After Hours (InterMix)(20)
“Well done,” he said.
I glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall, finding it was only a minute until we were due to finish. I waved his compliment away, knowing I looked half-dead, and spoke through my huffing. “Oh yeah, piece of cake.”
Though it never surfaced, I saw a smile lurking behind his lips.
“Great work, everyone!” Audra said with a clap. “See you back here tomorrow at ten for round two! So keep limber!”
Kelly and I headed for the door together.
“We’ve missed lunch,” I said as I realized it. My stomach growled, eavesdropping.
“We missed lunch service. But there’ll still be something to scavenge, if you didn’t pack anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“Better get you introduced to the kitchen staff. Good friends to have around here.”
“Oh?”
He nodded as we exited, and his eyes looked different outside. Nearly blue, like a thick, antique glass bottle. “The residents in the locked ward get so few luxuries, food’s a big deal. Sometimes having the power to score somebody an extra brownie is enough to avoid a meltdown.”
“I’ll make a note.”
We strolled in the warm June sunshine, its heat burning off a bit of my exhaustion and angst, if not my sweat. The drills were flipping through my mind like flash cards, and I hoped I wouldn’t have stress dreams about them all night. My legs yearned to slow down, dawdle so the walk took an hour, just me and the spring air, no responsibilities, flanked by a hulking man capable of defending me against any number of deadly attacks.
It would’ve been too strong to say I felt a bond with Kelly. My body was curious about his, but I didn’t have any urge to hold his hand as we walked, or to imagine he was my boyfriend. He’d shared too much about his romantic MO for me to waste my time mooning over him . . . but there was something there. Something not quite familiar, but comforting. I could see how he had a calming influence on the patients. If he ever got over his my-way-or-the-highway machismo, he’d probably make one hell of a dependable husband for some tough-as-nails woman.
We reached the entrance to Starling and I swiped us in. Kelly led me up a back stairwell to the third floor, and I knew we were near the kitchen from the smell. Tater tots.
Kelly swung one of the double doors in. “Knock knock,” he said to someone I couldn’t see, then slipped inside, holding the door for me.
It looked like a scaled-down version of my high school cafeteria. Lots of steel surfaces and steam and big freezers and plastic bins. Kelly introduced me to the man in charge, a short black guy my age named Roland. Before I knew it, we were carrying trays to a break room I’d never been in before, just me and Kelly and a softly droning portable television propped on a pile of textbooks in the corner.
Kelly opened a can of seltzer. “So. How is it, living in the transitional residence?”
I swallowed a bite of turkey burger and shrugged. “It feels like a dorm. I think. I’ve never actually lived in one. Quieter, probably. But you know, communal showers, identical rooms, shared kitchen. It’s cheap. It’ll do the job until I’ve got my head wrapped around everything and know the area a bit better.”
“Before you decide whether or not to stay,” he translated, but incorrectly.
I shook my head. “I’m staying, barring a seriously traumatic experience. It’s close to my sister, and it pays pretty well. I have to settle someplace, and get some clinical experience. And if I can handle a locked ward, I’ll know I’m capable of working just about anywhere.”
“Why’s it so important to stay near your sister?”
“I just need to. I sort of raised her, and I worry about her. She’s got a toddler and really bad taste in men. She requires a lot of maintenance, to keep from going off the rails.”
“Maybe you’d be surprised, if you left her alone to fend for herself.”
I laughed. “I tried that, when I moved in with my grandma. I didn’t think I could look after her, and my sister. And occasionally my mom. So I told Amber—my sister—that I was done bailing her out all the time, and she was eighteen, and it was time for her to find her feet and all that.”
“And?”
I shook my head. “Within six months she’d run up eight grand on a credit card, got evicted, and turned up on my grandma’s doorstep with her rear windshield smashed out.”
“Wild child?”