Chapter 11: Guests Only

I got out of the truck slowly, with one hand on my side.

Sabine did not move.

Behind her, the office door had opened.

Three truck drivers in work jackets stood on the porch with paper cups of coffee.

They had come for the morning pancakes Deirdre served to regulars.

Now they were watching us.

"How did you find me?" I said.

"The car," Sabine said. "You left my number as the emergency contact on the roadside plan."

I had filled in the form out of habit.

Five years of habit.

"The service alerted me when it used the county hospital's address at midnight," she said. "I drove all night."

Her eyes dropped to my side, to the dressing under my shirt.

She was a surgeon.

She saw it before I said a word.

"You're bleeding."

"A county doctor drained it an hour ago. Which is more than your hospital managed."

"What are you talking about?"

I pulled the folded paper from my wallet and held it out.

She read it.

I watched her read it.

"No complications," she said slowly. "Routine recovery. Signed by Tobin."

"I hemorrhaged," I said. "They gave me three units of blood."

The color left her face from the top down.

"That was you."

I did not answer.

"The man in the recovery room. Heath was screaming in the hall, and I..."

She put her hand over her mouth.

"He asked me if I knew who was in that bed. I said it was a patient."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rules Bend, Just Not for Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.