The Winter Sister(30)

“Wait!” I called, nearly jogging to reach him in time. Ben turned around, his face almost pained, as if enduring a muscle spasm or migraine.

What would Mom do if she saw him? Just the sound of his name a couple days before had sent her reeling. I could easily imagine, then, how her eyes would widen at the sight of him, her fingers fumbling to rip the IV from her arm, her mouth releasing a sound more animal than human as she fell to the floor.

“Listen to me,” I hissed. “You need to stay away from my mother. You’ve done enough to our family as it is, and if I ever find out that you so much as enter a room she’s in, I will make it my mission to ruin your life as completely as you ruined ours. Do you understand me?”

I could feel the adrenaline rising like waves. I’d never spoken to anyone like that before, but as angry and desperate as I felt, I still savored the slight look of shock on Ben’s face as he nodded.

“Now,” I continued, “we’re going to be back on Wednesday, so you need to stay away from us if you’re here that day.”

Ben cleared his throat, glancing over my shoulder. “I’m scheduled to work on Wednesday,” he said, “but I . . . I’ll make sure to stay out of your mom’s way.”

“You better,” I said, and already I could feel the rock-solid strength in my voice crumbling. I had nothing else to say—no threats to make, no words that would come close to conveying what he’d done to us. All I had left was the ability to leave.

My feet unsteady, I walked back to Mom’s treatment room and sat down in the chair beside her.

“Where’s the book?” Mom asked.

We both looked at my lap, where my empty hands rested.

“They didn’t have it,” I said.

Mom sighed but didn’t respond, and as the minutes went on, silence falling over us again like snow, I stayed rigid and alert, my eyes pointed toward the door.

? ? ?

They warned us about the anti-nausea medication. As we checked out, confirming Mom’s appointment on Wednesday, the woman behind the desk passed us a prescription.

“Do you have any pills left over from your last cycle, Ms. O’Leary?” she asked.

“No.”

“Okay, well this is the same medication you were prescribed before. If you did have any pills left over, the doctor said you could just use those and then move on to the fresh bottle. But since you don’t, you’re good to go with this.”

Mom watched me tuck the piece of paper into my wallet, hopefully not noticing the tremble in my hands, and then looked back at the woman defiantly.

“I feel fine,” she said.

“Oh, come on, Annie,” Kelly piped in. She was filing a folder in a long metal cabinet behind the receptionist. Hitting the drawer closed with her hip, she crossed her arms over the front of her scrubs. “Don’t be stubborn. You know how this works. There’s a reason you don’t have pills left over from last time.”

Kelly turned her attention toward me and I tried my best to concentrate on what she was saying, even as my gaze kept bouncing around the room, searching every shadow and corner. “Your mom’s probably right about feeling fine,” she said. “A lot of patients actually feel great right after chemo because we’ve already administered an anti-nausea drug during the process. Don’t let this fool you, though. She should still take the medication she was just prescribed, because once she starts to actually feel the symptoms, it’s too late. She’d likely just throw up the pill if she took it, and then she’d be miserable.”

She looked over at Mom, who was drumming her fingers in a slow, steady rhythm on the desk, staring off at a bland hospital-brand painting on the wall. “You remember all this from last time, right, Annie?” Kelly asked.

“Hmm,” Mom said, her eyes still turned away from us. “Last time’s kind of fuzzy.”

Kelly leaned over the desk to speak to me in a soft conspiratorial voice. “She seems tired,” she said, “which is also normal. Just let her rest while you go pick up the medication, and then give her a pill right when you get home. Sometimes it’s best for the caregiver to be in charge of administering drugs. Some patients just try to grin and bear it, but if you ask me, there’s no reason anyone should be in more discomfort than they have to be, right?”

I nodded, trying to smile, but my lips felt tight and heavy. The skin on the back of my neck bristled each time someone walked behind us or exited a room.

“If you have any questions,” Kelly said, “you can call us at any time. I promise you there’s no question too small. We’ve even had . . .”

I stopped hearing her. There he was, on the opposite end of the long reception area, walking beside a bald elderly man who was shuffling toward one of the treatment rooms. He had his hand on the man’s back, as if to steady him, and the old man laughed up at Ben. Then the two of them disappeared together into a room, the door closing behind them.

My skin felt hot, as if the blood moving beneath it were made of lava. It was still impossible to comprehend—Ben Emory, the man who’d left a girl on the side of the road like a bag of trash, was a nurse now. He joked with patients, guiding them gently into rooms, and all the while, no one ever suspected what his hands could really do. Hadn’t the hospital done a background check? Hadn’t they seen that he was once a person of interest in a murder? The injustice of it made me shake, and I stared at the door he’d just closed, as if my gaze could burn a hole through it.