“How about you, Sara?”
She swallows hard, but her throat still feels dry. “What about me?”
His gaze travels her face, lingering on her mouth before finding her eyes. “Will you be okay?”
They look at each other for a moment in silence. She’s still so angry – with him, with herself – and it still hurts so much and she knows she should just turn on her heel and walk away but she can’t and she won’t. She’s not a coward and she’s finished with running away. “I will be."
He smiles once more, but it's a very different smile this time. “Good,” he says again, then hesitates, his gaze searching her face. Finally - perhaps finding what he was seeking - he takes another step towards her, his eyes never leaving hers. “Let's talk.”
She stares at him, vaguely aware that her hand is suddenly gripping the edge of the wooden kitchen table. “How long did you say you’d planned to stay here?”
“Couple more hours, maybe.”
Feeling as though she’s about to take the first step out onto a high wire, she takes a deep breath and pats the empty chair beside her. “We’d better get started, then.”
He laughs, taking her by surprise. The sound washes over her skin like velvet, making her shiver despite the heat. “Whatever you say, Doc.” Dropping gracefully into the chair next to her, he looks at her intently, the amusement in his eyes fading, replaced by the same nervousness she feels whirling in the pit of her own stomach. “How-” he stops, frowning, then begins again with a quiet, “Where did you want to start?”
“Actually, before we talk, I have something else in mind.” Ignoring the speculative look he gives her - and the fact that her pulse is suddenly racing - she leans past him and plucks the first aid kit from the table. “Can you take your left shoe off, please?”
He glances down at his left foot, then up at her. “I’m fine,” he repeats, but she merely shakes her head.
“So you keep saying,” she retorts, doing her best not to smile, realizing that she’s actually missed arguing with him. “Take it off, please.”
Blowing out an audible breath, he bends over to unlace his boot. She watches him as she pulls on a fresh pair of gloves, not bothering to fight the urge to admire the supple lines of his body. There are still far too many unanswered questions hanging between them, but she’s very tired of pretending that she doesn’t want him. Of course, she thinks, that doesn’t mean she’s going to allow herself to do anything about it.
She studies his face as he slowly tugs off his sock, and she sees his wince as he looks at his remaining toes. “Has it been bothering you?”
“A little, but that’s not it.” He shrugs. “I haven’t really noticed them for a while,” he says softly. “I guess I forgot how bad they looked.”
The quiet resignation in his voice makes her heart ache, and she quickly motions for him to put his bare foot up on the edge of her chair. He hesitates, and she gives him an exasperated look. “Please?”
He finally does as she asks, and she touches the suture marks lightly, remembering the shock of having so much of his blood on her gloves, his teary refusal to tell her who had assaulted him. A dozen questions are suddenly burning on her tongue, but she just offers a mild, “They’re healing nicely.”
He looks relieved. “Thanks to you.”
“And no thanks to you, I’m guessing.” She gently presses her fingertips against the ball of his foot, just below where his two smallest toes used to be. “Too much running in those hard shoes won’t have done you any favours.”
His mouth twitches in a half-smile. “Couldn’t be helped.”
She can’t stop herself from smiling in return. “I guess not.” She nods at his foot. “You’re done.”
He bends down and picks up his sock from the floor. “Physical’s over?”
“Not quite.” She takes a deep breath. “How’s your back?”
He looks up at her, frowning. “Why?”
“The last time I looked, you had a second degree burn on your back.” She leans forward in her chair, elbows resting on her thighs, her gloved hands dangling loosely between her knees. “I’m guessing that’s also something you haven’t really had time to think about?”
“It’s fine.”
She ignores the broken record routine. “May I see it, please?”
His gaze slides away from hers, his face flushing as his hand brushes down the front of his crumpled shirt. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
She knows exactly what he’s thinking because she’s thinking it too – they both know how this particular scenario ended last time - but she’s a doctor and she’d like to think that she’s stronger than the impulses of her flesh. “It’s okay, Michael, it won’t be anything I haven’t seen before.” It’s the truth, but that doesn’t explain why her heart rate is suddenly twice as fast as it should be.
Without saying another word, he begins to loosen his tie, his eyes looking anywhere but at her. As she watches him, she’s gripped by the sudden urge to put her hands on top of his and slowly slip the knot of his tie undone. She sits back in her chair, putting some much-needed space between them, realizing too late that she had underestimated the strength of those impulses.
He pulls his tie over his head, drops it onto the table without ceremony, then begins to unbutton his shirt, still not looking at her. The contrast between now and then hits her like a slap in the face. There’s no smiling seduction here, only a growing tension stretching out between them, heightening her awareness of the smallest things - the sun-touched tone of his skin, the shadows beneath his eyes, the whiskers roughening his jaw – and she knows she’s no more immune to him now than she ever was.
She gets to her feet, moving to stand behind him as he slides his shirt off his shoulders, and is glad he can’t see her face. He smells of clean sweat and lemon soap – she suddenly wonders if his trip to the bathroom was more about washing up than anything else – and beneath that she recognizes the familiar scent of his skin. Her gloved hands clench at her sides, a flash of heat rippling through her stomach.
Damn it.
She closes her eyes for a few seconds, pulling herself back into line, drawing on every single scrap of her willpower, then she opens her eyes and reaches for the first aid-kit once more.
A few seconds later she’s shaking her head, only just managing to resist the urge to click her tongue in disapproval at the sight of the bedraggled bandage on his shoulder blade. “Does it hurt?” she asks with a calm that belies the hollow ache tightening her chest. It shouldn’t surprise her, of course, because she’s never been able to see him as just a patient.
“Yes,” he says dully, looking down at his feet, and she knows the fact that he’s not fobbing her off by saying he’s fine is a very bad sign.
Holding her breath, she peels away the bandage from his skin as carefully as she can, suddenly afraid of what she’s going to find. To her great relief, despite the total lack of adequate care, it’s not as bad as she feared. The wound has begun to heal, and there’s no ulceration whatsoever, which had been one of her main concerns. She picks up a clean swab, frowning as a vague, lurking suspicion begins to take shape in her mind.
No complications with his wounds, either his toes or his burn. No sharps or insulin in the first aid kit. She thinks back to the initial readings of his blood sugar levels and his reaction – he seemed relieved, she’d told Katie - when she’d announced the positive result of his later blood test.
He hisses softly beneath his breath as she begins to clean the wound, and she can no longer hold her tongue. “How are you managing with your insulin shots?”
He stiffens under her touch. She hears him exhale, then he turns his head to look at her. “Do you want the short or the long answer?”
“The truth would be a good place to start.” She thinks she already knows what he’s going to tell her, but she wants to hear it from him.
He shifts in the chair, but he meets her gaze steadily as he says in a quiet, clear voice, “I’m not a diabetic.”
She may have half-suspected the truth, but hearing him actually say it still shocks her. She stares at him, horrified by the implications of his admission. Your body is reacting to the insulin as though you’re not a diabetic. “God damn you, Michael,” she says through suddenly clenched teeth. “I could have killed you.” She’s suddenly furious, and she’s not sure who deserves it more, him for his deception or her for ignoring her instincts.
He shakes his head. “That wouldn’t have happened.”
“How the hell could you know that?”
He gives her a sad smile. “Research, remember?”
Speechless, she just glares at him, and he quickly begins to talk again, filling the silence between them. “I needed daily access to the infirmary,” he says, his tone low and urgent, his eyes silently pleading with her to listen. To understand. “The drainage pipe beneath the grate in your office led directly to a storage room, and that room was able to be reached via a tunnel from the guards’ room.”
She stares at him, stunned. She’d heard all kinds of rumours about the scale of the escape plan, but to hear him talk about it in such a matter-of-fact manner is something altogether different.
“I’m sure the last thing you want is a chemistry lesson, but I was treating the pipes beneath the drain in your office with a corrosive every day so that it would eventually be weak enough to be smashed through.” His gaze flicks away, then back again. “The infirmary window was always our way out,” he says, his eyes once again burning into hers, “but the only thing I planned to need from you was a daily shot.”
She goes back to tending his burn, finding a small measure of distraction in the familiar movements of her hands. Finally, when the silence in the room is unbearable, she licks her dry lips and asks a question that’s been on the top ten list of things keeping her awake at night. “So all the smooth talk, all those cosy little chats?” The words feel thick and tight in her throat. “All the things you said to me?”
He looks down at his feet again. “That was just me,” he murmurs, so quietly she can hardly hear him. “That was just you and me.”
It was real, Sara. You and me. Her heart does an odd little lurch, much to her annoyance. “What about my keys?” she asks in as hard a voice as she can manage, determined not to herself be bulldozed by his goddamned charm all over again.
“Someone must have noticed that the pipe beneath your office had corroded. They replaced it with a new segment that was two inches thick.” He takes a deep breath, his back shifting beneath her touch. “The infirmary was still our only way out, so I had to find another way into your office.”
She shies away from the words another way, not wanting to discuss the kiss they’d shared in the infirmary. Not now, while he’s half-dressed and her hands are on him and her whole body is humming simply from being close to him. “And, of course, when you say we, you’re not just talking about you and Lincoln, are you?”
“No.”
She tosses the bloodied swab into the plastic dish on the table, no longer bothering to keep her voice low. “Did it ever occur to you how I might feel when it came out exactly who I’d left that door open for?”
He flinches, although whether it’s at her words or the volume of them, she has no idea. “I’m sorry.”
“Like I said on the phone, Michael,” she retorts as she covers his wound with a clean dressing. “Sorry doesn’t really cut it, not when we’re talking about people like Bagwell and Abruzzi.” Just saying their names makes her feel sick, and she knows the fact that she helped them escape – and that she allowed Michael to deceive her into doing it – is something she’ll never be able to justify.
“Abruzzi was always part of the plan,” he whispers, his eyes trained on the heavily draped kitchen window. “He was the only one with the resources to help Lincoln and I disappear once we were out.” He twists in the chair, his gaze seeking hers once more. “But Bagwell was never someone I wanted involved.”
“Then why was he?”
He sighs heavily, a distant look creeping into his eyes, as though he’s suddenly far away from her, then tells her in a flat, empty voice. “He discovered the tunnel behind my cell during the riots and threatened to go to the bulls if we didn’t bring him in on the escape.” He’s frowning now, obviously reliving Bagwell’s threats in his head, his voice hollow. “Either I went along with it and took the chance that I could still make it work, or I refused and let my brother die.”
The emptiness in his eyes makes her heart twist. “You said during the riots.” She pulls off her gloves, watching her hands as they move because it’s easier than looking at him. “Would that be while you were crawling through the pipes towards the sick bay to find me?”
She looks up at him in time to see an odd expression flicker across his face, as though that was the last thing he expected her to ask. “Yes.”
She drops the gloves into the plastic dish, then nods at his back. “You’re all done.” She knows she should ask him how he got this burn, about what he did to the Pope, about Westmoreland, but she’s tired of playing the interrogator. She doubts very much that he had anything to do with Westmoreland’s death, and she already knows that every answer will have the same core of truth at its heart – whatever he did, he did for Lincoln. She thinks of her father and whether he would ever go to such lengths to protect her, then pushes the thought of away, knowing that there are some questions to which you should never know the answer.
As though he’s sensed her train of thought, Michael clears his throat as he gingerly pulls his shirt back over his shoulders and begins to button it. “We need to get you to your father.”
She watches the graceful movements of his long fingers for a moment, knowing that she’s beyond redemption when it comes to her feelings for him. She lifts her gaze to his, and her breath catches in the back of her throat because he’s watching her, his eyes glittering with a hunger that infuses her skin with heat. “You’ve heard about his recent promotion?” she hears herself ask, barely hearing the words over the sudden rush of blood in her ears.
“Yes.” He seems to be having trouble deciding whether or not to do up the top button of his shirt, and Sara realises he’s doing exactly what she’s been doing – trying to focus on the small things in order to avoid the great big fucking unresolved thing that’s right under their noses. “I read about it in the newspaper this morning.” He aimlessly toys with his discarded tie where it lies on the table. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m not sure.” She moves back to her chair, dropping into it without looking at him. It would take many hours to explain the complicated relationship she has with her father, hours that they didn’t really have. “But it’s what he’s always wanted.”
“What about what you want?”
She laughs, a bitter sound that makes him wince. “What I might want, Michael, and what I have to do are two very different things.” She doesn’t want to think about the one way in which she wants her life to be different, her pointless, foolish wish to go back in time and meet Michael in a café, at a bookstore, in the supermarket.
Anywhere but Fox River.
She begins to pack up the first aid kit, vaguely wondering where Lincoln has hidden himself, then thinks of their conversation. She looks at Michael, briefly torn between saying nothing and trying to let him know he could talk to her about it, then makes her decision. “Lincoln told me about Veronica,” she says softly.
His face instantly changes, his expression hardening, his eyes darkening with grief. “He was talking to her on the phone when it happened.” His eyes fill with tears but, unlike his brother, he doesn’t bother hiding them from her. “They may as well have killed her right in front of him.”
She feels the blood drain from her face. “He didn’t tell me that.” She reaches for his hand before she has time to think about it, her fingers threading through his as naturally as though she’s held his hand every day of her life. "Michael, I'm so sorry."
"Thank you." He shoots her a grateful look, his hand tightening around hers as he goes on, his voice rough with tears. “What we’re up against, it’s so much bigger than I ever could have imagined.”
She doesn’t want to ask, but she has to know. “Is my father part of it?”
He shakes his head, but not before she sees the uncertainty in his eyes. “I don’t think so.”
A hot, sinking feeling settles in the pit of her stomach. “But you don’t know for sure.”
He hesitates long enough to be saved from answering by Lincoln’s sudden reappearance. “We gotta go.” Lincoln stops in the middle of the kitchen, looking at their clasped hands, then at his brother, and Sara has the feeling he’s trying to decide whether to smirk or roll his eyes.
She starts to pull her hand away, but Michael’s fingers tighten around hers, not letting her go as he asks, “Why?”
Lincoln holds up a gadget she vaguely recognizes as a police scanner, and she wonders again if there’s an end to their seemingly bottomless bag of tricks. “The wire’s buzzing with an anonymous tip about certain escapees being spotted near Herald Street.” He looks at her. “Your friend, I’m guessing,” he says lightly, then he gives his brother a crooked smile. “I should’ve run over him again.”
“You could stay here.” Michael is watching her rather than Lincoln, his hand still curled around hers. “Call the police. Tell them that we snatched you against your will.” His voice sounds tight and hollow. Empty. “Coerced you.”
She looks at him. His lips may have said all the right things, but his eyes are saying something quite different. Just like her, he knows the gulf between what he wants and what he must do, how hard it is to do the right thing when what you want is right there for the taking.
She thinks of her father, of their last conversation and how she’d felt afterwards as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The thought that he would knowingly endanger her is unthinkable, but if she’s learned nothing else over the last few weeks, it’s that hardly anything is ever really as it seems. Perhaps, she thinks, it would be safer for both of them if she kept her distance, but where did that leave her?
“Sorry to rush you, Doc, but we have to go.” Lincoln’s voice rumbles through the room. “Now.”
Feeling as though she’s watching herself from a great distance, she gently disentangles her hand from Michael’s, then reaches for the plastic kidney dish sitting on the table. Both men watch her as she puts it carefully into the first aid kit, but it’s to Michael that she utters the words that she never, ever thought she’d say. “Then let’s go.”