Chapter 5 - The Laundry Door
Ruth lost her job that afternoon. I watched through the wired-glass panel as security escorted her out with her coat in a plastic bag. I thought I'd lost my only friend.
But that night a cart came into my room with clean towels. Beneath them lay a pair of socks, a maintenance badge, and a note: 2:15 A.M. LAUNDRY LOADING BAY. DO NOT TRUST THE NIGHT DRIVER.
At two, I pulled the IV tape from my arm. My bare feet stuck to the waxed hallway. The security guard at the desk was watching basketball with the volume low. I waited for the announcer's cheer, then slipped behind the linen cart and pushed toward the service elevator.
Inside the laundry room, I found Ruth in a brown jacket holding the back door open. "I got copies of everything I could," she whispered. "Move."
A van idled at the loading bay. The driver stepped out, wearing the same polished brown shoes I'd seen through the rain outside Blackthorn House.
"Miss Ashford," Bernard Kessler said. "Let's not make this ugly."
Ruth shoved a rolling rack of sheets into him. I ran, my healing skin tearing beneath the bandages. Bernard caught my scarf, but it slipped free. We reached Ruth's little car as the van's headlights swung toward us.
"Get down!" she shouted.
She reversed into a stack of trash bins, scattering metal across the driveway, then floored it. We didn't stop until the highway signs changed and dawn softened the sky.
At a gas station, she showed me an article on her phone. Juliette Ashford to Wed Developer Evan Mercer at Historic Saint Cecilia's Chapel. The bride smiled beneath a veil, radiant and unafraid.
"She gets a wedding," I said. "I get a borrowed name and scars."
May you like
Ruth touched my shoulder. "You get to be alive. And we're going to prove it."
As we pulled away, her phone rang. A man's voice said, "This is Detective Marcus Hale. Nurse Navarro, don't go home. Someone filed a report that you kidnapped a patient."
