“The perfume. It’s heavy, don’t you think?” I wrinkle my nose.
“But I like it.” Sam lifts her wrist to her nose. “It’s pretty. And you got it for me, remember?”
“Kind of gives me a headache.” I rub my hands along her sides. “You know I like that other one you always wear. The stuff in the pink bottle.”
I have to admit, Sam looks gorgeous like this . . . tailored clothes, full face of department store makeup, expensive haircut, nails done. She even carries herself differently, head held high and all that. A far cry from the girl who grew up in the trailer next to mine in some dog-food-scented town no one’s ever heard of in northeast Nebraska.
But I’d never tell her that.
I’ll take her anyway I can. Dolled up. Dressed down. She’s the love of my life, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world . . . which is why I’m about to give her the world.
The most loyal person I’ve ever known, Sam’s had my back from the moment we met—when Sonya moved us into the Summer Winds Mobile Home Court, and she rode her pink bike with the missing streamers on the left handle over to say hi and ask if we needed any help.
She came in for some store-brand mac and cheese.
I told her about my dad dying the year before.
She told me about her older brothers and their friends always picking on her, to which I promptly offered to kick their asses (she declined).
I told her about the stuck-up punks at the school I attended in the next town over.
She told me she’d introduce me to some of her friends when school started again in August.
The two of us were inseparable from day one.
The best of friends.
And now? Her loyalty’s about to pay off in spades. She’s going to reap every last benefit of this entire thing right alongside me, where she’s always been.
Besides, at the end of the day, I couldn’t have done any of this without her, even if she doesn’t know it.
The doorbell rings, and I give Sam a quick smack on the ass before grabbing my wallet.
Pizza. Beer. The girl I love. And an impending windfall.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
CHAPTER 26
My phone rings in the back pocket of my scrubs as I’m headed down the fourth floor of the cardiac unit Monday. We’ve been called for an emergency transfer, and if this sad sack beside me sees me checking my phone while we’re en route, he’ll report me to our department head.
Brian’s been dying to get me canned since the day I started last fall, when the potbellied sloth caught me coming out of one of the physicians’ sleep rooms.
Anyone else would’ve looked like the cat that ate the canary, but I mastered the art of the straight face a lifetime ago, beginning with the bullies who tried to make my life a living hell when I moved to Nebraska, and most recently when I landed this job after having been fired from the last one.
“You’re not supposed to be in there,” he said—as if I needed to be reminded that I’m a lowly patient transporter and not a doctor.
I yawned and mumbled some half-assed excuse about being up all night with my (nonexistent) sick kid and told him it wouldn’t happen again.
Hell, I’d have told him I was abducted by aliens if it meant not telling him the truth—that I was in search of a doctor’s badge.
It took a few tries, but I managed to find one lying outside the laundry facility about a week into my employment at the hospital, left behind by a cardiologist by the name of Niall Emberlin. His photo showed him as skinny and pale, hair white as snow, thick folds around his nose and mouth despite looking like he’d never smiled a day in his life.
It was nothing an hour of Photoshop couldn’t handle.
All I had to do was make a copy, cover his photo with one of mine, change the department name, and laminate it.
I’ve always thought it’s funny how things work out. My entire life, I’ve been what my stepmom always called a “manifester.” She was always amazed at how I’d come up with a goal, put my intentions out there, and then sit back and watch it magically come together. I never pretended to agree with her or understand how this manifesting business worked. All I knew was that anytime I wanted something, I did everything in my power to make it happen.
The crazy thing is, I moved to Quinnesec Bluff with an intention to maneuver my way into Brienne’s life so I could take what was owed to Sonya and honor her memory, but I had no plan to put that intention in place. And then one day, completely out of the blue, the plan practically fell from the sky and landed right at my feet.
Six months ago, Brienne was attacked outside her office and left for dead. When someone found her lying in the alley outside her office and called 911, where’s the first place they took her?
The hospital.
And who transported her?
Me.
She was unconscious in those first weeks. Didn’t remember much. Struggled with short-term memory loss. Or at least this is what I was able to glean when I accessed her medical file using Emberlin’s badge to log in to the system.
It was an ordinary Tuesday night when I passed her room and overheard two of her friends standing outside chatting about how she needed to get a roommate, how she couldn’t live in that big house of hers alone.
I’ll never forget making eye contact with one of them (whom I’d later come to know as Marisol) and the look she shot me before she told me to mind my own business.
Pretentious little snot.
It wasn’t part of my plan, but I decided then and there that she’d be the first to go once I got my foot in the door.
And she was.
Brienne was barely home but a week or two when I sent a handful of Photoshopped nudes from her spoofed phone number to Marisol’s boyfriend’s number (which took me all of three seconds to find on the internet).
I don’t know how many times I checked Craigslist and various rental websites in the weeks that followed Brienne’s discharge from the hospital, but the roommate ad must’ve been less than two hours old when I responded.
We met the next day, I in my scrubs with my doctor’s badge prominently displayed and she in leggings and a cardigan accessorized by dark bags under her eyes from an obvious lack of sleep.
I held my breath as we made small talk, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t ask me to fill out a formal background check (her first mistake).
That’s the power of the badge.
And it’s a power I’m going to miss when this is all over.
Lying on the spot has become a bit of a specialty of mine over the years. I wasn’t quite thirteen when I realized how many doors would open for you if you simply told people what they wanted to hear.
No one’s interested in the truth. Most of us just think we are.
Sonya taught me that.
At the end of the day, we just want to believe whatever makes us feel good inside. Whatever makes us feel safe. Whatever lets us sleep at night. It’s a fact I’ve always used to my advantage.
My phone buzzes again by the time we get to the patient’s room.
Monitors are going off.
Alarms are beeping.
Nurses are rushing around the room in a blur of patterned scrubs and silent shoes.
“Where the hell have you guys been?” One of the cardiologists spits his words at us, his tone laced in condescension and verbal arsenic. What I wouldn’t give to jack him across his smug red face. “We called for you five minutes ago.”