The Secrets of Us by Lucinda Berry

Author:Lucinda Berry [Berry, Lucinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

KRYSTAL

The rooms in my home have never felt smaller as I pace the living room, but I can’t sit still. It’s been over an hour, and Eric still hasn’t called me back since I left him a furious message about the incident Aiden caused on the unit tonight with Nichole. It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to go straight to the hospital and tear into Aiden.

I didn’t get a chance to process anything that happened in my meeting with Eric before getting the call from Dr. McGowan that Aiden had gotten into Nichole’s room and created a huge scene. How did he even get into her room? He’s not on her visitor’s list, and even if he was, patients have to be on level five before they get those types of room privileges. According to the nurses, he got onto the unit without raising anyone’s suspicions because he was dressed in a gown and looked like a patient—except anyone who has spent time on the unit knows that most of the patients are in regular clothes. You’re only in a hospital gown when you’re first admitted or on level one like Nichole, with around-the-clock monitoring. You have to earn your clothes like everything else, so if Aiden was in his gown, then that would mean he was a new patient or a severely disturbed patient, and eyeballs should’ve been on him at all times. Not to mention the fact that he had bandages wrapped around his head, which should’ve been an immediate red flag. It really bothers me that it was so easy for him to get on the unit undetected.

Aiden claims he found her sleeping in her room. Her attendant had stepped away to use the restroom since Nichole was sleeping, and Aiden appeared within that window. Nobody knows what happened in the room, but according to Aiden, she became startled when he woke her and went into a panicked rage. But she didn’t attack him. She went after herself, bashing her head against the wall. He ran to the nurses’ station for help. When they got back to her room, they found her lying on the floor of her room, unconscious. Aiden said she must’ve knocked herself out.

But what if she didn’t? What if he went up there to intentionally hurt her? Threaten her? Keep her quiet? Or something worse.

That’s what everyone has to be thinking. If they weren’t pointing their fingers at him before, they should be now. The questions swirl around each other, fighting for space in my head. I’ve grown to like Aiden over the years, even love him like a brother, but I wasn’t always on Team Aiden.

Nichole met Aiden the summer after we graduated from college when Nichole was doing a six-week teacher training in Austin for developing a multicultural curriculum in low-income schools. I went straight to work after we graduated at a small law firm in Houston, so I stayed behind. It was the longest we’d ever been

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