Page 6 of The Candle Palace (Jamison Valley 6)
“Yes, you do.”
“I heard him in his sleep last night,” she admitted quietly. “He’s got it bad, doesn’t he?”
I couldn’t tell her details about Milo’s situation. But I didn’t have to. Hospital walls weren’t soundproof. The hallways weren’t private. She’d know before the week was over just how bad his burns were.
“It’s bad before it gets better.” It was the same thing I’d told her on the worst of her own days.
Her fingers toyed with the long ends of her hair, a sign of her anxiety. She’d stroke her hair over and over when she was working through something in her mind.
Luna’s physical injuries had nearly healed, but the mental battle was far from over. Most burn patients spent months, if not years, in therapy after they left the hospital. Luna’s parents had already started her counseling sessions.
She would forever look different. She would forever be the girl with strange scars and missing hair. Plastic surgery had helped smooth out the skin on her cheek. She could hide the scars on her legs and arms with clothes. But her right hand would always be misshapen. Her ear would never look like the one she’d been born with.
Luna’s biggest challenge would be finding peace with this new appearance, not something easy for a teenaged girl.
She dropped the strands of hair and lifted a hand to hover over the tea lights, assessing them all. She finally decided on a yellow one. “Here, give him this one. And tell him I said welcome to the Candle Palace.”
“The Candle Palace.” I frowned at the name, causing Luna to giggle. “You’re awful.”
The corner of her mouth on the burned side wouldn’t rise as high as the other when she laughed, but her crooked smile was uniquely beautiful. I hoped she’d see that for herself one day.
“See you in a bit.” I waved, then made my way to the door, the tea light in my grip.
The Candle Palace was a nickname Luna had given this unit about a month after she’d arrived. I’d been working an evening shift for a change, covering for one of the regular nurses who’d been on vacation, and Luna had been having a hard night. She’d realized that night that she’d never be a network news anchor like she’d dreamed.
I’d tried to encourage her to look beyond her visual appearance, but we both knew it was true. In today’s society, a woman with a scarred and slightly deformed face would not find her place on the nightly news.
I’d sat with her for hours that night, pitching different careers to her. She’d decided working at a newspaper might be her forte. Or writing fiction. And the first story she was going to write when she landed herself a job out of college would be about me and the patients here at the Candle Palace.
She’d come up with the name because she considered herself a candle.
A human torch.
She was here in this palace to keep her light from going out.
I walked down the hall, once more peeking into Milo’s room. In the time I’d been with Luna, he hadn’t moved. I left his door open a crack then went to check on my third patient.
By the time I finished with him, an hour had passed. If Milo was still asleep, I’d be forced to wake him up to check his dressings. So I went to the center of the unit to stock up on bandages.
Opening the supply closet, I pulled in a deep breath of the sterile smell. The papery scent of gauze rolls and bandage packs was my favorite. The linens were washed without any softeners, leaving behind only the crisp scent of clean cotton. Most people wouldn’t find this scentless room comforting. But to me, it had become my solace.
This smell had become home.
I’d lived in Spokane my whole life. I’d gone to college here and earned my two-year registered nursing degree. Then I’d started working at this hospital as a float nurse, drifting from one floor to the next. I’d done that for about a year until the nursing manager had announced this small unit was starting. I’d applied, thinking I had no chance of being selected for one of the few nursing spots.
But I’d hoped to get into a more regular routine. The chaotic shift of a float nurse bouncing between shifts and floors wasn’t for me. Dad had always said my middle name should have been Routine.
With no experience in a burn unit, my manager had warned me that things would be gruesome. Then she’d offered me the job with another warning that it was likely only temporary. The hospital administration had agreed to start this unit as a trial, and unless it did well, it would close within a year.
So far, it had exceeded everyone’s expectations. Families in remote places in Montana or Idaho no longer had to travel all the way to Seattle or Salt Lake City to visit their injured loved ones. And while those cities had burn units four or five times bigger than ours, we had location on our side. Even though our unit was a fledgling start-up, they preferred to stay here and be closer to home.
That the hospital had gone into this as an experiment was likely the reason they’d picked me as a nurse. As a float, I’d been easy to replace, which was lucky for me. This job had become the most interesting thing in my life.
I didn’t have many friends. I preferred the comfort of my small condo on my days off, surrounded by my books and movies and assortment of teas.
Everything about me was dull, even my name: Sara Foster.
I didn’t know how to add spice to my life. I wished to go on vacation and come back with tales of adventure. But how? I avoided crowds because they made me nervous. I didn’t have the money to travel. And a twenty-three-year-old single woman doing adventurous things alone came with risks. Now that Dad was gone, I didn’t have a companion to drag along. And until I found one, I was content to stay at home in my comfort zone.
