by Holly Rayner
I pursed my lips. I wanted to tell Jamie I hadn’t taken anything, just like I’d told everyone at the practice. But I also didn’t want him to go home and tell his father I’d called him a liar.
“I know you didn’t do it,” Jamie said.
“Oh?” I narrowed my eyes. “You do?”
He nodded and smiled. “I know who did.”
For the first time since I’d opened the door, I wasn’t thinking about how to get Jamie out of my house and back to school safely. I was listening.
I dropped down into the chair opposite Jamie and leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You know who took the medication?”
He leaned towards me, one hand pressed to the side of his mouth. “It was Brittany.”
I barely resisted the urge to shout that I’d known it all along. Jamie was a little kid who was involving himself in an adult situation. I didn’t need to encourage his dabbling any more than I already had.
“How do you know?” I asked, attempting to remain impartial.
He took a deep inhale, his chest rising up dramatically, and then launched in to his story.
“I went to the clinic with my dad a few weeks ago. He needed to catch up on work one evening, but Erica was busy. I was doing my homework when I saw Brittany take a box into the storage room. I followed her because I wanted her to unlock the vending machine so I could get a snack, and when I walked into the room, I saw her taking a pill bottle from the box and dropping it into her purse.”
“How do you know she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing?” I asked. “Maybe you misunderstood what you saw.”
He shook his head. “She looked scared when she saw me, and then she opened the vending machine and gave me two packs of gummy bears.”
“Maybe she was just being nice,” I suggested, still searching for an alternate explanation. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Jamie or that I didn’t want Brittany to be guilty, it was that I didn’t want to get my hopes up if it wouldn’t change my circumstances.
“Brittany’s never nice,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “She’s always sending me away while she talks to my dad. You never try to send me away.”
He looked up at me, a shy smile on his face, and I began to realize why he’d made the trek all the way to my house. Why he’d stolen my address from his dad’s phone and skipped school. Jamie liked me. He didn’t want his dad and me to break up. I knelt down in front of him, my hand on his knee.
“You aren’t making any of this up, right?” I asked. “You promise you saw what you say you did?”
He nodded. “Swear it.”
“Then, I think you should tell your dad.”
Jamie’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “He won’t believe me. He knows I don’t like Brittany, and he would think I was only lying so you’d get your job back. You have to help me find proof.”
“How are we going to find proof?” I asked.
“Well…since what I saw was before you started working at my dad’s clinic, if we get the stock records, we can show my dad that Brittany has been doing this since before you got there.”
It was strange how Jamie could seem so mature and so young at the same time. He was just a little kid, and I knew that it was wrong to let him be involved in this. But I also really wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Spencer. If Jamie was telling the truth, then it could fix everything.
“Do you have a plan?”
I couldn’t believe I was asking a ten-year-old if he had a plan to help me get my job back, but it had been a strange couple days, so I pushed past it.
He nodded. “We sneak in, steal the papers from Brittany’s desk, and take them to my dad.”
I let my eyes flutter closed for a moment. This was insane. I knew that. But I needed to take Jamie back to his dad, anyway. So, I would drive Jamie back to the clinic, attempt to find the stock records, and if we got caught, I’d explain that Jamie had shown up at my door and I was simply bringing him to his father. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a lot better than sitting on the couch all day feeling sorry for myself.
“Okay,” I said, standing up and extending a hand down to Jamie. He grabbed mine and I helped pull him to his feet. “Let’s give this plan a try.”
Jamie’s face split into a wide, excited smile. “We’ll talk strategy on the way.”
Chapter 17
Jamie directed me to pull into the alley of the clinic to avoid detection, and as I put my car into park behind a large metal dumpster, I began having doubts. Was I really going to go along with a ten-year-old’s plan to try to get my job back? I’d placed my judgment in the backseat a lot recently, but that felt a step too far, even for me.
“Maybe we should just take you to your dad,” I said, biting my lower lip.
“No,” Jamie whined. “Just give me ten minutes.”
“I really don’t feel comfortable with you sneaking in and stealing documents. If your dad knew I was letting you do this, he’d be really mad.”
“My dad would be really mad if he knew Brittany was lying to him. When he sees you’re innocent, he’ll be so happy that he won’t care about any of this at all.”
I slid the key out of the ignition and turned around to look at Jamie in the backseat. He had his seatbelt off and was pulling a lanyard out of his backpack.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He lifted it up. A metal key dangled from the bottom. “The key to the back door.”
“Where did you get that?” I held up my hands. “You know what? Never mind. The less I know, the better.”
“Okay,” he said, ignoring me. “Once I open the back door, I’ll sneak into the storage room where I saw Brittany taking the pills. The records should be there, but if not, then I’ll have to check Brittany’s desk. That will be a little harder, but I think I can do it.”
I shook my head, prepared to once again tell Jamie this was a bad idea.
“Please,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “Just let me try to help. I can tell my dad is sad without you around. I want to make him feel better.”
Nothing tugged on my heartstrings quite like little kids and pouty lower lips, and Jamie Hunt had a powerful one. Not to mention, he had let it slip that his father was sad without me, which made me more eager to sort this whole mess out and reclaim my job and my probable boyfriend.
“We’ll try,” I said, holding up a finger in warning. “But if anything goes wrong in there, our official story is that you came to my house on your own and I was just bringing you back to your dad. No mention of our covert mission, you got it?”
He nodded once. “Got it.”
Jamie slipped out of the car and pressed his back against my car, looking both ways like he was a secret agent about to break into a vault. Then, he took two leaping steps across the alley and unlocked the back door with his key. I followed him in at a normal pace, though I crouched down slightly.
It was a weekday during business hours, so I could hear the hum of activity at the end of the hallway—exam room doors opening and closing, keyboards clicking, the beep of heart-rate monitors and the printer.
“The storage room is up ahead,” Jamie said, waving for me to follow him.
When we made it to the storage room door, Jamie pushed it open and tiptoed inside. I could tell he was having a lot of fun on our covert mission. I only wished I could be enjoying myself as much. My heart was thundering in my chest, and I jumped at every noise and shadow, certain we were going to get caught.
“Do you know what the records look like?” Jamie asked.
“I thought you had the plan,” I said.
“I did have the plan, but you worked here. I thought you’d know.” He shrugged his little shoulders and I groaned. “I guess we need to look around.”
One wall was dedicated to a unit of tiny drawers that held all of the medications the clinic had in alphabetical order. A small desk with an ancient computer atop it used for filling in patient paperwork, dosage information, and medic
ation names sat along the back wall. I shook the mouse and the screen popped up with the text box to input the password. I typed it in but was met with a harsh buzz when I hit “enter.”
“Do you know the password?” Jamie asked.
I tried it again, but the same buzzing noise came from the speakers with bright red text appearing on the screen: “incorrect password.”
“I used to,” I said. “They must have changed it.”
A shaft of light cut across the small room and Jamie and I both gasped and turned towards the door.
“Yes, I changed it,” Spencer said, arms crossed over his chest. “What’s going on here?”
Chapter 18
Jamie cowered behind me, leaving me to explain our very peculiar situation to his father. And I couldn’t really blame him. But I also felt the urge to grab him by the shoulders, push him forward, and proclaim that it was all his idea. I didn’t, of course, since Jamie was ten and I was a grown woman, but it was definitely tempting.
“Jamie? Jess?” Spencer said, closing the door behind him and lowering his voice. “What are you doing here? Why are you not in school, Jamie?”
“There is a logical explanation for this,” I said, letting out a nervous laugh. “I know it looks bad.”
“It looks like you kidnapped my son and were about to break into my company’s computer records,” he said. “It looks felonious.”
“She didn’t kidnap me,” Jamie said, finally stepping out from behind me and walking towards his dad. “I skipped school and went to her house this morning.”
Spencer furrowed his brow and knelt down so he was at eye level with his son. “Why? What were you thinking?”
“You can’t fire Jess,” Jamie said. I could hear the emotional tremor in his voice. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Spencer’s eyes flicked up towards me accusatorially.
“I heard you talking to someone about it on the phone,” Jamie continued.
Spencer lowered his gaze, his eyes softening. “Jamie, I know you like Jess, but this is work stuff. It doesn’t concern you.”
“But she didn’t do it. Brittany did!” Jamie said, practically shouting. “I saw her put pills in her pockets when I was here with you a few weeks ago. It was before Jess even started working here.”
“That’s a serious accusation,” Spencer said, looking up at me, trying to decide how much of this I was responsible for.
I held my hands up in surrender and shrugged. “He showed up on my doorstep with this story and wanted me to help him prove it. I needed to bring him to you anyway, so I let him convince me to make a small detour.”
“You should have called me,” Spencer said, his voice stern, but his face conflicted.
I nodded. “I know. I should have. But I also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to clear my name. I didn’t steal the pills.”
Jamie grabbed his father’s arm and tugged him towards the computer. “Look at the records, Dad. Check the records for the few months before Jess started. If they don’t match, then you’ll know it wasn’t Jess.”
Spencer pulled his arm back. “What you are accusing Brittany of is very serious. I’ve worked with her for years. If she’s done what you claim, then it wouldn’t just be stealing from the storage room. It would involve altering our inventory and financial records. It would be fraud, and she could go to jail.”
“Just check,” Jamie said, pointing to the computer.
Spencer tilted his head and looked down at his son. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in a few days. But he still looked perfect. So perfect it hurt.
In the time that we hadn’t seen each other, my mind had altered his facial features slightly, making him less beautiful so that maybe the end of our relationship wouldn’t hurt so badly. But now, I was once again looking at his perfectly sculpted cheekbones, strong brow, and bright blue eyes, and it killed. The idea that I’d never laugh with him again or hold his hand made me feel physical pain.
“Fine. I’ll look, but if everything checks out, we’re dropping this. We’ll be done, right?” he asked, looking from Jamie to me and back again.
Jamie nodded, and Spencer looked at me, a question in his eyes.
“Yes, done.” The words were practically a whisper, and Spencer looked away as soon as I had spoken.
He sat down in the squeaky computer chair, typed in the password, and immediately began opening files and flipping back and forth between screens. Watching him pull everything up made me realize Jamie and I never stood a chance of finding any proof. I never would have known where to find the inventory sheets, or, even if I did, how to read them. But Spencer made it all look easy.
Jamie was bouncing up and down nervously on the balls of his feet. I felt sick. I stepped away from the glow of the computer screen and tried to take deep breaths. This was it. My only chance to clear my reputation. If Spencer didn’t find anything to prove Jamie’s accusation, then finding another job in the medical field would be impossible for me. No one would hire a nurse who stole from the supply. My hopes of getting into medical school would be slim to none. I would have to find a new dream, a new life. The thought made my legs feel wobbly.
Spencer hummed and let his head fall forward into his hands. My heart stopped. All the air seemed to be sucked from the room. What did that mean? Was he upset that he had wasted his time? That he had found nothing? My entire body was tuned to his, waiting for his next move.
“What did you find?” Jamie asked, leaning around to look at his dad’s face.
Spencer sighed and spun his chair around. He clapped a hand on Jamie’s shoulder and stood up. “You were right.”
Jamie gasped and beamed. “I was?”
Spencer nodded, but this time, he looked at me. “There are inconsistencies in the inventory and financial records going back at least six months. Someone has been altering the forms to show that we are taking in less of certain pain medications than we really are, and Brittany is one of the only people aside from me who has access to both sets of records.”
It felt like a fifty-pound weight dropped off my shoulders. My lungs expanded, and I could breathe again.
“I’m so sorry, Jess,” Spencer said, shaking his head, his dark hair falling forward onto his forehead. “I should have believed you.”
I reached out and placed my hand on his chest, feeling the thrum of his heart beneath my fingers. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. How could you?”
Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly, the door to the supply closet opened once again, light from the hall blinding us all.
Someone let out a small yelp, and I recognized Brittany’s voice immediately.
“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in—” Her voice cut off as she took in the sight before her: me standing in the closet with Spencer and Jamie, everyone looking at her. She took a step backwards. “What’s going on?”
“There are discrepancies in our records,” Spencer said. “In the inventory and expenditures reports.”
Brittany’s eyes went wide and then, she gasped. “Really? Let me see the reports. I go over them every month, so I don’t see how they could be wrong. Someone must have—”
“Did you do it?” Spencer asked, cutting her off. “Don’t lie to me, Brittany. Please. Have you been stealing from our supply and covering it up?”
Brittany opened and closed her mouth several times while searching for a response to the accusation, but the longer the silence stretched, the more emotion began to collect on her face. By the time she finally began to speak, she had crumpled into quiet tears.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Hunt. I never meant to betray you, but I…” Sobs began to wrack her shoulders.
“You lied to me and made an innocent woman lose her job,” Spencer said, still in disbelief. He shook his head. “You are fired immediately, and I’ll have no choice but to begin a criminal investigation.”
“I’m—I—please,” Brittany mumbled between sobs.
Spencer crossed his arm
s, his expression stern and cold. “Pack up your things and go.”
Brittany mumbled a few other things before backing out of the room and disappearing down the hallway.
Spencer turned to me. “Jess, you are obviously welcome to have your job back, if you’d like. Though, I would understand if you wanted to move on. I will give you a great recommendation if that is your choice. Take time to think it over.”
I nodded, wondering where we stood. Even though I enjoyed my job at the clinic, it wasn’t the thing I cared most about. I wanted Spencer, not a job recommendation.
“I don’t need to think it over,” I told him. “I want my job back. I want things to go back to the way they were before.” I looked up at him from beneath my lashes, hoping he understood my full meaning.
But Spencer only nodded and then turned away to wrap an arm around Jamie’s shoulders. “I need to get you back to school, Jamie.”
“Can I have the day off to celebrate?” Jamie asked, hopeful.
Spencer shook his head. “You’ve done a good thing here today, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble for skipping school.”
Jamie pouted out his lower lip and hung his head. “Fine.”
“Thank you for your help, Jamie,” I said. “You cleared my name and I appreciate it very much.”
Jamie beamed back at me, and I even saw Spencer’s mouth pull up in a small smile as we all cleared out of the storage room and into the hallway.
I walked back to my car alone, relieved that everything had worked out, even if it hadn’t worked out the way Jamie had planned. Greg would never believe what I’d done while he was out buying bagels, and the thought made me laugh as I pulled out of the clinic and started driving home.
Immediately, though, dark clouds began to settle over me, figuratively and literally. Rain drops splashed across my windshield faster than my wipers could clean them off, and thoughts of Spencer filled my head.
I had my job back, but what did that mean for us? Was there an “us” anymore? I knew Spencer probably felt guilty about believing Brittany’s accusation, but I didn’t fault him. I would have done the same thing. She had worked with him for years, and I’d only been there a few weeks. I understood his motivations.