Page 91 of Fighting For You

Lori walked in with her bag over one shoulder and her hair still damp.

"Hey." I turned around. "How are you doing?"

She dropped her bag on the bench and opened her locker. "Better. A lot better, actually." She glanced at me. "Josie talked to Sullivan."

I stopped adjusting my badge. "She did?"

"Yesterday. Pulled him into her office after rounds and told him what happened with that lab wasn't a nursing failure. I followed protocol. The flag never generated. There was nothing in the working chart when I took the endorsement, and she pulled the audit trail to prove it." Lori hung her jacket and reached for her scrub top. "She told him the incident report needs to reflect the system failure, not the nurse."

"What did he say?"

"He listened." Lori shrugged one shoulder. "She also told him she's looking deeper into Liz and Jen. Third time something hasn't added up on charts that passed through their hands. She said it's getting out of hand."

I pictured Josie across from Cliff Sullivan in the huddle room, four-ten and unflinching, laying out the audit trail with the same steady authority she'd built over twenty-two years on this floor.

"I'm glad, Lori."

Lori closed her locker and looked at me. The relief on her face was real.

"Nora, Lori." Gracelyn's voice from the hallway. "Huddle room. Two minutes."

We followed her out.

The shift was quiet. Uncharacteristically quiet. A light board, manageable bays, no one crashing, no one coding. I was actually staying ahead of my charting, which almost never happened in this department. On any other day, I would have been grateful for the breathing room. Today it just meant there was nothing between me and my own head.

I couldn't stop thinking about Ian.

Andy's voice was still in my head. He walks out that door every morning and he makes his own choices until he walks back through it. And somewhere between charting and meds, the worry settled into my chest and stayed there. I couldn't turn it off.

On my break, I sat in the break room and checked my phone. No texts from Ian. No missed calls. I called Knox.

He picked up on the second ring. "Hey."

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

"Sore. The wrist is better than yesterday."

"Are you icing it?"

"Yes, Nurse Avery." I could hear him almost smiling. "Ian left on time this morning. Seven forty-five. I heard the front door."

I closed my eyes. "Good."

His voice shifted. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

I wasn't. But there was nothing Knox could do about the feeling sitting in my chest from across town, and telling him would only move the weight from me to him. He was home, recovering. Ian was at school. Everyone was where they were supposed to be.

"Okay," he said. "Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

I put my phone in my pocket and went back to the floor.

Kip fell into step beside me in the hallway.

"Hey." He glanced at me. "Are you okay? You seem off today."