Page 43 of Room 553: A Psychological Thriller

We’d just had the most exhaustive kind of sex and, having just come off a twenty-four hour call, I was spent. I was thinking about going home, crawling into bed, and sleeping the day away. “Sure.”

“It doesn’t scare you?”

“Why would it?”

She stared at me disbelievingly. “How would we ever get anything done?”

“We get a lot done, if you ask me.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like if we were together, together?”

That question, so lightly pressed that day, would crop up again and again, and would turn so threatening in time. In that moment, like the rest, it was a just game. Pure fantasy.

“We’d settle in.”

She cocked one brow. “Into what?”

“Life,” I said heading toward the bathroom.

I showered that afternoon. She hadn’t. Afterward, the two of us headed to Tony’s. Laurel insisted we share a milkshake in a booth. For the sake of posterity, she’d said. At the time, I didn’t see any harm in indulging her. It was a particularly hot day, and I had been hungry. Call had been particularly brutal. Three patients coded, three families to deal with. Lots of charting left to do. And anyhow, after what we’d just experienced, ice cream seemed like the least I could do.

I paid for the shake, double chocolate at Laurel’s request, and the two of us settled into a booth.

“Answer me honestly Max. If I were single…”

As I studied her lips puckered around the straw, my thoughts flittered back to the first time I saw her—really saw her. I was thinking about how sad she looked and how a woman that beautiful should never look that sad. I recall being well aware that it was a mistake to get involved. But how could I not? It was my job.

Laurel swallowed and slid the glass across the table toward me. “Would you become free too?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have to. I was sucking down ice cream, and she was already posing another question. “I’m asking because I don’t think my father has long and then…” She looked down at the table, her expression torn. After several beats her eyes met mine. “And then when would we see each other?”

I understood her desperation. It’s hard for the living to put their lives on hold for the dying. “We’d make time.”

Laurel looked disappointed, like maybe she wanted to cry. She made it clear that I’d given her the wrong answer. “It just kills me to see him suffer. I feel so helpless. And the truth is, Max, I’ve never been very good at that.”

She had mentioned this many times before. But this time there was something else in her, something she was holding back, something that was trying to find its way out. Finally, it did. “Can’t we help him along? I mean, surely there must be something we can do.”

“Physician-assisted suicide is illegal,” I explained.

“Illegal, maybe,” she quipped. “But what about ethically? Morally? I’d euthanize a dog for less.”

I didn’t offer a response.

She kept at me. “Surely you can see that.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I used to work in pharma,” she scoffed. “Nothing is that complicated.”

“Laurel?”

She and I both looked up at the same time.

“James!” she exclaimed, her brows shooting toward the ceiling.

I didn’t recognize the man towering over us, but I could take a pretty good guess at who it was.

Chapter Twenty-Six

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