Part Eleven
Sara watched as Michael disappeared after Agent Mahone and took a breath before she shifted Cameron on her hip. He was already making her arms ache, but she was not sure that she would be able to untangle his arms from around her neck without strangling herself. She stroked at Cameron's hair and made a soft shushing sound as she turned away. Now was perhaps the worst possible time for random surges of hormones and subsequent jealousy to come up. Sara liked to believe that she and Michael had moved on from that at least a little bit since the two of them had left Fox River.
Sara continued to hold Cameron until she had walked over to the lovely couch, reasoning that she did not mind marring it with a little blood. The boy did not want to let go over her neck even though they had met only a few moments before and Cameron was not in any condition for introductions to stick. Sara eventually settled for keeping Cameron in her lap so that he could maintain contact with her while she tilted his face up and surveyed him in the better light. Cameron's eyes were reacting to the lamps and to her presence normally, but Sara still did not like his lack of affect. There was a small cut running through his eyebrow from which a trickle of blood had dried, only to break open again when he had been transferred from one pair of arms to the other. Sara could see something glittering within the wound that she would have to deal with, but for now she was more concerned with his psychological state.
"Cameron?" she asked him as she released his chin. He lowered it of his own accord and began to rub briskly at his eyes, causing Sara to release her breath on a relieved sigh. She pulled his hand back down as he came close to disturbing the wound before she could pull the glass out. "Your daddy told you who I was before he gave you over to me. Do you remember what he said?"
"Dr. Tancredi." Cameron came out of the last remains of his fugue state so that he could flash her the kindergartner's version of an irritated stare.
Sara broke into a relieved smile. "Good. Do you remember what happened before your daddy came to get you?"
Cameron snuck a look at her face before he dipped his chin and began to play with the hem of his shirt. "My mommy came and got me and said that we had to go to Doug and Stacy right away." His voice dropped. "She was scared. We stayed with Doug and Stacy, but then when it started to get dark those people came. Everyone knew who they were but me." Sara was listening so hard and was so horrified as a result that it took her several seconds to realize that Cameron had begun to shake. It was soon so hard that Sara could feel it all the way into her shoulder. She looked up and saw a group of faces sharing her expression. Only Jane and Aldo appeared relatively unmoved, making Sara wonder if the two of them had already either seen or lived this scenario before.
"I think they hurt my mommy. Daddy wouldn't let me see her," Cameron finished. His voice was still level and relatively calm, but he was now shaking so hard that Sara had to hold him hard in order to keep him from tumbling off of her lap and down to the floor.
"Okay," Sara breathed as she stroked at Cameron's hair and tried to gather her thoughts. A great many heartbreaking cases had either walked or been carried into her infirmary during her tenure at Fox River, and she had learned to harden herself out of necessity at the same time that she made weekly desperate pleas in Warden Pope's office to get as many of them transferred to Ad Seg as possible. Adult men and children that she could still balance on her lap were not the same thing. Sara tightened her grip as Cameron began to slide from her lap yet again and looked Aldo in the eye. She had cried for two hours the first time that a patient died on her, until her attending had found her, nearly shaken her, and told her that she was a mechanic and sometimes machines failed. She would burn out before she was thirty-five if she could not find a way to on some level believe that.
It has not a truth to which Sara had ever been able to fully commit herself, but she still heard her attending's voice emerging from her mouth as she asked Aldo, "How much of a fortress is this place?" When Aldo looked only confused, she elaborated, "When you go out and play cops and robbers with the bad guys, surely you get hurt sometimes. How much are you prepared to deal with here, medically speaking, before you have no choice but to risk a hospital?"
"Everything up to a bad bullet wound," Aldo answered.
"Good. I need surgical need and thread, Topicaine or something very similar, and Ativan," Sara said. Aldo evidenced no confusion as to what any of the items that she had requested were and didn't ask any questions about the final one, for which Sara was grateful. She had enough on her mind as it was.
As much as she could not bring herself to take her old attending's advice and view the people that she was trying to put back together again as machines, there were times when Sara would not mind being one herself.
Aldo returned with everything that she had asked for, plus a bottle of water. So he had fully understood her. Sara ignored the looks of Lincoln and LJ as she eyeballed Cameron in order to get a rough guess of his body weight and then shook out the appropriate dose of sedative into her palm. She held the pill up to Cameron's lips and, when he took it from her, followed it up with a sip of the water. "There you go. That's going to make you sleepy, so don't get scared when you start having trouble keeping your eyes open. It's going to help you sleep without nightmares." Cameron was likely going to have enough of them once the sedative wore off, and probably for awhile. Let him have the chemical substitute for peace this once. Even Sara could recognize that there were times when it was needed.
"I want my daddy," Cameron said as he took the bottle from her and proceeded to drink half of its contents at one long gulp. Sara marked down an interest in food and drink on her mental list of encouraging signs.
"Your daddy's going to come back very soon." Because he needed to clean what looked like an entire person's worth of blood off of himself first. Sara decided then that she never wanted to know the full details of what had happened in that house in Durango. She had seen enough through her own experiences of what the Company did with people who had become inconvenient to them in order to fill in all of the blanks herself.
Cameron's shaking had by then dwindled down to trembling, but Sara still kept one arm wrapped around him in case he should be beset by another round as she wet some gauze and began gently cleaning the blood from his face. It was only a matter of moments before Cameron's breathing became both deeper and slower and his eyelids drifted down to half-mast. By the time that Sara had finished cleaning all of the blood away so that she could see the shard of glass (she had dark images of exploding picture frames and flying shrapnel that she could not dislodge) she thought that she might even be able to pull the glass out and stitch him up before he realized what she was doing.
"This is going to feel a little bit cold when I first put it on you," Sara said as she first slid on a latex glove and then uncapped the Topicaine so that she could squirt out a dab onto her finger. "Then the skin around your eyebrow will start to feel a little funny. Don't touch it, it will make your fingers numb." As Cameron did not answer her and was looking sleepier by the minute, Sara pressed, "Cameron, can you hear me?"
"Yeah, okay, no touching." Cameron sounded as if he was answering her from somewhere a long ways away, and he followed it up by immediately trying to rub at his eye again.
Sara pulled his hand back down automatically and resettled him in her lap before she began smoothing the anesthetic into the skin around the wound. Cameron flinched at the first touch of her finger as she accidentally jostled the glass, but sedative's effects were becoming more pronounced by the moment and Sara thought that he might even slump over asleep in her arms before she was done. Sara gave the Topicaine a few more minutes to work, just to be sure, before she rooted in the kit that Aldo had brought for her. It took only seconds to find a set of tweezers. Sara sterilized them with alcohol before she said to Cameron, "You going to feel me pushing down on your eyebrow, but it shouldn't hurt. Tell me if it does, Cameron, all right?"
The use of Cameron's name pulled him out of his haze long enough to get him to nod sleepily. Sara was still not sure that he understood, rather than simply offering up an automatic response. She supposed that she would have to rely on the typical five year-old's tolerance for pain to let her know when she was going too deep. Sara tilted Cameron's chin up so that he was facing the best possible light and inserted the tweezers into the cut at his eyebrow so that she could get the glass that she could still see glittering there. Cameron did not so much as flinch as Sara found a good grip on the glass and then pulled it out. It was larger than Sara had guessed when she had first noticed it, and it released a new, sluggish flow of blood once it was free. Sara held a fresh piece of gauze to Cameron's eyebrow with one hand and set both the tweezers and the glass to the side with the other. Cameron hung onto her arm in order to keep his balance.
"Cool," LJ breathed as he stared down at the bloodied glass. Sara thought that he might be on the verge of reaching out and touching it.
"Stay in school and become a doctor," Sara said. Whereas several hours before she might have added a qualifier such as 'if this is all over by then', she felt no such urge now. The return of Agent Mahone, Jane, and Cameron, all three of them splattered with one amount of blood or another, had done nothing to diminish the essential weight of Ben's discoveries: it could still be over. To Cameron, Sara went on, "I'm going to stitch your eyebrow closed now. You'll feel pressure again, but I need you to tell me if it begins to hurt."
At Cameron's sleepy nod, Sara sterilized a needle and threaded it before she stitched up the cut running through Cameron's eyebrow in a few swift and sure strokes. It took less than a minute before she was tying off the end of the thread and clipping it short. As she did so, she raised her head on chance to see Michael go storming down the hall and back into the study where Ben was still shielding himself from the family drama under the auspice of working. Michael did not so much as glance at any of them as he passed.
Sara pushed down on the sudden tight feeling that rising in her chest and said to Cameron, "You're all done." Cameron mumbled something about 'Daddy' again, but he was so far gone that whatever he was trying to say was rendered unintelligible. Sara had to wrap her arm around his waist again the very next second so that she would slide to the floor and crack his head against the coffee table on the way down. "He'll be here very soon." Sara pushed the first aid kit to the side so that she could stand and lay Cameron back down on the couch. He turned over onto his side and crossed over into sleep immediately. Sara looked around for a blanket with which to cover Cameron, only to have one handed to her by Aldo.
"Thank you," she said, startled. All of the information that she had on Aldo Burrows came by way of Michael, and there was very little of it that was flattering.
Aldo saw the look that flickered across her face and lowered his voice before he released the blanket and said, "Orphaning children was never a part of my plan, Dr. Tancredi."
'He's not an orphan yet,' Sara thought first, though she followed it immediately afterwards by thinking of the look that had been dominating Agent Mahone's eyes as he had reentered the house. 'Even if he might be soon.' "That's not what I was thinking." She shook the blanket out and spread it across Cameron's sleeping form. He stirred and muttered something that Sara could not understand before he was still again. "But when you abandon your children like that, you can't be stunned if the association crops up."
Aldo's lips pressed themselves into a hard, thin line, but he still did not appear to be angry. Sara had never seen him truly angry yet rather than merely irritated, and she wondered how he could fight such a sprawling conspiracy when he never seemed capable of really getting angry. Maybe it was only buried deep and waiting for the right combination of triggers to bring it out again. All that Aldo said to Sara was, "We should get back to making plans."
Probably he was right. A conspiracy as large as the one that Aldo was describing to them would be killing people like her father, the nameless bystander at the phone booth, and Agent Mahone's ex-wife on a daily basis. One little boy without anything else physically wrong with him and sleeping deeply likely needed far less of her attention at the moment.
She was also, however, a doctor, and she was in charge of a traumatized child. That she was not sure that she wanted to speak to or even see Michael until she had found a context for the unhappy thoughts that were swirling around her brain was merely a bonus. There was no good time to have the "In spite of our strange non-relationship based upon overwhelming danger and lies, I'm feeling hurt that you're looking at someone else. You want to explain what that's all about?" talk, anyway.
"I'll stay with Cameron," Sara said. "I don't think that I'd be any good at plotting government overthrow." What she had brought to the table had been around her neck. Now that it was in the hands of quasi-professionals, she could go back to what she knew.
An inner voice told Sara that she had not avoided a man when she wanted to discuss something with him since she was seventeen years old. Sara responded to that inner voice by telling it that she had also never been in mortal danger at least a half-dozen times in the span of a week before, so it could kindly shut up until it had found something actually useful to say. She paused and rubbed at her eyes for a moment, surprised at her own ferocity. It had been bubbling up more and more often.
Sara had thought that she had done a fair job of keeping her voice neutral and friendly, but the others still wasted no time in leaving her alone in the room with her sleeping patient. All save for Lincoln. He lingered on the opposite side of the couch, leaning on it with his forearms crossed over one another and staring at Sara with impassive eyes until she felt like twitching. Outside of a general sense of compassion that she had felt for all of the inmates who had managed to keep their humanity intact, Sara had never troubled her mind in any particular way with the fate of Lincoln Burrows before Michael had come. She disagreed with the death penalty, but she disagreed with it in the abstract, not because any particular case had stirred her. If Michael had not arrived at Fox River and convinced her that what she was doing was indirectly aiding in the execution of an innocent man, then she would have attended Lincoln Burrows death with sorrow as a point of principle, left an angry message on her father's answering machine, and been done with it.
"None of this is your fault, doc," Lincoln told her in a level voice, still making eye contact with her in that eerie and unsettling way. He and Michael had more in common with one another than appeared at first glance.
"I know," Sara said as she realized that Lincoln Burrows was also much smarter than a lot of people wanted to give him credit for. He was no talking about the ornate and chill house, her father's death, or the surrounding conspiracy at all.
"Thought you needed to hear it." Lincoln straightened and followed the others back towards the study.
Sara pulled an ottoman up to the couch and took a seat on the edge of it, putting her chin into her hand and watching Cameron sleep. He slept deeply and without obvious dreams for the most part, save for one or two restless twitches and sighs. Sara reached out and smoothed a few strands of hair back from Cameron's forehead. He was still beneath her hand.
A floorboard creaked; otherwise Sara would not have known that Agent Mahone was there at all. She had no idea how long he had been watching her. Sara pulled her hand back from Cameron's forehead, feeling guilty even though she had done nothing wrong. Now that Agent Mahone was in the room and filling it with his undeniable presence as Cameron's parent, Sara could feel her place as the temporary guardian evaporating away. She stood up from her seat in deference to that as Agent Mahone walked towards the couch and gave his son a swift, critical once-over. He was wearing what looked to be borrowed clothes and had damp hair, with dark circles beneath his eyes. As with Cameron, Agent Mahone had no serious physical injuries that Sara could see. Also as with Cameron, Sara was not sure how much that meant.
"How is he?" Agent Mahone asked in a soft voice as he took up the seat that Sara had vacated for him. Without Michael between them, there was a new tension between Agent Mahone and herself that Sara could not quite place, but suspected that she might if she thought about the way that Michael had disappeared down the hallway for too long. She decided that she would rather not.
Sara hesitated for a moment as she realized how many answers Agent Mahone's question actually had. "Physically, he's fine," she replied. "Nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises. That he's been psychologically traumatized goes without saying."
Agent Mahone glanced at her before he reached out and brushed the strands of hair back from Cameron's forehead in the same way that Sara had done a few moments before. In his hands, the gesture was heartbreaking, and Sara found herself glancing away in order to give the two of them a moment of privacy. When she turned back again Agent Mahone was still watching his son rather than her, only the faintest shadows of the frankly very frightening man who had walked back into the house before remaining. Sara studied his profile and wondered which one of all of the different Alex Mahones that she had seen over the past two days was the real one. It did not seem possible that they could all be true at once. Sara already knew that at least one of them was a killer.
Without looking away from his son, Agent Mahone said, "You might as well ask, Dr. Tancredi. Trying to burn a hole into the side of my head will not be particularly pleasant for either of us." He turned his eyes towards her at last; Sara was not sure which version of Alex Mahone she was looking at just then.
"How did they find you?" Sara asked before she had time to think and censor herself. If she could understand how the Company had found Agent Mahone, then maybe she could also understand how they had found her father, for it did not seem right that they could make arbitrary strikes independent of anyone's culpability. Even as Sara was starting to think of the Company more and more in terms of a cancer, it did not seem right. "How did you stomach it?"
His mouth twisting into a smile that had absolutely nothing to do with mirth, Agent Mahone said, "Dr. Tancredi, do you have any idea what it's like to have your entire life defined by the worst thing that you have ever done?" Sara paused and felt as if Agent Mahone had punched her straight in the stomach without ever standing up from his seat. Agent Mahone did not seem to take any triumph from the reaction as he finished calmly, "That's how they got me."
He did not seem inclined to add any more. The silence grew and swelled. In order to break it, finally, Sara said in a soft voice, "I'm sorry about your wife."
Agent Mahone's shoulders tightened until Sara was sure that she was about witness a shift into yet another one of those people that Agent Mahone could be. He relaxed after a few tense seconds and said, without looking at her, "She was my ex-wife. But thank you." Agent Mahone reached out and brushed the hair back from Cameron's forehead again. He frowned. "He's sleeping pretty deeply for all that he's been through."
"I gave him a sedative." Off of Agent Mahone's look, she added, "It was a very small dose, and I was careful. Any hospital would have done the same."
Agent Mahone sighed and nodded once before he turned back towards his son. "He can wait to face everything until tomorrow."
"I would offer you a sedative, too," Sara said, "but I'm not sure how it would interact with what you're already taking." Her voice was more snappish than she had intended, and she knew that she was out of line, but her life as she knew it was over, her father was dead, and the fact that Michael and Agent Mahone were building towards…whatever it was that they were building towards so obviously that everyone could see it except for themselves was making it pretty damned hard to remain stoic and purposeful at the moment. Sara took a breath and realized that her pulse was rising.
"Touché," Agent Mahone said without rancor. He turned back towards his son. Sara did not like the look of his shoulders, the way that they seemed to be run through with barbed wire that must be cutting him, but would also surely cut anyone who tried to offer him comfort in the meanwhile.
Sara took a breath, not sure that she was doing him any favors but also certain that she knew all of the dark ways that restless energy could turn if it was allowed to fester unwatched, and said, "We knew where Terrence Steadman is." Agent Mahone's head jerked upwards. Sara clarified, "The man that Lincoln was convicted of killing."
"I know who he is." Agent Mahone stared off in the direction that Sara had indicated, then towards his son, before he sighed and pushed himself up to his feet. When Sara gave no sign that she was going to follow him, his expression turned puzzled. "Dr. Tancredi, I would think that you would be even more eager to bring the Company to the ground than I am." There was an unhappy hunger, a rawness, to his voice that made Sara wonder if she had really done the right thing.
"I am." The speed with which she spoke and the savagery that colored her voice when she spoke surprised her. Sara took a moment to cough into her hand before she continued. "I'm a doctor. My job is to put things together, not to take them apart. And I-" 'Am scared of how good I might be at this,' Sara thought with a twist to her stomach as she remembered how easy it had been drive Kellerman's car into the side of the motel and how quickly she had become used to the presence of guns. "I am not a soldier."
Agent Mahone remained in the doorway for a beat so that he could continue to watch her, his head tilted to one side in a manner that made Sara wonder what was going on behind those eyes that were like Michael's and yet so different at the same time. "Really," he said before he turned to join the others. It was not until he was gone that Sara realized she had a tension headache building behind her eyes.
End Part Eleven