Chapter 15: The Black Notebook

Pru would not let me see Emmett until she had seen my back.

She dragged me into a supply room off the emergency ward, sat me on a stool and cut what was left of my shirt away.

"This one needs a dozen stitches," she said. "The rest I can tape."

"Pru."

"Hold still. I'm angry and I have a needle."

The first stitch pulled. I breathed through it.

"I heard everything through that tape," Pru said behind me. Her voice shook, and her hands did not. "The roof. The rifle. All of it."

"I know."

"Corvin kept you in a room."

"For nine years."

The needle stopped.

"And I spent three weeks telling you that you could tell me anything," she said, "and you couldn't, because you knew I'd see what you were."

"I was afraid you would throw me out."

"Calla Salisbury is on my lease." Pru pulled the next stitch tight. "I cried at your bed. I'm not throwing out anyone I cried over."

I covered my mouth with my hand.

"We're going to talk about the rest," she said, "when nobody is bleeding. Right now I need you to tell me the truth about one thing."

"Anything."

"Is the man out there the one who shot you?"

"Yes."

"Do you want him dead?"

I thought about it honestly.

"No," I said.

"Okay." She cut the thread. "Then I'll only hate him a little."

She taped the last dressing and put a clean scrub top over my head, and then she hugged me hard from behind, careful of the stitches.

Emmett Hanratty lay propped on pillows in a room at the end of the hall, grey in the face, with a drain in his side.

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