The Daughter He Rejected

Chapter 7

(Duncan POV)

My first shift at Westbrook started at eleven o’clock on a Monday night.

The facility looked different after dark. The floodlights made everything gray and cold. The walls seemed taller. The windows seemed smaller. I walked through the steel doors, each one clicking shut behind me, and wondered if I had made a mistake.

A supervisor named Carol met me in the hallway. She was older, with gray hair and tired eyes. She handed me a set of keys and a clipboard.

“You’ll be on the third floor,” she said. “Women’s wing. Most of them are asleep by now. Do your rounds, check their vitals, report anything unusual.”

“Anything else?”

She looked at me over her glasses. “Don’t get attached. They come and go. Some of them don’t leave the way they came in.”

She walked away before I could ask what that meant.

---

The third floor was quiet. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The floor was linoleum, scuffed and yellowed. Doors lined both sides of the hallway, each with a small window at eye level. Behind some of them, I heard breathing. Behind others, silence.

I checked the chart at the nurses’ station. Room 312. Campbell, Amelia. Twenty-eight. Admitted pending investigation for murder.

I knew her name. I had looked it up before I came.

I walked down the hallway, counting doors. 308. 310. 312.

I stopped.

The window was dark. I could not see inside. I raised my hand to knock, then lowered it. She was probably asleep. I should let her rest.

But I had not come all this way to stand in the hallway.

I knocked twice. Soft.

No answer.

I turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

---

The room was small and cold. A bed. A sink. A toilet. A window with bars. The walls were white. The floor was linoleum. It smelled like bleach and something else. Something stale.

She sat on the bed, her back against the wall, her knees pulled to her chest. The gray facility shirt hung loose on her frame. Her dark curls were messy, tangled. Her eyes were red.

She looked up when I walked in.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse. She had been crying.

“I’m Duncan,” I said. “I’m your night nurse.”

She studied my face. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“I just started tonight.”

I walked to the bedside table and set down a small cup of water. Then I unfolded the blanket I had brought from the supply closet and draped it over her legs.

“You look cold,” I said.

She stared at the blanket. Then at me. “Why do you care?”

“It’s my job.”

“No.” She shook her head. “The others don’t care. They give me pills and leave. They don’t bring blankets.”

I pulled the wooden chair from the corner and sat down. Not too close. Not too far.

“Maybe I’m different,” I said.

She watched me for a long moment. Her eyes were tired, but they missed nothing.

“Have we met before?” she asked.