Chapter 6: Visiting Hours

By four that afternoon I was standing in my own ER waiting room.

I held a paper lunch bag Tiernan had packed, and Camille Dunn was walking toward me with flowers.

I had come for my locker and my last check.

I had not come for her.

She came through the sliding doors in the same pale gray coat.

She carried a bouquet of white lilies the size of a toddler.

Behind her a young woman held a microphone, and behind that a cameraman backed in sideways.

The little red light on the camera was on.

Every chair in the room was full.

A mother with a feverish boy on her lap.

An old man with his wrist in a makeshift sling.

A teenager in a soccer jersey with an ice pack on her ankle.

They all turned to look.

"Willa," Camille said, in a voice a size too small for the room. "I had to see you. I couldn't stand it another day."

She held out the lilies.

"I've forgiven you, and I wanted you to know it to your face."

I looked at the flowers, and I looked at the red light.

Then I looked at the clock above the triage desk, and I took out my phone.

At 2:10 that afternoon, the detective had texted me a photograph of a signed page.

I held it up to the camera.

"Ms. Dunn," I said. "This is a temporary order of protection, signed by the judge at ten past two."

"It says you stay five hundred feet away from me at all times."

"Is the camera recording?" I asked the cameraman.

He nodded without meaning to.

"Good. Then everyone watching has just seen you walk through a door and break a court order, in the building where you put me."

The room went very quiet.

The young reporter lowered her microphone an inch and looked at Camille.

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