After Hours (InterMix)(10)

One of his brows rose a fraction. “You picked a real deep end to jump into.”

I nodded. True, it would’ve been nice to start at an end with steps, not a high dive. “It was the only end with a job opening.”

“Get changed and I’ll take you out for a drink.”

“Oh jeez. I better not. I’m really tired, and I have to be up at six again tomorrow.” I hadn’t even unloaded my car or set foot in my new apartment. I wanted to change into my familiar pajamas and reread a few nursing textbooks’ chapters on paranoid schizophrenia, try to figure out how I could have handled myself better with Lonnie.

Kelly shook his head. “Get changed and meet me in the lot. You can follow me in. You living in town now?”

“I’m staying here. In the transitional housing.”

He gave me skeptical look, the most judgment I’d seen from him.

“Just temporarily,” I added.

“I’ll drive you, then. You can leave your car.” And then he disappeared, giving me the distinct impression that his invitation was as negotiable as a hostage taking.

I was pooped. I obliterated my name from the duties board, dropped off my paperwork, and changed, tossing my scrubs in the hamper. The day had done the same to me—wiped me clean out and wadded me into a rumpled heap.

Though Kelly was surely only trying to be helpful in his bossy way, I resented being ordered around, especially by a man. Like I needed rescuing. I didn’t want to be rescued—in my family, I did the rescuing.

If I suddenly needed assistance, who in the hell was I?

But it was good, I decided as I buttoned my sweater—an invitation to grab a quick drink with Kelly. I was in over my head, and he’d have advice to help me stay afloat. He’d had a first day once, too. We’d talk and it’d push the incident a bit further back in my head, so it wouldn’t be the only thing running through my mind as I tried to fall asleep in a strange room. That voice, those words; that accusing pizza crust pointed like a switchblade at my face.

As I left the locker room and headed down the hall, I felt that corset sensation again. Only it wasn’t from the scare. Every step I took toward the exit, closer to Kelly, tighter, tighter. Funny how my body reacted to him the same way it did to the thought of getting assaulted by a patient.

Punching the keycode to the foyer, I wondered idly what Kelly’s wife looked like. And what she’d make of some underfed, round-faced urchin of a hapless trainee LPN going out for a drink with her oversized husband.

She probably wouldn’t think anything of it, I reminded myself, since it doesn’t mean shit. It’s a pity drink with your married coworker.

Still, as my fingers punched the final code, those laces yanked tight, tight, tight. At least if I passed out, Kelly was strong enough to carry my sorry ass home.





Chapter Two


He was waiting outside under the darkening sky, dressed in his civilian clothes—jeans and a black zip-up sweatshirt. It made him look like even more of a thug, but I followed him nonetheless. A thug who was on my side felt like a precious commodity.

Kelly led me to the far corner of the employee lot, to a late model GM pickup, probably the same vintage as my car but far-better maintained. He came close to unlock my side, seeming taller than ever, seeming huge and looming but strangely reassuring. A breakwater to keep the storm of stress from washing me out to sea, never to be found. Maybe I could steal some of his bricks and fortify myself, so the next run-in with someone’s psychosis wouldn’t shake me so badly.

He started up the truck, wipers knocking droplets from an afternoon shower off the windshield, headlights illuminating the sign posted at the head of each space that read, NEVER LEAVE YOUR KEYS IN YOUR VEHICLE!

“Everyone in that ward’s had their own first day,” Kelly told me, driving up to the first of two security boxes that would let us exit the campus. He punched in a code, drove through, waited for the first automatic gate to shut before jabbing at the second keypad.

“I know.”

He turned us onto a narrow service road I hadn’t taken in.

“I don’t want to make you feel worse, but that wasn’t such a terrible day to start.”

“I know that, too. And I don’t want to be as upset as I am, by what Lonnie said. It’s not like he stabbed me or anything. It was a frigging pizza crust.”

“But what he said slapped you across the face,” Kelly said. “So it’s fine to let it sting. Next time it won’t sting so hard, and soon enough the words won’t even hit you.”