Page 66 of Private Exhibit
Devon closed his eyes and slowly nodded. “It was just too much.”
“It's alright,” Andy murmured. “We'll get you straight home. I promise. I'll tell Oliver you need some quiet once we get there.”
Devon nodded again, but it wasn't really the noise that was the problem.
Everyone around him was thriving. They were all getting married. Having families. Following their passions. Enjoying things he'd never get to experience.
There simply wasn't time.
As he saidgoodbyeto Andy and shut the door to his apartment, he almost wondered if it would be better to have it all be over with already.
Chapter 24
ANDY SAT back with a sigh as his car pulled away from Devon's building.
Poor Dev. The boy had probably fallen off the high of that morning. Leaving aside the discomfort and embarrassment of waking up the way he had, Devon had been in great spirits when they'd left Andy's place to go to brunch.
And then it all came crashing down.
Andy winced. He'd seen it clear as day on the boy's face. The envy. The wishful thinking.Gods damn it all. He wanted to give Devon all the things the boy had been denied all his life, but what if it wasn't possible? What if there simply wasn't enough time?
The car plunged into darkness, turning off the sunlit streets and diving into the hospital's underground parking garage. Andy blinked hard, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The car stopped in his assigned spot, and Andy flew out the door, barely pausing long enough to make sure the car was locked before he headed straight for the elevator.
He stepped into the empty lift and automatically reached for the button that would take him to the basement level.Fuck. Andy slowly moved his hand up. He stopped, his finger hovering over the3button.
Andy let out a shuddering breath, swallowed hard, and punched the button before he could overthink it.
The doors slid shut, and the elevator moved.
Andy swayed, his body expecting the lift to stop after only a couple seconds. It kept going. Andy felt every muscle tense when the elevator finally slowed. The doors opened, but instead of a pair of double doors across an echoing hallway, Andy saw the main hall of the third floor stretching out ahead of him, the wide, carpeted expanse bordered by office suites on either side.
The doors began to slide shut again.
Andy shot out a hand, stopping them, then took a deep, bracing breath. He had to force himself to take one step. Then another. The doors closed behind him, and Andy felt his knees start to give out.
Gods. Four years. He shook his head. How was it that he used to walk this hall every single day? It seemed like another life. A whole other person.
Andy clenched his hands into fists at his sides and made himself finish that once-familiar route. He came to a stop in front of a door, blinking dumbly at the sight of the words that once defined his entire existence.
Suite 301
Medical Diagnostics
Dr. Anderson Gerard
Andy shuddered.Dr. Anderson Gerard. Who even was that man anymore? It certainly didn't feel like him.
He pushed on the door, laughing when it unlocked and opened without resistance. It wasn't long after he'd gotten the office that he had I.T. key it to his biometric signature. There had been one too many times that he'd rushed down there in the middle of the night, his mind full with a fresh idea, only to have to run back upstairs to his apartment because he'd forgotten his key card.
Four years later, and the bio-key still worked.
Andy stepped inside the office and let the door swing shut behind him, cutting off the soft sounds coming from the hallway and the other offices nearby. The room was chilly and unnervingly still, even more so than the morgue. Everything was spotlessly clean, though nothing had moved. Despite the intervening time, Andy could tell at a glance that all his files were exactly where he'd left them.
The Hopkins, Calloway, Reeger, Scott, and Dallak files were all still spread out across the table to the left. The files for Jacobson, Andrews, Fisher, and seven others were laid out on the bigger table to the right. On his desk, the remaining files were waiting to be sorted onto either table. Andy had been trying, at the time, to separate the cases by age of death, whether a patient fell in that ninety-one percent who died within a year or in the remaining nine percent who lived longer. Before that, he'd had the files separated by ultimate cause of death, whether it was a sudden attack or a slow progression. Prior to that, he'd separated the files by the various treatments that had been tried. And then a dozen other factors, trying to find any kind of connection. Any tiny shred of a pattern that might help him solve the damned thing.
None of those files was for Devon. None of them was even for another transman with Ashworth-Grahams. Andy would know. He had full scans and complete genetic workups for each of those patients. Every single one was male, pure and simple. No anomalies. No question. But why he didn't have a file for Devon in particular was beyond him. Andy had put out calls across the land, asking every hospital, every clinic, every doctor to send patients his way. Or, at least, a copy of their files.
But neither Devon nor his file had ever come into that office. If either had, would anything have changed? Would Andy have found the answer? Or would it have just been another dead-end?
