Chapter 5
Ihave seen some weird shit in my life, but this is next-level.
Sitting in her car, chewing on her thumbnail, Maisie ran the last couple of hours back over in her mind.
Yeah, definitely next-level. I think they’ll have to invent a new level for what I’ve seen today.
Maisie liked to think she had a pretty finely tuned bullshit detector. It had stood her in good stead in the past, and you kind of needed to develop one as a nurse. Especially if you’d worked in pediatrics, like she had – not that you really neededthatgreat of a bullshit detector when it came to kids, since there was really only one answer to the question ‘So how did the Super Mario figurine get stuck up your nostril?’and ‘It fell up there’was definitely not it.
It wasn’t as if anything had beenwrong, exactly – she’d followed the instructions she’d been given over the phone, despite her misgivings. If this guy reallydidhave something wrong with him, then she wanted to do the right thing, and he’d seemedveryinsistent that a hospital couldn’t help him.
And, she had to admit, there’d been people waiting for her when she’d pulled up outside the address she’d been given, and theydefinitelyhad seemed to know what they’d been doing. The guy – Rhys, she supposed she should call him, since he wasn’t justsome guy– had been whisked away on a gurney, a short, dark-haired woman barking out instructions to her assistants as they wheeled him away.
A tall, stern man who hadn’t told her his name had taken Rhys’s phone from her, too – and then thanked her for her time, told her not to worry and that everything would be fine. She had to assume he was the guy who’d given her instructions about how to find this place, but given what a whirl her thoughts were in, she couldn’t be quite sure.
But… is Rhys going to be all right?she’d asked, trying to peer past the man and through the doors Rhys had been taken through. Which was impossible, since they were made of solid wood.
Yes,the man said, nodding.I think we can be assured of that.
Maisie had felt less certain though. He’d been passed out and getting paler and paler in front of her eyes.
And whatwasthat green goo, anyway?
Is there anything else we can do for you?the man had asked after a moment.I’m very thankful you brought Rhys here, but you can leave anything else to us.
Maisie had shaken her head, muttering something about how it’d be nice if someone could head to her place to fix her window, since it’d been completely smashed in – and she’d only meant it as a tense little joke, but the guy had nodded and saidDone,and then twenty minutes later Kara, home from her shift, had called Maisie to ask if she knew how the window had gotten broken, because there were a bunch of guys there now repairing it.
I never told them my address,she thought, chewing on her nail even harder than ever.What the hell is happening here?!
Guilt gnawed at her as she glanced at her phone to check the time. Her shift had started about half an hour ago, and earlier this evening she’d scrambled to contact a colleague who was saving to buy a house (in this economy!) and so was always looking for extra shifts, and then, feeling worse and worse with every word she typed, had texted her shift manager:Good evening! I’m afraid that I have a sore throat and a cough. Carole says she can cover my shift, so you’ll be seeing her tonight instead of me! I’m sorry!
She felt bad enough about missing work – something she hadn’t done inyears– but now she strongly suspected her manager would just think she was skiving off to sneak away on her holiday sooner, despite the fact she’d been urging Maisie to take her masses of accumulated leave for months.
She hardly ever took time off to begin with, but taking it now – and right before going away on holidays – was eating away at her a little.
Stop it. The hospital won’t crumble to dust if you take an extra day off for once in your life. And you’d be liable to give someone the wrong medication if you went in right now, you’re so distracted.
This was part of why she needed a holiday, she knew. The desire to make other people happy, to make sure her patients received the best possible care at any given moment, was overwhelming sometimes. And of course those things were important, but she knew that at some point, she had to make time for what madeherhappy.
Maisie had seen too many colleagues burn out and quit nursing altogether, or become impatient and blasé, and she didn’t want to end up in the same position. She didn’t want to hate her job, or her patients, or herself.
She stared out into the darkening evening, leg jiggling nervously, looking for… she didn’t even know what, exactly. The building she’d been directed to park outside was nondescript, the kind of place she would’ve expected to hold a combination of businesses, maybe a law firm or some architects or something. She wouldn’t have thought it would hold some sort of top-secret, high-tech medical lab that specialized in treating green goo exposure… but then again, wherewouldanyone expect to find such a thing?
In any case, the lights facing the street had all gone out about ten minutes ago. Was Rhys even still in there?
… Is he dead?
Maisie couldn’t begin to explain the horror that twisted her gut at that thought. It made no sense. She’d seen so much death in the course of her work – why would the possibility in this instance affect her so much more than usual? Sure, it was a little more personal than usual – certainly, she’d never had a patient crash through her bedroom window before, or stare into her eyes so intently, orsuck on her fingers, what the actualfuck– but still, there was something about the idea of Rhys having possibly died that just stunned her on a visceral level.
He couldn’t be dead. Hecouldn’tbe.
Because…
I don’t know why. He just can’t be. I couldn’t handle it.
There was a small voice in her head that was telling her he wasn’t dead. That she wouldknowif he was. That if he had died, she would be inconsolable.
Which didn’t makeany sense.
