Gayle Wilson - Flashback

“I imagine the guys from the Bureau are going to be ticked off,” she acknowledged.

“You gonna tell ’em about this?”

“You think I shouldn’t?”

“I think they’ll react the same way you just did. But if you believe that’s what you ought to do…” Dean shrugged.

“I don’t think I can legitimately keep Underwood’s story from them. Do you?”

“Major Underwood.”

An officer. Something she should have gleaned from his attitude, if nothing else. “Do you?” Even as she repeated the question, Eden recognized that, in this case, calling the Bureau might fall under the category of “covering your ass.” If she didn’t pass this information on to the FBI, and something eventually came of it, she’d be considered derelict in her duty. The same word Jake Underwood had just used, she realized.

I thought it was my duty…

“Up to you, Chief,” Dean said, refusing to let her off the hook. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it makes a hill of beans difference what you do. I don’t think Jake had anything to do with that little girl’s disappearance. But I also think he can probably hold his own with the Feds. After all, he’s been dealing with bureaucratic red tape most of his life. I suspect he’ll be more than a match for the boys from Jackson.”

Dean sounded as if he was enjoying the thought of that confrontation. The realization that he had no doubt how Underwood would handle himself should have been comforting, given that she felt she had little choice about sharing this information with the agents. If the ex-soldier thought she’d hassled him…

Eden blew out a breath, the frustrations of the past two days suddenly catching up with her. She needed a couple of hours sleep to go along with the partially eaten sandwich. Maybe then she could get some perspective back.

They’d done everything they could think of to find Raine Nolan. The feeling that it wasn’t nearly enough was compounded by the realization that, despite the horror she’d felt listening to Jake Underwood’s “flashback,” despite the ridiculousness of even considering the possibility that what he’d seen was real, that vision—or whatever it had been—was the most positive indication they had had yet that Raine might still be alive.

“I just want to make certain I understand what the term means.” Eden looked up to make sure the door to her office was securely closed, although she had already done that before she’d placed this call.

It was bad enough that her inquiry into Jake Underwood’s medical condition felt like an invasion of privacy, she wasn’t sure how others in the department would interpret her interest. Dean’s dismissal of what the ex-soldier claimed to have seen had been swift and definite. In spite of that, she felt compelled to check with someone who had more expertise in these matters than either of them.

“Brain damage can mean a whole lot of different things,” Dr. Ben Murphy said. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific if you want me to give you a medical opinion.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.

Doc Murphy had been her father’s physician as well as his friend. She trusted both his discretion and his judgment. “Closed-head trauma?”

“I don’t even know that. All I know is he was a soldier.”

The silence on the other end of the line made her wonder if Doc, with his quick intellect and broad knowledge of this town, had already put it all together.

“This an official inquiry?” he asked finally.

“Nope. This is just me asking a trusted friend for some guidance.”

“Fair enough. Generalities, then. That all right?”

“If that’s all you got.”

“Give and take, Eden. Give and take.”

“Well, you got all I can give, so…I’ll take whatever you’ll offer.”

“The brain’s a delicate thing. It can be damaged by cumulative injuries, like a football player who has too many concussions during his career. Then you can get stuff like ALS, maybe years afterward. He doesn’t know his brain’s been hurt until it’s too late.”

“I don’t think that’s the case here.”

“I didn’t figure it was. In war, the injury is usually obvious. A blow or a concussive force from an explosion, resulting in an open or closed wound to the head.”

“Which is worse?”

She could almost hear Doc shrug. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s the degree that matters. And the treatment, of course. In modern wars men survive things that would once have killed them, if not immediately, then within a matter of hours. Now sometimes within minutes, we get them off the battlefield and into a trauma unit that’s as good, if not better, than most of those in our major hospitals. They relieve the pressure on the brain, maybe by removing a piece of the skull so it’s got room to swell. Maybe with drugs. Whatever we’d do here, they can do there.”

“And after that?”

“Depending on the damage, rehab to recover function.”

“Function?”

“Mental and physical. I could do a better job of explaining this, Eden, if I had some clue as to what kind and degree of injury we’re talking about.”

“I can’t help you with that. Just keep it general. So with this quick treatment, do most of them recover?”

“Some do. Some don’t.”

“And if they don’t, what kinds of problems would they have?”

“Physically? You ever see somebody after a stroke? That’s a kind of brain injury in itself. Muscle weakness, usually confined to one side of the body. Mentally? It could involve amnesia. Aphasia. Even personality changes.”

The tip of the pencil she’d been jotting notes with lifted. “What kind?”

“Any kind. Somebody who’s been mild-mannered and shy becomes overbearing. Or vice versa. Or they may suffer from extreme excitability. Impulsivity. Have anger-management issues.”

“Might they become violent?”

Again there was a silence on the other end of the line. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible, Eden, but most of the men and women who suffer brain injuries come home and resume their lives. They may struggle with mobility or memory or control, but they don’t become somebody else. If they weren’t violent criminals before, most of them don’t commit acts of violence after. They just come home and try to be the best they can be, despite what’s happened to them while they were fighting on our behalf.”

The silence this time was Eden’s. She broke it finally to suggest, “I don’t guess I need to tell you that I’d appreciate your keeping what we’ve talked about to yourself.”

“You don’t need to tell me. But I’d do it anyway. As on edge as folks in this town are right now, the suggestion that we’ve got somebody around here who’s become dangerous because he’s had a brain injury could be disastrous. Frankly, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate your help. And the advice.”

“Your daddy would be proud of you, Eden. You’re doing a good job. And the hardest one you got facing you may be keeping the yahoos here from going off the deep end. I’d hate to see that happen in Waverly.”

“Me, too, Doc. Me, too.”

“While you’re taking care of everything else around here,” the old man said, “don’t forget to take care of you. We need you. Your daddy knew that, too.”

“Thank, Doc. That means a lot.”

“You just do what he taught you. You’ll be fine.

YOU’RE A DAMNED slow learner, boy, Jake thought, as he watched the special agents’ car disappear behind the cloud of dust that enveloped any vehicle exiting his property this time of year. Or maybe he was as brain-damaged as the surgeons who’d worked on him had feared he might be.