Page 13 of Fighting For You

"Nobody's married, Liz. I work and I go home."

"That's depressing."

"It's my life."

"I'm just saying, you're twenty-six. You should be out there."

"I don't have time for that."

Liz held up her hands. "Okay. Whatever you say." She looked at Jen. "She's definitely hiding someone."

Jen smiled.

The door opened. Josie came in, and the temperature in the room changed.

"Liz. I need to talk to you about a medication order in bay three."

Liz straightened up. "What about it?"

"An order was entered IV push when the original was written for oral. Pharmacy caught it before it went out, but the timestamp has your credentials on it."

"That's not — I didn't change that."

"I'm not saying you did it on purpose. I'm saying your name is on it, and with administration watching numbers right now, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets flagged. I need you to be more careful."

Liz's face went hard. "Josie, I didn't enter it that way."

"Then we'll look into it. But right now, your name is on the order, and that's what the system sees."

The room was tight. Jen had stopped scrolling. Liz was staring at Josie with her jaw set.

I closed my locker, picked up my bag, and slipped out before it went any further.

I woke up at five the next morning. Even on my days off, my body didn't know the difference. Two months of twelve-hour shifts had reset something in me, and now five o'clock was just when my eyes opened, whether I wanted them to or not. It was fine. I'd get up, make breakfast and lunch for Ian, see him out, and go back to bed until three.

The kitchen was still dark when I got downstairs. I turned on the oven, laid bacon across the sheet pan, and put the kettle on. Outside, the sky was that gray-blue it gets before the sun makes up its mind. I set out two plates, a bottle of hot sauce, and started on Ian's lunch. Turkey sandwich, an apple, a bag of chips. I wrote his name on the brown bag. He told me at least once a month that nobody's sister writes their name on their lunch bag. I did it anyway.

"Smells good." Ian came downstairs just as I pulled the bacon out of the oven.

"Morning! Toast's almost done. Do you want an egg?"

"Yeah, just one. Thanks, Nora."

He sat down and reached for the hot sauce before anything else. I cracked an egg into the pan and watched it sizzle.

"Jesse's picking me up today."

"What time?"

"Like seven fifteen. Him and a couple guys. His brother's driving."

"His brother?"

"Wayne. He's older. He drives Jesse everywhere." He doused the egg in hot sauce and ate it in three bites. He did the same to the bacon, then the toast, then washed it all down with a glass of water. "Oh, and I'm staying late at Jesse's tonight, so don't wait up."

"How late is late?"

"I don't know. I'll text you."