Page 6 of Texting Dr. Stalker

My hands curled into fists again.

I’d first met Milton as he sneaked out of Melody’s house at five a.m. I was heading for a shift at the hospital. Not that it was Melody’s house anymore—she’d died of a broken heart, leaving yet another hole in my life after I’d lost my own beloved grandparents from various sicknesses over the years.

Dammit, enough!

Shaking my head, I focused on why I’d snuck into the staffroom on my way to see yet another patient. Pulling long shifts always made my mind a mess; my thoughts scrambled with patient data, to-do lists, along with the past and all the promises I’d made and hadn’t kept.

At least I could keep this one.

Pulling my phone free, I scrolled to the number Sailor had given me. Pressing call, I paced the small break room.

The scents of coffee teased me with promises of fresh energy as the ringing suddenly switched to a chirpy feminine voice. “Hello? Who’s this?”

I stopped pacing and sat in one of the worn vinyl-covered chairs clustered around a crumb-covered table. Considering every doctor and nurse in this place lived in a world of sanitiser and cleanliness, the staffroom was a disaster.

“Is this Lily?”

“Yes…?”

“My name’s Zander North. I’m a surgeon at Cedars Hospital.”

“Oh my God. Is it my dad? Itoldhim he shouldn’t have had that white bread. He knows he’s celiac but just doesn’t listen! He’s going to kill himself through wheat!”

Resting my elbow on the table, I nudged up my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose. Damn, it’d been a long day. “I’m not calling about your father. I’m ringing on behalf of your friend, Sailor. Sailor Rose. She gave me your number to—”

“Sails? Oh no! What happened? Is she okay? What on earth?Ahhh, I’m coming right now. I’ll get in my car and—”

“She’s fine. She suffered a few injuries and…” I paused. The programming that’d been drilled into me to stick to the facts and never give more information than necessary couldn’t override the sudden burning violence in my veins. “Do you know her boyfriend? Milton Rild?”

The line went quiet. “Yes, I know him.” She sucked in a wary breath. “What did he do to her?”

This was the part where I gave the hospital address and shut down how I truly thought about the patient under my care. But tonight, I just couldn’t do it.

Sailor was my neighbour. My shirked responsibility. My childhood destiny if my grandmother had anything to say about it. And I’d had to watch her date that bastard for a full year. I’d had to hold my tongue when she let him move in with her. I’d had to keep my distance even when I had my suspicions of the type of man he was. I’d also come face to face with the awful knowledge that I’d wanted her for years and was too late.

What if Jim’s dog, Biscuit, hadn’t heard her screaming?

What if Jim hadn’t been agile enough to swing that cast iron pan and knock out the bastard?

Sighing heavily, I struggled to contain the growl in my voice. “Milton Rild tried to kill her. She’s okay, and he’s been arrested, but she could do with a friendly face.”

I waited for another river of words, but she was eerily quiet. Finally, she said, “I always knew he didn’t deserve her. I’ll be there in an hour. I’ll swing by her house and grab some things.”

Didn’t deserve her?

Fuck, that was the understatement of the century.

I hung up before I could tell her exactly what I thought of Sailor Rose, her choice in men, and just how fucking lucky Milton Rild was that Jim had found him instead of me.

* * * * *

Staying in the shadows by the nurses’ station on the sixth floor, I peered into the room across the hall. Conveniently, Sailor had been moved into the bed visible from where I stood unseen, the other four beds empty.

However, she wasn’t alone.

Lily—her friend who I’d seen popping by quite often over the past two years—sat on a pulled-up chair and laughed as she passed her iPad to Sailor before reading whatever she’d written with the stylus. Patting Sailor’s hand, Lily said, “I’ll break you out the moment you get the all clear.”

Technically, Lily shouldn’t be here. It was way past visiting hours, but I’d instructed the nurses to let Sailor have the company. After all, Lily might not be family, but I happened to know that a friend was as close to family as Sailor would get these days. Her parents had died on some excursion in the Middle East after abandoning their teenage daughter at college. For her entire life, they’d acted as if they would have rather never had a kid, and now she didn’t have parents.

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