Keith saw the despair in my eyes. “Renee…”
I turned toward the warehouse door and took two steps, then stopped, smothered by a sense of hopelessness. A knot clogged my throat.
“Renee…” He’d walked up behind me. “I’m sorry, I know how much you care for Danny.”
Images of Danny spun through my mind. Whips and chains and knives and blood. His enemies would hurt him now, I was sure of that. What if they cut off Danny’s arm? Or his foot? What if they cut out his tongue?
Sometimes my mind seemed incapable of turning itself off. Keith put his arm around my shoulder. I know he was trying to comfort me, but I almost resented him for it because really, it should have been Danny standing next to me, not Keith.
He was a good man, the broken cop, but I wanted my broken priest.
What would Danny do?
He would lay down his life if he had to, and that was what scared me most.
I couldn’t break down. Jeremy was waiting. So I swallowed the pain in my throat, took a deep breath, breathed a prayer, and put my hope in Danny, which was the best I could do in that moment.
“Danny’s a strong man,” I finally said. “He might not be as easy to hurt as Randell thinks he is.”
And then I walked into the warehouse to save the boy.
19
MONDAY
THE INFIRMARY AT the Basal Institute of Corrections and Rehabilitation was large, considering the size of the prison. Nothing less than a top-notch facility that met the highest standards for professional medical care, in or out of prison. Danny wasn’t a stranger to hospitals. He’d spent time healing in several during the Bosnian War and even more time visiting patients as a priest. The level of sophistication at Basal surprised him. Certainly it was a far cry from the more clinical atmosphere at Ironwood.
He’d awakened in the ward eight hours after taking his beating in the hard yard, his head splitting with pain, still groggy from whatever medications they’d injected into his system, but otherwise sound. His lip was cut and swollen, and his ear had required several stitches, but none of his wounds prohibited his return to the commons.
The warden’s orders, however, did. It was for his own safety, the nurse had informed him. Basal’s policy was to segregate injured members long enough for the warden to stabilize the situation.
The infirmary was laid out like an emergency room, with six spaces separated by drawn blue curtains, each of which contained a hospital bed, an IV stand, and a sealed rolling cart that housed various instruments, none of which were pertinent in Danny’s case. Twelve recovery rooms housed longer-term patients on both sides of the hall outside the primary care facility.
In most prisons, patients who needed critical care were transported to hospitals and then returned upon recovery, but with the high quality of care available at Basal, only members with more serious medical conditions were transferred. It was yet one more way the warden limited his members’ contact with the outside world.
Danny learned that a doctor had inspected him and sewn up his ear, but otherwise the only human contact Danny had was with a male nurse, Garton Kilburn, a large fellow with unflinching eyes, few words, and no evident emotions.
“Looks like you’ll be fine,” the man said after a cursory inspection of Danny’s wounds on the first day. He wore blue scrubs over a white shirt and carried a stethoscope around his neck.
The nurse checked the leather restraints that tethered Danny by the wrists and ankles to the bed’s steel rails, standard operating procedure following a fight.
Danny lifted his right arm as far as the bindings would allow, no more than six inches. “I think it would be best if I moved around a bit, don’t you think? My joints could use some loosening up.”
The man offered him a curt nod and left him without a word, his version of whatever. Danny was their property and would be allowed to move around when they determined him either fit or deserving.
In Danny’s case, that was two days later, in the evening, long after his joints had all but frozen in place following his time on the wall and his subsequent beating. During those two days, he’d spoken only to Garton Kilburn and only on three occasions. None of the conversations had proven more inspiring than the first. The man’s function was evidently limited to delivering trays of food three times each day, freeing Danny of all but one restraint so that he could use a commode rolled in twice each day, and changing the bandage on his ear twice before removing it altogether.
Considering the nature of deep meditation, the medical staff likely attended to inmates whose bruising would raise the most eyebrows. They, as much as the correctional officers who knew about deep meditation, would have earned the warden’s trust. Connecting with their patients in a personal way that might test that trust was obviously not part of the program.
Odd, how being property of the state changed a person’s outlook on freedom and identity, Danny thought. Three years earlier, accepting this kind of treatment would have been inconceivable. The war in Bosnia had filled him with a profound need to protect the abused, and that need had extended to protecting his own life. But he’d walked into the hard yard and let Randell hit him without raising a finger to protect himself. Not once but three or four times, with enough power to kill most men.
Why? To what end?
Was he less of a man now than when he’d taken up a gun at age fifteen and avenged his family’s deaths?
Was he weak in the face of Peter’s suffering?
He’d taken a vow of nonviolence and he intended to stand by it. Judge not lest you be judged; turn the other cheek; love your enemy; rather than rebel against the authorities who stripped you of your dignity and slaughtered thousands, bow to them and pay them their tax. These were the precepts that had finally drilled their way into his heart.
But he could not shake the questions that begged him to reconsider.
Was it even possible to follow that way when boys like Peter stood in your path, begging for help?
But, no. No, he couldn’t go down that path again. It was precisely that kind of questioning that had led him to violence in defense of the helpless.
A correctional officer came for him on the second night after dinner. Danny’s muscles still ached, his joints were stiff, a dull ache still hung in his head like an iron weight. Once again he was led through the hub. Once again he climbed the stairs to the second tier in the commons wing. Once again he was ushered into his cell.
There was a change in the others this time, he thought. The member in the hub watched him with more than just mild curiosity. They wore uncertain faces, either confused by or genuinely interested in him, perhaps a little of both. The prisoners along the tier moved back from the railing without being told to.
This didn’t mean they’d found more respect for him. In all likelihood word of his beating solidified his reputation as a weak prisoner. He was prey for the predators, the kind of man who could not stand up and defend himself or his brother. A punk. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t in prison to win approval, only to do his time.
Peter was in the cell with Godfrey, waiting for Danny. This was surprising, considering the danger that he might find in the commons now as a resident of the privileged wing. Clearly, the boy saw him as his savior.
“Danny!” the boy blurted, bolting off the lower bunk. Peter bumped his head on the frame, but the blow didn’t discourage him from stumbling forward and throwing his arms around Danny.
“Hello, Peter.”
“You’re back!”
“I am.”
Danny patted the boy on the back, shifting to maintain his balance. Peter’s tight hug aggravated the pain in Danny’s ribs, and he was thankful when the boy released him of his own accord.