Claire Whitaker pushed through the hospital doors with a roll of medical tape still in her scrub pocket. She had forgotten to put it back. At the curb, an ambulance crew was unloading equipment, and a security officer who usually called good night to her had become very interested in the wet toes of his shoes.
A black sedan occupied the far end of the pickup lane. Everybody was giving it room.
Claire barely registered that. She had been awake for twenty-six hours, and her twelve-hour shift had stretched to nineteen after a bus wreck on one of Pittsburgh’s bridges. Her feet hurt inside her shoes. Somewhere under the fatigue, she was still hearing the last breaths of a man whose wife hadn’t reached the hospital in time.
She had held his hand. Eleven minutes later, she had entered his death into the computer, checked the next chart, and gone where she was needed.
At twenty-nine, after six years in emergency nursing, she could perform that transition without anyone seeing what it cost her.
The loan payment was another thing she had learned to carry quietly. When she was twenty-three, her father had collapsed beside a grocery display. An operation kept him alive; the bills that followed amounted to $205,600. Her mother cleaned offices after dark and had signed the loan papers with hands roughened by disinfectant. Claire had signed beside her.
Every month, $1,125 left Claire’s account. The lender never forgot the date.
She could live with cheap furniture, extra shifts, and the careful arithmetic required to buy groceries. What she couldn’t bear was anyone deciding that helping her entitled them to direct her life. She meant to pay what she owed and never acquire another kind of debt.
Her phone had three percent battery left. The ride app showed a black sedan, arriving now.
Headlights reflected off the pavement. Drivers shouted names through open windows. The car at the end of the lane was black, its engine was running, and Claire had reached the point where those two facts seemed sufficient.
She opened the passenger door and lowered herself into a heated leather seat. The interior smelled faintly of peppermint and damp wool.
“Please get me to my apartment,” she said, closing her eyes. “I can’t manage one more thing tonight.”
The car didn’t move.
She waited for the driver to confirm her name. Instead, she heard the turn signal of a vehicle somewhere behind them, then footsteps close to the door.
When she opened her eyes, the man beside her was looking through the windshield. His dark coat lay open over an immaculate suit. A narrow watch disappeared beneath his cuff when he shifted his hand on the wheel. Everything about him suggested that he had never spent ten minutes arguing over an overdraft charge.
A broad man appeared at the driver’s window. His gray jacket concealed something that made Claire sit a little straighter. Across the hood, another man took up a position facing her door, while two people emerged from an SUV parked behind them.
“Mr. Caruso,” the man at the window said. “Shall I get her out?”
Caruso.
Even exhausted, Claire knew that name. People in Pittsburgh spoke it softly or not at all.
She had climbed into Dominic Caruso’s car.
For a moment she felt every inch of the distance between herself and the hospital doors. Then her training supplied something useful to do. She looked at the man rather than the men surrounding him.
His right hand was trembling. He was keeping his breaths shallow and measured, and his complexion had a dullness she didn’t like. Whatever danger he represented, he was also a person trying to conceal that he felt unwell.
“Stay where you are, Wade,” he said.
The guard leaned nearer. “We don’t know—”
“She’s a nurse. Leave her alone.”
Wade withdrew from the window.
Claire brought her bag onto her lap. “I thought this was my ride. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
Dominic turned toward her. His eyes were gray, and his expression offered her no help at all.
“This door usually stays closed,” he said.
“Then I’ve had an exceptionally successful night.” She glanced at his hand again. “Have you eaten today?”
He looked down at the wheel as though she had pointed out something he hadn’t known was there.
“You’re shaking,” she added. “Skipping dinner won’t improve it.”
“Where am I taking you?”
She hesitated. “South Side. Morrow Street, just beyond the bread shop.”
“Buckle up.”
There were several sensible objections she might have made. None arrived before he eased the car away from the curb.
In the side mirror, the SUV followed. Beyond it, under the hospital’s awning, a silver-haired man in a dark overcoat watched them depart. He seemed almost pleased.
Claire tried to read the street signs as they crossed the river. She intended to remain alert, remember the route, and thank the driver properly when they arrived. Warm air blew against her ankles. The river lights broke into long streaks on the glass.
Her head settled against the window.
Dominic noticed before they reached the next traffic light. He lowered the fan a little and continued driving.
On Morrow Street, he parked outside a narrow brick building with a porch light above its worn steps. The SUV stopped near the corner. Wade came to the window, saw the sleeping woman, and started to speak.
Dominic raised his hand. Wade returned to the other car.
Rain tapped the roof, then grew steady. Dominic sat with the engine running and the radio off. He had kept that passenger seat empty for seven years. Now a stranger slept in it with a hospital bag caught beneath her elbow and a strip of tape clinging to her pocket.
He stayed for forty minutes.
Claire woke with a sharp breath and reached instinctively for her phone. The dashboard clock read 3:18.
“Oh, that’s awful. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You finally fell asleep.”
“That wasn’t your problem.” She gathered her bag, fumbling its strap. “Thank you. Really.”
He took a plain envelope from the console and offered it to her. It was thick enough that she didn’t need to ask what was inside.
“Let me make tonight easier.”
Her hand stopped short of it.
“The ride was enough. Keep that.”
“It doesn’t obligate you.”
“I’d rather not test that.” She opened the door, then leaned back to look at him. “And get yourself some food, Mr. Caruso.”
She was halfway up the steps before he lowered the envelope.
He watched her unlock the door. Refusing him had apparently required no more effort than reminding him to eat.
Three days later, Claire picked up a short coverage shift in the ICU at Riverview Medical Center. Rafael Ortega, in bed eleven, was recovering from two gunshot wounds. She was checking his infusion when the visiting period began.
Dominic entered at four minutes past six, with Wade behind him.
Claire glanced toward the door. “Rafael gets one visitor. The other gentleman can wait outside.”
Wade drew himself up. “I’m here to—”
“There are chairs by the nurses’ desk. You’ll survive them.”
Dominic looked at him. Wade went back into the corridor.
Claire asked Rafael about his discomfort, adjusted the tubing, and explained what she was doing before touching his dressing. Dominic remained near the foot of the bed, watching the concentration with which she attended to a man most people found inconvenient or frightening.
“So this is where you belong,” he said.
“Today. Tomorrow they may lend me to another floor.” She checked the pump once more. “Hospitals enjoy variety when somebody calls in sick.”
A suggestion of amusement crossed his face.
The silver-haired man Claire had seen at the curb appeared in the doorway carrying white lilies. She stopped him before he could bring them farther into the unit.
“Those will need to stay outside.”
“Of course.” He handed the bouquet to Wade with an easy smile. “Lawrence Fenwick. I’ve known this family longer than these boys have been alive. They generally put ‘Uncle’ in front of it.”
“Claire Whitaker.”
“Claire. A pleasure.”
Dominic stepped back toward the doorway to let him approach the bed. Lawrence rested a hand lightly on Rafael’s shoulder.
“I couldn’t sit at home another minute,” he said. “After that ambulance ride, after sitting beside him in the emergency room, you start feeling you ought to remain close. I held on to his hand until they finally took him upstairs.”
Claire stopped adjusting the line.
Only for a second. Then she finished, checked the connection, and gave Lawrence the courteous expression she used with difficult visitors.
Dominic saw the hesitation.
Rafael had arrived at 1:26 in the morning, left at the curb in the rear seat of a private car. There had been no ambulance, no companion in the treatment room, and no visitors allowed near him before daylight.
Claire knew because she had been the nurse who met that car…
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