I shove Donny away from the bedside. “You’re going to stop that.”
“Or what, Nurse Ann? Will you arrest me?” He goes to do it again, and I grab his arm. He breaks my hold like it’s child’s play and grabs my wrists, yanking me away from my cart…where my panic alarm is.
Out of camera range, too.
The smile widens. It’s here I comprehend the implications of the closed door. The door isn’t supposed to be closed except when complete soundproofing is required. Some of the patients are screamers, and it upsets the other patients.
Door closed. Complete soundproofing. Fear shoots down to my belly. I was worried about 34. Stupid. I should’ve been worried about myself.
“Fuck off!” I twist. Totally futile. Donny’s a fucking linebacker, twice my size. His grip is so tight, I think he might crack my bones, and he’s backing me into the bathroom, which will really hide us. From the cameras, from the window.
“Please,” I say.
My ass hits the sink. My blood runs cold as he squishes me in with his tree-trunk legs.
I bring a knee into his groin, but he’s ready for that.
He gets both my wrists in one hand. His breath is hot and slightly antiseptic, like minty, mediciney mouthwash, and that adds to my panic. He’s going to rape me, and I’ll have to smell that smell the whole time.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?” He stares at me with those predator eyes.
An unholy growl sounds from somewhere behind him. There’s apop.
Donny twists around just as 34 bounds in through the doorway, huge and brutal and furious, gaze afire. He pulls Donny off me and drives him face first into the wall with wild force. Donny crumples.
And then 34 comes to me.
I shrink back as he touches my cheek, gaze afire.
Donny was dangerous, but 34 seems…wild. Something deep and instinctive inside me prompts me to slide away into the corner of the bathroom. He’s so much bigger now that he’s standing. And free. How did he get free?
“Are you okay?” he rasps.
“Yeah.”
He cups my cheek, then he runs his thumb over my lips. So strangely gentle and sensual after such violence.
“Thank you,” I say.
His hard face softens.
Movement from the corner of my eye. Donny’s coming for him with a Taser.
Patient 34 seems to sense this. He grabs Donny’s arm and twists. There’s a sickening crack as the Taser clatters to the floor. Patient 34 pulls him right out of the bathroom and smashes him into another wall.
And then his fist goes, pounding Donny’s face over and over. He’s a blur, destroying Donny’s face. Donny fights back, gets in a few hits, but 34 is fighting with a vicious abandon I’ve never before seen.
The door bangs open. Did Donny get to his panic alarm?
A trio of orderlies bursts in. Patient 34 takes them down like three rag dolls, carefully and expertly avoiding the Tasers. I crouch against the wall. More arrive, coming at 34. I crouch in the corner.
Another orderly comes and shoves me aside so hard I smash my head on a shelf. I cry out.
That’s when 34 stops fighting. His gaze is fixed on me. The world seems to stop, and for a moment, it’s like we’re the only two people who ever existed. Alone together. Doomed.
I shake my head.Ignore me,I want to say.Keep fighting. Save yourself.