Shielded by the Ruthless Military Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Apology

Leah's mother and Keaton demand an apology in the hospital lobby, Leah shows everyone the bruise and tells her mother to cut her off, and the colonel stops Keaton from grabbing her a second time.

At seven the next morning I was standing in the hospital lobby with four stitches under my collar and my arm in a wrap.

The lockdown had lifted an hour earlier.

Clover had a coffee in each hand and was telling me I should be in bed.

"I'm going," I said. "I just need to sign out."

"Leah!"

My mother's voice carried across the whole lobby.

She came through the glass doors in a cream suit with her pearls on, and Keaton Pollard walked one step behind her.

A line of nurses at the front desk turned to look.

"Mom," I said. "I was in a lockdown. Somebody tried to kill a patient. I was on the stairs, and I was cut."

She stopped in front of me and looked at the bandage at my neck.

She did not ask what had happened.

"You walked out on the Pollards," she said. "In front of their partners. Do you know what I had to say to Keaton's mother last night?"

"I told you I wasn't ready for a wedding."

"Nobody mentioned a wedding."

"He did."

"Leah, apologize."

She said it in the voice she used for waiters.

I looked at Keaton. He had his hands in his pockets and a worried crease between his eyebrows.

It was a good crease. He had clearly practiced it.

"Marlene, it's all right," he said. "She's had a terrible night. I don't blame her. I just think someone should talk to her about these stories."

"What stories?" Clover said.

"The one about her wrist." He lowered his voice for the room, so the whole lobby leaned in to hear it. "She told people I hurt her. I would never touch a woman. I think she's under a lot of stress."

My mother's face softened toward him.

"You see how he is," she said to me. "He's being kind."

I unwrapped my arm.

I had taped gauze over the wrist at two in the morning because it hurt, and I peeled it off in front of the lobby.

Four long marks lay across the inside of it, and one deep oval on the bone.

They had gone nearly black.

"Clover," I said.

"Got it." She was already holding up her phone. "I took a picture of it last night, with the time on it. I've got the whole ward as witnesses, too."

Someone at the front desk drew a breath.

Keaton stopped smiling.

"That could be from anything," my mother said. "Falling, or equipment."

"It's the shape of a hand, Mom."

"Apologize to him."

"No."

"I am not going to ask you again."

"Good."

She stood very straight.

"Then I'm done. No more help with the house. No more help with anything. You are cut off, Leah. Do you hear me? Everything I've done for you stops today."

The lobby was silent.

I had waited twenty-five years for her to say it. I had been afraid of those words my whole life.

I felt nothing but tired.

"Then cut," I said.

My mother's mouth opened.

Keaton moved first.

He crossed the space between us in two steps and took hold of my wrist again. It was the same wrist and the same place.

"You're coming outside," he said through his teeth. "Right now."

Pain went up my arm.

"Let go."

"Stop making a scene."

"Mr. Pollard."

The voice came from behind him.

It was not loud.

A wheelchair had stopped at the elevator bank, and a captain in uniform stood behind it.

In the chair sat Colonel Kerrigan, in a gray T-shirt with a white bandage showing at the neck and a hospital band on his wrist.

His face had gone gray with pain. His eyes had not.

"Take your hand off her," he said. "You have until I finish this sentence."

Keaton did not let go. He turned his head, and he must have seen the uniform and the captain and the nurses.

"This is a private matter, sir."

"You're in my hospital. Every camera in this lobby records to my office." The colonel's voice did not rise. "You've just put your hands on a nurse twice in front of a full lobby."

Keaton's fingers opened.

I pulled my wrist back and held it against my chest.

"I was only trying to help her," Keaton said.

"Walk out of that door," the colonel said. "I'll decide later whether I need your name."

My mother had gone pale. She looked at the uniform, then at me, and for a second she seemed about to say something.

She didn't.

Keaton took her elbow, and the two of them went out through the glass doors together without looking back.

The lobby began to breathe.

Clover squeezed my arm. "Who is that?" she whispered.

"Colonel Kerrigan," I said. "That's all I know about him."

The captain wheeled the colonel two feet toward me and bent down to say something into his ear.

The colonel nodded.

"Nurse Marsden," the captain said, straightening. "The Colonel wants to see you in his office at 1400."

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