Page 74 of Victorious

She rolled onto her back as Gabriel knelt down beside her.

“I might have been able to convince you,” he admitted as her eyelids fluttered, and her limbs went slack. “But there are better uses of our time.” Her chest rose, and fell, and stopped. Her body stilled. “I think you’ll agree.”

He splayed his hand across her skin, cold burning his palm.

“Actually, I know you will.”

3TREATMENT

INOW. THEN.

2 YEARS AGO

EON

“DIRECTOR Roy,” said the woman on the screen, “this is highly unusual.”

The four remaining members of the board were assembled on the wall behind her desk. Three men, and two women, each wearing a different shade of gray, and a version of the same disgruntlement. Concern. Annoyance. Apprehension.

Gabriel considered them from his place across the desk.

They could see him there, behind Helena, hands laced atop his knee. Head bowed slightly. The positioning had been intentional, at once deferential and undeniably present. The way a puppeteer knows to sit behind the puppet. Gabriel’s words came out from Helena Roy’s lips, in Helena Roy’s voice, as she informed the board that she was stepping aside, and naming Dr. Gray as her successor.

The members of the board began to talk at once.

“What’s led to this?”

“Why would you step down?”

“I assure you,” she said calmly, “I’ve no intention of retiring. I intend to stay on, in a supporting role.”

“No offense, Dr. Gray,” said a man in a charcoal suit. “But who the hell are you?”

For the first time, the five heads looked across the desk, at him.

Gabriel looked back steadily. “I’m a psychiatrist,” he answered. “One with a personal investment in your organization. And a vision for its future.”

The board was working itself up again.

“There is an order—”

“Who cleared you to—” said another.

“You are hardly qualified—”

“I understand your concerns,” he said, nodding soberly as he reached toward the tablet on the desk “and I look forward to changing each of your minds,” he added, before ending the call.

Their faces blinked out of existence, replaced by the tapestry of EON screens.

He sat back, and tugged off his glasses, rubbing the place between his eyes.

He supposed he could have let Helena carry on, pretending to be in charge, but it was one more set of strings he had to pull, one more distraction.

Of course, now, the five members of the board would have to be persuaded.

Lies, he often told his patients, had a way of multiplying.

The same was true for problems.