Chapter 2
My fingers tightened around the blind cord.
“Don’t,” Liam said again.
This time there was no command in his voice.
No coldness.
There was something far stranger coming from a man who had spent four days making it clear that fear was something other people felt around him.
He sounded afraid.
I turned toward him.
In the weak glow of the bedside lamp, Liam Mercer looked different.
His shoulders had gone rigid against the pillows.
One hand gripped the sheet near his hip, whitening his knuckles.
“You hate the dark,” I said.
His eyes flicked to mine.
“I hate people who don’t listen.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was the only one you’re getting.”
For four days I had watched this man endure procedures that would have reduced most patients to begging.
I had changed abdominal dressings while he stared at the ceiling and refused pain medicine.
I had flushed his IV when his veins burned from antibiotics.
I had cleaned around metal pins drilled through swollen tissue while his jaw locked hard enough to show every muscle along his face.
He had never looked frightened.
Not once.
Yet now, because my hand rested on a blind cord, Liam looked as if something on the other side of those curtains could hurt him more than anything I had already treated.
I released the cord.
His shoulders lowered by half an inch.
It was such a small movement that another person might have missed it.
Nurses learn to notice small movements.
They are often where the truth lives.
“I’m not opening them,” I said.
He said nothing.
“But you’re going to tell me why.”
His expression hardened immediately.
“There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The part where you become like the others.”
I folded my arms.
“I didn’t meet the others.”
“They all started the same way.
Medication.
Dressings.
Vital signs.”
He looked toward the dark windows.
“Then questions.”
“Maybe because you’re obviously hiding something.”
A humorless smile appeared.
“You were hired specifically not to ask questions.”
“I was hired to keep you alive.”
“For ten thousand dollars.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
Maybe because they were true.
I glanced at the medication tray so he wouldn’t see my face.
“Correct.”
“Then take the money and stop pretending you care.”
Something sharp rose in me.
Four nights of almost no sleep.
Four days of listening for changes in his breathing, checking drainage, watching his temperature climb and fall.
Four days of wondering whether Tommy had eaten breakfast, whether his gums had started bleeding again, whether the experimental trial still had a place for him.
I picked up Liam’s thermometer.
“Open.”
He stared at me.
“Excuse me?”
May you like
“Your mouth.
Unless mafia bosses measure temperature through intimidation.”
