Gavin was sure whoever designed the Urgent Care at their small town’s only medical center had intended for it to be calming. From the portraits of smiling children, with their pink cheeks and bright smiles, to the pastel-patterned chairs and bubbling fish tank, it looked like some deranged living room from a department-store catalogue.
He searched his thoughts and tried to remember if he’d ever been in a place like this before. The only memories he had of seeing a doctor involved one showing up on his front porch in the middle of the night, and now that he thought about it, wearing the same, dazed expression as Dave when he delivered the groceries every week. Gavin couldn’t even think about what that meant. Not with the way everyone was looking at him, like he might leap at them at any minute.
Nothing about this place made Gavin want to stop pacing and sit down. Nothing made him comfortable. The chairs looked sticky, the carpet worn down to the plastic underside in some places and stained with random dark splotches in others. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what those stains might be.
And the concerned, dare he say, accusing looks being aimed at him from the nurses’ station weren’t helping.
The staff had rushed Delilah off almost as soon as they’d arrived. One look at her tangled, damp hair, the clothes that were too big and clearly not hers, and the way she held her injured arm to her body—protectively—and they hadn’t wasted a minute. Delilah looked like a battered woman, and Gavin, of course, looked like the culprit.
But she hadn’t wanted to go alone, arguing with them and refusing to let go of his hand.
“I’ll be back with you in a few minutes,” Gavin had told her, brushing the hair from her face. He nodded to the front desk. “I just have to answer a few questions up here and fill out your paperwork, and then they’ll let me come back.”
He’d kissed the corners of her mouth, knowing it was a lie. Gavin knew, and maybe Delilah did, too, that they had no intention of letting him anywhere near Delilah as long as she was here.
Worn-out and still in pain, she had finally relented, turning to hug him a final time before pressing her cell phone into his hand. “Dhaval said he’ll be here,” she whispered. “Give this to him for me? My parents will take it.”
He’d nodded and kissed her temple, watching as she was led out of the room, and the doors to the back of the facility closed behind her. Away from him.
“Maybe you can tell us what happened?” A nurse in her thirties spoke next to him. She looked pleasant enough, he supposed, but there was something about her—a pinched expression and almost gleeful look in her eyes at the prospect of possibly catching him at something—that made him dislike her almost immediately.
“Sure.”
He took a seat at the front counter, his eyes flickering back and forth from the woman typing in front of him to the doors that led to the treatment area.
“Your name?”
“Gavin Timothy,” he said.
“And you’re the boyfriend.”
He blinked back to the nurse, at the pointed way she’d said “the boyfriend,” like there was accusation in it. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me a little about what happened tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and dropped his head into his hands. This was pathetic. Who would possibly believe him? “She went upstairs and closed the door. I heard her scream and followed. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sure nobody else was in there, Gavin?”
She was talking slower than she needed to, speaking as if he needed her to dumb it down for him. Her smile was pained and condescending, and when he didn’t elaborate or tell her anything she wanted to hear, she tucked a strand of faded red hair behind her ear and made a note.
“We’re going to need you to sit over there,” she said, pointing the chewed end of a pencil to the waiting area. “We may need to talk to you again, so please don’t leave.” She gave him a glance that said I’ll be watching you and Stay where you’re told, before she picked up her papers and disappeared into the back.