The Inmate (13)

Once Shane is situated, Hunt leaves the exam room. I start to close the door behind him, but he puts up a hand to keep the door from closing.

“You should keep the door open with this one,” Hunt says.

I glance over at Shane, who is sitting on my examining table, his head hanging down, his wrists and his ankles bound together. I have felt twinges of fear around some of the inmates, but I don’t feel it right now. Despite what I know he’s capable of.

“I’ll be fine,” I say, hoping I don’t regret my words.

Hunt keeps his hand on the door, still preventing me from closing it. Our eyes lock, and for a moment, I’m sure he’s going to push his way in. But then releases his hold on the door. “I’ll be right outside,” he tells me. “You have any problems, you give me a yell.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say again. But I don’t close the door completely. I keep it cracked just the slightest bit.

Now Shane and I are alone in the examining room. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together since he… well, we don’t need to relive that night. He looks different from the way he did when he was seventeen. Different and the same. His hair is much shorter, clipped barely an inch from his skull, and there’s a hardness to his face that wasn’t there before.

I hate that he’s still every bit as handsome as he was back then.

I hate even more how much he looks like my son.

For a moment, the two of us just stare at each other. Glaring, more like—his eyes are dripping with venom. I don’t know what he’s so upset about. I should be the angry one—if it were up to him, I would be dead. I suppose he’s mad that I told the truth in that courtroom.

“Hello,” I say in the flattest, most emotionless voice I can muster.

Shane doesn’t lift his eyes. “Hi.”

I square my shoulders. This was what I had been dreading when I took this job in the first place. And now here I am, and I just have to deal with it. I’ll get his injury taken care of like a professional, and I’ll send him on his way.

“How are you?” I say.

At my question, he whips his head up and stares at me. “Well, Brooke, I’m spending my life in prison for something I didn’t do, so how the hell do you think I am? I’m not great.”

I return his seething gaze. “I meant your head.”

“Oh.” He lifts a shackled hand to touch the bandage on his forehead. “That’s not great either.”

I slip my hands into a pair of blue latex gloves. I cross the small room to take a look at his forehead. This is the closest I’ve been to him in a long time—except in my nightmares. A decade ago, the thought of being this close to him would have made my skin crawl. But I can handle it now. I’m stronger than I used to be. This monster won’t get the better of me.

The last time I was near Shane like this, he was wearing an aftershave that smelled like sandalwood. If I close my eyes, I can still almost imagine that deep, woody but floral aroma. I can’t stand the smell of it anymore. I once went on a date with a guy who was wearing a sandalwood cologne, and I wouldn’t go out with him ever again. I dodged his phone calls rather than explaining why.

I peel back the tape from the wound on his forehead, not bothering to be as gentle as I normally would be. It looks pretty bad. Despite the bandage, it’s still bleeding significantly. It definitely needs stitches. He also has what looks like the start of a black eye forming on the same side.

“How did this happen?” I ask.

“I ran into the fence.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Really?”

He stares at me, challenging me to question him further. “That’s right.”

“Because it looks like somebody did this to you.”

“If somebody had done this to me,” he says, “and I ratted them out to you, the next time, whatever they did to me would be worse. So, you know, good thing this just happened from walking into the fence.”

I notice now that he has other scars on his face. He’s got a scar splitting his other eyebrow, and one running along the curve of his jaw, almost concealed by the stubble on his chin. There’s also a long white scar just on the base of his throat.

For some reason, I think of Josh. About the other kids bullying him at school and giving him a black eye like Shane has right now. Shane, who also grew up without a father. And I feel the tiniest twinge of…

Well, not sympathy. I would never feel sympathy for a monster like this. Somebody capable of doing what he did.

“Shane,” I say, “if someone is beating up on you…”

“Stop it, Brooke.” His voice is firm. “Whatever you think you’re trying to do, just stop. Just stitch me up and let me go back to my cell, okay?”

“Fine.”

He’s right. I can’t do anything to help him, even if I wanted to, and I don’t. My job is to get him stitched up and back to his cell, like he said. And that is all I’m going to do.

I can handle it.

I leave Shane alone in the room while I go to grab some suture material. Everything I need is in the supply room except for the lidocaine to numb him up. Since that’s a medication, I’ll need Dorothy to dispense it. So I return to her office, where she again takes her sweet time telling me to come in.