Midnight Valentine(97)

I did this.

I pushed him so hard, his only choice was to run away. I could’ve let him come to it in his own time, or gone along with his treatment plan if it made him feel better to pretend schizophrenia was the root of all his problems. I didn’t have to shove the truth down his throat, but I did.

I punish myself in a variety of imaginative ways, but my favorite is denying myself food.

Which makes all the vomiting I’m doing more than a little strange.

“You’re sick again, honey?”

The head nurse on Theo’s floor at the hospital is a motherly Latina named Ana with big, brown eyes and a tendency to dispense random hugs. She’s gazing at me in concern outside the hallway restroom where I’ve just been puking my guts out.

I lean against the doorframe, wiping the beads of sweat off my brow with the back of my hand. “You heard, huh?”

She makes an apologetic face. “I think the whole floor heard. It sounded like an exorcism was happening in here.”

“Must’ve been that egg salad sandwich I had for breakfast.” I attempt a feeble laugh, avoiding her eyes. “Damn cafeteria food.”

She snorts, propping her hands on her hips. “I think you actually have to eat some food before it can make you sick, chica.”

I mutter churlishly, “I eat.”

“Ai!” She pinches my arm, startling me into looking at her. She shakes her finger in my face. “Don’t you lie to me! I have six kids—I’ve got a black belt in lie detection!”

I’m too tired to argue with her, so I sigh instead. “Okay, fine. I probably picked up a bug from hanging around this place so much. Didn’t I read somewhere that hospitals make people sick more than anything else?”

Her eyes round. “Dios mío. Do you have a fever?”

“No.”

“Body aches?”

“No more than usual.”

“A strange rash? Enlarged lymph glands? Extreme weakness or chills?”

I wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Why, is the plague going around here or something?”

Her eyes go from round to narrow. She pinches her lips and looks me up and down. “Well, I can tell you what—no matter what else might be wrong with you, you’re anemic for sure.” Clucking like a hen, she lightly slaps my cheek. “Look at this, pale as a ghost.”

“Thanks for that vote of support,” I say drily.

She grabs my arm and steers me down the hallway toward the elevators. “I’m sending you down to Tommy in the lab to get some blood drawn.”

“No! I’m okay, Ana, really—”

Glaring at me, she says something in sharp Spanish that shuts me up.

“Fine. But if Tommy doesn’t hit the vein the first time, I’m kicking him in his balls.”

She clucks again, pressing the call button for the elevator. “Such a temper. I heard about your performance in the emergency room in Seaside Hospital, you know.”

I look at the ceiling, shaking my head. “Unbelievable.”

Tommy turns out to be a hipster with sleeves of pinup girls tattooed on his arms, silver rings decorating his thumbs, and a bald head capped by a gray fedora set at a jaunty angle. When he catches me eyeing it, he grins.

“It makes my head look less like an egg. Have a seat.”

I sit, stick my arm into the squishy blue armrest on his small counter, and squirm in my chair when he pulls a lethal-looking needle from a plastic wrapper and jabs the opposite end into an empty vial.

“Make a fist.” He ties a length of urine-colored rubber around my biceps, and taps the little blue bulge on my inner arm. “Nice veins,” he says, impressed.

“Thanks. I’m an ass girl, myself.”

He laughs, displaying a set of dimples. “We all have our weaknesses, I suppose.”

To distract myself from the pointy spike of steel about to be jabbed into my body, I ask, “So, how’d you get into the vein business, Tommy?”

“After my brother overdosed from heroin when I was fifteen, I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”

He discloses that bit of personal information so nonchalantly, I’m stunned. “Oh. God, I’m so sorry.”

He slides the needle home expertly. I hardly feel a pinch. “Yeah. It sucked. I was the one who found him, slumped over the toilet with his arm still tied off. Shit like that really changes your perspective on things.”

I say faintly, “It sure does.”

He fills up one vial, exchanges it for another, casual and competent, talking as he works. “I enrolled in the premed program at Portland State but dropped out after a year. College wasn’t really my thing. I’m crap at taking tests. But I still wanted to do something in the medical field. I knew a guy who worked here, said the pay was decent, and they had on-the-job training, so I got my certification and that was that.”