Page 16 of Grumpy Sunshine

“I didn’t.”He was shaking his head.“What I was likely trying to do was warn you to watch out for her.Not take care of her.”

“Those are the same thing, bro,” Cutter cut in, agreeing with me.“I kind of got the same vibe, too, when you said it.Though my mind was on you leaving, and not what you were asking him.”

“No,” Copper disagreed, looking slightly amused.“They’re not.”

“How about you explain what you meant, then?”I suggested.“Because that’s not what I got out of your words.”

“You didn’t fuck her?”he asked.

Was that hope in his voice?

“No,” I replied.“Never even wanted to.In all honesty…”

“You can’t stand her,” Cutter cut in.

Well, I didn’t exactly like her.

Sometimes I felt like she was a leech, but Copper had asked me to take care of her, so I had.

“I was warning you,” Copper explained.“Reignisa good girl but…”

“But…” I pushed.

“But I swear to Christ, she makes up all sorts of illnesses and is convinced that she has them.”He shook his head.“I didn’t want you to fall for her sob story.I didn’t want either one of you dealing with her shit when you didn’t need to.I love her to death, but she’s fucking exhausting.I’ve been gone all these years, yet I still remember this feeling, and it’s not good.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Like Munchausen?”

That was a new voice.

Webber.

“What?”we all asked at once.

“Munchausen,” Webber repeated.“Had a guy have it where I was growing up.His mother took him to the emergency room for everything.One time, he sneezed, and she freaked out and left me there at their house.He came home hours later and said that he had brain cancer or something, and he wouldn’t be able to play with me anymore.A year later, he was miraculously cured by something that his mom gave him out of her garden.But it was a continuous pattern.He had brain cancer, then some super rare form of osteoporosis.I remember at eighteen, he left town and didn’t look back.I ran into him in Florida years later.He was happy with kids.He told me his mom had that.”

“Brain cancer,” I mused as I went back to my psych days in med school and started to pair symptoms of that disorder to Reign.“Let me…”

I pulled out my phone and placed a call, hoping that Val was still at the hospital.

My luck held and she was transferred onto the line in moments.

“Chevy, what’s up?”she asked, sounding concerned.

I’d never called her before, so it had to be confusing and concerning.

“Hey,” I said.“You remember that friend I told you about this morning?”

“Yeah,” she said.

The back door slammed and Doc came in looking haggard.

Cutter, Copper, Webber and I just gave him quick nods and went back to waiting for me to finish my phone call.

“Would you look up her patient file on the computer for me?”I requested.

“Sure,” she said.“What’s her full name?”

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