The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

Becca suffered a head injury from the blast that had almost killed her. Skipper was critically burned.

Matt had known them while growing up, since they were all at Episcopal Academy. Both came from families of significant means. And both had a history of getting in trouble with booze and drugs.

Because of the severity of their multiple injuries, both had been taken to Temple University Hospital’s advanced burn center, where the chief physician was one Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM.

“Matt, I’ll never tell anyone else this,” Amanda said, “but it’s my brutally cold assessment that Jesús Jiménez probably did Skipper a favor by killing him. Skipper was either going to die from his burns or suffer a long recovery and never be the same again.”

Matt nodded.

“But Becca,” she went on, “nonetheless is feeling responsible, saying they wouldn’t have been there if Skipper hadn’t wanted to make her happy with some of those goddamned drugs. To get past this damned survivor’s guilt, I sent her to Amy.”

“That’s interesting,” Matt said. “Amy never mentioned she was now Becca’s shrink.”

“She’s a doctor, sweetie. Just because she’s your sister doesn’t mean she’s going to tell you and break the physician-patient confidentiality.”

He shrugged.

Amanda said, “There can be a variant of survivor’s guilt among doctors. They get a guilty feeling that they didn’t do enough to save a patient. Luckily, I’ve never had it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. And I know that those who do have it need to look at the glass as being half full, not half empty, confident in their skills that they did the right thing.”

I’ve had a few of those myself, Matt thought.

It wasn’t that long ago that I held Susan Reynolds in my arms as her very life poured out from that bullet hole in her head.

And I loved her like I love Amanda.

Right down to the roadside cottage with the picket fence.

I endlessly questioned if I could’ve done anything different to save her from that madman of a killer.

And, bottom line, the answer was I couldn’t.

Still, finally realizing that didn’t ease the pain of loss.

He took a sip of Scotch as he glanced at Amanda.

Am I about to lose Amanda . . . ?

Amanda was saying: “I also understand that sometimes things play out the way they do no matter what anyone does. In fact, in some cases we probably prolong the inevitable by taking the heroic measures. Which was why someone in a wise moment came up with DNRs.”

“Do Not Resuscitate orders,” Matt said.

She nodded.

He sipped his drink again and tried to understand where she was going with this.

Maybe it’s her body clock ticking. The abduction was a real wake-up call for her sense of mortality.

And maybe that’s some manifestation of survivor’s guilt—in part because

she lived while that young teen Honduran girl, after being forced into prostitution, died a brutal death.

Then she said: “Two months ago, Matt, I went to Hawaii for an M and M.”

I know she can’t mean candy.

“It’s a conference doctors attend,” she went on, as if reading his mind, “Morbidity and Mortality.”

This is about mortality!