Page 5 of Heartless

“In the car,” she orders, yanking open the passenger door the moment Jeremy’s car rolls to a stop in front of The Pancake Plate.“No arguments. And take tomorrow off.” She ushers me into the car with surprising strength, and it’s all I can do towrestle my seatbelt from her and buckle it myself while keeping my injured hand in my lap.

“Aye aye, captain,” I tell her with a rueful half-smile. “I’m sure Jeremy will report back to you on what the damage is.” I treat it as a joke, which is my usual, but I’m still barely paying attention to the pain in my hand or the blood.

I’m still fixated on the image of an older, taller Cassian with the same blue eyes.

Though as I glance back at the two men now making their way to a car, I frown and a touch of doubt stabs into my heart.Be real, Winnie,I tell myself silently.There’s no way he’d be here.It had probably been a hallucination of my weird brain. It is near Halloween in Hayden Fields, after all.

“Aren’t you off tomorrow, anyway?” Jeremy asks slowly, when we’ve gone through three stoplights and approach a fourth.

“Yeah,” I tell him, throwing a small smirk his way. “But it’s the thought that counts.”

Chapter

Three

“So…” Jeremy’s voice cuts through my thoughts as I slump in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, paper towels pressed to my hand. “What even happened?”

Jeremy isn’t so great with blood. A fact I’ve known ever since a customer got a nosebleed and he started heaving in response. Frankly, I’m impressed he drove us the whole ten minutes to the urgent care center without puking or wrecking his car.

“Plastic bin was wet. I didn’t realize it, and I dropped it,” I lie easily, eyes still closed. My hand throbs, the ache sharp and bright. “Then I grabbed a piece of a plate wrong and it cut my hand.” Another half lie. I haven’t been paying any attention at all, and my carelessness is why I’m here now.

“Oh. Okay, that’s understandable.” But I can tell by Jeremy’s tone that he isn’t done. The teenager taps his foot against the floor, the noise distracting me enough that it’s hard not to grab his knee or beg for him to stop. Already my head is aching dully with the whispering promise of a stress-migraine. “But uh, can I just ask?—”

“Winnifred Campbell?” The voice cuts Jeremy off and I open my eyes, sitting up in my seat to see a nurse in pink cloud patternscrubs leaning against an open door leading behind to the rest of the clinic. Getting up, I follow her wordlessly to the back, leaving Jeremy to shift in his chair and look uncomfortable about being here.

But I pause in the doorway, turning to look at him as a bolt of pity stabs through me. “You can go back to the diner, Jeremy,” I tell him with a small smile. “I’ll get a ride home or call an Uber.”

“Okay…” Jeremy stands up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “If you’re sure, then I?—”

“Later, Jeremy,” I interrupt, knowing he’ll ramble endlessly if I don’t. To further the point, I take another step so the nurse can let the door close behind us.

“Follow me,” she sighs, like this is the least interesting part of her day. And well, maybe it is. Maybe a multitude of other girls showed up here today with deep cuts on their hands that might require stitches, leaving a trail of bloody paper towels like a fucked up version of Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumb trail.

The exam room she takes me to is as small as I remember from being a kid with strep throat, and I hop up onto the table automatically. At least this time there won’t be a wooden stick pressing my tongue down and a swab, making me gag embarrassingly.

“So,” the nurse sighs and pecks at the keyboard with her pointer fingers, making me think she was never subjected to hours of fifth-grade typing practice like I was. “What happened to your hand?”

“I cut it on a broken plate,” I answer, watching her type agonizingly slowly. Part of me wants to offer to do it myself, since even with one hand I’m sure I’d be faster than the slowtap-tap-tappingof her hunting and pecking on the keys.

“How long ago?”

“About forty minutes? I work at the diner and I came straight here,” I explain, trying not to ramble. The shorter myexplanation, the less I have to watch this agonizing display of her masterful lack of acuity in typing.

She doesn’t reply. Her entire attention is on the keyboard, and I wonder if I’ll bleed to death before she finishes.

Somehow, it’s still this century when she’s done. The nurse gets up and comes over to me, plucking the paper towels out of my hand and gesturing for me to let her see. I do, scrunching my nose in discomfort as she gently turns my hand in her latex-clad fingers to look at the cut on the side of my palm.

“That’s going to need stitches,” she tells me, still just as unimpressed as she had been calling my name in the waiting room. “No way around it. Have you ever gotten stitches before, Miss Campbell?”

“Oh yeah,” I assure her. “Yeah, I’m a pro at stitches. Okay, that’s a lie. But I’ve gotten them a few times.” Six times, to be precise. Back when I was a kid in a shitty situation with no way out except force.

“Okay,” the nurse sighs again and drops her hands. “I’ll go get the doctor. Shouldn’t be long at all.” She hands me a wad of clean paper towels that I gently press to the still-bleeding cut in my hand. She’s gone in a second, her steps certainly faster than her typing.

And all I really have to do to pass the time is wait. My hand hurts too much for me to consider messing around on my phone, and the room is incredibly boring with nothing on the walls except a washed out painting of trees and a river.

But, it’s all I’ve got. I lean forward to study it, looking for any kind of little hidden details left by the artist. Unfortunately, though, the artist really made a boring painting of trees and a river in washed out colors that blend together.

The door opens and I glance up, smiling when a woman in a white coat and black scrubs comes in. “All right, Miss Campbell?” She waits for my nod before continuing. “I’m Dr.Morris. I hear you’ve cut up your hand pretty good, and that you’re probably going to need stitches.”

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