Page 35 of Ward D
She tugs on her wristband. “There’s optimistic and there’s just plain stupid. I’d love to live in your magical happy land where this is the time they finally get it right. But after eight years, you give up hope. I don’t know if there’s any hope for me anymore. I mean, they never figured it out for my mother.”
I frown, remembering the woman who had Jade’s nose and chin, but darker eyes and bigger boobs. I never heard the details of her overdose. I wonder if Jade was the one who found her. I can’t even imagine. Jade wasn’t super close with her mother, but the two of them were very protective of each other.
Jade is only twenty-four, like me. I can’t imagine losing my mother so young. Even though she can be annoying sometimes, I don’t know what I would do without her. A girl needs her mother.
I wish I had told her I loved her before I hung up with her.
I get the sudden urge to wrap my arms around Jade in a hug. She’s been through so much, and the two of us used to be so close. But given she’s a patient here, it would be wildly inappropriate.
“So.” She lifts her blue eyes flecked with yellow. “Enough about my pathetic life. Tell me about you.”
I lift a shoulder. “Nothing to tell. I’m a medical student. That consumes every moment of my existence, from morning through night.”
“So you say.” She gives me a sly smile. “But what about that other medical student? Cameron, right? Do not even try to tell me there isn’t anything going on there. I could see the way he was looking at you.”
Jade was always insanely good at figuring these things out. “There used to be. Not anymore.”
“Why not? He’s so handsome!”
“He broke up with me. He told me he needed more time to study.”
“No!” Jade cackles with laughter. “Oh, Amy, I’m so sorry! But like I said, he isn’t even your type.”
She’s right. Cameron isn’t my type. But stupid me—I had been starting to really like him. Even though he’s a kiss-ass and he studies far too much, he can also be very sweet. Like, if we went to a restaurant, he would always hold out my chair for me. And he liked to open the car door for me too. You don’t meet many guys who are twenty-four years old and try so hard to be a gentleman.
Even if he hadn’t ended it though, it was never going to go anywhere. I never felt like Cameron was the guy I was going to end up with. Still, I didn’t want it toend.
“You should hook up with Will,” Jade says.
It takes me a second to even figure out what she’s talking about. “You mean the guy in 906?”
“Sure,” she says. “He’s your type, right? I heard the two of you bonding over the same dorky books you always liked in high school. And it’s not like either of you has anything better to do tonight. So why not?”
I stare at her. “Because he’s mypatient. And he’s on apsych ward.”
“Ugh, you always were such a square.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. But I can say with a hundred percent certainty, I am not hooking up with anyone tonight. Not Cam, not Will—all I want is to get out of here in one piece.
“And how are you… otherwise?” Jade asks.
There’s a subtext to her question that makes me very uneasy. “Fine,” I answer.
“Are you still…” Jade drops her voice a notch. “Seeing things?”
I stare at her. “No.”
“Because you used to sometimes—”
“No, I didn’t.” I get up off the bed, my legs wobbling beneath me. I’m just about done with this conversation. “You’re mistaken.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, is that how you want to play it, Amy Brenner?” She stands up too, so she can look me in the eyes. “You don’t want anyone here to know that you’re more like us than they think.”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t want anyone to know, becauseit’s not true.”
Jade’s lips curl. “Now, we both know that’s a bald-faced lie.”
I almost jump out of my skin at the sound of a knock on the door to Jade’s room. A second later, Ramona peeks her head into the room. “I’ve got some pills for you, Jade,” she sings out.
