“She realizes that she’s in her seventies, right?”
“I believe she knows that, yes.”
Whit scoffs. “So, she either keeps doing this because she wants to earn her cougar stripes, or she doesn’t realize that nonurse in their seventies is still doing the heavy lifting this job requires.”
Nancy is a frequent flyer in the emergency room. She hurts herself, calls the ambulance, and comes here to flirt with nurses and doctors. We see her rolling in here once every couple of weeks, calling us by name and promising that this one was an accident.
She ends up in mental health more typically than not, but she’s always back. This time, she smashed her fingers with a hammer. Last time, she placed her hand on a hot element for over two minutes and claimed that she barely flinched.
“I’ll call Psych.” I reach for the phone.
“Already done,” Whit says, and her hazel eyes flicker to my phone. Open. On the Carter Forkerro tag. “Still stalking Big Boy?”
Big Boy.
That’s what Whitney and Autumn have taken to calling Carter. They were with me that night atIcebox. Whisked me away from the scene when the blood started dripping. Autumn hauled me to the car and Whitney met us at the curb after she did the initial assessment of the guy and determined he’d live.
Whit is steadfast that I should contact ‘Big Boy’. I think she wants it to go further than that. You know, for the plot. I’m not sure Carter would be excited to hear from me after that mess of a night, nor do I have any intention of calling to find out.
One, I would have no idea how to even find his number.
Two, I remember his horrible comment about me being in Declan’s bed.
I lock my phone to prove to myself Icanchoose to ignore this whole situation.
“No.”
Whitney stares at me. “Right.”
“Just checking for updates.”
“They’re not going to fire him.”
She says it like it’s a fact, but she couldn’t possibly know that. Rumors usually start with a whisper, meaning this conversationishappening behind the scenes. The fact that this has become viral enough to have gone from a whisper to a full-on shout means there is merit.
“He was just defending me.”
“I know. I saw.” Whit nods, leaning forward on the desk. She shrugs. “He’s too valuable and that guy was completely in the wrong. I know that you feel bad, but I don’t think anything too severe will come from it. Plus, Carter Forkerro doesn’t throw a punch that he doesn’t want to throw. That’s not on you.”
She’s said that before.
Whit’s the hockey fan in our friend group,The Charlie’s Angels. Susan, one of the senior receptionists, bestowed that title on us one day, and it stuck. Autumn is our music girl, Whitney is our sports girl, and I’m just… a girl. I have no passions that shape me, besides volunteering at the animal shelter when I can, and putting on these scrubs every single day. I’m too busy trying to survive each week without falling apart to have any time for hobbies or dreams.
Life isn’t easy.
At twenty-eight, I feel like I should be in my late forties. The amount of pressure I feel every morning when I open my eyes is overwhelming. Don’t get me started on stress. Two years ago, I started losing my hair. My hair is my shield. My armour. But my red strands started thinning and falling out by the day.
The reason for it? Stress.
Imagine that. Nobody warns you aboutthatwhen they talk about the impacts of mental health.
I have tried everything the doctor recommended. It’shelped, but it’s not foolproof. I know how to ground myself better now. My hair is coming back to life, slowly but surely, yet that’s only one consequence of being in Arden Doll’s head.
Sounds quite fun, doesn’t it?
I’m the oldest of three girls. Serena is two years younger than me, and Anya is one younger than her. My parents had three kids under five. Girls with drastically different personalities and a chronic need to be independent people in their parents’ eyes. One would assume that it would have been a recipe for disaster, but it wasn’t. It was a great childhood, and it probably would have stayed that way if Mom didn’t die. Those three little girls would have grown into three moody teenagers who ripped each other apart, only to become best friends in our twenties and have that unbreakable sisterly bond you see in all the movies.
But Momdiddie.
