100% Compatibility novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Nurse

The lobby of Farnsworth Match had a floor of white marble and a wall of orchids.

I had walked across it every morning for six years.

At nine the next day I walked across it in a black coat, with Maeve on my left and the nurse on my right.

He was sixty, broad, gray-haired, in a church suit that had been pressed that morning.

He carried a green accordion folder against his chest.

"They told me this building has a lot of glass," he said.

"It has," I said.

"Good," he said.

"I like being seen when I tell the truth."

The security desk saw us coming.

Two guards started to stand.

A young coach I knew by sight stepped out from behind the orchids with her phone up and her thumb on the red button.

"I'm live," she whispered.

"Four hundred people already."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me," she said.

"I've wanted to do something for six years."

I stopped in the middle of the marble, and the sound of my shoes stopped with me.

Staff were drifting out of the elevators to look.

I raised my voice, because I knew how to be heard in a room.

"Good morning, everyone," I said.

"Seven years ago I signed a paper in this building, and as of last night the whole city has seen me do it."

"I'd like to tell you what I signed."

I turned to the nurse.

He opened the folder with careful hands.

"My name is on every page," he said.

"I was Mr. Keogh's home nurse for twenty-two months."

"The firm paid my agency, in installments, forty thousand dollars."

"That's every visit, every shift, every dose, signed by me and by him."

"Mr. Keogh couldn't hold a pen near the end, so he made a mark."

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