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“Why? To save Bullstow the guilt of killing a good man?”
“For honor.”
“It always comes back to honor. Fuck honor. Fuck Bullstow.”
“Call it what you will, but your father wanted you with him. He needed you w
ith him. It was no happy accident that you were there.”
“Why me? Because I’m trained? So that I might save him?”
“Gods, no.”
She looked away, biting her cheeks again until she could speak steadily. “Could I have saved him? If I’d just pressed a little harder? If I’d—”
Booth shook his head. “As I said before, your technique was perfect. You were never meant to save him. No one could have, not even me. Not even if he’d taken those pills inside the clinic.”
“Then why did he want me to stay with him?”
Biting her cheeks didn’t help this time.
“Because your father didn’t want to die alone.”
“He didn’t even tell me.”
“Of course he didn’t. If he had, it would have ruined his last night on earth. You might have tried to stop it.” Booth leaned against the bed in the middle of the room, the paper crinkling under his palms. “He knew you’d understand what he’d done the moment it happened, that you’d cover it up with the family and the press. You did everything exactly as he knew you would.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Lila wiped at her eyes, embarrassed to break before the doctor.
“Yes, you did, madam. You called me for a reason, not Randolph General. You knew that it was happening the entire time.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did, madam. Somewhere deep down, you knew, otherwise you would have called for an ambulance.”
“You were closer.”
“Of course, madam. That must be it.”
Lila raised her fist, enjoying the way Dr. Booth flinched and backed away. She’d hit Olivier a few days before. She’d kept punching and punching and punching his face, enjoying the cracking of his bones.
But she felt none of the anger she’d felt that day.
Where had it gone?
Had it been spent so quickly on a few shoves against a wall?
“This was the senate’s doing,” Lila growled. “It was so much worse than retirement, and he didn’t even tell me.”
“Madam, there are committees, procedures, steps. Your father told me he’d lied to the senate a thousand times. Something had to be done.”
“My father died because of committees?”
Booth shied back to the corner. “He died because of lies. He saved Mr. Shaw, madam. Whatever your father said changed their minds. I was supposed to have two corpses tonight.”
“My father didn’t deserve this. Neither of them deserved to be punished. What’s the use of it if no one even knows?”
“The disciplinary committee will know. They’ll take up the issue next session. They’ll find a solution within the rules of Bullstow or their lives are forfeit.”
