Page 83 of Ward D
Ramona, who is actually Nicole, shoots her a look. “You asked for my help and you got it.”
Nicole. That was the name of the patient Mary had mixed me up with. I remember Mary saying something about how Dr. Beck wouldn’t let her leave.
My eyes go to the ID badge clipped to Nicole’s scrubs. The photo is tiny and blurry, and while it looks somewhat like Nicole, any other middle-aged woman with brown hair could likely have passed.
“Don’t pretend you were doing us a favor,” Jade snaps at Nicole. “Your brother was trying to have youcommitted. We did you a big favor letting you in on our plan. How about a littlegratitude, huh?”
Nicole screws up her face. It doesn’t look like any expressions of gratitude are forthcoming.
“Anyway.” Jade rolls her eyes as she turns back to me. “We had to get rid of your buddy Cameron, because let’s face it, he’s a big guy and the two of you together would be difficult to take on. But when we had the element of surprise, he was fairly easy to take down.” She snickers. “He should have spent more time at the gym and less time studying.”
“Don’t you dare make jokes about him,” I snap at her. “Cam was a really good guy. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Oh really? Didn’t he dump you to study for an exam?” Jade retorts.
“Plus he was kind of an obnoxious kiss-up,” Nicole adds.
Jade whips her head around to glare at Nicole. “We don’t need your opinion on every little thing.”
“Will you shut up, Jade?” Nicole shoots back, her eyes flashing. “The whole night it was like you got to call all the shots. I told you that Amy was getting suspicious, and did you listen? Of course not! You’re always talking and never listening. Frankly, I don’t blame Amy for not respecting you! You always—”
I don’t know what Nicole was going to say next, but she never gets a chance. Damon removes what appears to be a paperweight from the pocket of his scrubs and bashes it against her skull with incredible force. Nicole stops speaking mid-sentence, and a second later, she crumples to the floor. A little pool of blood starts to form around her head.
I take another step back, my mouth hanging open. I can barely breathe.
“Jesus Christ,” Damon comments. “She was really beginning to annoy me. No wonder her brother wanted to have her committed.”
Jade’s expression has not changed. If her boyfriend’s act of violence has disturbed her in the slightest, it doesn’t show on her face. “Don’t worry, Amy. That was part of the plan all along. The only people who are going to survive the night are me and Damon. Nicole was just a third wheel.”
I look between the two of them, trying to figure out if there’s any reasoning with either one of them. Jade—well, I’ve tried it before. I’ve tried to talk her out of doing something terrible. And it didn’t work. But on the other hand, she was my best friend. We’ve known each other our whole lives. She wouldn’t really hurt me if it came down to it.
Would she?
Now that I know who Damon really is, I notice the crazed glint in his brown eyes. Even his hair has taken on a wild edge, sticking up every which way instead of neatly combed like it was at the beginning of the shift. When I first found out about the man locked in the seclusion room, it sounded like they were describing a wild animal. And when I look at Damon Sawyer, that’s what I see. A man who would smash a paperweight into a woman’s skull and kill her just because she was beingannoying.
No, there’s no reasoning with this man. It’s Jade or nobody.
“Jade,” I say, “whatever you’re planning, you don’t have to do this. It’s not too late to turn things around.”
“You really think that?” She nods in the direction of Seclusion One. “You really think it’s not too late?”
She has a very good point.
“You always thought you had all the answers,” she says. “You always thought you were better than me. Well, tonightI’mcalling the shots for a change.”
“I’m not better than you.” My voice breaks. “I don’t think that. I never thought that.”
“Of course you do!” Jade bursts out. “You always did! You were the one who got all A’s and were the teacher’s pet, and I was the crazy one. You never had any idea what it was like to be me.”
Damon grins. “Maybe you should’ve dropped a few more hallucinogens in her peach iced tea.”
I feel like Damon just slugged me. For a moment, my entire world is crashing down around me. “What?”
Jade drops her eyes, but Damon just laughs. “Come on, Jade. She’s going to die—you should at least tell her what you used to do to her. It’sfunny.”
“You didn’t!” I cry.
Jade lifts a shoulder. “You are always drinking those peach iced teas. It was so easy just to drop a little something in there if you went to the bathroom or… you know.”
