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like that.
    I sighed.
    Besides, I owed her one. I’d lusted after her husband, hadn’t I? So, if she owed me one, and I owed her one, then couldn’t we call it even?
    If I did rat her out to her supervisor, things would get very, very messy. Chad Detweiler’s name would surely be dragged into the fray. True, he sort of deserved it, but a little voice inside me whispered, “He can’t help the way he feels … and you can’t either.”
    So I did something rare for me. I kept my mouth shut. In that gap between accusation and evidence, the charge nurse’s inquiry fell flat. While we sat there in the empty crater of quiet, I pleated my sheet hem between my fingers. Did a good job of it, too. I’m not sure what Brenda did. I didn’t watch her. I put all my energy into pleating.
    The charge nurse told Brenda, “Get back to your station.”
    Her shoes slap-slap-slapped along the floor, moving quickly away from my bed.
    After the charge nurse left, I heard her outside my door. I couldn’t make out everything she said, but I distinctly heard, “We’ve got a problem. Brenda’s at it again.”

The morning after my confrontation with Brenda, I wondered if I’d imagined the whole scene. If it was a pain-induced hallucinatory representation of my guilty conscience. If I’d conjured up the whole scenario.
    But my doubts ended when my best friend Mert stopped by to bring me a book on tape. (Actually she brought me a bunch of CDs. I can’t get used to calling them anything but books on tape. Old habits are hard to break.) I stretched out a hand to examine the CDs more closely.
    Mert doesn’t miss a trick. She noticed bruises on my upper arms. “Holy Macaroni. What happened to you? These weren’t here yesterday.”
    “Nothing happened to me.”
    “You call them nothing? You got yourself a perfect set of fingerprints.”
    “There was a problem. I took care of it.”
    “Which means what?” Mert scolded and scowled. “I heard that Brenda Detweiler works here. You run into her?”
    “No,” I lied.
    “I just bet,” snorted Mert.
    “It’s none of your business,” I snarled. I was tired of my friends being in my business. I was a grown woman. I didn’t need Mert educating me on what to do. Last night I’d been “saved” by the appearance of a second nurse. Try as I might, I couldn’t erase the image of a furious Brenda Detweiler. Every time I closed my eyes, I conjured up her face and its fearsome expression of anger. A shiver wiggled down my spine.
    She could have killed me. She certainly wanted to.
    Despite questions from the charge nurse, I held my tongue, nearly biting it off in the process. I’ll give her this, she was persistent. After all, she was ultimately responsible for my well being.
    “I had a bad dream,” I insisted.
    When the new nurse handed me a paper cup with a couple of Tylenol in it, I refused the painkillers. No way was I willing to relax. What if Brenda came back? Instead of sliding blissfully into nirvana, I lay in my bed watching the black hands of the clock click off minutes. When the sun brightened my room, I was still watching that stupid timepiece. Tick, tick, tick.
    Now I embellished the lie I told the charge nurse the night before. “I had a nightmare,” I told Mert. “Flailed my arms about. Hit something.”
    “That don’t give people fresh bruises shaped like fingerprints.”
    “I bruise easily.” That was true.
    Mert knew it, but she was too smart for my baloney. “The nurses here are paid to provide a service. Last I checked, that don’t include roughing up the patients. I don’t care if you ran off with Brenda’s hubby on their honeymoon. She’s got no call to be mean to you. Hurting you is just wrong.”
    Of course, I didn’t run off with her hubby on their honeymoon. I wish I could have, though. Deep in my heart, I knew that if Detweiler ever came to my door and offered to take me away, I’d step out of this life with only one hesitation—what about Anya? My