Chapter 3: Report to Me

ISLA

“Do I stand up when I present, or do I sit down?”

Junie asked it in the elevator at two minutes to nine, with her clipboard pressed to her chest and her purple coat open. I had buttoned it twice. She had unbuttoned it twice, because she said a lawyer’s coat has to be open so the jury can see the tie.

She was not wearing a tie. I have chosen not to fight that battle.

“You do whatever the man says, and you say thank you,” I said.

“Even if he’s the liar?”

“Junie, we agreed on nicer.”

“Even if he’s the man who broke the promise?”

That is worse. That is so much worse, and she said it with a smile.

The elevator opened on the ninth floor. Six years ago I knew every supply closet on the third floor and the fastest way from the cafeteria to the roof, and I had never once been invited past the eighth.

A bald man in a cardigan was waiting at the glass doors with his hands behind his back. Everybody at Cole Memorial knows Hollis Grant by sight, mostly so they can hide from him.

“Ms. Penn,” he said to me.

Then he bent down to Junie’s height and said it again, with exactly the same respect. “Ms. Penn, Mr. Cole will see the complainant now.”

Junie looked back at me as if she had just been told she was going to the moon.

Lord, I know You have a plan. I would like to see the ninth-floor part of it in writing.

His office was all glass on the lake side, with grey water and grey ice under a grey sky. He stood up when we came in.

I had seen him in my head every day for six years. I was ready for the grey eyes and the cowlick. I was not ready for the streak of silver at his left temple, or for the way he stood with both hands flat on the desk, as if the desk might get away from him.

Six years have passed, and the man still has the nerve to look good in charcoal.

Heat climbed my neck. I pulled my sleeves down over my fingers and kept my back straight, which is the one part of the old me I never let anybody take.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Penn,” he said to Junie. “May I offer you a chair?”

“May I stand on it?”

“The complainant may stand on anything she likes.”

He pulled the visitor’s chair out himself and held it while she climbed up. Then he sat down, uncapped an old green fountain pen and waited.

I knew that pen. I had watched him write in the front of a book with it.

Junie cleared her throat and read from her clipboard.

“My first point is that Milo’s room has a fish named Doctor Blub, and Grand Rapids doesn’t have Doctor Blub. My second point is that Milo’s mom sleeps on the chair that folds out, and in Grand Rapids she would have to sleep in her car. My third point is that you broke a promise.”

He wrote all three down. “Which promise did I break?”

“I don’t know which one. Mommy didn’t say.”

He looked at me over her head for exactly one second.

“She misunderstood a private conversation,” I said.

“Grandma said you lie like a rug,” Junie told him helpfully.

“Your grandmother has always been a strong communicator,” he said.

Junie squinted at him. “Do you know my grandma?”

“We’ve met.”

They have met. Six years ago he stood on her porch in the snow and asked where I was, and she told me about it while I was being sick in a stranger’s parking lot in Oregon.

He asked her three questions, and he asked them seriously. He asked how many fish were in the tank, and Junie said one, but he was large. He asked whether Milo had a brother or a sister, and she said he had a baby sister who bites. Then he asked what she wanted him to do first.

“I want you to keep the room,” she said.

“I’ll give you my answer in writing within seven days.”

“Seven days is a long time for Milo.”

He considered that. “Then I’ll answer you in five business days.”

“What are business days?”

“They’re days when I’m not allowed to count Saturdays.”

“That’s cheating.”

“It’s the law,” he said, “but I’ll consider your objection.”

She wrote that down. Then she looked straight at him and said, “Also, my mommy says you’re a liar.”

“I did not say liar,” I said.

“You said it with your face.”

Hollis appeared in the doorway as if he had been standing right outside it, which he obviously had. “The complainant is entitled to refreshments. We have a selection of lollipops.”

Junie climbed down and went with him without looking back once. The door clicked shut behind them.

He came around the desk and stopped beside the window, with his back to the lake and his hands at his sides.

“Is she mine?” he asked.

It was the voice I remembered from the ward at two in the morning, when he read to children who couldn’t sleep, and for one terrible second I wanted to tell him everything.

He ended us with eleven words in a text message. I can spare him a few of my own.

“She’s Owen’s,” I said. “Her father is my fiancé, Owen.”

I turned my ring around on my finger so the little sapphire faced him.

He looked at the ring. Then I watched him count backward from May to August, and I watched him decide what kind of woman I had been that summer. I let him decide it.

“Congratulations,” he said, in the voice of a man signing a death certificate.

“Thank you, Mr. Cole.”

“Her name is Junie?”

“It’s Juniper.”

It came out before I could stop it. His hand stopped halfway to his pen.

“I like the name,” I said.

I had my hand on the door when he spoke again.

“Ms. Penn, as of this morning you are nurse lead of the Juniper Rescue Plan.”

I turned around. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Neither does anyone else. It began twenty minutes ago.” He sat back down. “Bev Tran tells me you rebuilt the ward’s night medication rounds in nine days. Bev has not complimented a nurse in this building since 2015.”

“You asked Bev about me?”

“I asked her at six fifteen this morning.”

He didn’t sleep. He went down to my ward before dawn and interviewed my charge nurse about me.

“I’m not going to work for you,” I said.

“You already work for me. I’m only changing whom you report to.” He capped the fountain pen. “You report to me, Ms. Penn, and to nobody else.”

Six years ago he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. I would ve

ry much like somebody to explain why he wants me on the ninth floor now.