Chapter 11: The ER

Nate drove me himself.

He'd pulled on his jeans and the flannel shirt inside out, and I didn't tell him.

The housekeeper had Lulu. Doris the bell hadn't rung once.

He stopped the car under the ER sign at Ballard and looked at me.

"I'll come in."

"No," I said. "If you walk in there, it's about you. It has to be about her."

"Then I'm parking and waiting. Text me."

I leaned across and kissed him, fast and hard, and got out.

The emergency room smelled of floor cleaner and cold coffee.

A police officer was standing outside a curtained bay at the end of the row with his thumbs in his vest.

My mother was in a plastic chair beside him in her church coat over pajama pants.

She stood up when she saw me.

She didn't hug me this time. There was no one to perform for but a cop.

"She's in there," she said. "Go on. She wants you."

I pulled the curtain back.

Shelby was sitting up on the bed in a hospital gown with a white bandage across her forehead and a bruise coming up purple on her cheekbone.

Her right wrist was cuffed to the bed rail.

Her honey hair was matted with something dark.

She looked at me and her face crumpled.

"Holly," she said. "I hit a pole."

"I heard."

"I didn't hit anybody. There wasn't anybody. It was just a pole."

"I know."

"They're going to take my license," she whispered. "My nursing license. I'm going to lose everything."

I stood at the end of the bed.

I'd imagined this a thousand times in a cell.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Ex-Convict Nanny and Billionaire Single Dad from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.