10
Cord roused once, and Molly forced meds on him and a glass of water.
He drifted off again.
Heard her talking, on the phone probably. Her voice was distant.
"Is there a doctor in Sutter's Hollow that does house calls?"
There was movement from the kitchen. Running water. The scrape of a pot against the stove.
"What about an urgent care clinic?"
Sutter's Hollow was too small for that. What'd she need a doctor for anyway?
Oh. For him.
Chills wracked his body. His muscles clenched up. He ached all over.
Doctor Kindley wouldn't see him as a patient. Even after the oaths that doctors took in med school.
Because of Noah.
He hadn't wanted Molly to find out about Noah. Somehow in his delirium, his tongue had loosened, and he'd let it slip. Now she knew about his part in that fateful night, but she couldn't know how the town had turned against him. Starting with Mackie.
"Really?" Her voice had grown subdued.
He wanted to stand up and go to her, take the phone from her hands and hang it up.
But he was so weak, he couldn't even lift his head off the pillow. Couldn't open his eyes.
Iris. It had to be Iris. Or Jilly.
For a moment, a wash of affection slid over him. Iris and Jilly were—
They weren't his friends. He had to remember that. He'd left them behind, abandoned their friendship just like he'd abandoned West. He could never recapture what had been lost.
The five of them had been there that night. Iris and Jilly. Himself. Noah and Callum. Callum had disappeared and never returned. He'd been Iris's boyfriend, but he'd skipped town without a word.
After the joke that was Cord's trial in front of a district judge, he'd gone to the hospital to try to make things right with Noah. His former friend, covered in bandages and permanently in the dark, had been awake but silent and cold from the hospital bed.
And Cord had known the whole thing was his fault.
Pain sliced through his head. Shivers racked him.
Molly's voice moved closer. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking in on him.
A double batch of chills hit him, and he couldn't stop shivering. He was shivering so violently that the wooden couch legs scraped against the wood floors.
"I gotta go." There was a pause. "Thanks."
Her footsteps padded toward him. He wished he was in his bedroom, where he could suffer alone.
He didn't like being weak. He didn't like her seeing him like this.
Warmth settled over him. A gentle weight. She must've put a blanket on.
Then she brushed back the hair at his temple, and her touch was soft as the fur on those tiny kittens he'd hauled up to the house.
