Chapter 24: Briar Saves Eliza

 

Briar yanked her hands away from her stomach.

Too late. She knew it was too late. She pressed them to her sides and made herself look at Vivienne directly.

"I'm not pregnant," she said.

"You just grabbed your stomach like"

"I have a stomachache! I always do that when my stomach hurts, I hold it, it's just a habit!" Her voice came out too fast and she knew it. "And I've been eating too much lately because everything has been terrible and I stress eat, okay? That's why I look different. That's all it is."

Vivienne looked at her hands. Looked at her face. Looked at her hands again.

"Stress eating," she said.

"Yes."

"That explains the stomach."

"Yes! Can you stop looking at me like that?"

Vivienne tilted her head slightly. She was still looking at Briar with that focused, private quality, the expression of someone turning something over very carefully.

Then the front door opened downstairs.

Killian's footsteps in the entry hall. His keys on the table. Then his voice coming up the stairs, calm until it wasn't.

"What happened?"

Briar turned around. Vivienne had sat down on the hallway floor, her back against the wall, her wrist cradled against her chest. She had moved so quickly and so quietly that Briar had not seen it happen.

Killian was at the top of the stairs in seconds. He looked at Vivienne on the floor. He looked at Briar standing over her. His expression went through several things very fast and came out the other side as something cold and hard and entirely directed at Briar.

"What did you do," he said.

"Nothing! She stumbled, I didn't"

"She is sitting on the floor, Briar!"

"We had an argument and she stumbled! I didn't push her, she just"

"An argument." He was already crouching beside Vivienne. "Are you all right? Does it hurt here?"

"I'm fine," Vivienne said quietly. "Really. It's not bad. Don't be angry at her."

The way he held Vivienne's wrist. Briar had spent three years in this house and he had never once held any part of her like that.

She looked at the floor.

Killian stood up and crossed to Briar and she could feel the anger coming off him before he touched her arm.

"Apologize," he said.

"Killian"

"Now, Briar."

"She started it! She pushed me first and I just"

"I don't care who started it!" His voice cracked up and she flinched. "She is a guest! In my house! And you will apologize to her right now!"

Briar looked at Vivienne.

Vivienne was watching from the floor with her wrist held to her chest and her expression carefully arranged into something pained and forgiving.

"I'm sorry," Briar said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "I'm sorry you got hurt."

"It's okay," Vivienne said softly. "It's really okay, Killian. Don't be too hard on her."

Which was the most infuriating thing she could possibly have said and she knew it perfectly well.

Briar went to bed and lay there in the dark and pressed her hands against her stomach and breathed.

---

The next morning Briar arrived at the hospital nursing station and Eliza looked up from her desk and immediately looked back down.

"You're here again," she said.

"I'm here again," Briar said.

"I told you yesterday that I don't need your help."

"You told me to sit against the wall," Briar said. "I sat against the wall. I can do that again."

"Or you could not be here at all."

Two nurses passed behind Briar and one of them said something low to the other. Briar caught enough of it. Something about recently the city had been in turmoil, and even near the hospital there were rogue wolves causing chaos.

Eliza heard it too. Her jaw tightened slightly. "Get out of here! Find a seat somewhere and don't bother me." she said to Briar.

Briar sat down.

She spent the morning not touching anything and not pushing any carts and watching Eliza work. Eliza did not speak to her. The other staff did not speak to her.

In the early afternoon a nurse told her to take a bag of medical waste to the collection point in the back alley.

Briar took it.

She had just dropped it into the correct bin when she heard the door open behind her and Eliza came out with a second bag. Then two men she did not know came around the corner from the street end of the alley. Large. Moving with the loose  confidence of wolves who were outside their own territory and had decided that did not concern them.

They were looking at Eliza.

"You work here?" one of them said.

"We're leaving," Eliza said.

She stepped back toward the door. The handle did not move. It had latched behind them.

The first man reached out and flicked the bag in Eliza's hands, deliberate and contemptuous, and the bag tore and the contents went down the front of her uniform and across her shoes. Dark fluid, the smell immediate and bad, soaking into the fabric.

Eliza went still.

"Oh, that's unfortunate," the man said. He looked at his friend. They were both smiling.

Briar looked around. There was a length of metal pipe propped against the wall near the bins, the kind of thing that ends up in alleys without explanation.

She picked it up.

Her hands were shaking. She was aware of that. She was also aware that she was not large and not intimidating and that the pipe probably looked more ridiculous than threatening in her grip. None of that changed what she did, which was step between them and Eliza and hold the pipe in front of her in both hands.

"Walk away," she said.

The men looked at her. One of them smiled.

"Walk away right now," she said again. Louder. "There are cameras on this building and I will scream loud enough for every person on this floor to hear me, and you are on hospital grounds and you do not want this!"

Still shaking. Grip tight on the pipe. Not moving.

The two men looked at each other. The one who had been smiling stopped smiling. Something passed between them, a calculation, a decision about whether this was worth it. Then they went back around the corner.

Briar did not lower the pipe until she could no longer hear their footsteps.

She lowered it.

Her legs felt strange.

Eliza was looking at her. Then she looked down at her uniform. The smell was very bad.

"Are you okay?" Briar said.

"I'm fine."

"You're covered in"

"I said I'm fine." Eliza looked at her. "You were shaking."

"I know."

"You were terrified."

"I know."

"But you didn't move."

Briar did not say anything. She set the pipe down against the wall.

Eliza looked at the uniform again. She looked up. Down the alley a door had opened and two staff members were standing in it, taking in the scene, and one of them had her hand over her nose. The other one made a face and they both stepped back inside.

Briar crossed to Eliza and stood next to her. Directly next to her. "Do you have your key card?" she said.

Eliza found it in her pocket. They went back inside.

Nobody in the break room sat near Eliza while she changed into spare scrubs. Only Briar sat on the bench directly beside the locker Eliza was using and scrolled through her phone and did not move.

Eliza glanced at her once. Some ideas in her mind gradually began to loosen.

The afternoon passed.

At the end of the shift Briar said goodbye and headed for the street.

"Where's your car," Eliza said behind her.

"I take the bus," Briar said, turning.

Eliza looked at her keys. "I'm going past the house anyway. I need to see Killian about something."

"You really don't have to"

"I said I'm going past anyway," Eliza said. "Don't make it something it isn't."

They drove without talking much. Eliza had the radio on low. Briar watched the streets and did not push.

When they pulled up to the house, Vivienne was coming out the front door.

She stopped on the step."Eliza," she said, warm and immediate. "I didn't know you were coming."

Eliza looked at her. For the first time, a cautious suspicion appeared on Eliza's face.

"I'm here to see Killian," Eliza said.