Chapter 6: Hazard Pay

Three men dragged a hose across the gravel and soaked my car until the flames went out.

It was a twelve-year-old Corolla with a cracked dash and a hundred and ninety thousand miles.

It had been the first thing I ever bought with my own money.

Boone stood at the end of the lot and watched the grey sedan turn onto the river road and disappear.

He did not chase it.

"Why didn't you go after them?" I asked.

"Because that's what they want," he said. "A feather means they'll be back. They want me running at night with one hand off the bars."

He pulled the black feather from under the wiper and folded it into his fist.

"I'm sorry about your car," he said.

"It was a bad car."

"It was yours."

I looked at the wet black shell of it.

"Then buy me a better one when I get my money back," I said.

His mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile.

"Done," he said.

The next morning my arm was stiff but quiet, and I put on clean scrubs.

I stood at the clubhouse door and said, "I'm going to the hospital."

"You're suspended," Boone said.

"I'm going to fix that."

"I'll drive you."

"You'll wait in the parking lot."

"I'll wait in the parking lot," he said, and he did.

I walked through the ambulance bay doors at nine-oh-five.

Every head at the nurses' station turned.

Somebody went quiet in the middle of a sentence.

A new nurse I had trained in spring looked at the floor.

I walked straight to my supervisor's office and knocked on the open door.

She looked up from her monitor and took off her glasses.

"Laney," she said. "I told you not to come in."

"I know. I came anyway."

"HR has a form for this."

"I want to talk before the form," I said. "Can I show you something?"