Chapter 10: The Ledger

Maura's POV

I went in for my Sunday shift an hour early, in scrubs, with Damon's sweatshirt still in my bag.

I had left him asleep in my bed with a note that said I'd be back at midnight and that he was not to answer the door.

I could still feel the weight of his hand on my hip.

I pushed it aside and walked down the hospital corridor.

The break room was full.

Six nurses and two orderlies were standing around the coffee machine, and every one of them looked at me.

"Is it true?" said the day charge nurse. "That Mr. Ostrow walked out on Friday?"

"He ticked a box."

"We heard about the laundromat."

"Who from?"

"Everybody," she said. "Somebody's cousin put the video on the internet."

I had not looked.

She turned her phone around, and there I was on a wet staircase with my phone held out, saying "I'm the person you'd have to go through."

It had thousands of views.

I handed the phone back.

"Is the administrator in?"

"He's been in since six. His door's locked and the shredder's been going for an hour."

"Shredder," I said.

I walked down the hall.

The administrator's office had a frosted-glass door, and behind it I could hear paper being fed into a machine, over and over.

I knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again and said, "It's Garvey."

The shredder stopped.

"I'm on a call," he said.

"You aren't."

I knew the lock. In nine years I had watched the cleaning staff open it with a credit card.

I did it with my hospital badge, and the door swung in.

He was behind his desk with his jacket off.

There was a banker's box of files on the carpet beside him and a shredder bin bulging with paper.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Wife Sent Me to a Psych Ward, So I Gave Her a Big Surprise from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.