After Hours (4 page)

Though I’d stopped shaking, my handwriting was barely legible and stringing coherent
words together was a struggle. A sob of frustration rose in me. I tamped it down,
knowing other staffers could appear at any time to sign in or out. I sat up straight
and tried to look studious.
Well, she had a scare, but she bounced right back.
Worth a shot.

I finished my incident forms, three pages that left me as spent as a triathlon. I
stood to toss my can in the recycling bin, then yelped when I turned around, finding
a huge body materialized in the threshold. But it wasn’t the shiv-wielding maniac
my brain expected, only Kelly Robak. Just as scary in his size and general ominousness,
but unarmed, and placid as always.

My hand had flown to my chest, like an old lady set upon by ne’er-do-wells. I dropped
it hastily. So much for looking cool and collected.

“Hey,” Kelly said. He wiped his name from the whiteboard with his improbably big thumb.

It was useless to pretend I wasn’t upset, so I let him see as I combed my hair with
shaky fingers. “Hey.”

He leaned against the door frame. “Lonnie gave you a scare, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. Just, you know. My first day.” I rubbed at my sternum, trying to
soothe my panicky heart. “It’s my first clinical job. My first real psych job.”

One of his brows rose a fraction. “You picked a real deep end to jump into.”

I nodded. True, it would’ve been nice to start at an end with steps, not a high dive.
“It was the only end with a job opening.”

“Get changed and I’ll take you out for a drink.”

“Oh jeez. I better not. I’m really tired, and I have to be up at six again tomorrow.”
I hadn’t even unloaded my car or set foot in my new apartment. I wanted to change
into my familiar pajamas and reread a few nursing textbooks’ chapters on paranoid
schizophrenia, try to figure out how I could have handled myself better with Lonnie.

Kelly shook his head. “Get changed and meet me in the lot. You can follow me in. You
living in town now?”

“I’m staying here. In the transitional housing.”

He gave me skeptical look, the most judgment I’d seen from him.

“Just temporarily,” I added.

“I’ll drive you, then. You can leave your car.” And then he disappeared, giving me
the distinct impression that his invitation was as negotiable as a hostage taking.

I was pooped. I obliterated my name from the duties board, dropped off my paperwork,
and changed, tossing my scrubs in the hamper. The day had done the same to me—wiped
me clean out and wadded me into a rumpled heap.

Though Kelly was surely only trying to be helpful in his bossy way, I resented being
ordered around, especially by a man. Like I needed rescuing. I didn’t want to be
rescued
—in my family, I did the rescuing.

If I suddenly needed assistance, who in the hell was I?

But it was good, I decided as I buttoned my sweater—an invitation to grab a quick
drink with Kelly. I was in over my head, and he’d have advice to help me stay afloat.
He’d had a first day once, too. We’d talk and it’d push the incident a bit further
back in my head, so it wouldn’t be the only thing running through my mind as I tried
to fall asleep in a strange room. That voice, those words; that accusing pizza crust
pointed like a switchblade at my face.

As I left the locker room and headed down the hall, I felt that corset sensation again.
Only it wasn’t from the scare. Every step I took toward the exit, closer to Kelly,
tighter, tighter. Funny how my body reacted to him the same way it did to the thought
of getting assaulted by a patient.

Punching the keycode to the foyer, I wondered idly what Kelly’s wife looked like.
And what she’d make of some underfed, round-faced urchin of a hapless trainee LPN
going out for a drink with her oversized husband.

She probably wouldn’t think anything of it,
I reminded myself,
since it doesn’t mean shit. It’s a pity drink with your married coworker.

Still, as my fingers punched the final code, those laces yanked tight, tight, tight.
At least if I passed out, Kelly was strong enough to carry my sorry ass home.

Chapter Two

He was waiting outside under the darkening sky, dressed in his civilian clothes—jeans
and a black zip-up sweatshirt. It made him look like even more of a thug, but I followed
him nonetheless. A thug who was on my side felt like a precious commodity.

Kelly led me to the far corner of the employee lot, to a late model GM pickup, probably
the same vintage as my car but far-better maintained. He came close to unlock my side,
seeming taller than ever, seeming huge and looming but strangely reassuring. A breakwater
to keep the storm of stress from washing me out to sea, never to be found. Maybe I
could steal some of his bricks and fortify myself, so the next run-in with someone’s
psychosis wouldn’t shake me so badly.

He started up the truck, wipers knocking droplets from an afternoon shower off the
windshield, headlights illuminating the sign posted at the head of each space that
read,
NEVER
LEAVE YOUR KEYS IN YOUR VEHICLE!

“Everyone in that ward’s had their own first day,” Kelly told me, driving up to the
first of two security boxes that would let us exit the campus. He punched in a code,
drove through, waited for the first automatic gate to shut before jabbing at the second
keypad.

“I know.”

He turned us onto a narrow service road I hadn’t taken in.

“I don’t want to make you feel worse, but that wasn’t such a terrible day to start.”

“I know that, too. And I don’t want to be as upset as I am, by what Lonnie said. It’s
not like he stabbed me or anything. It was a frigging
pizza crust
.”

“But what he said slapped you across the face,” Kelly said. “So it’s fine to let it
sting. Next time it won’t sting so hard, and soon enough the words won’t even hit
you.”

“I hope so.”

“Just know that whatever anyone in there says to you when they’re having an episode,
it’s not personal. You’re the just the face that was closest to theirs when the impulse
hit. Like you happened to be walking by when they whipped a door open, and got clocked
in the head.”

I nodded, finding some comfort in that.

“They didn’t know who was behind the door. They just needed to shove. But letting
them see you flinch is like handing them a weapon—they’ll use it if they know it’s
there.”

I knew he was right. But skins didn’t thicken overnight, and realizing the only way
to get my armor built up was to be verbally assaulted over and over was a defeating
thought. Defeating and dehumanizing. Probably felt an awful lot like being locked
in a psych ward. I sighed, and the exhalation made room for a measure of calm. I gulped
it down like a quenching drink, thirsty for more.

“How long have you worked on the ward?” I asked, just as Kelly pulled us onto a rural
route, trees giving way to a vast stretch of fallow fields.

“Four years. Four and a half.”

“Is there a lot of turnover with the patients? Have any of them been there as long
as you?”

“Sure, two or three. Don and I came to the ward the same week, actually. Probably
part of whatever bond we got going.”

“How long do most patients wind up staying?”

“’Til they’re better.”

“On average?”

“Couple weeks, maybe a month. Tough to say. Lots get on the right antipsychotic regimen,
get better, get cleared, think they’re cured and go off their meds. Or they go home
and get triggered by the same shit that landed them with us to begin with. So maybe
a month, but then another month, and another . . . Some patients in Larkhaven have
been institutionalized on and off for twenty years or more, but most don’t stay in
the locked ward for longer than it takes for their drugs to kick in or their addictions
to be treated.”

“That’s good.”

“Most patients don’t want to stay in a unit like ours long-term. They want their own
clothes back. They want to be trusted with metal cutlery and get more visiting hours
with their families, stand a chance at meeting a woman or seeing their loved ones
with a bit more dignity. There are a few types like Don, though. Guys who thrive on
the routine and the restrictions, real institutional cases. Or ones like Lonnie, who’ve
been in and out so much, the ward has become their own little world. A place where
they feel they understand their spot in the pecking order, unlike on the outside.
But it’s not ideal. After years of the same gray pajamas, same meals, same views out
the same windows . . . Sounds like prison. To me, anyhow, to lots of those guys. But
it keeps the ones like Don safe, I guess.”

“I hope that’s not how it feels, working there—like it’s a prison.”

“Not when you get to clock out every night, get paid and have the freedom to drive
to a bar once the working day’s done, order whatever you want to eat. Leave the job
behind the second you wipe your name off that board.”

“I guess.” But I worried it’d feel like a sentence to me. I’d chosen this job, but
out of duty and under duress. I’d be going home to just another ward, practically,
as long as I stayed in the transitional residence, and playing nurse on the weekends
for free, trying to enact order to combat my sister’s chaos. Would I ever feel like
I was off duty? Would I ever leave the day behind when the door to Starling clicked
shut at my back? Right now, I couldn’t imagine it.

The outskirts of a small city appeared beyond the fields. Buildings drew closer, revealing
their wear. The sun was just meeting the horizon, ripening the clouds to a warm mauve.

Kelly drove us past a huge factory, windows shuttered in plywood, its vast parking
lot eerily absent of cars. Corroded wisps of razor wire coiled along the top of the
chain-link fence.

“You been to Darren before?” Kelly asked.

“No. Do you live here?”

“Yeah.”

“You like it?” I asked, as another block of urban decay slid past.

“It’s a shithole.”

“Oh.”

“Former factory and mill city—no shock—now it’s caught someplace between ghost town
and ghetto, with a little river of civilization running through the middle, paying
taxes.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Parts are, sometimes. But mainly it’s just quiet. We got substance abuse issues and
the crime that goes with it, but not as bad as other places, since public services
are practically nonexistent here. But you can buy a two-bedroom house for twenty grand,
so here I am.”

“You’re not really selling me on it.”

“Wasn’t trying to.”

“Did you grow up around here?” I asked.

“Not really, but it’s a lot like where I did.”

“Where?”

“Hamtramck.”

I sort of knew where that was. A poor city outside Detroit, crippled like so many
in the state in the wake of plant closures. “I didn’t grow up too far away. On the
other side of Dearborn.”

Kelly nodded, his stern face looking different in the sky’s pink cast and the glow
from the dash—somber, if not soft. “Some people grow up on the ocean, by the mountains,
places where it snows or places with palm trees. That’ll always be the kind of stuff
they want surrounding them. Guess I’m hardwired for cracked concrete and rust stains.”

He turned us down a more civilized block, past a hardware shop and a karate studio,
an AT&T store, other signs of life. There was a heart beating inside the city’s bones,
if faintly. He parked along the curb outside a bar called Lola’s and we swung open
our doors, slammed them in unison. The town was half-dead but the bar had a pulse.
I could hear it thumping to the rhythm of classic rock and loud conversations. Kelly
held the door for me.

The patrons seemed lively enough for a Monday night, though there were plenty of places
to sit. Back in manufacturing’s heyday, it would’ve surely been packed with factory
workers. Kelly brushed past me and I followed him to the bar.

“Heya, Kel,” said the bartender, tossing two napkins on the wood before us. He gave
me a lukewarm nod and the most cursory male assessment.

“White wine,” Kelly said, shocking me speechless. Just as well, as the bartender didn’t
ask for my order yet. So my companion had a girl’s thirst to match his name.

“Sit tight.” Kelly tossed some bills on the bar and left me, presumably for the men’s
room.

I studied the taps and liquor bottles but decided I’d probably get wine as well.

“Hey.”

I turned, finding a guy about my age leaning casually on the corner of the bar. He
wore baggy pants and a white tank, a gold chain. He wasn’t my type at all, but his
friendly, hopeful smile made me think maybe I didn’t look as wretched as I felt.

“Hey,” I said, and offered a little wave.

The bartender returned, plunking Kelly’s wine and somebody’s beer by my elbow.

“Buy you somethin’?” the friendly guy asked.

I hadn’t come here to flirt, and a polite decline was halfway to my parted lips when
the guy’s face suddenly fell. I sensed Kelly at my back, tangible as a shadow cooling
us.

When I craned my neck to look, I understood why the guy had withered. Kelly’s eyes
had gone black, jaw set, expression like a rusty steak knife. His fingers closed over
my shoulder, spreading warm misgiving down my arm, up my neck, through my chest.

“Can I help you,” he said to the guy. It was no question, just cold, hard words wrapped
in barbed wire.

“No, man. Sorry.” And the guy slinked away with his tail between his legs.

Kelly let me go and took his seat. I resisted an urge to rub my shoulder and see if
the skin really was as feverish as it felt. This man had a wife, and if anybody got
to feel all hot and confused by his touch, it was most definitely her.

“Who was that?” I asked. And what had he done to get on Kelly Robak’s bad side? Drug
dealer? Maybe some old beef over a woman?

“Never seen him before,” Kelly said.

“Oh. Then—” I stopped, frowning as Kelly slid the wine glass in front of me, the beer
bottle before himself. Did I really look so rattled that I couldn’t choose my own
drink? Or for that matter, handle myself around a stranger?

He held up his beer, and I went ahead and tapped my glass against it, miffed.

“Congrats on surviving day one,” he said, and took a deep pull off his bottle.

“Thanks.”

He stared at me, his pale, hueless irises tinted by the beer signs, blue and yellow
and every other neon color. He had a scar above one brow, a thick shiny line that
must’ve needed stitches in its day. To my great surprise, he reached out to run a
fingertip up and down the frown crease between my own brows. “What’s put that there?”

I tried to snuff out the spark I’d felt from his touch, hot and startling and inappropriate.
“You could’ve asked me what I wanted to drink,” I said, hoping to camouflage my unease
behind annoyance.

“I’m paying.”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get to pick.”

He made a puzzled face like I was speaking Chinese, and took another sip of his beer.

I decided to drop it. Maybe it’d been some kind of ignorant chivalry, antiquated bull,
like choosing your date’s order off a menu. Not that this was a date, of course. Surely
Mrs. Kelly Robak would have something to say about such a notion, same as I would.
Same as Kelly ought to.

I rubbed the spot he’d touched, finding my forehead greasy from the day’s long shift.
I ran the heel of my hand across it, more tired than ever. My stomach gave a gurgle,
anger pooling in my belly as I began to suspect maybe Kelly hadn’t brought me here
to be understanding. Maybe he’d brought me here because I seemed vulnerable, amenable
to a roll in the hay with a married colleague just because he’d deigned to buy me
a four-dollar glass of chardonnay.

But I was also exhausted, and not thinking clearly. It was a Mom-thought, as Amber
and I had years ago christened our impulsive suspicions, the little embers that could
burst into blazes with the mildest provocation.

Time for a nice, neutral change of subject, before my tinder went up.

Wanting Kelly’s own answer to the question I’d posed Dennis, I asked, “Why do you
wear gray, like the patients? Isn’t it confusing?”

“Sure, but the free benzo jabs are a decent trade-off.”

“Why, really?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s helpful for some residents, seeing me in their colors.
It’s my job to restrain them, and I’m good at it. It’s easy for me to be the enemy,
when it’s my role to physically dominate them. Just a way to say, ‘Hey, I’m on your
side. Trust me.’ Because I know I don’t look like the most sympathetic guy.”

No, he didn’t. He’d been born with a cruel face, just as my little sister had been
born with a deceptively wide-eyed, innocent one. Both their faces said things to men—in
Kelly’s case,
Don’t even fucking try me
, and in Amber’s,
Lead me astray
. If only my sister’s choices more often contradicted the invitation.

For a while we sipped our drinks without speaking. The bar was warm, and Kelly shed
his jacket. He’d swapped his gray tee for a black one, and the scars and bruises decorating
his arms looked like blurry tattoos in the dim light. I could have studied them for
an hour, but I forced my gaze onto the muted TV behind the bar and pretended to read
the news headlines.
Those arms are spoken for,
I reminded myself.
And you wouldn’t know what to do with them if you got the chance.

Kelly leaned over me to grab a napkin from a nearby stack, his bare forearm brushing
the clothed one I had propped on the bar. The wine commandeered my lips to announce,
“You don’t look like a Kelly.”

One of his brows twitched. “No? What do I look like?”

A Lance, maybe a Butch. Brutus. Killer.
“I dunno. Just not a Kelly.”

He sipped his drink. “It was my grandfather’s name.”

“What does your wife do?” the wine blurted.

“I’m not married.”

“Oh.” Something different in my middle squirmed, some troublemaking attraction embryo
wriggling, kicking aside the anger that had been pacing there. “You still wear your
ring. Has it been a long time?” Since his divorce, or maybe since she’d died, who
knew? I’d let him fill that in as he wished.