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It’s another text from Ben.
I’ll cook dinner for us at the condo. Whatever you want.
Ben, Sienna and I used to live in a condo together in Lincoln Park. Now it belongs to him. When we got divorced and Sienna and I moved out, I mourned the condo almost as much as I mourned Ben. But now the idea of going there, of being alone with him scares me.
I don’t reply. I put the phone down again and try to forget about it, to forget about Ben, but only minutes pass before the phone actually rings and I’m scared by his persistence. He won’t give up.
I glance at the phone, feeling unwell, run down by stress and fatigue. It’s not Ben after all. I answer the call, pressing the phone to my ear and ask, “Hello?”
It’s someone from the hospital, from HR. They’d like me to come in and meet with them.
The early morning sun was a tease. No sooner did it come out than it disappeared behind thick, dense clouds that rolled quickly in. Outside the wind is tempestuous, the day just above thirty-two degrees so that instead of snow, I get pelted with sleet that comes down sideways and into my eyes. When I get to work, people stare at first—and then they go out of their way to look away, to avoid eye contact. By now everyone knows who I am and what I’ve done, how I killed a patient.
When I arrive at human resources, people wait inside a meeting room to speak with me, to go over it again, the details of what happened for a second and then a third time. Some faces I know but others I don’t. They introduce themselves. It’s HR, risk management, the nurse manager, more. I regret not listening to the charge nurse’s advice. I should have gotten an attorney.
“Good morning, Meghan. Please have a seat,” someone says. I pull out a padded chair and sink into it, but I can’t get comfortable.
They go around the room and ask questions.
How long have you been a nurse?
How long had you been treating Ms. Beckett?
How did Mrs. Layley’s insulin pen come to be in your pocket?
Is it common for you not to scan a patient’s wristband before administering medication?
Can you describe your mental state at the time?
It’s more of an interrogation than anything, and I realize quickly that what they’re most worried about is their own liability. When they ask questions, I have to be careful that the details are the same as I told yesterday.
They explain what will happen next. They’ve already filed a report with the state board of nursing, who will review the report to decide if they have jurisdiction. The board will investigate. They will talk to my colleagues, to my superiors, to the Becketts—who may file civil charges all on their own if they so choose. It will take many months before the board decides if what I’ve done is actionable, if my nursing license will be suspended or revoked or if some other punishment will be handed down, though there may be none too. I may get off scot-free.
They put me on administrative leave pending the investigation.
I make my way slowly to the ICU to get my things out of my locker to leave. I don’t know when I’ll be back or if I’ll ever be back. I’m not surprised this is happening. I knew there would be fallout, of course. Something was going to happen, but I haven’t been fired. I’m not being escorted out of the building by security. Administrative leave isn’t the worst thing that can happen. I’ll still get paid. I’ll still get benefits. The worst thing that could have happened is if the police came, if they were waiting for me when I walked into HR, if this became a criminal matter. As it is, even if I eventually get fired or have my license revoked, there are things I can still do like become a home health aide or I can switch careers altogether and become something else, become someone else.
I push open the door to the break room to gather my things to go home. There is a woman inside the room, a patient—completely out of place in the staff break room—standing with her back to me, with long dark brown hair that spills over the shoulders of a starchy, white hospital gown that ties at the back.
As she gazes back over a shoulder at me, her smile is sage. “You’re going to pay,” she says, and I recoil in shock, bumping into the break room door, taking in the hair and the eyes and the smile.
It’s Caitlin. She’s not dead after all. She’s alive.
She turns her body completely around and when I take a fresh look at her, I see that it’s not a hospital gown at all, but a long, slim white doctor’s smock.
It’s not Caitlin. Caitlin is dead.
“Pardon?” I ask, short of breath.
“I asked if I’m in your way,” the woman, a physician, says kindly as I stare flustered and wide-eyed at her, trying hard to reconcile her face with the face of Caitlin Beckett.
My words are breathy as I say, “No. Not at all.”
Her expression is kind. She smiles, thoughtful—she doesn’t know who I am and what I’ve done—and then leaves and when she does, I drop down into a hard chair at the small, round table to catch my breath, before gathering my things to go.
I’ve just stepped out of the break room and am slipping my arms into my coat when I see two uniformed police officers down the hall. They stand over six feet tall and two hundred or two hundred and fifty pounds at the nurses’ station with their backs to me so that I only see them from behind, just their broad shoulders and their husky frames. My legs stop suddenly dead so that someone crashes into me from behind by accident and I mumble an apology as I move to the wall, standing flush against it, hiding behind a pilaster, my heart in a flat spin.
The police are here. They know what I’ve done. They’ve come for me.
