Page 62 of Lights Out

He blinked at me, and I had just enough time to catch the triumph in his eyes before he scrunched his face in mock fear and started wailing. “Help! Help! This nurse just threatened me!”

I took a hasty step away, cursing myself for letting him manipulate me.

Several people came running in at Brad’s continued outbursts, including Ben, one of our security guards.

“You okay, Aly?” he asked, and I almost swore at him for using my name.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Why are you asking her?” Brad whined, all evidence of the monster I’d just met gone, replaced by the spitting image of the spoiled brat I’d accused him of being. “I’m the one she threatened.”

“We’re not doing this again, Mr. Bluhm,” Ben said, approaching Brad’s bed.

Again? Had Brad pulled something like this the other night? Is that how he’d gotten out of here? Fuck. Had I just given his lawyers another excuse to target the hospital?

“I want my lawyer!” he yelled, right on cue. “And I want that one to treat me instead.” He pointed straight at Erica, who’d rushed in with Tanya to help.

Thin, petite Erica, who I noted had the same build and dark hair as the woman Brad had assaulted. Oh, hell fuck no. Was this his plan all along? Replace me with his ideal victim so he couldtorment her instead, or worse, try to find out who she was so he could attack her next?

“Nope,” I said, turning Erica around and marching her away while everyone else dealt with the shrieking rapist.

Tanya found us around the bend in the hall a few minutes later. “What did he say to you?”

I leaned against the wall and tilted my head back, trying to get myself under control. “Some bullshit about how his victim should have been thanking him for deigning to lay with such a low-quality woman.”

“But…that’s – what?” Erica sputtered.

“He’s fucking crazy,” I told her. “And I’m not being ableist. I mean that clinically. I might not be a therapist, but there is no way that man doesn’t have ASPD.” I shifted my gaze to Tanya. “He was just like that guy from last year.”

Her eyes widened. “The murderer?”

I nodded.

She looked away from me as a plump white woman in her early 30s joined us. Uh-oh. Someone had called HR.

“Hey, Aly,” Hannah said as she reached us. “You want to come to my office and tell me what happened?”

I sighed and pushed off the wall. Technically, I hadn’t broken any major rules, though I’d probably get a slap on the wrist for the shrimp-dick comment and the taunting. “Sure, lead the way.”

An hour later, Brad had been discharged, and I was back on the ER floor, ready for my next patient. Hannah had given me an unofficial warning and very kindly told me to watch my mouth while also insinuating that had she been in my shoes, she would have stabbed Brad with the nearest sharp object.

Hannah was good people.

I felt like I’d faced the worst of the night and came out mostly unscathed on the other side. That was until I got called to theambulance bay to help with a car accident victim. These were always rough for me because of my past, but tonight proved to be my undoing.

The victim was a woman in her mid-fifties with dark hair and olive skin. Like my mom. And just like my mom, she’d been impaled by something on impact, only instead of the pipe that had plunged straight into Mom’s chest, this woman had an unidentifiable, thin piece of metal sticking out from her right shoulder. She would survive where Mom hadn’t, and though I told myself that it wasn’t her, all I could see was Mom looking at me from the passenger seat, blood pouring from her mouth as she tried to speak.

“I can’t,” I said, backing away from the gurney while one of my co-workers rushed in to take my place. “I can’t.”

I was 16 again, sitting uselessly beside my mother as she died, my hands covered in her blood while I tried to staunch the flow, the broken car horn drowning out my cries for somebody, anybody, to help us.

Chapter 14

Josh

Something was wrong with Aly. Something wasreallywrong with her.

I paced in front of my computer desk, unable to sit still any longer. She was grabbing her things out of her locker, and to anyone who didn’t know her well, she probably seemed fine. But I knew her. At least I knew her expressions, and right now, her face was wooden. It was like someone had sucked all the life out of her, leaving her shell behind to go through the motions.

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