Never In Another Life novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Say It Again

At six in the morning I walked into the director's office with the index card in my pocket and a plan.

I did not show her the card.

I had learned in three years of night shifts that a document you wave around too early becomes a story somebody else tells.

"I want two names on my mother's restricted visitor list," I said. "Margo Winslade and Constance Sayer."

The director put down her coffee.

"I'm sorry, hon. Is this about last night?"

"I'm her health care proxy. I'm allowed to do it."

"You are," she said slowly. "May I ask why?"

"Because one of them handed me a bus ticket and a deadline, and the other one raised her."

I had no better way to say it.

She looked at me for a long moment.

"I'll put it in the system," she said. "I can't promise it holds if a lawyer shows up."

"Then I'll deal with the lawyer."

I had barely said it when the front doors opened, and a lawyer showed up.

He wore a gray suit and carried a leather folder.

Behind him came a woman in a navy wool coat with silver hair cut to her jaw and a strand of pearls that had probably cost more than my mother's yearly care.

Constance Sayer.

She had a way of walking into a room.

Margo came in last, pale and red-eyed, holding a paper cup in both hands.

Declan was already in the lobby.

I had not known he'd come back in.

He stood at the window with Sammy, whose face was still creased from the car seat, and when he saw his mother his shoulders came up.

"Mother," he said. "What are you doing?"

"What I should have done three years ago."

Constance did not look at him.

She looked at me.

She took in the scrubs, the hair in its elastic, the sleeves pushed up to the elbow.

"So it's true," she said, loud enough for the whole lobby. "The nurse is alive."

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