At 11:50 PM on Thursday, Jordyn walked into my waiting room.
She knew when I took my break.
She used to bring me coffee on it.
She wore a navy work blazer and her company lanyard.
About twenty people sat in the plastic chairs.
A man held a dish towel around his thumb.
A mother rocked a toddler with a barking cough.
The triage nurse looked up from her window.
The guard by the doors looked up too.
I had a granola bar in one hand and a chart in the other.
I'd been an RN at St. Adalbert for six years.
Nobody had ever come to my ER to visit me.
"Patrice wants the card box," Jordyn said.
"Jordyn, not here."
"It's not yours."
"Those are his family's cards."
"Grandma's check was in there."
"Five hundred dollars, Leah."
She said my name like it was a bill she was sending me.
The man with the towel turned around in his chair.
"Then where?" Jordyn said.
"You're never anywhere else."
She took a breath and let it come out louder.
"You were always on shift."
"He was lonely."
The toddler stopped coughing to stare.
I put the granola bar in my pocket.
"I was on shift."
"You were in my suite."
Somebody in the second row said, "Oh."
The mother with the toddler pulled him a little closer.
Jordyn's chin came up.
"It just happened, Leah."
Behind me, the curtain of Bay 4 slid back.
Wes stepped out.
He wore a Breakers jacket over a gray sweater.
There was blood on one cuff, and it wasn't his.
His rookie defenseman was in Bay 4 with eleven stitches in his cheek.
A puck in the third period had done it.
I'd put in the last three stitches myself.
Wes came and stood beside me, not in front of me.
"She's working."
"You're leaving."
Jordyn looked at him, then at me.
She laughed, but only with her mouth.
"The hockey owner."
"You didn't waste a night."
The triage nurse leaned into her microphone.
"She's at work, Jordyn."
It came out over the speakers into the whole room.
Jordyn went red all the way down to her lanyard.
My phone was in my pocket.
The makeup artist's video was still on it.
4:22 PM, the bedroom door, the two of them going through it.
Twenty people would have watched it.
I left the phone where it was.
"The box is gone," I said.
Jordyn blinked.
"Gone where?"
"All one hundred twelve cards went back Tuesday."
"Unopened."
"Each one to its return address."
"Grandma's is in Sun Prairie by now."
Jordyn opened her mouth.
Nothing she'd brought with her fit anymore.
She'd come for a woman sitting on the money.
There was no money.
The guard walked over and pulled the door open for her.
He held it.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
Jordyn walked out into the cold with her lanyard swinging.
The doors hissed shut behind her.
The man with the dish towel said, "Good for you."
"Let me see that thumb," I said.
He held it out like a ticket.
"Kitchen knife?"
"Bagel."
"It's always a bagel."
At 3:10 AM I found Wes in the ambulance bay.
The rookie had gone home at one.
Wes hadn't.
He was holding two coffees from the vending machine.
He gave me one.
It was too sweet.
I drank it anyway.
"How's your rookie?"
"Asking if the scar will show on TV."
"It will."
"I told him that."
"He said good."
The bay doors were up.
The air smelled like diesel and October.
A medic rig backed in past us with its lights off.
"There's an empty unit in my building," he said.
"Furnished."
"Nobody's using it."
"Don't."
He waited.
"I'm not a stray you found in a hallway."
"I know."
"Then don't feed me like one."
He looked down at his cup.
"Then I'll ask for less."
"Your next night off."
"For what?"
"You pick."
I almost laughed.
"My next night off is the twenty-fourth."
"I'll be at your game anyway."
He frowned.
"In your owner's box," I said.
"Dawn won the department's Healthcare Heroes invitation."
"There are eight of us from the ER."
"I didn't know that."
"I figured."
The man owned a hockey team.
He didn't read raffle results.
He laughed into his cup, once and short.
I hadn't heard him laugh before.
I thought about the hallway.
The elevator mirror.
The blue thread at the hem.
It had been over his arm in the lobby.
On the loading dock it was gone.
Six days, and I hadn't asked him once.
I set my coffee on the bumper of the ambulance.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Why did you take my mother's veil?"
The radio cut in.