The Daughter He Rejected

Chapter 4

(Duncan POV)

The van pulled away. The lights flashed. The crowd dispersed.

I stood outside the mansion, my hands in my pockets, staring at the empty driveway.

“Hey, Duncan. You okay?”

My partner, Marcus, walked up beside me. He was older, with gray hair, tired eyes. He had been a paramedic for twenty years.

“Yeah,” I said. “Fine.”

“You look like you saw a ghost.”

I shook my head. “I know her. The bride. I’ve seen her before.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You know Armstrong?”

“No. Not like that. It was a long time ago. Maybe three years. The ER. A homeless man. She was the doctor who helped him when everyone else walked past.”

Marcus was quiet for a moment. “That’s the woman they just arrested for murder?”

“She didn’t do it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know her face. I know her hands. She held a dying man’s hand when no one else would touch him. That is not a murderer.”

Marcus shrugged. “People change.”

“Not like that.”

I turned and walked back to the ambulance. Marcus followed.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I did not answer.

---

The next morning, I sat in my small apartment and stared at my laptop screen.

Westbrook Psychiatric Facility. The place they had taken her.

I searched for the name. It was not a hospital. It was a prison dressed in white coats. Patients went in. Some did not come out.

My brother Marcus had died in a place like that. No one believed him. No one helped him. He was twenty-three years old, and he stopped breathing in a room with barred windows.

I won a settlement after he died. Enough money to live on. Enough to never work again if I chose.

I did not choose.

I became a nurse. I wanted to be on the inside. To watch. To protect.

Now there was a woman in a psychiatric hospital who had held a stranger’s hand when no one else would. And I could not stop thinking about her face.

I picked up my phone.

“Westbrook Psychiatric Facility. How may I direct your call?”

“This is Duncan Green. I am a registered nurse. I am requesting a transfer to your facility.”

“Do you have experience with psychiatric patients?”

“Yes.” I did. My brother had been one.

“We have an opening on the night shift. Can you start Monday?”

“Yes.”

I hung up.

The phone trembled in my hand.

I did not know if she would remember me. I did not know if she would want my help. But I had to try.

My brother died because no one believed him. I would not let that happen to her.