Chapter 7
BANDIT
I've taken the same patient's blood pressure twice and written down two different numbers, which is how I know I'm no good to anyone today.
I cap the pen. Smile at Mr. Abernathy, who didn't notice, because Mr. Abernathy is ninety-one and watching a game show with the sound off.
I'll do it a third time in a minute. Right now my hands are busy but my head is in my studio, which is so small a man had to stand in the middle of it to fit, telling me he wasn't going anywhere.
It should not be legal, what one sentence from that man does to a whole shift.
I keep catching myself. Mid-chart, mid-hallway, mid-reach for a fresh sharps box, and there he is.
The gray I put my fingers in. The way he said Bandit like it was a thing he'd decided and wasn't taking back.
He kissed me and then he stopped, because I was running on no sleep and he wanted me clear-eyed when it happened.
I've replayed the stopping more than the kissing.
I didn't know that was a thing a person could do to you.
I'm grinning at a blood pressure cuff. I need to get a grip.
It's room 14 that fixes that. It's empty right now but it was Darling's room.
I stop my cart in the hall and I'm not grinning anymore.
I'm not a detective. I've just taken my pharmacology final and have exactly enough money to make rent if nothing goes wrong this month. I'm the last person who should be poking at any of this.
But I want to know so I'm going to find out where they send the "difficult" patients.
Now, I won't sneak in rooms I have no place to be or borrow logins I shouldn't have access to. I'm going to do the most boring, aboveboard thing in the world.
I'm going to ask.
I catch Dr. Kessler at the station before the four o'clock handover, when he's signing off orders and almost human about it.
He's always been decent to me. Learned my name in week one, calls me Bennett, asks about the program like he means it.
Also he runs the place so he's got to know what happens to the patients he discards.
If I'm asking anyone, it's him.
"Got a second?"
"For you? Always." He doesn't look up from the chart.
"I'm close to done. The program." I talk like a girl thinking about her résumé and asking a mentor for advice. "I've been looking at psych. Psychiatric nursing. I think I'd be good at it."
"You would." Now he looks up. "You've got the stomach and the patience. Rare combination."
"I'd love some hours before I graduate in a couple of weeks. Shadowing, even unpaid. I heard the harder cases here go somewhere with a real psych setup. I thought, if you could recommend me, maybe I could go in for a few shifts. See the work before I commit to it."
I'm very proud of myself. I sound perfectly reasonable.
For a second he just nods, already half back in his chart. Then he stops and looks up.
"Which facility's that?"
"Well, I don't know the name. That's sort of why I'm asking." I smile. "I just heard the difficult transfers go to one place."
"Heard where?"
"Around." I shrug. "People talk."
"Which people?" Still pleasant but harder. "We've got a small staff. I'd want to know who's discussing patient transfers in the hall."
"I wasn't keeping track." A laugh, to make it nothing.
He doesn't laugh with me.
"It's not a big deal. I'm just trying to get experience."
"Of course." He picks the pen back up. Doesn't write. "What made you interested in our transfers, though? Versus the county program. Better access for a student. Easier paperwork."
I didn't think about the county program. A real psych student would have. He watches me not have an answer.
"I hadn't gotten that far," I say.
"Mm." He smiles again. "Let me look into it. See what's possible. It's not really my call but I can ask the right people."
"Thank you," I say.
"Of course, Bennett." He stands, taps the file square. "Get your finals out of the way first. Plenty of time for the rest."
That's it. Nothing happened. He was kind the whole way through but he turned weird in the end. Or not. I tell myself I imagined it the whole way to the bus.
I'm tired. I've been tired for three years; tired makes everything mean something. He asked a couple of questions, that's what doctors do, they're nosy by trade. By the time I'm off the bus and walking the six blocks to my building, I've nearly talked myself all the way out of it.
Nearly.
Except there's this man who's been following me since I left work … When I turn around for the fifth time to check if he's still tailing me he's gone.
It's fine. Nobody's looking at me. I'm an ordinary girl with a backpack, the least interesting thing on this sidewalk.
It's only that I've never noticed before how deserted those six blocks can be., how long it takes for me to get home or how loud my own shoes get once I start listening for somebody else's.
I walk a little faster. I don't run. Running would mean I believe someone's after me and I don't. I've decided I don't.
The feeling comes the whole way with me right up to the second I turn onto my street.
And then it's just gone.
It lifts off me all at once and for a beat I don't understand why. Then I see my building.
The street door, the busted one that hasn't latched since I moved in, is propped open and halfway off its hinges.
Tools everywhere. The building superintendent, who I have personally never witnessed do a single thing aside from collect the rent, is standing there holding a level and nodding like he's supervising.
And crouched in the doorway of my own building, sleeves shoved up, scowling at a strike plate like it has personally offended him, is Bones.
He looks up when my shadow hits the step.
"Bandit." Like I'm the one who's turned up somewhere strange. "Door's shot. Frame's worse. Whoever hung this never put a long screw in it in their life."
Bones lives behind a twelve-foot gate on the far side of the city. There is no version of his day that drops him onto his knees at my front step at six o'clock by accident. We both know it.
The super says something about the old frame. Bones says something back. I'm not listening. I'm looking at this enormous, dangerous man who told me last night he could wait. He's here on my step inside a day dressing his visit up as a carpentry issue so I'd have an out if I wanted one.
I don't want an out.
I press my lips together. I look at the sky, the tools. I think about the man who may have followed me and the long six blocks between the bus stop and my home. I think about how all of it fell off me the moment I turned this corner, and I smile.
I can't help myself, especially when his mouth goes crooked when I climb the steps to where he's waiting.