Chapter 4: Late

I woke to a white ceiling and a nurse's voice.

"The bleeding has stopped, Mr. Ledford. You have an ulcer, and you need to stay put."

They had put a tube in my arm and a monitor on my finger.

I looked at the clock above the door and it said nearly midnight.

Nobody had come.

I waited an hour in case I was wrong about that.

Then I pulled the tape off my arm, took the tube out, and put my feet on the cold floor.

"Sir, you can't leave," the nurse said from the door.

"Watch me."

She stood aside, because she could not make me stay.

I signed a form with a hand that barely held the pen.

The night air outside the emergency entrance was sharp, and I was in a hospital gown and borrowed scrub pants.

I was three steps from the curb when a woman ran across the parking lot and caught my sleeve.

"Connor!"

It was Leanne.

Her coat was buttoned wrong and her hair had come out of its knot.

Her eyes were red, and I had never seen them like that.

I felt nothing.

"I called the hospital after the party," she said. "They told me you were admitted. Come back inside. You can't walk out of here."

"Let go."

I pulled my arm away, and my knees folded, and she caught me by the shoulders.

I looked at her face from six inches away.

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