The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,7
eyes.
“What time is checkout?” Lucy asked, still transfixed by the bauble.
The nurse shrugged dismissively and returned to her business.
“Bitch,” Lucy mumbled as the short and stubby nurse waddled away.
Watching the nurse leave, she noticed a familiar face across the hall—not a friend or even much of an acquaintance, but a former classmate and a die-hard competitor for precious gossip-column space. The girl never had a bad thing printed about her, until recently when rumors of a pregnancy by an ex-boyfriend, now in college, began to circulate. Lucy knew all about it because she had started the rumor. And right next to her was the girl’s boyfriend.
There was no curtain on their bay. They were totally exposed.
“Hey, Sadie,” Lucy called out, getting the girl’s attention.
Sadie was clenched over in pain, moaning, holding her stomach. She was too weak to respond or to defend herself.
“Wow. Can’t believe how fantastic your postpregnancy bod looks,” Lucy said. “Hard to believe you were pregnant like . . . an hour ago.”
The girl tucked her head inside her hoodie, knowing what was about to happen, much like a mobster who’d been taken away in the backseat of a rival crime family’s car. But the guy didn’t even try to hide his face. In fact, quite the opposite.
Ratting Sadie out would surely impress Jesse and get her ER story better placement. In fact, it might even warrant a vlog post. All she could think was jackpot. In her circle, teen pregnancy was one thing, good for a few days of embarrassing coverage before it got turned into some noble endeavor, but termination, that was quite another. That could mean exile. And for Lucy, one less rival. She couldn’t count the number of times they had tried to humiliate her.
Eye for an eye.
Lucy took a picture with her cell and looked it over. It was a perfect snap, capturing all Sadie’s tears and torment. But the distraught look on Sadie’s face, her vulnerability, reached Lucy in a way she hadn’t expected. Even more moving to Lucy was Sadie’s boyfriend, Tim, hand in hand with her, right by her side. There was no one there for Lucy. Not even the man who should have cared the most, her dad.
She locked eyes with the couple, felt them pleading silently with her for media mercy, felt their pain, which was completely unlike her, and pressed send.
“You’re discharged,” the nurse said curtly to Lucy on her way down the hall. “Your things are in that bag and the paperwork is at the front desk.”
“That’s it?” Lucy asked, somewhat disappointed.
“Ha! What did you expect?”
Lucy frowned only slightly, but still just enough to give the night nurse a smirk of satisfaction.
“What do you think?” Lucy inquired, brandishing her bejeweled wrist regally.
“I think it suits you,” the nurse said. “Try not to pawn it too quickly.”
Lucy bared her teeth and raised her perfectly manicured hands into claws like an angry cat and hissed away the nurse’s bad energy.
She grabbed her weekender bag and headed out through the revolving doors. It was dawn, the time when people were getting up for work and, in her case, returning from going out. Her rush hour.
She walked to a food cart and ordered some scrambled egg whites and street meat on a bagel and a hot cup of coffee. Still thinking about what she’d just done to Sadie. How low she’d sunk. She watched the vendor crack the eggs and separate the yolk, the core, the most substantial part, and discard it.
“Scoop it,” she ordered, insisting he shell out the bagel, as she watched an obviously downtrodden couple order their toddler a Dr Pepper.
Right on cue, she felt a spindly hand grab her arm. She didn’t need to look to know whose it was. Jesse’s black-sleeved jacket was a dead giveaway.
“Get your hands off me, prick,” she barked, jerking free without even turning around to face him. Jesse was tall, slightly hunched over from all that time spent on the computer, and thin. He tried, to a fault, to be on trend, and looked as if he were uncomfortably dressed by a girlfriend—which he did not have.
“Awwww,” he whined. “Wake up on the wrong side of the gurney?”
Lucy was suddenly struck by the reflection of the sun bouncing off the double-eyed charm. She could have sworn it was staring back at her.
“I’m done, Jesse. This time I mean it.”
“Done with what? You’re living the dream.”
“Whose dream?”
“Yours, remember?”
“All I know is I could have rotted away in there and nobody