking back to the infirmary that she realised he was, in fact, simply answering her previous question.
He was a man on a mission: To save Lincoln.