Chapter 12: Nine Out of Ten

I found Roan at the coffee machine at ten past midnight.

He was feeding quarters into the slot, and a respiratory tech was standing next to him, talking with her hands.

I stopped behind a pillar with the book against my chest.

"I'm serious, Doc," the tech said. "My brother got out of rehab in March."

"He couldn't sleep, so I put the show on for him in the car."

"Did it help?"

"It was the only thing that did. And there's this one line."

She grinned.

"Say the scary thing at three in the morning. It weighs less in the dark."

The quarter fell out of Roan's hand and rang on the tile.

"I wrote it on his bathroom mirror," the tech said. "He says it every night now. It's the best thing that guy ever said."

"I'm glad it helped him," Roan said, in a voice I barely recognized.

She patted his arm and went back to bed twelve.

I stepped out from behind the pillar.

He turned, and I saw it in his face before I said a word.

"You never told anyone you said that to me," I said.

"I said it to you."

"On the first night, on the dock. You said it, and I went home and wrote it in my notebook."

"And it's on the radio."

"It's in a book," I said, and held up the galley. "It's the first page."

He took it from me and read the epigraph without moving.

Keep reading free with an account. Start We Called It Therapy After Dark from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.