She looked at the bag. Looked at me. The expression she had was not surprise: a woman who’d been right about this all along, working out what to do about it.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and went into the hallway.
The door fell shut.
THE BAG HAD HIS JEANSand boots. I swapped the sweats for the jeans—that took longer than it should have, every move pulling at the suture line—and the incision had something to say about every part of it. The boots took longer still; crouching to lace them pulled at the wound and I went slow. The cut was in the closet where it had been since they brought his effects up. I had it on before her footsteps hit the hall.
The door opened.
She took in the jeans, the boots, the cut on my back, and me sitting on the bed like I hadn’t moved. A muscle shifted in her jaw. She came inside, let it close behind her, and sat down in the chair across from me.
Then she crossed her legs, set her hands in her lap, and turned her eyes on me.
“Shannon,” she said.
Not clinical. Not the register she kept for discharge paperwork and blood pressure readings. Low, and specific, and aimed.
Not the freeze from yesterday—that had been reflex, a man caught cold. Low in my chest, wider than anger, already settled in like it wasn’t going anywhere. I’d known since yesterday she was a different kind of problem.
I leaned forward. Put my forearms on my knees. “We’ve talked about that.”
“We’ve been over it.”
“I told you what I go by.”
“I know you did.” She didn’t move. “You’re not getting out that door.”
“I got dressed.”
“You’re dressed and sitting on a hospital bed with an active IV line,” she said. “And I’ve already talked to the night nurse and the charge nurse on the floor below this one. If you walk past either of them, they’ll stop you.”
I looked at her. She looked back at me. Neither of us moved.
“Shannon,” she said again.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I held her gaze and kept my voice even. “You want to be careful with that.”
“I’m being very careful.”
Four feet of hospital room between her chair and the bed. The heat that had been running under every exchange since yesterday, the pulse she’d felt jump, the jaw she’d made tighten twice, how she’d used my name like a key she’d found and hadn’t decided what to do with yet, hung in the space between us. Neither of us moved toward it.
I sat back.
She uncrossed her legs and picked up the clipboard.
“Tomorrow,” she said, same register as before, professional and level, the warmth underneath running like it always did. “Dr. Patel signs the discharge orders. Someone picks you up, gets you somewhere you can rest for a few days before you make the drive. You call the number on your paperwork if anything changes with the wound.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You will be,” she agreed, “if you don’t do anything stupid between now and then.”
She waited. I didn’t take it. She let another beat pass and set it in her lap. She’d noticed.
She stood up. “Get out of the jeans. The wound needs to stay flat and you’re not sleeping in those.”
I opened my mouth.
“I’ll send the aide in to help if you need it,” she said, with the pleasantness of a woman who knew exactly what she was offering.
