Page 99 of The Girl from Widow Hills
“Yes,” I said, opening the passenger door.
She tipped her head as I slid out of the seat, and I smiled back. I hoped it was the last time I’d see her.
I ASKED FOR SYDNEYBritton directly, grateful to hear that she’d just come on shift.
It took longer, without the police escort, to be called back, or maybe it was because I was waiting for Dr. Britton specifically. I had my shoulder x-rayed and generally examined before being sent to the semi-private area to wait once more.
Sydney Britton stood in the curtained entrance, glasses on top of her head, mouth a straight line. “We need to stop meeting like this,” she said. And then she slipped the X-ray into the slot against the wall, placed her hands on her hips. “I heard what happened. You all right?”
She looked back once, and I nodded. She did the same, and that was enough.
“No break,” she said. “No dislocation.” She turned back to where I sat on the exam table, tried to maneuver my arm, but stopped as I hissed in air. “Some ligament damage. There’s a lot of scar tissue as it is.”
I looked over at the X-ray, wondering what she could see. “Can you tell what happened when I was a kid?” I asked. This was why I’d asked for her. To ask without being documented. To know: What had happened to me twenty years earlier?
She moved my arm in another direction, gently, getting the full range of motion. “Not really. Twenty years is a long time, Liv. Your bone is much different now from when you were a kid, still growing. There’s only so much I can tell from an X-ray now—only the places the damage remains. Time covers the rest.”
And so I might never know.
She stepped back. “Rest and anti-inflammatories are what I’d suggest for now. But you know, there are things you can do about that. Things that could help.” She pointed to the X-ray. “It can take time, but I’ve seen people make good progress with physical therapy alone.”
My mom had stopped taking me to my follow-up appointments. And I’d been afraid to visit doctors; afraid of what they might see. I hopped off the table. “Maybe,” I said.
I WAS WAITING FORBennett outside the hospital entrance. I’d asked if he had time to swing by to pick me up and take me home before he headed in to work, partly because I wanted to see him again, partly because I knew he’d hear about this anyway, and I wanted it to be from me.
“What’s the prognosis?” he asked. He moved his messenger bag to the back seat as I let myself into his car.
“A sprain.” I had the X-rays and documentation tucked under my arm to send to Detective Rigby and the Widow Hills Police Department. “Just have to take it easy.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad you called me.”
As if on cue, his cell started ringing from his bag in the back. I twisted around to be able to reach it with my right arm. “It’s fine, leave it,” Bennett said, “probably just work.”
But I was already unzipping his bag.
“Liv, stop—”
The phone was in my hand—yes, it was work. I didn’t answer it. Because I had just understood the urgency in Bennett’s voice. The thing he didn’t want me to see. My name on a form tucked away under his phone. I pulled the paper out, and his hands tightened on the wheel.
I wished he would look at me so I would know what this meant.
“It’s not important,” he said as I was reading the heading. “Liv, I was bringing it out of the hospital. I was going to get rid—”
“What the hell is this?” I asked, trying to process the pieces. It was a hospital incident report. One of the things Bennett was in charge of, reporting infractions up the chain of command.
But this had my name on it.
It had a list of infractions: unauthorized access to medicine room; unauthorized access to patient room—
It had the signature of the person who had reported it: one Erin Mills.
And it had Bennett’s signature and date beside it.
“What thefuck, Bennett?”
“I was going to get rid of it,” he repeated, which sounded wholly unlike Bennett. “Look, someone reported you. Unauthorized access to medicine room. Unauthorized access to patient rooms. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t doanythingwith it, I swear.”
Someone had been watching me. Noticed what I’d been doing. I’d thought only Bennett knew. The name, though. I had never even met her. “Who the hell is Erin Mills?”
