Chapter 13: Badge 4471

Sabine's POV

I answered Tobin's ninth call at the end of the motel road.

He was crying before I said a word.

"Where are you?" he said. "Strangers are writing that I should lose my license. I can't breathe."

"I'm driving," I said.

"Come to the hospital. Please. Only you can fix this."

I put the car in gear.

I did not look at the motel sign in the mirror.

I reached the hospital at dawn and did not go home.

At nine o'clock Tobin called the whole floor into the staff lounge.

Forty nurses crowded in.

He stood at the front in a clean gray cardigan with his hands pressed together.

"I want to say something before the rumors say it for me," he said.

His eyes were already red.

"A man attacked me in a restaurant. He is married to someone I respect. I was only trying to help her."

A nurse in the front row started crying with him.

"Some of you saw the video," he said. "I would never ask for sympathy."

His voice broke on the last word.

Three women reached him at once.

One of them put both arms around his shoulders.

"You're the best of us," she said.

He looked over her arm at me.

He did not smile.

He did not have to.

I had watched this act for six years.

Today I watched it knowing the man in the video was my husband, and that the whole room was cheering against him.

Nobody in the lounge asked me what I thought.

They never did.

I walked out and went straight down the hall to the records room.

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