He Ruined Me—Now He Crawls Back Begging novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Two Cities

"No," I said.

He took it the way he'd taken every no since Thanksgiving. He didn't argue. He just stood there and let it land.

"Not only here," I said. "And not only Chicago."

He frowned. "Both?"

"I've got a crew in Chicago who stood up for me in a break room. I've got Peg. You've got a mother and a coffee company and nine stone steps." I shrugged. "I'm a night nurse. I can make any schedule work."

"Both cities," he said slowly.

"Both. You fly. I fly. Nobody gets handed over, and nobody gets left on a step."

He started to smile.

"You've already planned it," he said.

"I made a spreadsheet on the plane."

In February, the surgeon in Miami who'd put seven screws in his leg rebuilt my knee.

Santiago sat in the waiting room for six hours in a plastic chair.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was him asleep with his head on the bed rail and his cane on the floor.

In March, I learned to walk again on the parallel bars at the top of the hotel on the river.

He stood behind me with his hands on my hips.

"Heel first," he said. "Then roll through. Then push."

I swore at him in Spanish.

"I heard that."

"You don't speak Spanish."

"I speak it better than you," he said. "Two more lengths. Stop looking at me. Look at your feet."

He was a terrible coach. He never let me quit.

By April, I didn't limp.

Peg's bowling league threw a fish fry and raised eleven thousand dollars, and on Saturdays I ran a free walk-in clinic in the old school-bus garage in Gary where Peg used to park her route.

Peg ran the waiting room. Nobody cut the line twice.

In Medellín, I worked Tuesdays at a clinic at the bottom of the hill, in the neighborhood where the boy from the dock lived.

He brought his mother in the first week, for her blood pressure.

He showed me his hand. The scar was thin and straight and white.

"Good work," he said in careful English.

"Yours too," I said.

Bella was sentenced on the last Friday in April, in a courtroom on the West Side, eight blocks from my ER.

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