But then I went to work one day on the labor and delivery unit and BAM.
There he was.
I’d been having a really good day.
I’d made a new friend named Eddy—though that was a nickname for Edith. I’d actually held a conversation with a few of the nurses and they’d asked me if I was staying, instead of joking that I wouldn’t make it through a winter.
And I’d gotten some really freakin’ cute photos of Neo on his afternoon hike up a mountain courtesy of the dog walker.
All was well in my world.
Until it wasn’t.
I’d picked up some IV fluids, my intent to deliver them to Eddy’s room before I headed out for the day, when I pushed open her door and came to a sudden and bone-jarring halt.
Gentry.
In the flesh.
Right there for everyone and their brother to see.
I’m not sure what I said or did in that minute and a half I was in Eddy’s room.
I knew that I dropped off the saline like everything was okay.
But inside…
No, inside, I was freaking the fuck out.
Gentry.
Alive.
Well.
Not dead.
Not in prison.
ALIVE.
I hurriedly exited the room, then the floor, then the hospital.
I was almost all the way home when the red and blue lights lit up my back window.
I pulled over on autopilot, not quite adding two and two together at first. I mean, later, I’d look back at that moment in the hospital room and see Gentry dressed in the sheriff’s department uniform.
Then I’d think to myself, yeah, you should’ve kept driving and gone far, far away.
Another state, perhaps.
But I didn’t.
I pulled over on autopilot.
I came to a stop.
Then I stared in the rearview mirror, waiting for the officer to get out.
