Chapter 13: What Was in the Bag

Devin's POV

I told Lydia I was going to the grocery store, and for once it was a lie with a receipt.

I did buy the groceries.

Then I drove to the hospital with one capsule from the courier's bottle sealed in a specimen bag in my coat pocket.

It was seven in the morning, and the day lab tech was just coming on.

She had run toxicology at Lorain General for nine years, and she owed me for covering three of her night calls.

"Don't put my name on it," I said, and held out the bag.

She looked at it, and then at me.

"This isn't a patient sample."

"No."

"Is this about the girl?"

I had never told her about a girl.

"Everybody in the ER knows about the girl," she said. "You've stopped eating the vending machine tacos. Give me an hour."

I did not sit down for the hour.

I stood in the stairwell and thought about Lydia asleep that morning, with her hand open on my pillow.

I had watched her sleep for twenty minutes before I left.

I counted her breaths, and I told myself it was a nurse's habit.

It was not a habit I had with anyone else.

I knew she was clear now, and I knew she could lose that at any second.

Some part of me kept waiting for her to wake up and look at me as a stranger.

She had done it once already, politely, in my kitchen.

I had decided that when it happened, I would say my name and make her coffee.

I had not decided what I would do with the rest of the day.

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