I kissed her and it was real. He saw it and it was real for him too. That makes three people in this building with something to lose, and I'm the one in the cage.
I've been planning my way out of this cage for years. She just became the reason to finish.
Chapter 11
Hope
I kissed a patient forty minutes ago and now I'm walking back to admin with my notebook under my arm and my pen behind my ear, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum. I keep pressing my lips together and catching myself doing it.
I wait for the guilt to show up and it doesn't, and I'm not surprised. The accident took care of that. This version of me is thinking about how his hand felt on the back of my neck.
Lane is at the nurses' station when I round the corner. He looks up from his paperwork and watches me pass.
"Long one today, honey?"
"Eh, it's average." I wonder if he can see it written all over my face. The flush I can't quite get rid of. The way I keep touching my mouth.
He nods and goes back to his paperwork and I keep walking.
Kent is in Conference Room B with the door open when I pass, so I knock on the frame to say hi.
He's sitting at the far end of the table with his legal pad and his briefcase, jacket draped over the chair beside him. Sleeves rolledto the forearm. Hair pushed back from his face. The shirt fits him well enough that I can see the line of his shoulders through the fabric, and I look at that longer than I need to.
"Ms. Turner." He gestures at the chair across from him. "Come in, sit, please."
I sit.
He flips a page on his pad, he doesn't look up for a few seconds, and in those seconds I watch his hands. Broad. Clean. The tendons shift when his pen moves, and his fingers are long and precise, I make myself look at the folder on the table instead.
"Your last three reports," he says. "The board filed them without comment."
"Good."
"Not good. Unusual." He puts his pen down and meets my eyes. "The board has commented on every report you've filed since Week Two. The fact that they didn't means someone told them not to."
"Dr. Hudson?"
"Hudson doesn't have the pull. Someone above him." He picks up a folder and opens it. "I spent several billable hours last week trying to find your angle."
I blink. "Excuse me, my angle?"
"Everyone who walks into a case this messy has an angle. Crusaders. Career builders. People who want their name on a precedent." He turns a page. "I looked at your other placements. Three facilities, two states. Every report filed on time, every finding documented, every outcome favorable for the patient without a single instance of bias or advocacy overreach." He closes the folder. "You don't have an angle."
"I could have told you that in our first meeting."
"You could have but I wouldn't have believed you."
He looks at me and he's not evaluating me, which is new. Every meeting before this one he's had his guard up, and now he doesn't, and I wasn't expecting that. He looks younger without it. Less like a lawyer and more like a person.
"The board meeting," he says. "When you asked Hudson to put it in writing. You meant it." He pauses. "That's either useful or dangerous."
"It can be both."
His mouth twitches. He catches it and straightens his cuffs, and for a second I see past the suit and the billable hours to something underneath. Something almost human.
"I'd like to coordinate documentation going forward. Your session notes, my legal filings. Same data makes the case stronger."
"You want to collaborate."
