He said he’d write up some discharge orders and ducked out of the curtain that separated her ER cubicle from the others. Izzy lay back on the gurney and slipped her hands underneath the scratchy blanket. She flattened them on her stomach.
As soon as she had gotten outside the clinic, the EMTs had put her on a stretcher beside Dr. Ward, even as she had tried to tell them she wasn’t hurt. He would have none of it. “She’s pregnant,” he insisted. “She needs medical attention.”
“Youneed medical attention,” she argued.
“There she goes again,” Dr. Ward said to the young paramedic inspecting his tourniquet. “Won’t give me a moment’s peace.” He caught her eye. “For which,” he said quietly, “I am supremely grateful.”
That was the last she had seen of him. She wondered if he was in surgery; if he would keep the leg. She had a good feeling about it.
Maybe some people simply were destined to survive.
She had grown up with a chronically unemployed father and a mother who struggled to take care of Izzy and her twin brothers, in a house so small that the three kids shared not just a room but a bed. But for a long time, she didn’t even know she was poor. Her mother would take them on a spare change hunt. They’d go fishing for dinner. Occasionally they celebrated Colonial Week—when they used candles instead of electric lights.
When Izzy thought about her life, there was such a clear break between then and now. Now, she lived with Parker in a house three times larger than her childhood home. He was, on paper, the prince from the entitled family who’d fallen for a debt-ridden nursing-student Cinderella. They had met when he was in traction with a broken leg. Their first date, he liked to say, had been a sponge bath.
Parker had gone to Yale like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. He had grown up in Eastover, the snobbiest neighborhood in the whole state. He went to private schools and dressed in miniature blazers and ties even as a child. Hesummered. Even his job—a documentary filmmaker—was possible only because of his trust fund.
Izzy still ordered the cheapest thing on a menu if they ate out. Their freezer was packed with food, not because she couldn’t afford to go grocery shopping now, but because you never stopped anticipating another lean time.
They might as well have come from different planets. How on earth were they supposed to raise a child together?
Izzy wondered if now—finally—the fault line of her life would no longer be the first day she earned a paycheck. It would now be today’s shooting; she would divide everything intobeforeandafter.
A nurse entered the cubicle. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m good,” Izzy said, glad that her shaking hands were still tucked under the blanket.
“I got some information on that patient you asked after…”
“Dr. Ward?” Izzy sat up.
“No. The woman. Bex something? She came out of surgery okay,” the nurse said. “She’s in intensive care.”
Izzy felt tears spring to her eyes.Thank God.“And what about Dr. Ward?”
The nurse shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’ll keep an eye out.” She looked at Izzy with sympathy. “I guess y’all went through Hell together.”
They sure had. In trying to save Bex’s life, Izzy had pushed her finger through the other woman’s chest wall; had felt for the pillow of her labored lungs. She had been covered in Dr. Ward’s blood.
“The police want to talk to you,” the nurse said. “They’ve been waiting. But if you’re not feeling up to it, I’m happy to tell them.”
“Can I use the restroom, first?”
“You sure can,” the nurse replied. She helped Izzy off the gurney and led her through the curtain to a single-person bathroom. “You need any help?”
Izzy shook her head. She closed the door and locked it, leaned against the wood. The shakes had migrated from her hands to the rest of Izzy’s body. Her teeth were chattering now.
Textbook shock.
“Pull yourself together,” she commanded, and she ran water in the sink and splashed it on her face. She blotted her skin dry with paper towels, looking at the bathroom mirror, and immediately wished that she hadn’t. Her hair had long ago escaped its braid and was a hot red frizz around her face. The scrubs they had given her to replace the bloody ones she had been wearing when she was brought in were too big, and the top was slipping off one shoulder, like a really poor version of a sexy nurse fantasy. Although she had washed off most of the blood that covered her arms and neck, she could see the spots she had missed.
She scrubbed until her skin was raw and then walked back to her little cubicle. Hovering outside the curtain was a police officer. “Miz Walsh? I’m Officer Thibodeau. I was hoping you might be able to just give a short statement?”
She drew back the curtain and sat down on the gurney, her legs dangling. “Where do you want me to start?”
Thibodeau scratched above his ear with his pen. “Well, I guess at the beginning,” he said. “You went to the clinic this morning?”
“Yes.”
