Chapter 11
Hope
I kissed a patient forty minutes ago and now I'm walking back to admin with my notebook under my arm and my pen behind my ear, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum. I keep pressing my lips together and catching myself doing it.
I wait for the guilt to show up and it doesn't, and I'm not surprised. The accident took care of that. This version of me is thinking about how his hand felt on the back of my neck.
Lane is at the nurses' station when I round the corner. He looks up from his paperwork and watches me pass.
"Long one today, honey?"
"Eh, it's average." I wonder if he can see it written all over my face. The flush I can't quite get rid of. The way I keep touching my mouth.
He nods and goes back to his paperwork and I keep walking.
Kent is in Conference Room B with the door open when I pass, so I knock on the frame to say hi.
He's sitting at the far end of the table with his legal pad and his briefcase, jacket draped over the chair beside him.
Sleeves rolled to the forearm. Hair pushed back from his face.
The shirt fits him well enough that I can see the line of his shoulders through the fabric, and I look at that longer than I need to.
"Ms. Turner." He gestures at the chair across from him. "Come in, sit, please."
I sit.
He flips a page on his pad, he doesn't look up for a few seconds, and in those seconds I watch his hands. Broad. Clean. The tendons shift when his pen moves, and his fingers are long and precise, I make myself look at the folder on the table instead.
"Your last three reports," he says. "The board filed them without comment."
"Good."
"Not good. Unusual." He puts his pen down and meets my eyes. "The board has commented on every report you've filed since Week Two. The fact that they didn't means someone told them not to."
"Dr. Hudson?"
"Hudson doesn't have the pull. Someone above him." He picks up a folder and opens it. "I spent several billable hours last week trying to find your angle."
I blink. "Excuse me, my angle?"
"Everyone who walks into a case this messy has an angle.
Crusaders. Career builders. People who want their name on a precedent.
" He turns a page. "I looked at your other placements.
Three facilities, two states. Every report filed on time, every finding documented, every outcome favorable for the patient without a single instance of bias or advocacy overreach.
" He closes the folder. "You don't have an angle. "
"I could have told you that in our first meeting."
"You could have but I wouldn't have believed you."
He looks at me and he's not evaluating me, which is new. Every meeting before this one he's had his guard up, and now he doesn't, and I wasn't expecting that. He looks younger without it. Less like a lawyer and more like a person.
"The board meeting," he says. "When you asked Hudson to put it in writing. You meant it." He pauses. "That's either useful or dangerous."
"It can be both."
His mouth twitches. He catches it and straightens his cuffs, and for a second I see past the suit and the billable hours to something underneath. Something almost human.
"I'd like to coordinate documentation going forward. Your session notes, my legal filings. Same data makes the case stronger."
"You want to collaborate."
"I want to stop billing hours trying to prove you're not what you appear to be."
I nod and say "Fine." I don't know when we stopped being adversaries. Maybe just now, or maybe a few weeks ago when I told Hudson his treatment plan didn't hold up and Kent didn't say a word against me.
I stand up to leave. My bag catches on the chair and Kent reaches forward to unhook the strap, his hand brushing the outside of my arm. Goosebumps run up my skin before I can do anything about it.
Shit.
In the corridor I press the heel of my hand against my chest because my heart is racing and I need a second to get my shit together. I kissed Jude this morning and now I have goosebumps from his lawyer's hand on my arm and I don't know what to do with either of those things yet.
Rounds take the rest of the afternoon. Ward B, the medication dispensary, admin for a chart review, then Ward C. The whole time I'm thinking about Jude's mouth on mine, the way his hand found the back of my neck and held me there. I kissed him back.
I'm back in Ward C for the afternoon round, eyes going straight to the far checkpoint to see if Gage is on shift.
He's there. Arms crossed, radio clipped to his belt, watching the corridor the way he watches everything—still, steady, not missing a thing. When he sees me, his posture changes. Shoulders come down. Chin lifts. If you didn't know what to look for you'd miss it.
"Afternoon," Gage says when I reach the checkpoint.
"Hey." I badge in and the light goes green. He reaches past me to hold the heavy door and his hand lands at the small of my back, firm and warm through the fabric of my shirt.
"Watch the step."
There's a raised lip where the corridor meets the secure wing threshold, a half-inch of uneven concrete the maintenance team has been meaning to fix since before I started. I've tripped on it twice and he's seen it both times, so the hand on my back makes sense and my face getting warm doesn't.
His voice is close to my ear. I keep my eyes forward.
"Thanks," I say. My voice sounds normal. He holds the door open, and his hand stays on my back one second longer than the step requires.
Then it's gone. He's back at his post with his arms folded and his face neutral, and I keep walking.
The drive home is twenty minutes of cold air through the cracked window. I drop my bag by the door, kick my shoes off, and stand in my kitchen for a minute with my hands on the counter.
The fridge has leftover pasta and half a bag of spinach that's going limp. I eat the pasta cold and lean against the counter while the kettle boils. My phone buzzes while I'm pouring. Mishel.
Her face fills the screen the second I answer. Dark curly hair. Gold hoops. Red lipstick. She's on her couch with a glass of wine balanced on her knee, and her eyes narrow the instant she sees me.
"You sound weird," she says.
"I haven't said anything yet."
She squints at me through the phone. "You look different. Who is he?"
"What makes you think there's a he?"
"Because I've known you since we were nine and the only time you make that face is when someone's or something's gotten under your skin.
" She points at the screen. "You made it when Daniel Foster kissed you behind the gym in eighth grade.
You made it when you passed your masters.
You're making it now." Her finger jabs closer to the camera. "Spill."
I put the kettle down. Mishel is the one person in the world I don't pretend with. She sat with me in the hospital after the accident and read my scan results out loud because I couldn't focus on the words. She calls me on my shit and loves me anyway.
"It's complicated," I say.
"It's always complicated with you. Uncomplicate it."
"There might be more than one 'he.'"
She stops with the wine glass halfway to her mouth. Her eyes go wide and the glass lowers and she stares at me for three full seconds without blinking.
"...Hope."
"I know."
"More than—" She puts the wine down on the coffee table. "More than one?"
"I'm aware of how that sounds."
"How many?"
"Maybe two." I press my lips together. "Possibly three."
"You don't have a—Hope Margaret Turner, you are a court-appointed behavioral monitor at a maximum security psychiatric facility and you are telling me there might be more than one guy."
"Yes."
She picks up her wine. Drinks. Puts it down. Picks it up again. "Okay. Okay." She points at the screen. "We are unpacking all of this right now. Start talking."
I smile. I can't help it. "Not tonight. I'm tired and I don't even know myself yet."
"Absolutely tonight. I canceled a date for this."
"You did not."
"I would have." She leans closer to the camera, her face filling my screen.
"Okay fine, don't tell me tonight. But you know I love you and I'm on your side through whatever this turns into," she says.
"But you owe me every detail, and I mean every single one, and if any of them are criminals I'm going to need a much bigger glass of wine. "
She tells me I'm insane and I can't stop laughing.
"I love you," I say when I can breathe again.
"I love you too, you disaster." She grins at me through the phone. "Call me when you're ready to talk. I'll bring wine. And possibly bail money."
"Very funny."
"Who's joking?"
She hangs up and I stand in my kitchen with the phone still warm in my hand, smiling at nothing.