Page 61 of I Can't Even

If I hadn’t been here, hadn’t walked into the room when I had, what would’ve happened to her? To the other two nurses who were just as small as she was?

“All. The. Time,” she grumbled. “It’s gotten so freakin’ bad here, Quaid. That’s originally why I started looking into something else. The ER just isn’t it for me anymore.”

“What was the deal with the gang banger accusing you of stealing?” I asked, a suspicion starting to form in my brain.

This girl.

She was up to something…

“I might, or might not, have had something to do with his missing money,” she admitted quietly, looking sheepish.

“What?” I asked.

She looked away and down, her face flushed. “Well…”

“Tell me,” I ordered.

“So it went like this…”

Then she went on and explained how the last few months had been going at the hospital, and how horrible it’d gotten. To the point where she was determined to hire her own security.

On one hand, I was mad that she was stealing from people. On the other, she was stealing from the people who were causing her to need security in the first place. So, could I really blame her?

“Don’t do it anymore,” I ordered.

She sighed. “I haven’t done it since the day you came into the ER looking for me.”

I blew out a breath.

I remembered that day.

I remembered seeing her talking to the woman with the baby, too.

Had seen her give her something.

“Shit,” I said softly. “You could’ve really gotten hurt.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “And that kid never knew. I also, um, flushed his drugs down the toilet.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend how this brave, crazy woman had crawled so deep into my heart.

But every time I woke up in the morning, there she was, taking up more and more of it until there wasn’t a single piece she didn’t have control of.

“I love you.”

Three words, just blurted right out of my mouth.

Her eyes widened, and then they started to tear up and she said, “I thought I was crazy for already loving you only a few days after meeting you. But every morning I get up and the words are on the tip of my tongue. I just got scared that you wouldn’t feel the same way.”

I curled a piece of her hair behind her ear before saying, “I’ve felt like this for a long…”

“Hey, peeps!” Hollis slid into place beside Ellodie, completely ignoring the deepness of our conversation. “What are y’all getting to eat? Quincy was supposed to be bringing me lunch, but some shit was going down in the ER. So now I’m here.”

“That was our shit,” Ellodie sighed and explained.

Together, the three of us went through the line. Hollis got a burger and potato salad. Ellodie got a chicken sandwich and fries. And I got all four.

I cracked open a Dr. Pepper once we took our seat, and I sighed at the first hit. “This. This is what I needed.”

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