How Can I Kill Them with My Broken Arm? Chapter 10
Now she was right here in my arms, warm and alive, her tears dripping onto my neck..
“Mom, I’m fine.” I patted her back with my left hand, my voice shaking slightly. “Really, I’m fine.”
“Your arm is broken and yet you’re telling me you’re fine?” She lifted her head, her face a mess of tears. “Who did this to you? I’ll kill them myself!”
I could not help but laugh, and somewhere in the middle of laughing my eyes started to sting.
Dad was standing outside the door. He had not come in. He had never been good with words, not once in his life, but I knew he was there.
He stood in the hallway smoking one cigarette after another, the butts piling up on the floor around him. A nurse walked by and glanced at him, looking like she wanted to say something, but she let it go.
On the sixth day, there was a new development in the case. Cole’s lawyer showed up wanting to discuss a settlement with me.
I refused to see him.
A settlement? What exactly was he going to settle with? He owed me a life.
On the seventh day, I was discharged.
My right arm was still in a cast, but the pain had mostly faded. My parents were packing up the room while I sat on the edge of the bed, scrolling through my phone.
There were dozens of messages from colleagues, friends, reporters, and numbers I did not recognize. I did not reply to a single one.
One message stood out. It was from Margaret, and it was only one line.
“Vera, the state board of health wants you on the accident investigation team. Are you interested?”
I stared at that message for a long time.
Joining the investigation team meant going back to the state hospital and facing all those familiar faces, the people who had believed Cole and were now turning around to pity me.
It meant digging up every crime Cole and Nina had committed, one by one, and laying it all out in the open. It meant I could no longer pretend that nothing had happened and go back to the life I had before.
However, that life was already gone. It had been gone since the moment they led me to the execution chamber in my last life.
I typed two words and hit send.
“I’m in.”
The phone rang almost immediately. Margaret’s voice had a smile in it.
“I knew you’d say yes. Tomorrow morning, 9:00am. State board of health conference room. Don’t be late.”
“I’ll be there.”
I hung up and Mom leaned over. “Who was that?”
“Work.”
“Your arm isn’t even healed and you’re going back to work?” She instantly became agitated.
“You’re staying right here and recovering. You’re not going anywhere!”
Before I could respond, Dad’s voice came from the doorway. “Let her go.”
Mom turned to look at him.
He stubbed out his cigarette, walked into the room, and said something that was considered long for him. “It’s her decision. Let her make it.”
I looked at him and felt my throat tighten.
In my last life, he had come home from the courthouse without saying a single word and walked straight up to the roof. The proudest moment of his life had been his daughter becoming a doctor. The most devastating had been watching her branded a murderer.
Now he knew his daughter was not a killer. That was enough.
The next morning at 8:30 am, I arrived at the state board of health.
My right arm was still in a cast and I could not get a white coat on, so I had thrown on a dark gray trench coat instead. The woman in the mirror was noticeably thinner than she had been a week ago, with dark circles carved under her eyes, but her gaze was different.
In my last life, those eyes had been full of ambition and desire and every bright expectation for the future. Now they held nothing but a single thought.
The people who owed me a debt were going to pay it.
The conference room was already full with over a dozen people, including representatives from the state board of health, the district attorney’s office, the state police and the hospital’s newly appointed chief administrator, and not one of them wore the same expression.
