CHAPTER 13

It took all of Jane’s energy to drag herself to work. She’d barely slept. She hadn’t eaten. Steve had sent several texts pestering her for an answer she couldn’t give him, but there had been no contact from Daniel. She tried to appreciate this for the fact that it gave her time to plan what she would say to him. The more time that passed the more time her brain had to convince her that she could still have Daniel if only she became a very good liar and kept her secret from him forever. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was all she had.

“What’s wrong with your phone?” Alma’s face was puffy and splotched, her voice void of energy, her big black mass of hair even wilder than usual.

“Died on me.” Jane handed her the burner. “I couldn’t download the numbers.”

Alma entered her phone number into the burner. “I needed you last night.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Have you heard from him?”

“Yeah, I—We talked this morning.”

Jane was staring blankly at the charge board. She missed the significance of Alma’s hesitation, her expression pleading with Jane to ask more, to show that she was listening.

“What were you doing last night? I came by, you weren’t home.”

“I was out with Steve.”

“Steve … Fletcher?”

“It was nothing. He and Daniel have this competitive—I don’t know what exactly. It’s weird. I’m not sure Daniel and I are going to work out.” Jane drew a deep breath. “I’m going to do rounds, okay?”

“Hang on. You were out with Steve Fletcher while I was freaking out thinking my boyfriend was dead?”

“The Vanguard don’t kill people, Alma. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but if you were really a fan you would know that.”

Jane didn’t hear Alma say, “You’re wrong about them,” as she walked away, the ground not quite solid beneath her feet, vaguely aware she was being a bitch.

There were not enough patients to keep Jane away from the desk for as long as she needed, so she worked as slowly as possible. The car accident victim in bed six slept off the anesthesia from his kidney transplant. His face looked like it had finally begun to heal. There was less bruising. Jane set up a fresh bag of IV meds and paused to listen to the humming of the machines. They sang a little chorus of life-giving harmony, all operating at different frequencies, almost like they were singing to her.

From the caddy at the foot of the bed Jane filled her hands with gauze and swabs and pump bottles to clean his burned feet. Confronting the festering red blisters, all she could think about was Daniel and the trauma that must have been inflicted on his leg to make saving it impossible. She wished the Vanguard had been the ones killed while attacking Annie Sunderland instead of those other people. And then she was glad they hadn’t been killed because that kind of death was too easy for them.

They all lied to me that night. They were lying to me every day after that.

The machines soothed her. She remembered that she was a good nurse. Even if it wasn’t what she wanted, she would always have that. She whispered quiet words of reassurance to her patient’s brutalized body. She asked him if he wondered how he had come to this place, this less than pristine condition of himself, and if he had a plan for recovery. The machines answered her. There was always a way.

She saved Rhea’s room for last knowing it would be the most difficult. Pausing behind the privacy curtain, she listened for visitors. Rhea was on the phone with her husband, the conversation a playful flirtation full of innuendo, and what sounded like a debate about the best kinds of boats.

“Have to go, my savior is here,” said Rhea when Jane revealed herself. “Catch some good ones for me.”

Jane frowned her disapproval when she saw Rhea sitting in the recliner beside the bed. “You need to elevate that leg.”

“So I’ve been told.” Rhea pushed herself up and hobbled over to the bed. “But one can only sit in this bed for so many hours a day. Once I’m home, I promise I will do everything I’m supposed to, scout’s honor.” Her smirk looked remarkably like Steve’s. “I’ll even eat my vegetables.”

“You better.” Jane tried to sound playful, but it seemed like everything she said came out sounding like a threat.

“I’m expecting you at my welcome home bash tomorrow night. I want to show you off.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Shame.”

“I guess this is goodbye then.”

“Is it?” Rhea frowned. “Did I miss something?”

“Goodbye for now, I mean.”

“Don’t let my son scare you off. He’s an expert at self-sabotage. We know you’re right for him. Don’t forget that.”

Jane turned the words over in her head as she made a hasty retreat so Rhea wouldn’t see her cry. We know you’re right for him. Her confidence made Jane feel even worse.

After her shift, Jane drove home and went straight to bed. She slept through both alarms, three texts from Steve, and a phone call from Alma saying they had to talk. Something—a nightmare or imagined movement outside her bedroom door—startled Jane awake twenty minutes before her shift started. She didn’t rush.

First, she stopped at Taco Bell for lunch, then she drove through Starbucks for what turned out to be a poorly blended Frappuccino. She jabbed at the ice chunks as she drove. Drivers honked their horns and passed her, furious for no apparent reason. There was that billboard again, the woman who looked like Jane, gazing at her perfect, sleeping child. She made Jane want to throw things. She cultivated fantasies of objects flying end over end through the air, splatting, thudding, crashing.

At the gas station off the hospital exit, she stopped and bought three fistfuls of little bottles of Wild Turkey whisky. The gas station guy asked if she wouldn’t rather just buy a pint. Jane laughed in his face. “A pint? A pint! I’m going to work, you moron.”

He gave her a look; she felt the need to clarify.

“I’m not going to drink at work, but I need these … for later.”

The gas station attendant’s right hand moved beneath the counter like he was reaching for the alarm.

“Don’t you hate that billboard? Someone should complain. That’s not how it is you know, being a parent.”

The guy pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about.

Jane drove the rest of the way to the hospital with the bottles in her lap, one hand keeping them in place, one hand steering. One or two accidentally found their way into her purse as she parked. Jane patted the knobs of their bottoms poking against the canvas as she walked across the parking garage. One never knew when some low-life or the gas station guy could break into your car and Jane didn’t want all her little bottles to disappear without her.

Alma waited at the elevator. “Where the frack have you been?” Her hair was a tangled mass amplifying every movement of her head. “I’ve been calling you.” A rush of tears flooded her eyes. She choked on a sob.

“I’m here now, relax.” Jane sensed a nervous anticipation in the air, a conspiring of the universe. It occurred to her that only men had the power to make Alma this upset.

“I’ve done something terrible. You have to help me make it right.”

“That’s what I’m here for. But, like, I think we’re late for work; Doraceli’s going to be pissed.” Jane sipped her frappe of sweet processed sugar goodness and wondered what made a Frappuccino a Frappuccino. Which was better, almond or soy lattes? Was the buzz around this flat white thing really deserving? These were questions her family never asked. Daniel probably knows about coffee, she thought.

“The morning after South Carolina, I talked to him.”

“Yesterday.”

“Yes, yesterday. He told me …” Another sob disrupted the end of Alma’s sentence. “When we talk, he’s really vocal about how the Vanguard needs to change because people aren’t getting the message … the culture isn’t reforming fast enough. And I’ve been agreeing with him. It seemed harmless, just venting. But Jane—he had them killed.”

Jane’s frappe drinking picked up speed. “I bet your guy is just pretending to be one of them.”

“I talked to him again this morning and I don’t think … I think he was dating me because he was interested in me.”

Jane sucked down so much frappe she gave herself a brain freeze. The fact that the sun had risen bright and beautiful was beginning to feel like a cruel joke.

“He’s interested in you. Jane—I’m so sorry. I know you have problems with your ex, and you want to stay under the radar, but I had no idea who Mirt was when I told him about you. I can’t tell you how stupid I feel. Don’t hate me, okay? I have a plan. I was awake all day thinking about it, and I’m sure it will work. You and I can go to the FBI.”

Jane’s frappie straw jabbed into the roof of her mouth as she misjudged its position relative to her lips. The residual momentum bent the straw so forcefully it crunched through the flimsy plastic lid.

“We’ll set a trap so when your husband comes to find you, he’ll be arrested. If the Vanguard are really going the way Mirt says they are, we have a responsibility to make sure something like South Carolina can’t happen again.”

Jane turned her back on Alma and scanned the parking garage. In movies and TV shows, bad things happened in parking garages. Seth could be there, right now, watching them, waiting for the opportune moment.

Jane wanted to argue with Alma about Tommy having something to do with South Carolina. It felt easier than confronting the fact that the secret was out; her life was about to change. And she was so tired of defending what she thought she knew about her family.

When Jane turned back to Alma, she was holding up her phone. On the screen was a family picture from Jane’s wedding. She almost didn’t recognize herself as the smiling young woman in a veil enveloped by the arms of a grizzly bear of a man in a tux. They looked so happy together. Tommy stood at Jane’s other side, edging into the frame with an anxious expression like he worried he’d be left behind.

“The FBI can catch them if you give them the names of the guys they’re looking for. You know them.” An iron determination filled Alma’s voice. “Help me stop them.”

Jane shook her head. “That isn’t me.” She brushed past Alma and punched the elevator button.

“He told me about your daughter,” said Alma. “Leah.”

The name sent pinpricks up Jane’s spine.

“Your husband wants to see her. Unless you’ve got a kid stashed away somewhere that I don’t know about, I think that means you’re in trouble.”

A sharp pain spasmed across Jane’s gut. She sensed Alma edging closer. “I know you’re good at secrets, Jane. You’ve obviously got reasons for some of them, but this one you should’ve shared. No woman can bear the loss of a child alone.”

It would’ve been so easy for Jane to turn and bury her head in Alma’s shoulder, wait for the tears to seed her confession. But she couldn’t allow that much of a concession to the truth. The elevator chimed its arrival. “I’ll see you upstairs.”

Jane pushed the button for every floor between the Ground and the 7th. She needed to think. Alma had told Tommy she knew Jane. Tommy knew where to find Jane. He would tell Seth. Seth would come. Maybe he was already on his way. She pulled her brain back to her filmy first days in LA and found the Amtrak schedule she had memorized. A train left for Vancouver at ten the next morning. That was option one. Option two, wait and see what happened; maybe going back to Seth wasn’t such a bad idea. Part of her thought maybe it’d be easier to just give up and be his wife. Option three, go with Alma to the FBI and pray they’d allow her to be an anonymous witness. She’d get her family arrested so they could never find her again. She’d live out her life as a good nurse.

None of these options got her what she wanted.

Doraceli’s usual sour expression devolved into a smirk when she saw Jane, who had been riding the elevator and drinking wild turkey for almost ten minutes before she arrived on her floor. Her feet felt like lead. Alma had not come up from the garage.

“Not on your A game today, huh?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“So you are.” Doraceli handed over the shift log. “Bed six is still alive. Order came down from the doctor to speed up the drip on IV. His vitals weren’t so great today. And Rhea Fletcher was released.”

Alma came down the corridor from the elevator with a put-on smile. She’d dried her eyes and fixed her makeup.

“You two have fun,” Doraceli signed off. “I’ll make sure and be super late tomorrow morning, so you know how it feels.”

And then they were alone.

Alma’s hair was a tent hiding her neck and shoulders like an ancient Egyptian headdress. Her eyes beamed into Jane with supernatural power. They were the eyes of Isis, goddess of downtrodden women, slaves, and the poor. Jane’s idea of Isis had come from a date with a grad student in archeology who had not wanted to go into archeology, so maybe she was some other kind of goddess. For a moment, this question was a blissful distraction Jane could hide in.

“Jane, listen to me. I know they’re your family,” whispered Alma, “but people are getting hurt. We need to stop them.”

“If that’s how you feel, go for it.”

“Jane, please.”

“You want to punish Mirt for not being interested in you. That’s your thing not mine.”

“He’s your brother.”

Jane glared at her. And then, as she felt the glaze of her anger splintering into something more dangerous, Jane escaped from the desk to mix the new IV bag for bed six. Doraceli had written the proportions in big letters in the log. Jane had read them. But now she couldn’t remember, and she didn’t want to go back to the desk to check. It was two parts to one, Jane was pretty sure.

Bed six and his humming machines were the same as she’d left them the night before. She replaced the IV bag and allowed herself a moment to absorb the stillness. She wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. Once her patient was awake and knew the long road to recovery that lay before him, peace would be a distant memory for both of them. Maybe she wouldn’t be around for his recovery. None of the options Jane had considered in the elevator involved remaining in LA as a practicing nurse who worked alongside her best friend.

She needed to say something to Alma. The poor woman’s heart was broken and Jane had cut herself off from any expression of support. She’d suspected Tommy had ulterior motives and said nothing. There wasn’t anything she could say now that would fix any of the three hundred million new cracks in their relationship.

Maybe there was one thing.

Jane set aside the gauze she was about to use on her patient’s burns and walked back to the desk. She walked slowly. Time seemed slower than usual. Nothing and everything felt important. She saw Alma running toward her.

“I was thinking about your idea—”

“What are you doing?” Alma called as she ran by. “Don’t you hear the alarms in six?”

It took more energy than it should have for Jane to turn herself around and follow Alma. “Caution, this woman makes wide turns,” whispered Jane. She found this incredibly funny.

“He’s going into shock,” cried Alma to the West 7 nurses as they rushed into room six just ahead of Jane.

The machines’ chorus no longer hummed in harmony. They’d erupted in staccato screams. Alma rushed from one display to another, from machine to patient, and back. Jane stood against the wall out of the way. She wondered if maybe she could help. But there seemed more than enough people already involved. And here came the doctor, also not in a rush, coffee in hand. Jane’s brain had turned into a soggy gray mush that might or might not be leaking out her ears. She couldn’t feel them.

“He’s dead,” said the doctor.

Alma’s Isis eyes turned on Jane, no sympathy, only accusation. Jane felt the need to throw something. She marked a target in the middle of Alma’s forehead only to find her hands empty.

“Was this fatality expected?” asked the doctor.

“Yes,” said Jane. “No,” said Alma. The West 7 nurses looked at each other and silently edged past Jane and out of the room. Jane rushed to clarify. “Not exactly expected, but he was barely hanging on.”

“He was fine,” said Alma.

“That’s not what Doraceli said.”

“I’ll get his chart and we’ll see.” Alma brushed past Jane.

Jane followed her. “You think this is my fault, don’t you?”

“You’re the expert.”

“Stop walking and look at me.” Jane grabbed at Alma’s arm and missed.

“What did you put in that IV when you changed it?”

“Exactly what it should have been.”

“What was it?”

This was a test, Jane could tell. “Don’t you know?”

“I’m asking you.”

Jane guessed. “Three parts to one part.”

“You killed him.”

“Did I say three parts to one? I meant one and one.”

They’d arrived at the desk. Alma pulled out her tablet and synched it with the computer records.

“It was an accident.”

Alma ignored her.

Jane looked around for some way to get Alma’s attention. Her phone sat beside the computer. The phone with Jane’s wedding picture on it.

The weight of it felt solid in her hands, a little unwieldy. She wound up and pitched it in Alma’s direction a little harder than she should have. It covered the four feet between them in slow motion, graceful, not as dangerous as Jane felt. The corner of the phone connected with the side of Alma’s head. She fell back, startled. She tripped over the wheels of her chair, tried to grab the back and stop her momentum but grabbed her track jacket instead. It slipped. Her head connected with the edge of the desk on its way to the floor.

For a moment Jane felt an alarming sense of triumph. She’d won. She would survive another day. She picked up Alma’s phone and slid it into her pocket. Aaron had taught her to always put away her tools after she used them. The triumphant feeling faded. Jane fell to her knees and cradled Alma’s head in her lap.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Alma? Can you hear me?”

Alma’s head shifted from side to side. Her eyes fluttered open then closed. “You can’t let them control you,” she whispered.

Jane sensed movement at her back and jerked her head around. The doctor had followed them from room six. How long has she been there? The doctor was staring at Jane like she was some sort of demon who threw cell phones. “What happened?”

“She slipped.” Jane moved her hands like she was helping Alma up.

“Stay here,” the doctor said, but nervously, which meant if Jane could summon the willpower, she could escape. It was easier to sit. While waiting for security Jane considered the irony bound up with the fact that Tommy had been the one who had taught her to throw. If Alma had been more conscious, maybe Jane would’ve admitted this, the closest thing to a confession she could muster.

Ten minutes later Gary, the night watchman, gave Jane orders to clean out her locker and leave the campus pending what would likely be a two-week suspension leading up to at least one review board interview. The on-call doctor had tried to convince Alma to file assault charges with the city police as well, and for Gary to arrest her so she couldn’t escape in the meantime, but neither of them had been up to a fight with teeth in it. There was irony here also, in the doctor’s dramatic insistence, which neither Alma nor Gary took seriously, and the fact that Jane was in fact plotting escape.

Because no one had searched her, Jane still had her remaining bottles of Wild Turkey. She also still had Alma’s phone. She carried them out to the garage with the rest of her belongings and sat in her Jeep scrolling through Alma’s pictures. Alma and her cat. Alma and her cat. Alma at ComicCon dressed in a Star Trek jumpsuit. Jane and Alma at a church retreat the previous summer. Jane and Alma, Jane and Alma. And then there was Jane and Seth in their wedding costumes. Alma had several more than she’d showed Jane—which really begged the question of what Tommy had been thinking. Almost ten pictures of Jane and he was only in two. In one they stood together dressed for homeschool prom looking more like a couple than siblings—not something a guy normally sent his out of town girlfriend. The other was a family photo—Jane’s brother Amos and his wife and their kids, her mother flanked by Aaron and Tommy, with Jane and Seth beside them. Jane hated how she looked like she belonged, how she had pretended so well and for so long that sometimes she’d forgotten it was pretend. She deleted every picture.

Nine hours until the train left for Toronto. She needed to say goodbye to Daniel. Even if he wasn’t ready to talk to her yet, he was surely out of the clinic by now. She needed closure. She texted Steve. Finished work early. Party still on?

Steve replied in less than three seconds. Waiting on you.

Jane started up the Jeep and stomped on the gas. A party would be just the thing to distract her from the magnificent train wreck that had become her life. Her last hurrah in Los Angeles. It was fitting that it would end with Daniel and his family since he was the one she had come to Los Angeles to find. While she was thinking this, Jane was supposed to be backing up. Imagine her surprise when stomping on the gas propelled her forward instead of backward and she plowed into a cement support column. The engine sputtered, smoked and then died a slow ticking death. Unfazed, she texted Steve again. Off work, need a ride, hosp parking garage, SAVE ME.

Jane waited five minutes, ten, twenty. No reply. She considered trying Daniel. Maybe he needs me to initiate? Instead, she cracked open a whisky and wondered how many bottles it would take before she felt something she wanted to feel.

Forty minutes and three Wild Turkeys later, Steve’s Maserati roared into the garage. Jane offered him his own bottle of Wild Turkey and slid into the passenger seat. He didn’t need to say anything. The smile Jane gave him let him think he’d won her over and that this drive was a prelude to the final stage of his conquest. He seemed a little nervous that she would be so open, that Daniel could be dismissed so easily.

The whisky burned through her nerves. Leather seats had never felt so warm. The new lemon and pine air freshener was a little too strong, so Jane rolled down the window. The wind in her hair was like ten expert hands at a top-of-the-line salon massaging her scalp.

She decided there was nothing, absolutely nothing, more romantic than driving out of the city along the coast at night. This was why people lived in California. It wasn’t the beaches or the movie stars or Silicon Valley or endless days of uninterrupted smoggy sunshine. It was the way the night felt as it came across the continent, bringing an entire country’s worth of daily lives to conclusion before it drove off with the sunset. Night saved the best for last, tucking them in like a favorite youngest child.