Chapter 9: The Loft

Melina's POV

Doran came to the shop at nine that night with a black notebook and no excuses.

He put it on the workbench and stepped back.

Hal looked at the two of us and took his coat off the hook.

"I'm going home," Hal said. "I'm old and I'm deaf, and the loft has a door."

"Hal," I said.

"I'm deaf." He left.

I opened the notebook under the work lamp.

Every page held a date, a time and one plain sentence in a nurse's neat hand.

Patient ambulated unaided to east wing, 0214.

Patient asked me to leave the chair in the hall for the day shift.

Patient laughed when I asked about her pain scale.

I read thirty entries, and then I stopped, because my eyes had gone hot.

"Over two hundred entries," Doran said quietly. "I checked them tonight."

"And I said sorry to her at breakfast for all of those days."

"Yes."

"I don't forgive you."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Why tonight?" I asked.

"I quit this afternoon. Constance wanted a statement that you pushed Elora's chair over."

"And you wouldn't write it."

"Then my mother's care home called. Her room is under review as of Friday."

I closed the notebook.

"Then we fight Friday," I said. "I'm not forgiving you, Doran. But you're not alone with it."

His breath went out of him, and he put one hand over his mouth.

I had spent two years watching that man look at the floor, and now he looked at me and didn't stop.

It was a long look, and it dropped to my mouth.

"You're staring," I said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I've wanted to for two years, and I was never allowed."

I heard it land in my chest.

"You hold still very well," I said. "I noticed that today."

"You told me to."

"I did." I stepped around the workbench. "I have terms."

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