After Hours (6 page)

“Not bad,” he said.

I rubbed my sore forearms. “Not great. You could have head-butted me into unconsciousness
ten times over, in the time that took.”

“So try it again.”

And I did. Kelly made me do it a dozen times, until my shoulders burned and my face
was flushed and my arms tenderized. I’d probably have bruises like his by the end
of the three-day course, tattooed all black and blue.

We swapped, and he stooped to curl his arm around my neck. His hold was loose enough,
but his elbow was as locked and unyielding as an iron collar. I did everything I’d
been taught and everything Kelly’s deep voice reiterated just behind my ear, but he
was too strong. Or I was too weak. I felt dizzy from the hangover and the creeping
claustrophobia, my muscles more limp with every attempt, noodles turning soft and
useless. My pushes grew frantic, and he must have sensed I was beyond trying.

When he finally stepped back and let me rest, I was panting and no doubt red as a
brick, my sweat stinking of whiskey and wine. He studied my face, and I didn’t think
I’d ever felt so unattractive.

“Well done,” he said.

I glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall, finding it was only a minute until we were
due to finish. I waved his compliment away, knowing I looked half-dead, and spoke
through my huffing. “Oh yeah, piece of cake.”

Though it never surfaced, I saw a smile lurking behind his lips.

“Great work, everyone!” Audra said with a clap. “See you back here tomorrow at ten
for round two! So keep limber!”

Kelly and I headed for the door together.

“We’ve missed lunch,” I said as I realized it. My stomach growled, eavesdropping.

“We missed lunch
service
. But there’ll still be something to scavenge, if you didn’t pack anything.”

“I didn’t.”

“Better get you introduced to the kitchen staff. Good friends to have around here.”

“Oh?”

He nodded as we exited, and his eyes looked different outside. Nearly blue, like a
thick, antique glass bottle. “The residents in the locked ward get so few luxuries,
food’s a big deal. Sometimes having the power to score somebody an extra brownie is
enough to avoid a meltdown.”

“I’ll make a note.”

We strolled in the warm June sunshine, its heat burning off a bit of my exhaustion
and angst, if not my sweat. The drills were flipping through my mind like flash cards,
and I hoped I wouldn’t have stress dreams about them all night. My legs yearned to
slow down, dawdle so the walk took an hour, just me and the spring air, no responsibilities,
flanked by a hulking man capable of defending me against any number of deadly attacks.

It would’ve been too strong to say I felt a bond with Kelly. My body was curious about
his, but I didn’t have any urge to hold his hand as we walked, or to imagine he was
my boyfriend. He’d shared too much about his romantic MO for me to waste my time mooning
over him . . . but there was
something
there. Something not quite familiar, but comforting. I could see how he had a calming
influence on the patients. If he ever got over his my-way-or-the-highway machismo,
he’d probably make one hell of a dependable husband for some tough-as-nails woman.

We reached the entrance to Starling and I swiped us in. Kelly led me up a back stairwell
to the third floor, and I knew we were near the kitchen from the smell. Tater tots.

Kelly swung one of the double doors in. “Knock knock,” he said to someone I couldn’t
see, then slipped inside, holding the door for me.

It looked like a scaled-down version of my high school cafeteria. Lots of steel surfaces
and steam and big freezers and plastic bins. Kelly introduced me to the man in charge,
a short black guy my age named Roland. Before I knew it, we were carrying trays to
a break room I’d never been in before, just me and Kelly and a softly droning portable
television propped on a pile of textbooks in the corner.

Kelly opened a can of seltzer. “So. How is it, living in the transitional residence?”

I swallowed a bite of turkey burger and shrugged. “It feels like a dorm. I think.
I’ve never actually lived in one. Quieter, probably. But you know, communal showers,
identical rooms, shared kitchen. It’s cheap. It’ll do the job until I’ve got my head
wrapped around everything and know the area a bit better.”

“Before you decide whether or not to stay,” he translated, but incorrectly.

I shook my head. “I’m staying, barring a seriously traumatic experience. It’s close
to my sister, and it pays pretty well. I have to settle
some
place, and get some clinical experience. And if I can handle a locked ward, I’ll know
I’m capable of working just about anywhere.”

“Why’s it so important to stay near your sister?”

“I just need to. I sort of raised her, and I worry about her. She’s got a toddler
and really bad taste in men. She requires a lot of maintenance, to keep from going
off the rails.”

“Maybe you’d be surprised, if you left her alone to fend for herself.”

I laughed. “I tried that, when I moved in with my grandma. I didn’t think I could
look after her,
and
my sister. And occasionally my mom. So I told Amber—my sister—that I was done bailing
her out all the time, and she was eighteen, and it was time for her to find her feet
and all that.”

“And?”

I shook my head. “Within six months she’d run up eight grand on a credit card, got
evicted, and turned up on my grandma’s doorstep with her rear windshield smashed out.”

“Wild child?”

“By herself she’s not that bad. But she falls for the most horrible guys. I think
part of her enjoys the drama, like she’s in her own reality show. But she’s got a
son now, you know? You don’t get to star in your own show when there’s a kid around.”

“So what, you’re just going to babysit her until your nephew’s safely off to college?”

I slumped, exhausted by the thought. “I dunno. I just know it’s too soon to disentangle
myself. I lost my grandma this winter and my mom’s barely in the picture, so Amber’s
my only close family, really. And vice versa. I know it sounds codependent. I know
it
is
codependent . . .”

“You’re just doing your best,” he offered.

“Yeah. Yeah, I hope so.”

“That’s all any of us can ever do. And a lot of us don’t even do that.”

As depressing as Kelly’s wisdom was, it cheered me. I was doing my best. That
was
all anybody could do.

“What do you think you’d be doing, if you didn’t have your sister to worry about?”

“Jeez, I dunno. I wound up here, because of her moving, and I wound up in nursing
because of my grandma. God, it’s so depressing to think about it that way.”

Kelly shrugged. “I wound up here because my old man was a raging drunk. We’re all
just pinballs, getting bonked around wherever our upbringings kick us.”

“So much for free will.”

“Free will’s whatever you do when you punch out for the night.”

“Then my free will’s got narcolepsy,” I said, and as if illustrating my point, a massive
yawn unfurled from my lungs.

“You’ll adjust. And tomorrow you get to sleep in.”

I nodded. “Until ten, when I have to go back to wrestling practice.”

He cracked a smile, cranking my internal temperature up a few degrees. “I went easy
on you today. Tomorrow and Thursday, I won’t fuck around.”

“Oh, yay.”

“You’re good, though.”

“At what? Restraints?”

He nodded. “A natural.”

“Yeah, right. You had me in a headlock for at least three minutes and I couldn’t even
budge your stupid arm. And don’t you have tomorrow off?”

Another nod. “We’re on the same rotation. But I’ll be in, just for the morning. The
overtime’s always appreciated. And it’s a piece of cake teaching restraints, knowing
you debutantes won’t pull a pen out of someplace and stab me in the eye.”

I sipped my pop. “Only if you give me a good reason to.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Well, I’ll look forward to
that
,” I said snidely, and finished my burger and downed the last of my drink. Kelly did
the same, and we dropped off our trays in the kitchen and thanked Roland.

“Back to the fray,” Kelly said as we signed in downstairs. He wrote
spec obs Don
beside his name, and I couldn’t be sure if I was disappointed or relieved that I might
not see him again that afternoon.

The second half of my shift proved quiet, borderline boring. Having Kelly as a distraction
wouldn’t have gone astray.

As a psych professional you have to pay attention constantly, not just for signs of
danger, but while taking a zillion sets of vitals, in making notes in the right files,
doling out the right meds in the right dosages at the right times, making sure the
right patient actually swallows them . . . Nothing dynamic, but I swear the sheer
constancy
with which you have to be alert is as tiring as any physical chore. By the time dinner
hour was over and we met with the next shift for the hand-off meeting, I felt like
I must be dreaming. I staggered down the stairwell on aching feet.

I wiped my name off the duties board and ran into Jenny while I was changing.

“Got plans tonight?” she asked, dialing her combination lock.

“No, none at all. Just finish unpacking and pass out.”

“You’re more than welcome to come along to a little party across the road. Retirement
bash for one of the veteran RNs in our geriatric ward. Free eats. You know where the
transitional residence is?”

“Yeah.” I stripped off my scrubs, not feeling compelled to tell her I was in fact
living there for the time being.

“You should come. Get off campus, enjoy a drink. I’ll introduce you around to some
people from the other departments.”

I wouldn’t have minded meeting the geriatric staff. I had experience with that, after
all, and wouldn’t say no if a chance to transfer out of the locked ward should present
itself.

“Starts at seven thirty,” Jenny said. “Bring your staff ID—they’ll be rigid, what
with alcohol being served.”

“Okay. Sure.” Why the hell not? It was my birthday. There’d be drinks, maybe a cake,
and even if they weren’t in my honor, it’d be nice to do
something
special. Restraint training had been the highlight of my day, and that wouldn’t do.
Exhausted or not, I deserved a bit more. I could top getting tossed around and banged
up by Kelly Robak. Then I pictured his body, and wondered if maybe I couldn’t.

With twenty minutes to kill, I strolled through campus and crossed the road, headed
up to my little apartment and changed into the only dress I owned. Nothing glamorous,
but it gave me a bit of a figure, and that was a luxury after two days in nothing
but yellow pajamas. As I clasped a pair of earrings, I hoped there’d be wine. Against
my better judgment, I hoped there’d be Kelly as well. But he didn’t seem the type
to carouse while still basically on the institute’s grounds, nor one to cut loose
in front of colleagues and ruin his stoical façade. Though he’d allowed me a glimpse
of his after-hours self, at the bar. And surely I wasn’t so special that it’d been
some one-time peek.

On the first floor, a series of construction-paper signs pointed the way to the party,
in the large basement rec room—the unglamorous venue surely picked for its proximity
to work, and because alcohol wasn’t allowed anywhere inside Larkhaven’s gates. I didn’t
recognize anyone when I arrived, but I was pleased to spot a motley selection of beer
and wine lined up on a ping-pong table; crackers, cheese, veggies and dip, and an
uncut cake on the other side of the net.

What I wasn’t so pleased to see was a room full of scrubs. I wasn’t the only one who’d
changed, but the majority of the partygoers seemed to have come straight from a shift.
Instantly I felt dumb and overdressed, some newbie weirdo in a wrap dress and heels—no
matter how short they were—surrounded by sneakers and clogs. The folks who weren’t
dressed for work wore jeans.

“You came!”

I turned to find Jenny behind me, holding a gift bag bursting with pink tissue paper.

“Oh, hey.”

“You look great. Trying to put the rest of us to shame?”

I tailed her across the room to a table laden with flowers and presents. I eyed them
with envy. It was my birthday, after all. Standing there with no one to realize that
fact, I felt lonely, deep down to my bones.

But it wasn’t as though I were used to my birthday being special. My grandma hadn’t
been in a state to remember it in recent years, and I considered it a banner year
if my mom thought to call. Amber had offered to have me over for pizza and cupcakes,
but since I got off work so late and my nephew would already be asleep, I’d asked
for a rain check.

I followed Jenny’s lead and poured myself a cup of wine. She introduced me around,
largely to staffers my own age. I smiled a lot and forgot everyone’s names, wondering
if they’d remember mine or just think of me as That New Girl Who Didn’t Get the Dress
Code Memo.

Shyness had me drifting out of conversational orbits twenty minutes into the party,
and I was about to up my wine dosage when someone set an empty cup beside mine. I
knew it was Kelly from his oversized hand and its misleading wedding band, and my
heart thumped as I tilted my face toward his. In an instant, I was drunk.

“You look awful fancy.”

A blush warmed my cheeks and I tried to hide it by filling my cup. “I know.”

“Special occasion?”

I shrugged, looking around to indicate the party.
It’s my birthday,
I wanted to tell him.
Make a big deal of me.

“You promised me a glass of wine this morning in restraints,” he said.

“True. Though I don’t see any funnels.” I filled his cup. He tapped it to mine and
gave my body an open, brief up-and-down, at once businesslike and predatory. I took
too big a gulp and felt my face burn brighter still.

Kelly had changed, but only into jeans. “How you feeling, after this morning’s workout?”