The Woman You Erased

Ward Nine

CHAPTER THREE: Ward Nine

I did not faint. Not fully.

Strong arms caught me before my head hit the stone, and a familiar voice, low and furious and gentle all at once, said my name over and over.

"I've got you. I've got you, little sister. God, you're burning up. Marcus, get the doctor on the phone, tell him fever, exhaustion, get the car warm."

"Anthony." I clutched his sleeve. His face swam above me, older than I remembered, a sharp handsome face with our mother's eyes. "You came."

"You called. Of course I came." His jaw worked. "Three years, Claire. Three years you made us wait. Dad has aged ten. And I find you like this? On the steps of a courthouse? Alone?"

"There's a woman," I mumbled. "In the hospital. Ward nine. Felicia. He's paying her bills with my money. I want... I want to close it. Tonight. I want it finished before I disappear."

Anthony's arms went very still. "You want to go to the hospital. Now. In this state."

"Please. Just once. I need to see her face when I take it away."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then, because my brother had never once in his life been able to say no to me, he swore under his breath and carried me to the car.

Ward Nine was a private suite that cost more per night than most people earned in a month. I knew, because I had been paying for it.

I walked in on my own feet, holding the wall, with Anthony one step behind me like a shadow with a very expensive coat. Felicia lay propped on silk pillows, pale and pretty and perfectly arranged, a thin blanket over legs that were supposedly ruined. A nurse fussed at her side.

Felicia's eyes found me, and they lit up.

"Claire! You came." Her voice was soft and wounded and sweet as poison. "I knew you would. You always take care of me, don't you. I told the doctor you'd handle the deposit."

"The photo," I said. "You sent it."

The nurse's hands paused.

Felicia's lashes fluttered. "What photo? Claire, I've been in this bed all night, I don't know what you're talking about. You look ill, you should sit."

"You typed it with the same hand you took the picture." I stepped closer. My legs shook, but my voice did not. "You called me a homewrecker. In my own marriage. On my own money."

"I would never." Her eyes went glassy, and right on cue, two tears slid down her cheeks. She looked past me, toward the door, wounded and searching. "Please, I'm so tired, I'm scared about the surgery. Where's Raymond? He promised he'd come."

"He's coming," I said. "But before he does, I want you to hear something, and I want you to hear it clearly."

I reached down and, before the nurse could stop me, I flipped back the thin blanket over her ruined, tragic, un-walkable legs.

Underneath, her ankles were smooth and unmarked, one of them lightly wrapped in a bandage that had clearly been placed there for show. No bruises. No swelling. No sign at all of the emergency surgery that was supposed to be minutes away.

The room went dead silent.

"There's the leg that needs two hundred thousand tonight," I said quietly. "Not a scratch on it."

Felicia's mouth opened and closed. "I, that's, the doctor said internal, you don't understand medicine, Claire, you're just a nobody, you can't just, you can't touch me!"

"You're right." I pulled the blanket from my hands and let it drop. "I'm just a nobody. So find another nobody to pay for your lies."

Behind me, the door slammed open.

"Claire!" Raymond's voice cracked like a whip across the room. He took in the scene in one furious sweep, Felicia crying, the blanket thrown back, me swaying on my feet. He crossed to me in three strides and seized my arm hard enough to bruise. "What do you think you're doing? Get your hands off her. Have you completely lost your mind?"

And that was the moment my brother stepped out of the shadow by the door, straightened his cuffs, and spoke for the first time.

"Take your hand," Anthony said, in a voice like a door closing on a vault, "off my sister."

Raymond froze.

"Your... sister?" he said.