Left at City Hall, So I Called In His Life Debt novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: No Swelling

Kelsey collapses on cue, and Jillian, a nurse, examines the ankle in front of forty guests and tells them what she sees.

I had made it three steps toward the door when Kelsey screamed.

It was a thin, high sound, and it ended in a crash of chairs.

"Kelsey!" Brett shouted. "Somebody call an ambulance!"

I turned around.

She lay on the carpet with one arm flung over her face and the other hand pressed to her chest.

Brett was on his knees beside her, shaking her shoulder.

"Don't move her," I said.

I said it in the voice I use on the unit, and forty people shut up at once.

I crossed the room and knelt on her other side.

"I'm a nurse," I told the table. "Give me room."

"Get away from her," Brett said. "You've done enough."

"Brett," his father said. "Let her look."

I took Kelsey's wrist, the one that had worn my watch.

Her pulse was steady and slow.

Her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm, and her eyelids were pressed shut so hard that they creased at the corners.

"Kelsey, can you hear me?" I asked. "Squeeze my hand."

She did not squeeze it.

I lifted her eyelid with my thumb, and she rolled her eye up under the lid, and then she remembered and let it go slack.

"Her pupils are fine," I said. "Now I want to see the ankle."

"She's in pain," Brett said. "You can't touch it."

"She fell down a flight of stairs today and she's been walking on it all evening. Open the boot, Brett, or I will."

Nobody moved.

Then Brett's mother said, in a small, flat voice, "Open it."

Brett looked at her.

Diane did not look back at him. She was staring at Kelsey's foot.

Brett undid the straps.

I pulled the boot away and set it on the carpet, and I took the foot into both my hands.

Under the dim chandelier it was the color of any foot.

I pressed along the bone, then around the knob of the ankle and up the tendon.

I turned it left and right.

"There's no swelling," I said, loud enough for the back of the room. "No bruise, and no heat. If this had been sprained at noon it would be purple by now."

Kelsey's mouth twitched.

"Does this hurt?" I asked, and I pressed the side of her heel hard.

Nothing happened.

Then, two seconds late, she cried out and clutched at her cardigan.

"It hurts," she gasped. "It really hurts, Bretty."

"It didn't hurt until I stopped," I said. "I pressed it first, and you said nothing."

I laid her foot down gently, because I would have done the same for anyone.

"Her ankle is fine," I said. "And she hasn't fainted. Her pulse is seventy-two."

A man near the window had his phone out.

Another woman had hers raised beside him.

Half the room had their phones raised to film.

Kelsey opened her eyes and began to cry for real.

"She's lying," she sobbed. "She hates me. She's always hated me. Brett, she's accusing me in front of everyone."

"She's a trained nurse," Jonas said from the doorway.

He had not moved since I knelt.

"If you disagree, Miss Dunn, the county hospital is ten minutes away. I'll take you myself."

"No," Kelsey said, too quickly.

"There's a scan I can pay for tonight," Jonas said.

"I just want to go home and lie down."

"Take her to the hospital, Brett," his father said. He had set down his glass. "Tonight."

"She's been through enough!" Brett shouted. He got to his feet. "She lost her whole family, Jillian. She's just a traumatized friend."

I stood up and wiped my hands on my dress.

"Then she can be traumatized at a hospital," I said. "With a doctor, and a scan."

Kelsey clung to his sleeve and wept into it.

He lifted her into his arms, her bare foot dangling, and I watched her tuck her face into his neck.

Over his shoulder she looked at me.

There were no tears in that look at all.

Brett carried her to the door.

Then he stopped, turned, and nodded his head at me.

"Out in the corridor," he said. "Now."

I went because I wanted the room to hear.

In the corridor he set Kelsey down on a bench, and she sat very still with her hands in her lap.

He took my elbow and pulled me three steps away, to the wall under a family portrait.

"What is wrong with you?" His voice cracked. "You humiliated her. In front of my parents."

"She humiliated herself."

"Who is that man?"

"I told you. My husband."

"You can't be married to him," Brett said. His grip tightened. "We're getting married. We have a date. Dinner is on the schedule. It's a joke, it's a stunt, you're doing this to punish me."

"Let go of my arm."

He didn't.

"Jillian. Please. Don't make me choose. Not tonight, not with her like this."

Behind him, on the bench, Kelsey lifted her head and waited to hear my answer.

I looked at the hand on my arm, and at his wrist, and at the place where my watch used to be.

"You already did," I said.

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