Page 54 of The Coworker
“Kayla?” Chelsea calls out. “Are you okay?”
Again, no answer.
Chelsea clears her throat. “We won’t try to come in. We just want you to tell us you’re all right.” She pauses. “Kayla?”
In the slit of light coming in through the upstairs windows, I can see Tim looking at me. My eyes meet his, and he shakes his head. I can hear the bat shifting in his hand.
Chelsea turns to us. “She’s not answering. What should we do?”
“The door doesn’t have a lock,” Shane says.
“I…” Chelsea’s voice trembles. “I can’t do this.”
Before there can be any more debate, Shane pushes past her. There’s a creaking noise as the knob twists open, and a second later, the door to the room swings open.
Even though it’s dark in the room, it’s lighter than it was in the hallway, so our eyes are already adjusted. Which means I’m able to make out details I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Like the bookcase in the corner. Or the bed in the center of the room.
Or Kayla lying on the bed, her chest covered in fresh blood, her eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Chapter 29
PRESENT DAY
Mr. Fanning has a broken finger.
I don’t know how he got the broken finger. I asked him before I sent him over to radiology for an x-ray, but he was squirrelly about the details. The x-ray showed a fracture of the middle phalanx of his little finger, and I called the radiology department at the local hospital that provides official reports of our x-rays to confirm that the fracture didn’t go through a joint and wasn’t displaced. It looks like a simple fracture—one that can be treated easily with buddy taping.
After I get off the phone with radiology, I emerge from the examining room to find Mr. Fanning sitting in one of the plastic chairs in the hallway, joking around with Officer Hunt. Hunt is outright hostile to most of the inmates, so I’m surprised to see him on good terms with Fanning.
“Mr. Fanning,” I say. “Come on inside.”
Mr. Fanning grunts slightly as he gets out of the chair. He is in his early fifties with a large gut that stretches his khaki jumpsuit. He has that central obesity that makes me think he’s within five years of a major heart attack. Hopefully, by the time he starts getting those crushing chest pains, I’ll have moved on to another better job.
I assume Hunt doesn’t think Fanning is a safety concern, because he closes the door ninety percent of the way. Fanning climbs up on the examining table, cradling his right hand. It’s not a bad fracture, but it sucks for him that it happened on his dominant hand.
“So is it broken?” The bags under Fanning’s eyes seem to deepen. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I confirm. “But it’s a minor fracture. We can treat it here.”
Fanning looks doubtfully at his right hand. His pinky finger has turned almost purple, and his ring finger doesn’t look great either, but at least that one isn’t broken. He’s lucky he wasn’t wearing any rings, because we’d probably have to cut them off.
“It will heal fine,” I reassure him. “I promise. We just need to immobilize it.”
“Okay, Brooke,” he says. “If you say so.”
I’m glad he goes along with this plan. It’s not exactly easy for a prisoner to get a second opinion, especially since I don’t seem to have a doctor backing me up. The inmates have rights, and if he lawyered up, we would be in trouble. But most of the men either don’t know they can do this or don’t care enough. In any case, I try to give them the best medical treatment I can.
I grab some paper tape from a drawer so I can buddy tape his fourth and fifth digits together. Fanning watches me, a look of growing concern on his face. “That’s all you’re going to do?”
I wrap the tape around his fingers. “This is the standard treatment. It was a simple fracture—we just need to immobilize it.”
“And it will heal?”
“Absolutely.”
Fanning grimaces with pain as I stretch out his fingers to wrap the tape evenly. “Goddamn Nelson.”
I jerk my head up. “What?”
