Chapter 9
Thursday night. My last shift of the week. Then three days off — Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Three days to decide what I'm doing with my marriage.
The door opens. Amy pokes her head in.
"You have a visitor. At the front desk."
"A visitor?" No one visits me at work. Marco's never come to the ER except to pick me up once when my car wouldn't start. My mom is in Florida. Rosie knows better.
"Woman. Blonde. Says she's your friend."
I count three seconds before I move. One. Two. Three. Then I walk.
Twenty-seven steps from supply closet B. And there she is — Brooke. In the waiting room. Sitting in one of the plastic chairs with her purse in her lap, looking small. Looking manufactured-small.
She sees me and stands. "Nina. I'm sorry to come here. I just — I needed to talk to you. In person. Not through lawyers."
I look at her. She's wearing a soft cardigan and jeans. Minimal makeup. Hair down. She looks like someone who needs help. That's the costume. That's always been the costume.
"I'm working," I say.
"I know. But you won't answer my texts and I didn't know when else—"
"You came to my WORKPLACE." My voice is low. Not because I'm calm — because I'm at work and patients can hear everything in this waiting room. "You came to my job at ten o'clock at night."
"I just want five minutes—"
"No." I step closer. My badge swings against my chest. I can feel Deborah watching from the station — I don't need to look. "You do not come to my place of work. Ever. You want to talk — you call my lawyer. That's the channel now."
"Nina, please. I'm going to sign the agreement. I just wanted to explain—"
"There is nothing to explain. You took twenty-three thousand dollars from my husband. You slept with him. You did both of those things while pretending to be my friend. The payment plan is the only conversation we're having."
Her eyes fill. She's good at this — the wet eyes, the trembling lip. I've watched her do it to Marco for months without knowing that's what I was seeing. Every time she said "I'm so sorry to ask" with that specific tilt of her head. Every time she said "you're the only one who cares."
"I was your FRIEND," she says. "For twelve years—"
"Friends don't do what you did."
"I made a mistake—"
"Twelve mistakes. Twelve separate transfers. Plus cash. Plus a lease. Plus sex. That's not a mistake — that's a campaign."
She flinches. Good. Something landed.
"Sign the agreement," I say. "Pay me back. And do not come to this hospital again."
I turn around. Walk back to the station. Twenty-seven steps. Deborah is pretending to chart.
"Everything okay?" she asks without looking up.
"Fine. She's leaving."
I watch through the glass partition. Brooke stands in the waiting room for eight seconds. Then she picks up her purse, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and walks out through the automatic doors.
I press my thumbnail into my finger. Four seconds for color.
"That the friend?" Deborah asks. Still not looking up.
"Former."
"Mm." She charts something. Then: "You need a break?"
"No." I pull my next patient's chart. Fifty-two-year-old female, lower back pain times three days. "I need to work."
I work. The back pain is muscular — no red flags, no neuro deficits. I give her a Toradol injection and a referral to physical therapy. She thanks me. Leaves.
At midnight I eat my lunch in the break room. Turkey sandwich, apple, a granola bar. I eat methodically — six bites for the sandwich half, four bites for the apple, two for the granola bar. I don't taste any of it.
Brooke came to my job. MY job. The place where I spend twelve hours saving people. The place where I earned every dollar she spent. She walked in like it was a café, like she could just sit down and wait for me to have five minutes.
The entitlement. The absolute certainty that her need for a conversation overrides my boundaries. My workplace. My time. My shift.
This is how she's operated from the beginning.
Her need was always bigger than anyone else's reality.
"I'm so sorry to ask" — but she always asked.
"I know you're tired" — but she always came over anyway.
"I don't want to be a burden" — while being the most expensive burden my marriage has ever carried.
I finish my apple. Throw the core in the trash. Wash my hands. Twenty seconds. Back to work.
The rest of the shift is quiet — a UTI, two medication refills, a child with ear pain at 4 AM. Easy. Routine. My hands move. My brain counts.
At 6:50 AM I check my phone before report.
Brooke hasn't texted. Good.
Marco: Hope your shift was okay. Made $280 today, shorter day but still. Goodnight.
He's texting me good-night at — I check the timestamp — 10:47 PM. While I was being ambushed by his affair partner in my own ER.
I wonder if he knows she came. I wonder if she told him. I wonder if they still talk at all, or if the payments were the whole language between them.
I give report. Walk out. Drive home.
In the driveway I sit for nine minutes. I think about what happens next.
The agreement is sent. Brooke has thirteen days to sign.
When she signs — and she will, because the alternative is court — we'll have a legal document requiring monthly payments.
My lawyer says $500 a month for two years, with a balloon payment of $11,000 at the end if she can't keep up.
We'll likely get $12,000 total from her.
The rest comes from Marco in the divorce.
The divorce.
I haven't told him yet. I haven't said the word out loud to him. He thinks we're in a rough patch — that he'll earn the money back, that we'll go to counseling, that time will fix what he broke.
Time doesn't fix $23,000. Time doesn't unfuck my best friend. Time doesn't give me back the April night when I was coding a patient while he was in her bed.
I go inside. He's still asleep. I don't wake him.
I lock the bedroom door. Get into bed.
Twelve tiles. Thirty-two strokes. Ten seconds rinsing.
Tomorrow I call Heather and tell her to prepare the filing.
Tomorrow.
I lie in the dark and listen to the apartment settling around me. The refrigerator hums. A pipe ticks in the wall. Somewhere outside, a car door closes. These are the sounds of a life I'm about to dismantle.
I don't know when I fall asleep. But I do.