Loving Him Was My Punishment novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Night Nurse

The Harbor Diner had a back booth under a flickering sign, and she was already sitting in it with both hands around a mug.

She was about fifty, small, with grey in her braid and the stillness of someone who has spent years in corridors at night.

I slid in across from her.

Celia sat in her car outside the window with the engine running, and Padraig, at my asking, was nowhere in sight.

"I won't give you my name," the nurse said. "I still have a visa to keep."

"All right."

"Do you want it plain or gentle?"

"Plain," I said.

She nodded.

"You came to us at twenty-two on a Tuesday in April. Your stepmother handed the signed papers over and left before you were out of the car."

"I remember the car."

"The first month you were angry. The second month you stopped eating. The director said you were obsessed with a man and the obsession was a disease, and he had a treatment for it."

She drank some of her coffee.

"They put a clip on your forearm and a cuff on your wrist. The cuff was for the straps. They played a tape in your ears."

"What was on the tape?"

"His name," she said. "Over and over, in the director's voice, in a kind one. Then a nurse pressed a switch."

My hands went to the table edge.

"They did it in sessions of forty minutes, twice a day," she said. "The first month you called for him. Every night, down the corridor, I heard you. You called his name all the way down the corridor."

← Chapter 10 · All chapters · Chapter 12 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend