The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Ben's POV: Station Four

Ben's POV

I couldn't sleep at the station.

That was new.

For twelve years I'd slept anywhere, in a rig, on a gurney, on a bench outside an ER.

Now I lay on the bunk at three in the morning with my boots on, listening to the bay doors tick as they cooled.

Station four was quiet.

My partner was in the other room, snoring through a wall.

I pulled my jacket off the hook and put my hand in the inside pocket.

The paper towel was soft with handling.

I didn't unfold it.

I knew what was in it.

I held it for a minute, then I put it back, and I took a pen out of the chart bag and a blank patient report form off the shelf.

I turned the form over.

I wrote: June.

I crossed it out and wrote: Dear June.

I crossed that out, too.

The pen was bad and the light was worse.

I wrote the first true thing I could think of, which was: You said you wanted the one who goes back out.

I looked at that for a long time.

Then I kept going.

I wrote that I had been a coward in October, and that I had put in for the transfer because I thought I was being kind.

I wrote that I had stood in her hallway the night she opened her bedroom door, and that it was the first time in two years I hadn't heard a baby crying in my head.

I wrote that I wasn't asking for her to love me.

I wrote that I was asking whether I could stay.

Not the spare room.

The house, the mornings, the Sunday pancakes in all seven shapes, her son's first word and whatever came after.

I wrote: I'll be tired some days. I'll come back every time.

My hand was shaking.

It was five minutes to four when the tones went off.

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