“All elementary school assistant principals are.”

“I’d assume as much.”

His smile widens. “Look, I have to get inside, but we really do need to catch up. Could we get coffee sometime?”

The last thing I want is to catch up with someone from my old life—especially someone I was as close with as Tim. “I’m pretty busy.”

“Well, coffee doesn’t take long, does it? Twenty minutes—tops.”

This can’t lead to anything good. I don’t have any room in my life for whatever Tim wants. Plus, I have a feeling when he finds out the truth about Josh, he’s going to feel differently about me. But I want to end this conversation, so I’ve got to throw him a bone.

“Maybe,” I finally say, “after I get settled in.”

“Well…” His face is still glowing. God, I forgot how he used to look at me. “It was really great seeing you again, Brooke. Really great. And I’m going to hold you to that maybe.”

There’s an extra skip in his step as he sprints back toward the elementary school. Tim Reese. Wow. I really never believed I’d see him again.

Chapter 6

I am outraged.

The patient I’m seeing right now is Mr. Carpenter. He is in his late twenties, and he was shot in the spine while doing… well, whatever got him sent to a maximum-security prison for life. It was bad, I’m sure. I don’t want to know.

But none of that is my concern. What is my concern is that Mr. Carpenter is a paraplegic and uses a wheelchair. So he’s sitting on his bottom all day, and then he’s lying on a mattress at night that is paper-thin, and now he has a rather impressive sore on his coccyx that has not been addressed in God knows how long.

“What do you think, Brooke?” Mr. Carpenter asks me. He’s lying on the examining table on his side with his pants pulled down, waiting for my assessment. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything good to say.

“It’s a pressure wound,” I say. “We can put a dressing on it, but it’s never going to heal if you don’t keep pressure off of it.”

“Yeah, well, how am I supposed to do that? The cushion on my chair is halfway decent, but the mattress in my bed is terrible. I’m basically lying directly on metal springs.”

“So you need a better mattress.”

Mr. Carpenter snorts. “How long have you worked here? Nobody’s getting me a new mattress.”

“They have to get it for you if I prescribe it.”

“Whatever you say…”

Despite Mr. Carpenter’s skepticism, he’s going to get that mattress. It’s medical neglect not to give a paraplegic a decent mattress with pressure relief. It might involve a stack of paperwork, but I’m going to make it happen.