“You can drop me here,” I said, gesturing to the pull-through entrance in front of the ER. I didn’t want the detective to get any ideas about accompanying me into the hospital again, accumulating information when I wasn’t paying attention.

She parked the car, put a hand on my arm before I turned away. “Have the medical report sent to me, okay? We’ll get it to the folks in Widow Hills. I assume you can find yourself a ride home?”

“Yes,” I said, opening the passenger door.

She tipped her head as I slid out of the seat, and I smiled back. I hoped it was the last time I’d see her.

I ASKED FOR SYDNEY Britton directly, grateful to hear that she’d just come on shift.

It took longer, without the police escort, to be called back, or maybe it was because I was waiting for Dr. Britton specifically. I had my shoulder x-rayed and generally examined before being sent to the semi-private area to wait once more.

Sydney Britton stood in the curtained entrance, glasses on top of her head, mouth a straight line. “We need to stop meeting like this,” she said. And then she slipped the X-ray into the slot against the wall, placed her hands on her hips. “I heard what happened. You all right?”

She looked back once, and I nodded. She did the same, and that was enough.

“No break,” she said. “No dislocation.” She turned back to where I sat on the exam table, tried to maneuver my arm, but stopped as I hissed in air. “Some ligament damage. There’s a lot of scar tissue as it is.”

I looked over at the X-ray, wondering what she could see. “Can you tell what happened when I was a kid?” I asked. This was why I’d asked for her. To ask without being documented. To know: What had happened to me twenty years earlier?

She moved my arm in another direction, gently, getting the full range of motion. “Not really. Twenty years is a long time, Liv. Your bone is much different now from when you were a kid, still growing. There’s only so much I can tell from an X-ray now—only the places the damage remains. Time covers the rest.”

And so I might never know.

She stepped back. “Rest and anti-inflammatories are what I’d suggest for now. But you know, there are things you can do about that. Things that could help.” She pointed to the X-ray. “It can take time, but I’ve seen people make good progress with physical therapy alone.”

My mom had stopped taking me to my follow-up appointments. And I’d been afraid to visit doctors; afraid of what they might see. I hopped off the table. “Maybe,” I said.

I WAS WAITING FOR Bennett outside the hospital entrance. I’d asked if he had time to swing by to pick me up and take me home before he headed in to work, partly because I wanted to see him again, partly because I knew he’d hear about this anyway, and I wanted it to be from me.

“What’s the prognosis?” he asked. He moved his messenger bag to the back seat as I let myself into his car.

“A sprain.” I had the X-rays and documentation tucked under my arm to send to Detective Rigby and the Widow Hills Police Department. “Just have to take it easy.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad you called me.”

As if on cue, his cell started ringing from his bag in the back. I twisted around to be able to reach it with my right arm. “It’s fine, leave it,” Bennett said, “probably just work.”

But I was already unzipping his bag.

“Liv, stop—”

The phone was in my hand—yes, it was work. I didn’t answer it. Because I had just understood the urgency in Bennett’s voice. The thing he didn’t want me to see. My name on a form tucked away under his phone. I pulled the paper out, and his hands tightened on the wheel.

I wished he would look at me so I would know what this meant.

“It’s not important,” he said as I was reading the heading. “Liv, I was bringing it out of the hospital. I was going to get rid—”

“What the hell is this?” I asked, trying to process the pieces. It was a hospital incident report. One of the things Bennett was in charge of, reporting infractions up the chain of command.

But this had my name on it.

It had a list of infractions: unauthorized access to medicine room; unauthorized access to patient room—

It had the signature of the person who had reported it: one Erin Mills.

And it had Bennett’s signature and date beside it.

“What the fuck, Bennett?”

“I was going to get rid of it,” he repeated, which sounded wholly unlike Bennett. “Look, someone reported you. Unauthorized access to medicine room. Unauthorized access to patient rooms. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t do anything with it, I swear.”

Someone had been watching me. Noticed what I’d been doing. I’d thought only Bennett knew. The name, though. I had never even met her. “Who the hell is Erin Mills?”

“She’s a nurse in the ER, hangs out in our lounge a bunch. Older than us. She was friends with Elyse.” I remembered the name now. The person who lived next door to Elyse, in 121. “She was supposed to fill in for us and then quit. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter. She quit now. So no one’s gonna know. I’m the only one. I didn’t escalate it. It’s in my bag, I’m taking it home. I’ll get rid of it there.”

The opposite of how I’d disposed of the box cutter.

My hand was shaking, though. Because someone else knew I’d been inside the medicine room. And someone else knew I’d been in a patient room—did she know about the box cutter? If she had reported me to Bennett, would she have reported the rest to the police?

I could remember only one nurse in the lounge the day I’d sneaked into the medicine room. That curly auburn hair, facing away. I hadn’t known her; hadn’t thought she knew who I was, either. Now I was worried about what else she had seen. What else she knew.

“Liv, please. Say something.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He moved his lower jaw, and I thought I probably already knew the answer. Because he hadn’t decided what to do with it. And now the decision had been made easier for him.

“You had a lot going on,” he said. “A lot to deal with already. I thought I was helping.”

We pulled onto my road, but I was still working through this piece of information. Bennett had caught me in the medicine room; he’d heard everything the detective said that first day; he knew about Dr. Cal; he’d been through the things in my house while I was unconscious; he’d convinced me not to search harder for Elyse.

“Take it,” he said, looking straight at me before turning in to my driveway. “Take the paper and destroy it. There’s no copy.”

He’d also given me the information for a lawyer; he’d also shown up any time I called. At some point, I had to choose to trust him and the things he told me. “Okay,” I said.

He parked the car behind my own in the driveway, looking to the house. “Can I come in for a sec?” he asked. “Make sure everything’s okay?”

I understood what he meant: make sure we’re okay.

Bennett would be leaving for work. The detective was gone. I thought of Elyse all alone at the campgrounds. What might happen to any of us with no one around and no one noticing when something was wrong.