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strapped to a gurney, additional security had to be called, and an ambulance.
"Please... you got to understand, it's a mistake, okay?" he pleaded.
"Shut up," ordered Billings.
Kathryn drew her breath in sharply when she saw them wheeling the gurney toward the isolation
room. Billings' right eye was badly swollen, and one of the security guards dabbed blood from a nasty
gash on his cheek. On the gurney Cole struggled in vain with the restraints. His face was flushed and
blotchy, his pupils dilated. She was stunned by how much urgency he could still pump into his slurred
words he'd had enough Halcion to trank out someone twice his size.
"Dr. Railly?" Billings' voice broke her reverie. She moved aside to let them wheel Cole into the
room.
"Yes," she replied. She tapped the hypo, checking once more for air bubbles, then turned to Cole. He
stared at her with wide mad eyes, and she thought back to a night last summer, when she'd accidentally
run over a raccoon. It had looked at her like that, scarcely comprehending and numb with pain, its teeth
bared in a bloody grimace.
"No more drugs. Please..." Cole whispered.
Railly swallowed, forcing herself to stare at his hand and not his eyes. "It's just something to calm
you," she said as she pressed the needle against the skin of his upper arm. "I have to do this, James.
You're very confused."
Before one of the guards could question her, she turned and fled, trying not to remember how, a year
before, she had heard the raccoon snarling and thrashing at the side of the road as she drove away.
She made her rounds, then returned to her office. On her desk was a message for her to meet with Dr.
Fletcher in the conference room.
"Shit," she murmured, rubbing her throbbing temples. She gulped down several ibuprofen, chasing
them with a mouthful of tepid Evian water, and hurried back into the hall.
In the conference room, Dr. Fletcher sat between Goodin and Casey. All three looked tense, Goodin
bordering on outright anger. Kathryn felt herself grow hot, flashing back to high school visits to the
principal's office.
"Kathryn, sit down."
Fletcher waved at the chair across from him. Kathryn glanced at it, then quickly moved another chair
to the table and sat in it. Fletcher's eye twitched as he reached for his pencil and exclaimed, "Four years!
We've worked together for four years, Kathryn, I've never seen you like this before."
Kathryn opened her mouth and Fletcher pointed his pencil at her. "Now please, Kathryn, stop being
so defensive. This isn't an inquisition."
"I didn't think I was being defensive. I was just "
The pencil came down, hard, on the edge of the conference table. "He should have been in restraints.
It was bad judgment on your part, plain and simple. Why not just cop to it?"
Kathryn started to snap back, then thought better of it. Instead she stared at the table for a long
moment.
"Okay, it was bad judgment," she said at last. An unwanted vision rose before her: Cole's helpless
form strapped to the gurney with canvas-and-metal bonds. "Bu it have the strangest feeling about him,
I've seen him somewhere and "
"He's already put two policemen in the hospital," Fletcher interrupted angrily. "And now we have an
orderly with a broken arm and a security officer with a fractured skull!"
"I said it was bad judgment! What else do you want me to say?"
Fletcher leaned back in his chair. "You see what I mean? You're being defensive." He turned to Dr.
Casey. "Isn't she being defensive, Bob?"
Before Casey could reply, there was a tentative knock at the door. Kathryn swung around and saw
Billings holding an ice pack to his face as he said, "Uh, Dr. Fletcher? We got another situation."
"Christ," Fletcher swore, slamming his hand against the table. This time the pencil snapped in two.
"Now that is it?"
Billings pulled the ice pack away from his cheek and winced. "I think you better see for yourself,
Doctor."
They filed into the hall behind Fletcher, Billings studiously avoiding Kathryn's eyes as he led them
toward isolation.
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