I had no idea if British hospitals had set visiting hours, but I didn’t intend to ask, in case someone told me I had to leave.
I wrinkled my nose against the strong smell of cleanser mixed with something sour and musky that I didn’t want to identify. I paused outside the third-floor elevator to stare down the hall at his closed door. I stiffened my spine before I could lose my courage.
I moved around a nurse pushing an older guy in a wheelchair and cautiously nudged the door open. Alex pulled himself up when he saw me. A middle-aged man in the bed next to him snored away.
“Hey!” Alex waved. A tube that led from his elbow to the IV pole knocked against the metal rail of the bed.
I slid inside the room and drew a chair up next to him. “Hey to you too.” I touched his arm, almost as if I had to convince myself he was really there and okay. “You look better than when I saw you last.”
Alex rubbed his chin, his whiskers rasping. “Sorry.”
I pulled back, shocked. “Why are you sorry?”
“I imagine it was freaky, seeing me like that. Thrashing around, throwing up, passing out,” Alex said, not meeting my eyes. “Not exactly the kind of thing they advise when you want to impress a girl.”
“I don’t know,” I hedged, picking my words carefully. “Remember our waitress? She looked like she thought you were pretty hot.” His lip twitched and I could see he was trying not to laugh. “After all, some people are into weird shit.”
“Nothing against her, but she isn’t the girl I was trying to impress.”
My heart cracked like brittle ice. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too. I could kick myself for losing that stupid EpiPen. My mom is going to have a goat when she gets here.”
I held his hand through the metal railing on the side of the bed. There was no point in telling him he hadn’t lost the pen. I didn’t know exactly how Nicki had taken it, although it didn’t surprise me that she knew how to pickpocket. She might have bumped him on the sidewalk or sat next to him on the Tube and picked it out of his backpack as though she were a character from a Dickens novel.
“Your mom won’t be mad—she’ll just be glad you’re okay.”
“You might think that, but you haven’t met my mom. She didn’t want me to come on this trip because of my allergies. We almost never go out to eat because she doesn’t trust restaurants. When we travel anywhere, including to my grandma’s, she brings our own food in a cooler. This is going to convince her that her paranoia is justified. She’s going to take me home and seal me in a bubble.”
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I said. My heart gave way and broke into a thousand pieces. This was my fault.
Alex reached over and wiped a single tear off my cheek. “Hey, it was just some stupid cross-contamination thing.”
I nodded to please him, but it was my fault. He wouldn’t have been hurt if it hadn’t been for me. Nicki had gone after him to get to me. “You almost died,” I said quietly.
“But I didn’t. And who knows, maybe the exposure to the shrimp will end up giving me superpowers.”
“Like Batman,” I said.
Alex closed his eyes. “We soooo need to take you to a comic con at some point. For a woman who knows sci-fi, your superhero references are shit. Batman wasn’t bit by a bat. I was going for Spider-Man. I’m thinking I’ll be known as Crustacean Man. Shrimp Man sounds wimpy.”
“You can’t have that—then the bad guys won’t be afraid of you.” I liked Alex’s cartoon view of the world, where a bad guy was easy to identify. Not like real life, where she looked like a nice person to pass a plane delay with.
“I’ve got to figure out something for an outfit. I look pretty good in pink, so I’ve got that going for me.” He rubbed my knuckles and I flinched—they were still sore from hitting Nicki—but I didn’t pull my hand away. I deserved the pain.
“They’re supposed to discharge me later today once my parents get here,” Alex said. “Staying overnight at a hospital is a first for me and I’m not keen to repeat it.”
“Are you going home tomorrow?”
He nodded. “I tried to tell my parents I wanted to stay, but there’s no way. My mom is already preparing my hypoallergenic bubble.”
My throat grew tight. “I’m going to miss you.” I hated the idea of him leaving, but it was better. Safer.
He made an exaggerated dismissive wave. “Woman, you’re going to have to do your best to live without me for a couple days.”
“Yeah, about that . . .”
I hated to do this, but I had to. I had to put him first. Being close to me put Alex in danger. The best thing I could do for him was to get as much space between the two of us as possible. As long as Nicki thought he was important to me, the greater his risk, if I didn’t do what she wanted.
And if I did murder her mom, then I’d never be able to look at Alex again. How could I kill an innocent person and then go back to living my life as though nothing had happened? Alex was a good person. He deserved someone who was the same. I had no choice.
Alex pulled himself farther up on the pillows. “Wait, what’s going on?”
“I think it might be good if we took a break,” I said, pushing the words out.
He blinked. “Are you joking?”
“I mean, it’s been great, but when we get back, we’re both going to be really busy with school and stuff,” I said. I couldn’t look at him.
“You’re dumping me?” Alex’s voice was so loud, the guy in the next bed jolted awake with a juicy snort, as if his tongue had slipped down his throat. He looked surprised to see me there.
I lowered my voice. “We’ve both got a lot going on and—”
“Stop saying ‘we’ when this is clearly about you,” Alex said.
“Um, do you want me to leave?” the man in the next bed said, holding the blanket to the side, exposing his scrawny legs, as if he were ready to make a run for it. Alex waved him off without even acknowledging what he’d said.
“Okay, I’ve got a lot going on. I’m not sure I can be in a relationship right now. I don’t have the emotional resources.”
Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you hear yourself? ‘Emotional resources’? You sound like a bad episode of Dr. Phil. Is this because I got sick? They’re allergies—I don’t have some kind of plague.”
“It’s not that.”
“Seriously, I could just pop down for a cup of tea . . .” the man offered.
“You just happen to be dumping me while I’m in the hospital. You expect me to believe that’s just a coincidence?”
“I could make a couple calls or something.” The guy had his feet on the floor at this point. His pajama pants were a washed-out gray and the elastic at the waist was loose, the pants threatening to fall down. I wished he would just go instead of waiting for permission. Alex was right. The allergic reaction was why I was breaking up with him, but not because it had grossed me out. I had to hurt him now to keep him safe, even if every word out of his mouth was a punch to my heart.
“Your allergic reaction has nothing to do with it,” I said. “The whole reason I wanted to talk to you yesterday was about this.”
“So, your plan was to break up over pad thai so that I wouldn’t make a scene? You were managing me.” He shook his head. “That’s just great. You couldn’t say anything when I stayed the night at your place?”
I winced. The man in the next bed was no longer asking to leave. Now he looked ready to munch on some popcorn and watch the show.
“It’s not that I don’t care about you, but—”
“You know, please spare me the ‘I care about you, but’ speech. If you don’t want to be with me, then that’s fine, just go.”
“Alex—” I touched his elbow, but he yanked his arm back, making the IV pole shake.
“You should go. You said what you came to say. Thanks for the good times. It’s been fun. We’ll always have London, blah blah blah.”
“I’m really sorry.” I stood, my legs shaking.
“Just leave.”
“I wish things were different,” I said.
“Just get the hell out!” Alex yelled, and I bolted from the room, his hurt and anger chasing me into the hall. I bumped into a squat nurse right outside the door.
“Is everything all right?” She peered into Alex’s room.
“Uh-huh.” I dodged past her and down the hall. I stumbled down the stairs and spilled out onto the first floor. Every direction I turned, there were more people. Then I saw the sign for the nondenominational chapel. I pushed open the door, praying for quiet.
The room was blissfully empty. I shut the door behind me and slid to the floor onto the industrial carpet. It was a good thing I was already in a hospital, because my heart was failing. I could feel it shredding inside my chest, tearing free. I squeezed my temples, trying to hold in a scream.
I hated that I’d hurt Alex. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t understand. He thought it was him, that I found his love for comic books too geeky, or his encyclopedic knowledge of video-game strategy too useless, or that I looked down on the fact that he’d actually taught himself Elvish by reading The Lord of the Rings. But I loved all those things. I loved how different he was from everyone else and how he saw adventure and magic in everything. I loved how there was a tiny chip in his front tooth and how his body was always so warm, as if he were his own nuclear device sending out heat waves.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, trying to pull myself together. My breath came in shuddering gasps and I focused on taking slow, deep inhales through my nose and then exhaling through my mouth. I couldn’t afford to lose my senses now. I had no doubt Nicki was serious. If I didn’t kill her mom, she would hunt me down. Worse than that, she would hunt down the people who mattered to me.
Going to the police was no longer an option. They weren’t going to believe me. I’d cried wolf too often. Not to mention I could just imagine how Nicki would perform under questioning. Smooth. Like a duck, perfectly calm on the surface but paddling like mad underneath the water. She’d bury me and get away. And then who knew what she would do in revenge. I’d risk myself, but not everyone else. I had to handle this on my own.
Nicki said that she’d picked me because she thought I was smart and analytical. That I could divorce myself from emotion and do what needed to be done. Clinical. If I was going to survive this, I needed to be that person. I had to focus on what I was going to do. What would give me the outcome I wanted. The tears on my face started to dry and I could see options in my mind as if I were writing them down on the whiteboard in Mr. Donald’s class. The squeak of the dry-erase marker as I flew over the calculations. My breathing evened out.
I needed to work the freaking problem, and that wasn’t how to kill Nicki’s mom. My problem was Nicki.