I Was Billed For Every Minute Of Their Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nobody Counts Here

In Bev's spare room Libby gets her first unbilled meal. Dalton shows up at midnight with roses and she asks him one question he can't answer, then the staff bulletin names the new ER doctor.

Bev Lundgren opened her door at ten past eleven in a flannel robe, with her reading glasses pushed up into her gray curls.

She looked at my face, my bare left hand, and the coat I hadn't put on.

"Get in here," she said.

Bev was the charge nurse on my night shift, and she had never once asked me to explain myself before feeding me.

She sat me at her kitchen table and started a skillet.

"Don't tell me anything yet," she said. "Eat first."

The grilled cheese came out cut in triangles, the way my mother never cut anything.

I ate two.

Bev pushed a third one toward me.

"I shouldn't," I said. "That's a lot of your bread."

"Libby, hear me." She pointed the spatula. "Nobody counts in my kitchen. You eat until you're done."

My eyes went hot.

I ate the third one.

Then I took Dalton's invoice out of my purse and put it next to her plate.

She read it with her glasses down and her mouth getting thinner at every line.

She got to the bottom and set it face down.

"Your father hired him."

"For fourteen months."

"And the ring?"

"I left it on my father's folder."

Bev nodded slowly.

"Good place for it," she said.

My phone started buzzing on the table.

Dalton, eleven calls, then texts.

Libby, please. Where are you? Libby, it's not what it looks like. Libby, I'm outside your apartment.

I turned it face down on top of the invoice.

"There's a spare room," Bev said. "It has a sewing machine in it and a bed under the sewing machine. You can have both."

"I can't stay here."

"You're not paying rent. You're sleeping."

I put my head in my hands and cried for the first time that night.

Bev didn't pat me or tell me it would be fine.

She just stayed in the chair across from me and let me take as long as I wanted.

At midnight, somebody leaned on her doorbell.

Bev looked at the clock on the stove, then at me.

"I'm not in the phone book," she said. "That's a man who went looking for my address."

"I told him about you once."

"Then I'll get the door."

"No." I wiped my face. "Let me."

Dalton stood on the porch under the yellow light with a bouquet of red roses still in cellophane.

He looked wonderful.

His hair was perfect, and his face was tight with exactly the right amount of worry.

"Libby." He took one step toward me and stopped. "I know how it looked."

"It looked like an invoice."

"Okay. It was an invoice." He gave a small, rueful laugh. "I'm not going to pretend. Your dad came to me fourteen months ago and made an offer. I took it. I'm not proud of that."

"You're doing well at not being proud."

"But, Lib, the money stopped mattering fast. I want to tell you the day it stopped."

"Okay," I said. "Tell me the day."

He opened his mouth.

"Around hour forty," he said. "Door County."

"Door County was a weekend."

"Right, so it was a long weekend, and..."

"You billed that weekend as forty hours. Every one of them."

"It's how the contract was written."

"You billed me sleeping next to you."

His smile stayed where it was, but it stopped doing anything.

"I'd have done all of it for free after that," he said.

"Then why did you send the invoice?"

He looked at the roses.

"Your father pays on receipt," he said.

I looked at him for a long moment, at the face I had thought was kind.

"Thank you," I said. "That's the first true thing you've told me."

I took the roses out of his hands.

I set them on the porch rail, very carefully, so the stems wouldn't snap.

Then I shut the door.

Through the wood I heard him say my name twice.

I heard his shoes go down the steps.

Bev was waiting in the hall with her arms folded.

"I would have thrown them at his head," she said.

"I'm saving that for later."

She laughed, a short surprised bark, and then so did I.

It was the first time I'd laughed all day.

Her phone lit up on the counter.

She read the screen and frowned.

"Hospital bulletin," she said. "Somebody posted the new hire list for the week."

She held it out to me.

I read the third name down, and the floor tilted.

Dr. Eli Kearney, Emergency Medicine, attending. Starting Monday, nights.

Two years ago he had sent me exactly one text.

I can't see you anymore. I'm sorry.

Then he had blocked my number.

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