Prologue
“Finn? If you’re awake, give me a sign.”
That hushed voice wasn’t the weekend nurse for the prison infirmary. It was Vivi. More officially, Nurse Curiel. That meant it was now Monday, which was fine by Finn. This weekend hadn’t done her any favors. It was fired. No, wait. If it was Monday now, the weekend had already quit. Cool. Maybe she’d make a note in its permanent record anyway just in case.
Once she could open her eyes, if her eyelids would cooperate. They usually tried to go on strike after a bad migraine.
Finn tried turning her head and didn’t much enjoy the feel of her neck and jaw. A hand caught the ice pack—well, used-to-be-ice pack, now room temperature—before it slipped off her forehead.
“Want to try water?” Vivi asked, still not too loud. She always kept it down until she knew Finn was okay. She kept the light off over Finn’s bed, kept the guard from dragging the metal chairs across the tile which the jerk did even knowing they screeched. Vivi kept Finn safe, as best she could.
Finn managed to crack her eyes open. At first, she saw only blurs: Vivi’s regulation blue scrubs and her lightly tanned face. The tan was a little unfair since it was only April, but Vivi tanned easily for a white gal. Finn and her lifelong history of sunburning her pale skin were occasionally jealous.
Blinking a few times added detail. Vivi and the staff appearance guidelines had a conflicted relationship, so her sunny red lipstick today was slightly too bold. Her long dark hair, though, was up in its usual inoffensively neat bun. The color on her short nails—only the most durable polish so it wouldn’t chip at work—was similarly tame, the same shimmery pink she’d worn two weeks ago. On a Thursday and Friday, Finn’s brain helpfully supplied, right after the plum one with the glossy top coat.
Finn told her brain to take a hike and reached up for the ice pack so Vivi could let go. Their hands brushed in the process. Finn tried not to enjoy it too much.
“Hey there.” Finn’s voice was rougher than she’d hoped it would be. She’d wanted to sound like a person, not a patient, and ugh, who knew what her hair was doing at this point? Finn might not be allowed her preferred style because of how the dang “extreme haircuts” policy was interpreted here, but she did still have some pride.
“Hey there yourself.” Vivi beamed down at Finn as if her day had just gotten one hundred percent better.
Vivi gave her that smile often. It was the best part of Finn’s days, or at least the normal weekdays, when Finn had volunteer duty in the infirmary instead of being laid up in it. An unpaid prison assignment was better than having nothing to do. The other two days of the week, Finn aimed to get through by keeping her head down, and most of the time it even worked.
Vivi pulled a rolling stool bedside, sat, and offered Finn a plastic cup of water. Finn propped herself up on the pillows, which sent the ice pack from the back of her neck sliding down. Their hands brushed yet again as Finn took the cup. Finn tried to ignore it, and she tried to ignore how lonely it felt watching Vivi trying to ignore it too, and they both sat silently while Finn took a sip through the straw and waited for her stomach to protest. It didn’t. Cool.
“Finn, do I have to verbally kick someone’s ass on your behalf?” Patient care failures were Vivi’s nemesis, and when she found one, she was rarely inclined to leave it alone.
So Finn stalled. “What do the notes say?” It would have bordered on insubordinate if Finn had asked any other nurse, but Vivi Curiel wasn’t any other nurse. She and Finn were coworkers, friends…
And it had to stop there.
Finn knew it, really she did. She was a prisoner, Vivi was staff, and the rules existed for a reason. It was scary when somebody with power got into a thing with somebody who had none. Finn had watched it happen to other prisoners.
“The notes claim,” Vivi responded, starting to get a familiar steely glint in her eyes, “that per my explicit standing order, you received your meds within twenty minutes of asking the guard for them. But I believe the person who wrote those words about as far as I can throw the entire west wing of this building.”
Vivi’s anger was gratifying. At least one person in this concrete complex gave a damn about Finn’s well-being. But what if that one person made too much fuss and she ended up out of a nursing job?
There’d be no more placing mental bets on which color polish Vivi would wear next. No more spirited debates about who to put on a super-team made up of kick-ass women from action movies. No more quiet confessions about growing up motherless, Vivi’s mom passing away and Finn’s mother abandoning her parenting duties to devote her life to her church. No more listening to Vivi’s whispered emphatic speeches about underfunding of health care in the criminal justice system, the mass incarceration crisis in general, or the Texas Legislature’s latest boneheaded decision that would only make things worse.
No more realizing they were standing a little too close, smiling a little too softly, and seeing the same thing Finn was feeling in Vivi’s eyes before they both looked away.
“Don’t worry about it.” Finn forced herself to sit up more. Ordinarily she found Vivi’s righteous indignation one of her more appealing qualities, but escalating this might not end well for either of them. “I’m serious. I’ll schedule better next time.”
Vivi’s red lips twitched with amusement. “Schedule your migraines better?”
“Only on weekdays between six a.m. and four p.m. from now on. Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Girl Scout?” Vivi asked skeptically.
Finn did her best to grin. “You think I got this gay without doing a lot of camping?”
Vivi snickered and gave Finn a sarcastic thumbs up. Finn caught Vivi’s hand playfully, purely on reflex.
It felt so right.
It was so wrong.
Vivi took her hand back immediately.
“Nurse Curiel?” the guard called from across the room. “Everything okay?”
Not good.
The nurse in question straightened her back and stood up. “Everything’s fine,” she called back. “Thank you.”
They waited to see if the guard would pull himself up out of his chair and walk over all slow and menacing, as if he’d be plenty happy if Finn was starting something. He didn’t, though. He simply rolled his eyes, re-crossed his arms, and went back to staring around the room.
Vivi turned her attention back to Finn. “That can’t happen again,” she said, her voice so low only the two of them could hear. Not reproachful or condescending. More… regretful.
Finn had undoubtedly spent way too much time imagining what Vivi would say to her if they could freeze time or step into an alternate universe or get teleported to another country, anything to let them step outside of their roles for five freakin’ minutes. Just so Finn could take a full, deep breath and she and Vivi could be completely candid with each other for once. Would Vivi say Finn, you’re fooling yourself? Would she say Finn, even if things were different, it would never happen?
Her gut said no. Not when Vivi looked at her exactly like this so often, as if Finn’s touch would be welcome if only the circumstances were different. As if Vivi was stopping herself from leaning forward only because she knew stopping herself was the right thing to do.