Read Rule of Thirds, The for Free Online

it.”
    Two months? She doesn’t really look sick, but why else would she be here so long? Unless she’s never coming out of the hospital. I push that thought away.
    “You know what does need water?” she sing-songs, snapping the compact shut and putting it on the tray table with her lipstick.
    I shake my head.
    “Dorothy.”
    Oh great, she names her plants. “Which one’s Dorothy?”
    She gives a deep, throaty chortle and points at herself.
    “Oh,” I say, then laugh.
    “I’m so thirsty and all they give us to drink are these tiny cups of water.” She points at the paper Dixie cup by her bed. “I’d love to get a glass of fizzy water. With those bubbles that make you burp but feel so good in your mouth?” She grabs a tattered fabric change purse from beside her bed and opens it, then hands me a five-dollar bill.
    “Like Perrier?”
    Dorothy nods. “That would be really lovely, dear.”
    I smile. “Sure thing. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    At the nurses’ station, I grab my bag from under the desk and head to the elevator, happy for the break. I’ve been watering plants for what . . . an hour? I check my watch. Oh. Twenty minutes. Well, whatever.
    I push the elevator button just as I hear a familiar voice behind me. “Now where do you think you’re going?”
    My stomach lurches and I turn around to see Hannah. This is like Silence of the Candystripers , and Hannah-ble Lecter is going to bite off my tongue.
    “I—I’m just going to the cafeteria to—”
    “Cafeteria? You work five seconds and you’re already taking a break?” As the doors to the elevator open, she waves the trio of doctors inside to go on without me. “We’ve got a Code Yellow. Room 414 .”
    “Code Yellow?” I look around. I’m guessing she’s not referring to the décor fail in this joint.
    She shoves a set of folded white bedsheets and a bottle of disinfectant at me, then heads back to the nurses’ station.
    I shuffle down the hall to room 414 and push open the door. A burst of urine-infused air hits me in the face.
    The clean sheets end up on the green vinyl chair in the corner so I can grab a tissue from the box beside the bed. I tear it in half then twist each into tight rolls, kind of like Twizzlers, and stuff them up my nose. Test inhale. Can’t smell a thing. Perfect. Or, as close to perfect as you can get when you’re about to change soiled sheets.
    There’s a dispenser on the wall for plastic gloves. With my hands all latexed up I’m ready to conquer the bed. It’s not the wetness of the sheets that makes them disgusting—well, it is, but it’s also the fact that they’re still warm. I put them in the bin marked soiled linens outside the door and toss out my gloves. Hopefully the most disgusting task I’ll ever have to do here.
    The nurses’ station looms at the end of the hall, but Hannah’s not there. Score. Down on the first floor cafeteria I grab a Perrier for Dorothy, two Diet Cokes—if the Code Yellow’s any indication, it seems like a two DC kind of afternoon. Oh, and a bag of Twizzlers from the bottom shelf of the candy display. As I’m standing up, I nearly hit my head on a guitar. That’s attached to a boy. Dylan.
    “Hey,” he says, and his hair falls over his eyes. I drop everything. Literally. Plastic bottles everywhere.
    We both bend over to pick them up. “Thirsty?” he asks as he hands me the Perrier.
    “Diet Coke?” I ask, handing him mine. Nice gesture, except I haven’t even paid for it yet. “I mean, I’ll pay for it.”
    “Oh thanks, but I don’t drink aspartame,” he says. He rubs his nose.
    Which makes me rub my nose. And that’s when I realize the tissues are still up there. Twizzler style. I yank them out of my nose.
    “I was just changing the sheets,” I say, flustered. “Code Yellow?”
    He gives me a blank look.
    “You don’t know Code Yellow?”
    “No, I . . .” he starts to say.
    “Oh yeah, music team. I forgot. So lucky.”
    He nods. “Right. So