by Cara McKenna
When he finally stepped back and let me rest, I was panting and no doubt red as a brick, my sweat stinking of whiskey and wine. He studied my face, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt so unattractive.
“Well done,” he said.
I glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall, finding it was only a minute until we were due to finish. I waved his compliment away, knowing I looked half-dead, and spoke through my huffing. “Oh yeah, piece of cake.”
Though it never surfaced, I saw a smile lurking behind his lips.
“Great work, everyone!” Audra said with a clap. “See you back here tomorrow at ten for round two! So keep limber!”
Kelly and I headed for the door together.
“We’ve missed lunch,” I said as I realized it. My stomach growled, eavesdropping.
“We missed lunch service. But there’ll still be something to scavenge, if you didn’t pack anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“Better get you introduced to the kitchen staff. Good friends to have around here.”
“Oh?”
He nodded as we exited, and his eyes looked different outside. Nearly blue, like a thick, antique glass bottle. “The residents in the locked ward get so few luxuries, food’s a big deal. Sometimes having the power to score somebody an extra brownie is enough to avoid a meltdown.”
“I’ll make a note.”
We strolled in the warm June sunshine, its heat burning off a bit of my exhaustion and angst, if not my sweat. The drills were flipping through my mind like flash cards, and I hoped I wouldn’t have stress dreams about them all night. My legs yearned to slow down, dawdle so the walk took an hour, just me and the spring air, no responsibilities, flanked by a hulking man capable of defending me against any number of deadly attacks.
It would’ve been too strong to say I felt a bond with Kelly. My body was curious about his, but I didn’t have any urge to hold his hand as we walked, or to imagine he was my boyfriend. He’d shared too much about his romantic MO for me to waste my time mooning over him . . . but there was something there. Something not quite familiar, but comforting. I could see how he had a calming influence on the patients. If he ever got over his my-way-or-the-highway machismo, he’d probably make one hell of a dependable husband for some tough-as-nails woman.
We reached the entrance to Starling and I swiped us in. Kelly led me up a back stairwell to the third floor, and I knew we were near the kitchen from the smell. Tater tots.
Kelly swung one of the double doors in. “Knock knock,” he said to someone I couldn’t see, then slipped inside, holding the door for me.
It looked like a scaled-down version of my high school cafeteria. Lots of steel surfaces and steam and big freezers and plastic bins. Kelly introduced me to the man in charge, a short black guy my age named Roland. Before I knew it, we were carrying trays to a break room I’d never been in before, just me and Kelly and a softly droning portable television propped on a pile of textbooks in the corner.
Kelly opened a can of seltzer. “So. How is it, living in the transitional residence?”
I swallowed a bite of turkey burger and shrugged. “It feels like a dorm. I think. I’ve never actually lived in one. Quieter, probably. But you know, communal showers, identical rooms, shared kitchen. It’s cheap. It’ll do the job until I’ve got my head wrapped around everything and know the area a bit better.”
“Before you decide whether or not to stay,” he translated, but incorrectly.
I shook my head. “I’m staying, barring a seriously traumatic experience. It’s close to my sister, and it pays pretty well. I have to settle someplace, and get some clinical experience. And if I can handle a locked ward, I’ll know I’m capable of working just about anywhere.”
“Why’s it so important to stay near your sister?”
“I just need to. I sort of raised her, and I worry about her. She’s got a toddler and really bad taste in men. She requires a lot of maintenance, to keep from going off the rails.”
“Maybe you’d be surprised, if you left her alone to fend for herself.”
I laughed. “I tried that, when I moved in with my grandma. I didn’t think I could look after her, and my sister. And occasionally my mom. So I told Amber—my sister—that I was done bailing her out all the time, and she was eighteen, and it was time for her to find her feet and all that.”
“And?”
I shook my head. “Within six months she’d run up eight grand on a credit card, got evicted, and turned up on my grandma’s doorstep with her rear windshield smashed out.”
“Wild child?”
“By herself she’s not that bad. But she falls for the most horrible guys. I think part of her enjoys the drama, like she’s in her own reality show. But she’s got a son now, you know? You don’t get to star in your own show when there’s a kid around.”
“So what, you’re just going to babysit her until your nephew’s safely off to college?”
I slumped, exhausted by the thought. “I dunno. I just know it’s too soon to disentangle myself. I lost my grandma this winter and my mom’s barely in the picture, so Amber’s my only close family, really. And vice versa. I know it sounds codependent. I know it is codependent . . .”
“You’re just doing your best,” he offered.
“Yeah. Yeah, I hope so.”
“That’s all any of us can ever do. And a lot of us don’t even do that.”
As depressing as Kelly’s wisdom was, it cheered me. I was doing my best. That was all anybody could do.
“What do you think you’d be doing, if you didn’t have your sister to worry about?”
“Jeez, I dunno. I wound up here, because of her moving, and I wound up in nursing because of my grandma. God, it’s so depressing to think about it that way.”
Kelly shrugged. “I wound up here because my old man was a raging drunk. We’re all just pinballs, getting bonked around wherever our upbringings kick us.”
“So much for free will.”
“Free will’s whatever you do when you punch out for the night.”
“Then my free will’s got narcolepsy,” I said, and as if illustrating my point, a massive yawn unfurled from my lungs.
“You’ll adjust. And tomorrow you get to sleep in.”
I nodded. “Until ten, when I have to go back to wrestling practice.”
He cracked a smile, cranking my internal temperature up a few degrees. “I went easy on you today. Tomorrow and Thursday, I won’t fuck around.”
“Oh, yay.”
“You’re good, though.”
“At what? Restraints?”
He nodded. “A natural.”
“Yeah, right. You had me in a headlock for at least three minutes and I couldn’t even budge your stupid arm. And don’t you have tomorrow off?”
Another nod. “We’re on the same rotation. But I’ll be in, just for the morning. The overtime’s always appreciated. And it’s a piece of cake teaching restraints, knowing you debutantes won’t pull a pen out of someplace and stab me in the eye.”
I sipped my pop. “Only if you give me a good reason to.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Well, I’ll look forward to that,” I said snidely, and finished my burger and downed the last of my drink. Kelly did the same, and we dropped off our trays in the kitchen and thanked Roland.
“Back to the fray,” Kelly said as we signed in downstairs. He wrote spec obs Don beside his name, and I couldn’t be sure if I was disappointed or relieved that I might not see him again that afternoon.
The second half of my shift proved quiet, borderline boring. Having Kelly as a distraction wouldn’t have gone astray.
As a psych professional you have to pay attention constantly, not just for signs of danger, but while taking a
zillion sets of vitals, in making notes in the right files, doling out the right meds in the right dosages at the right times, making sure the right patient actually swallows them . . . Nothing dynamic, but I swear the sheer constancy with which you have to be alert is as tiring as any physical chore. By the time dinner hour was over and we met with the next shift for the hand-off meeting, I felt like I must be dreaming. I staggered down the stairwell on aching feet.
I wiped my name off the duties board and ran into Jenny while I was changing.
“Got plans tonight?” she asked, dialing her combination lock.
“No, none at all. Just finish unpacking and pass out.”
“You’re more than welcome to come along to a little party across the road. Retirement bash for one of the veteran RNs in our geriatric ward. Free eats. You know where the transitional residence is?”
“Yeah.” I stripped off my scrubs, not feeling compelled to tell her I was in fact living there for the time being.
“You should come. Get off campus, enjoy a drink. I’ll introduce you around to some people from the other departments.”
I wouldn’t have minded meeting the geriatric staff. I had experience with that, after all, and wouldn’t say no if a chance to transfer out of the locked ward should present itself.
“Starts at seven thirty,” Jenny said. “Bring your staff ID—they’ll be rigid, what with alcohol being served.”
“Okay. Sure.” Why the hell not? It was my birthday. There’d be drinks, maybe a cake, and even if they weren’t in my honor, it’d be nice to do something special. Restraint training had been the highlight of my day, and that wouldn’t do. Exhausted or not, I deserved a bit more. I could top getting tossed around and banged up by Kelly Robak. Then I pictured his body, and wondered if maybe I couldn’t.
With twenty minutes to kill, I strolled through campus and crossed the road, headed up to my little apartment and changed into the only dress I owned. Nothing glamorous, but it gave me a bit of a figure, and that was a luxury after two days in nothing but yellow pajamas. As I clasped a pair of earrings, I hoped there’d be wine. Against my better judgment, I hoped there’d be Kelly as well. But he didn’t seem the type to carouse while still basically on the institute’s grounds, nor one to cut loose in front of colleagues and ruin his stoical façade. Though he’d allowed me a glimpse of his after-hours self, at the bar. And surely I wasn’t so special that it’d been some one-time peek.
On the first floor, a series of construction-paper signs pointed the way to the party, in the large basement rec room—the unglamorous venue surely picked for its proximity to work, and because alcohol wasn’t allowed anywhere inside Larkhaven’s gates. I didn’t recognize anyone when I arrived, but I was pleased to spot a motley selection of beer and wine lined up on a ping-pong table; crackers, cheese, veggies and dip, and an uncut cake on the other side of the net.
What I wasn’t so pleased to see was a room full of scrubs. I wasn’t the only one who’d changed, but the majority of the partygoers seemed to have come straight from a shift. Instantly I felt dumb and overdressed, some newbie weirdo in a wrap dress and heels—no matter how short they were—surrounded by sneakers and clogs. The folks who weren’t dressed for work wore jeans.
“You came!”
I turned to find Jenny behind me, holding a gift bag bursting with pink tissue paper.
“Oh, hey.”
“You look great. Trying to put the rest of us to shame?”
I tailed her across the room to a table laden with flowers and presents. I eyed them with envy. It was my birthday, after all. Standing there with no one to realize that fact, I felt lonely, deep down to my bones.
But it wasn’t as though I were used to my birthday being special. My grandma hadn’t been in a state to remember it in recent years, and I considered it a banner year if my mom thought to call. Amber had offered to have me over for pizza and cupcakes, but since I got off work so late and my nephew would already be asleep, I’d asked for a rain check.
I followed Jenny’s lead and poured myself a cup of wine. She introduced me around, largely to staffers my own age. I smiled a lot and forgot everyone’s names, wondering if they’d remember mine or just think of me as That New Girl Who Didn’t Get the Dress Code Memo.
Shyness had me drifting out of conversational orbits twenty minutes into the party, and I was about to up my wine dosage when someone set an empty cup beside mine. I knew it was Kelly from his oversized hand and its misleading wedding band, and my heart thumped as I tilted my face toward his. In an instant, I was drunk.
“You look awful fancy.”
A blush warmed my cheeks and I tried to hide it by filling my cup. “I know.”
“Special occasion?”
I shrugged, looking around to indicate the party. It’s my birthday, I wanted to tell him. Make a big deal of me.
“You promised me a glass of wine this morning in restraints,” he said.
“True. Though I don’t see any funnels.” I filled his cup. He tapped it to mine and gave my body an open, brief up-and-down, at once businesslike and predatory. I took too big a gulp and felt my face burn brighter still.
Kelly had changed, but only into jeans. “How you feeling, after this morning’s workout?”
I flexed my left shoulder and it swore in protest. “Pretty dinged up. Can’t say I’ll be sad when your days of throwing me around are over.”
He faked a jab to his ego and gave me a wounded look, but there was mischief in his eyes. He hadn’t missed the double entendre I’d accidentally lobbed his way. “Be grateful there were gym mats.”
“And witnesses,” I cut back, and yeah, it sounded pretty bad—like we were agreeing things would’ve evolved into something scandalous, had the setting been different. Damn it.
“And Audra, barking corrections,” Kelly added.
“Yeah. That’d be a mood killer.” Oh fuck, why had I said that? His resulting smile was as dangerous as ever, a shot of pure, liquid stupid plunged straight into my bloodstream.
He answered my flirtation with another assessing look. It wasn’t terribly professional, but I was grateful for that. I’d spent my first two shifts feeling like a newbie, a jailer, a waitress, and a wuss. Felt good to feel like a plain old woman, something enticing enough to bring a little heat to Kelly’s cool gaze. The wine suddenly tasted very expensive, and I decided it was everyone else’s loss, not taking the opportunity to dress up a bit, not my folly.
A small group of people came by and we made room for them to get drinks. I wandered toward the middle of the party with Kelly, praying no one could see the comical lust lines vibrating from my body toward his.
He’d worked at Larkhaven for years so he knew everyone, and as long as I stuck by him, I was never at a loss for conversation. It seemed perhaps he did shed that cold façade alongside his gray uniform, and tonight he was as warm as I’d yet seen him. He introduced me and goaded our colleagues into recounting old war stories—funny ones, not scary ones. I was even invited to join Larkhaven’s softball team, though judging by the way my coworkers put away the boxed wine, recreational drinking was the institution’s official sport.
After an hour’s mingling I felt relaxed, even a little charming. I also felt dangerously attracted to the man on my left. But I wouldn’t ever act on it, so what was the harm? It’d been more than a year since I’d made out with a guy or had a date or even a crush, and I’d forgotten how fun infatuation was. Like being continuously buzzed on champagne. You just have to know when you’ve had enough.
By ten I was yawning uncontrollably, and as nice as it was to feel cheerful for the first time since arriving here, it couldn’t top the promise of bed. I got to sleep in a bit the next morning before restraints, and I could use all catch-up rest I had coming to me.
“You want a refill?” Kelly asked me, nodding at my emp
ty cup.
“No, I better get to bed. It’s been a long couple days.” Walk me up, I wanted to say. Walk me to my door, and give me a look that said he wanted to kiss me, but not actually do it. Send me to bed with no thoughts of attacks or paperwork or antipsychotic dosages.
But he didn’t. He drained his own cup and took mine, tossing both in a nearby garbage can. “You’re taking all the glamour away.” He said it like I ought to feel guilty, and gave me a final assessing glance.
“You’ll cope.” I smiled wearily and offered a wave before heading for the stairs. I wanted so badly to turn, to see if he was watching me go. But if he wasn’t, I’d be disappointed. And if he was, he’d know I cared.
Upstairs, I changed into pajama pants and a tee shirt and checked a voicemail from my sister—no crisis brewing thank God, just “Happy Birthday” sung into the phone, with Jack shrieking gleefully in the background. I hung up, smiling.
A knock at my door interrupted my search for a washcloth. Nervous, I peered through the peephole.
Kelly, of all people.
Every ounce of my hard-earned self-possession vanished in a breath.
I swung the door in. “Um, hello.”
He took up the entire threshold, and he was holding a vase of white lilies.
Fucking hell, he was here to woo me. And I would go so, so easily.
I wished I hadn’t just gone from heels and a dress to bare feet and an oversized Red Wings tee shirt.
“Happy birthday.” He held out the flowers and I accepted them.
“How did you know that?”
“Saw it on the roster this morning—the participants list for the restraints course.” His chameleon eyes looked blue again, the pale robin’s egg shade of my walls.
“Oh. Well, thanks.” He was being so uncharacteristically sweet, I offered a dopey smile and admitted, “I wish you’d said something earlier. I was feeling sorry for myself all day, thinking no one knew.”