Chapter 4 4

The community clinic on 108th Street smelled of bleach and desperation. Denice pushed through the doors at 8:47, seventeen minutes late, her dress still damp, her hair still tangled from the bus window.

Margo looked up from the intake desk, her eyebrows rising. "Girl. You look like hell."

"Rough night." Denice tied on her lab coat, the fabric worn thin at the elbows, and reached for the first chart in the stack. "Who's first?"

"Mr. Henderson. Laceration, left hand. Says he caught it on a fence, but you know how that goes." Margo paused, studying her face. "You sure you're okay? You want coffee?"

"I'm fine." Denice took the chart, felt the familiar ache in her right wrist as she gripped the pen. The ache was psychological-she knew that, had known since the surgery that failed to fix what her mind had broken-but knowing didn't stop it from hurting. "Coffee would be good. Thanks."

The morning blurred. Mr. Henderson's laceration, twelve stitches, no insurance. A toddler with an ear infection, screaming while her mother tried to fill out forms in Spanish. A homeless man Denice recognized from previous visits, his feet blistered and weeping, who flinched when she touched him and apologized for wasting her time.

She was cleaning the exam table when her phone buzzed. She ignored it. It buzzed again, insistently, vibrating against her hip through the thin fabric of her dress.

Margo appeared in the doorway, holding two cups of coffee in styrofoam cups. "You gonna get that?"

"It's nothing." Denice finished wiping the table, disposed of the gloves, reached for her cup. The coffee was bitter, burnt, exactly what she needed.

The phone buzzed a third time. Then a fourth. A pattern. Denice's hand stilled.

She knew that pattern. She'd known it five years ago, when he'd call her at 2 AM because he couldn't sleep, when he'd send her pictures of the sunrise from the hospital roof, when he'd-

She pulled the phone from her pocket. Unknown number. But she knew. She'd memorized that number before she'd memorized his name, before she'd known that memorizing things was a way of making them permanent, and permanent things could be taken away.

She walked to the fire exit, pushed through the heavy metal door, and answered in the stairwell where no one could hear.

"Hello?"

"Quit your job." Jasper's voice, stripped of everything-greeting, context, pretense. Just the words, flat and absolute.

Denice leaned against the concrete wall. It was cold through her coat. "What?"

"The clinic. It's filthy. The ventilation system is outdated, the bacterial load is-" He made a sound of disgust. "You're compromising your immune system. Your reproductive health. If you want this to work-"

"This is how I live." Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "This is how I eat. You can't just-"

"I can do exactly what I want." A pause. She heard him moving, pictured him pacing in his office, that high-ceilinged space with the view of the East River. "You want a child. I want-" Another pause. "I want this transaction completed with maximum efficiency. Your current employment is counterproductive."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I refuse." His voice dropped, became something almost gentle. Almost kind. The voice he used with terminal patients, she'd learned later. The voice that meant bad news was coming. "No more appointments, Denice. No more... cooperation. Find another donor."

The wall held her up. Her knees had gone liquid, her vision tunneling. He was threatening to withdraw. To leave Ansel to die because she wouldn't-because she couldn't-

"You're a monster," she whispered.

"I'm a pragmatist. There's a difference." She heard him shift, papers rustling. "My executive assistant will contact you with the schedule. Clear your days entirely. I expect you to be available the moment you are summoned."

The line went dead.

Denice stared at the phone. Her hands were shaking again, worse than before. She didn't want to wait for a sterile message from his assistant. She needed to see, needed to know. She opened her messages. She typed his private number from memory-the one she had never forgotten. Her thumb hovered over "send request."

She pressed it.

The screen changed. Request sent. Then, almost immediately, a glitch of his privacy settings or perhaps a forgotten auto-accept: Jasper Garrison Montgomery has accepted your request.

His profile picture was the default gray silhouette. She shouldn't click it. She knew she shouldn't. But her thumb moved without her permission, tapping the name, opening the linked accounts, falling through the digital rabbit hole into his life without her.

Instagram loaded. The most recent post: three days ago. A beach, golden sand, turquoise water that looked nothing like the gray Atlantic she knew. Jasper in a white linen shirt, sleeves rolled, looking down at someone just out of frame. His expression was soft. Open. The way he'd looked at her, once, in another life.

The camera pulled back. Kira Schultz leaned into his shoulder, her blonde hair catching the sun, her smile wide and white and victorious. Her hand rested on his chest, over his heart.

The caption: "Weekend getaway. Always you."

Denice's phone slipped. She caught it against her chest, her fingers numb, her breath coming in short gasps that didn't quite fill her lungs. Always you. The words echoed, mocking. She'd thought-she'd allowed herself to think, for one stupid moment, that his cruelty might be a mask, that something might remain of what they'd been-

She was wrong. She'd always been wrong. She was the stand-in. The substitute. The woman who'd happened to be available when Kira was overseas, and now that Kira was back, Denice was simply... useful. A body. A womb. A means to an end.

The fire door opened. Margo's head appeared, her expression shifting from annoyance to concern. "Denice? We need you. Mrs. Chen's kid is having an asthma attack-"

"Coming." The word came out steady. Automatic. She wiped her face with her sleeve, found it wet, didn't remember crying.

She followed Margo back to the clinic floor, her phone still clutched in her hand. At the nurses' station, she paused. The resignation forms were in the top drawer, printed on cheap paper that jammed the printer every third use.

She filled it out in block letters. DENICE COPELAND. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. No reason given. She'd learned that reasons were vulnerabilities, and she had no vulnerabilities left to expose.

She handed the form to her supervisor, who stared at it, at her, at the form again. "Denice, you can't just-"

"I can." She was already moving toward the locker room, toward her spare clothes, toward the door. "I have to."