Chapter 10: Six Envelopes

Joss's POV

By six on Wednesday evening I was eating dinner in the Metro cafeteria.

A dozen residents and the whole night nursing staff sat at the long tables around me.

He slid into the seat across from me with a tray and Friday's chart for his cosign.

"Your note on the stab wound is the cleanest I've read in a year," he said.

I took the chart from his hand, initialed the margin and handed it back across the table.

"Cliff."

"Yes, Dr. Tarrant."

I leaned in, so the charge nurse at the next table couldn't hear.

"Friday night, after our shift, I'm going to take your scrubs off with my teeth," I said, in my report voice.

He had just put a forkful of rice in his mouth.

He did not swallow it for some time.

"Is that a threat," he said, when he could talk.

"It's a schedule."

The charge nurse looked over, and I looked innocently at my salad.

Cliff's ears went red.

It was wonderful.

I got to Dess's walk-up at nine and found Bennett on the stoop again, with a banker's box in his arms.

He wasn't holding coffee.

He stood up when he saw me, and his face was gray and tight.

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," he said.

I waited.

"I went to the house tonight to get the last of your things. The boots, your father's tools. I thought you'd want them."

"Thank you," I said.

"The housekeeper let me into my mother's study to look for your passport. Joss, she keeps a file."

He took a manila folder off the top of the box and held it out.

It had a single initial on the tab, in Rosalyn's upright hand.

I took it and opened it on the stoop under the bare bulb.

Inside were six envelopes with the Metro seal, slit open with a letter opener and refolded.

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