Chapter 12: The Dress Shop

Maggie wanted a look at him before the gala, so I brought him to the ER at the end of her Wednesday shift.

He came in a gray coat with two coffees from the cart out front.

He stood just inside the sliding doors with the coffees held out.

A security guard watched him.

So did two orderlies and a woman with a bleeding hand.

Maggie came around the nurses' station in blue scrubs, braid pinned up, with a clipboard under her arm.

She looked at the coffee.

She looked at him.

"That's the man who said it was a Tuesday," she said to me.

"Yes," I said.

"Say it to my face," Maggie said.

Elliot set both coffees on the counter.

"I was wrong," he said.

"I told your sister she couldn't leave work the day you had surgery. I said it so she knew she had no choice.

You woke up alone because of me."

Maggie studied him for a while.

Then she picked up one of the coffees and sniffed it.

"Is this decaf?"

"No."

"Good. Don't ever bring me decaf."

She took a sip and pointed the cup at him.

"She cried in the stairwell the next day. I heard about it from the night nurse."

Elliot's face didn't change, but his hand tightened on the counter.

"If you ever make her cry like that again," Maggie said, "I'll put you in a bed myself."

"Understood."

"Good." She turned to me. "I like him a little. I hate that."

"I know," I said.

"Go away. I have a patient."

On Thursday she came dress shopping with me.

We went to a narrow shop on Madison that Constance had named in a short, dry note.

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