Finn studied her cousin more closely. Hollis had always been thin, but he’d crossed the line to gaunt now. His long light blond hair, same color as hers, was always in a messy ponytail these days, all flyaways and split ends. His brown eyes were still sharp when the medications let them be, but he had a ways to go yet getting back to himself. Finn remembered watching him catch a Frisbee in the park when he’d visited her in Fort Worth, both oblivious that she’d be arrested five days later. He’d made several leaps she’d sworn had cheated physics. Now he had to be careful turning to look at her lest he anger the back muscle gods.
“Please stop scrutinizing me,” he said with a grim smile. “Where the heck have you been, and who was the woman who called and scared the heck out of me?”
Finn flinched. “Sorry.”
Hollis waved it off. “She started by saying you were fine, so that helped while I was restarting my heart from hearing someone else’s voice from your number. I didn’t know you had any friends in Austin.”
Finn settled back and ran her hand through her hair. “I didn’t either.” No one she knew from Fort Worth had ever moved to Austin because the rents were too high. Which meant it sucked she was starting over here, but there’d been nowhere else to go. “I went to my doctor’s appointment and I ran into one of the nurses from the prison.”
“Too bad it wasn’t that Victoria,” Hollis said. “You could find out where she disappeared to.”
Funny you should mention. “Vivienne,” Finn corrected him, but gently. He was stepping down the pain pills, but he didn’t sleep well. “That’s who called you.”
Hollis was visibly taken aback. “Oh wow. Sorry. She didn’t say she was a nurse or I might have put it together.”
“Well who would have thought?” Finn reassured him. “Total coincidence. She and I went for coffee to catch up, except I ended up doing the head explosion thing and I didn’t want to bust in on y’all with that. The good news is, I have both my meds now.” Hopefully he wouldn’t ask any questions. He had enough to manage without fussing over her already-resolved medication gap.
Hollis smoothed his hands over his thighs, a nervous gesture. He wore sweatpants these days instead of skinny jeans, loose t-shirts instead of fitted button downs. “I’m so sorry things are like this.”
“Knock it off. Compared to almost anybody else getting out of there, I’m living a life of luxury. My only concern is not leaning on you for too much longer.” Then she’d start paying him back for everything, starting with the shocking amount he’d paid to break her pre-prison lease so she wouldn’t have an eviction on her credit report.
Hollis did the little hand tilt he’d taken up as the replacement for a shrug. “It’ll take as long as it takes. Anyway, you found your mystery woman. Did you find out what happened?”
Yeah, she had, but Vivi had no interest in resuming even their friendship. However, Finn could answer Hollis’s question, which was some kind of closure. “She got fired, basically for caring too much.”
“You kind of suspected, yes? Or did I remember it wrong?”
Finn rested her head on the back of the couch. “You didn’t. Not everybody working there was evil, but Vivi was the nail that stuck up the most.”
“Whole system’s poison,” Hollis said through a yawn. “Could tell that much from your letters. So she took you home, nursed you back to health, you confessed your adoration, and?”
Surely the man could watch a soap opera if he needed romantic drama. Finn didn’t have any. “Nothing of the sort. She’s a nurse, I’m a former patient.”
“Emphasis on the former, and you had a crush on her.”
“Totally irrelevant.”
“She took you home, Finn. She could have asked me to come pick you up.”
“You can’t drive yet.”
“But did she know that?” Hollis asked as if it was a gotcha.
“You’re professoring in psychology now?”
Hollis’s face froze and Finn wanted to smack herself on the back of the head repeatedly. She lightly shoved his knee instead. “You’re on medical leave. You’ll get back to your bio majors soon enough, Dr. Lind.”
If he didn’t, at least he had the settlement from the accident. Finn hadn’t expected it to be resolved so quickly, but Hollis’s insurance company had torn up the trucking company whose driver had slammed into his small car. If Finn ever had a vehicle again, she was signing up with them.
“Tell me when it’s nine, okay?”
Finn’s heart went all ouch and she turned to face him better. “Twenty-three minutes left, Holl. You want ice? Heat pack?”
“Just keep me distracted. It’s not too bad, but I don’t want Mom and Grant seeing me either drugged up or worn out tomorrow. They’ve spent too much time worrying already.”
So that was the impetus to taper off the pills. Maybe after Aunt Priscilla had departed, Hollis would be kinder to himself.
A problem for tomorrow. Right now, he needed distraction. “Here’s something I haven’t told you about working in the prison infirmary. I wasn’t allowed to unpack boxes of wooden tongue depressors and put them in the cabinet. I couldn’t handle medications, that makes sense. No sharp instruments? Obviously. But the tongue depressor thing?”
Hollis gave her a small grin, playing along. “You could sharpen them.”
“Well sure, but whenever I imagined getting my hands on one of them, all I could picture was a diagnostic rampage making people say ‘ahhh’ and triggering their gag reflexes. Which would have made me unpopular, but what would they charge me with? Assault? Practicing medicine without a license? Both?”
“Finn.”
“What?”
“You like the girl.”
Finn blew out a breath. She was doing her best to bury that way down where it belonged. Had already begun to while talking with Vivi, or maybe she hadn’t and the reason Vivi had pulled away was hearts showing in Finn’s eyes.
Maybe if they’d had less time together, Finn would have had an easier time putting those hearts away in the first place, when Vivi had disappeared. She could have lied to herself that it was a passing crush. But they’d had two years of thirty hours a week, minus the too few days Vivi had taken off for vacation.
Working with someone for so long, you saw them. You knew which of their habits might annoy the heck out of you long term, such as cracking their knuckles multiple times an hour, or obsessively correcting people’s grammar when the speaker’s meaning was perfectly clear. You found out about their deep-seated attitudes from how they behaved. You saw how they treated people who had less power, and how they treated people who had more. The important stuff.
Finn liked all the important stuff about Vivi.
At first Finn had interpreted that warmth as coworker feelings, then good friend feelings. When she’d fallen for someone romantically before, it had been a rush, fast and bubbly. With Vivi it had snuck up on her, slow and sweet and comfortable, and by the time Finn had realized what had happened, it had been all around her.
“Yeah,” she finally admitted, because Hollis wouldn’t stop staring at her. “I like the girl. Honestly though, Holl, it doesn’t matter.”