Chapter 19
Nicole’s POV
The rooftop lab was quiet. Parkville was already there, his wheelchair angled toward the window with afternoon light across his hands. Marlon came in behind me and closed the door.
Neither of them spoke right away and I knew from that alone it was going to be that kind of conversation.
“You were impulsive,” Marlon said, he set his copy of the contracts on the table. “The clause. Pushing back on Tracy through the terms instead of letting me handle it quietly, she is going to fixate on that.”
“She was going to fixate regardless,” I said.
“Nicole.” He turned to face me properly. “A woman like Tracy is a ticking time bomb. She’s arrogant, she treats people like crap, she’s going to make life hell for the nurses and staff because she has nothing to do all day except find something to be angry about. If anything goes wrong with the protocol later anything small, anything minor
she will make it about Dr. Carter refused to appear. She will make it personal.”
Parkville was quiet for a moment after Marlon finished. He turned his wheelchair slightly toward me, and when he spoke his voice had the careful gentleness he used. “I want this research to reach the people it was built for, Nicole. You know that. It is my life’s work as much as it is yours.” He paused. “But I have watched you carry more than your share for a very long time. I don’t want to see you walk back into something that costs you more than it gives.”
“It won’t,” I said.
He looked at me. “I hope you’re right,” he said quietly. “I simply want you to be honest with yourself about what you’re walking into before you walk into it.”
I looked out the window, the institute grounds were quiet below us and I let that settle me before I answered.
“I know what she is,” I said. “I lived with her for years.”
Parkville made a small sound.
“I want this project to succeed,” I said. “Not for my sake, for every person whose file I have read. Every case that looks like Parkville’s, and I wouldn’t allow myself to disappoint people like Luna Diana and make her recovery to be delayed.” I looked at Marlon. “I am not being stubborn, I am not doing this out of spite. I have poured years into this work and I know it is right and I will not let Tracy Caesar’s bad manners be the reason it fails.”
Marlon was quiet. “Which nurse are you assigning to her? I can contact my mother.”
Marlon’s mother was a highly experienced researcher and nurse who had just retired a few months ago.
“No,” I declined. “You’ll have enough to manage with Tate and his people,” I said. “I’ve decided to be Tracy’s primary care attendant myself.”
The room went very still. Marlon put both hands flat on the table. “That will accelerate everything. The moment she looks at you properly.”
“Exposure is inevitable.” I heard my own voice come out steadier than I expected. “I cannot run a trial this size from behind a locked door and I cannot keep relying on your protection indefinitely.” I looked at him. “I would rather control the terms than have it happen when I wasn’t prepared.”
“Nicole”
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“Marlon.” Parkville’s voice echoed as Marlon stopped.
Parkville looked at me for a long moment. “This is your battle,” he said. “It always has been, kindly think about it first, just don’t decide hastily, be mentally prepared. Not just for Tracy.” His eyes held mine. “And protect your children.”
“I will,” I said.
I did not go straight back to my office. I told myself I was taking the long route, that I needed the air, but the truth was simpler than that.
The rooftop conversation had left something tight sitting behind my chest and I knew from experience there was only one thing that I needed. I needed to see my children.
The small garden off the east corridor was where Amber usually took them at this hour. I saw Amber on the bench with a picture book open across both their laps, Rosy pressed against her left side pointing at something on the page, Maple on her right eating an apple with the focused dedication of someone who had decided eating was a full -time occupation as his voice carried through the hedge.
“But the fox should have just said it,” he announced.
“He wasn’t ready,” Rosy said, patient in the way she was always patient with him, like she had been born already knowing he needed a moment to catch up.
“He was ready but was just scared.”
“That’s the same thing.”
The relief that moved through me was quieter than fear always was. That was the strange thing about having children – the terror arrived loud and the relief arrived softly.
“Mummy.” Rosy looked up first, the way she always did, as if she had felt me coming before she saw me. Maple looked up half a second later, apple still in hand. “We were reading,” he said, helpfully.
“I can see that.” I came and crouched in front of them both and looked them over. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Rosy said.
“We’ve been here for ages,” Maple added, with the mild grievance of someone who felt the duration had not been fully appreciated.
Amber met my eyes over their heads, her expression when she wanted to ask something and was deciding whether now was the time. I gave a small shake of my head, not yet.
I sat on the bench beside Rosy and let the afternoon settle around us for a moment, the garden was quiet. Light moved through the trees in the slow way it did at this hour, and the institute beyond the hedges was its usual hum of distant doors and footsteps.
“Two more pages,” I said, “then it’s time to go in.”
Maple held up the apple. “I’m not finished.”
“You can finish inside.”
He looked at the apple, calculated, and took an enormous bite in protest, and Rosy sighed in the way she sighed at
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him sometimes.
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Amber read the last two pages as Maple finished the apple. Rosy asked a question about why the fox in the story hadn’t told the truth earlier, when it would have been easier, and I said sometimes people wait until they’re ready and sometimes they wait too long.
I walked them back to our rooms and got the bath running while Maple argued that he didn’t need one because he hadn’t done anything dirty today, which was demonstrably false given the state of his collar.
“In,” I said.
He got in. Rosy was already unbuttoning her cardigan, folding it neatly over the towel rail while her brother splashed an experimental amount of water onto the floor to see what would happen.
“Maple.”
“It slipped.”
“Water doesn’t slip.”
He considered this. “Mine did.”
I got them both in, Rosy at the tap end with her knees pulled up, Maple taking up the rest of the space.
I washed Rosy’s hair first because she sat still for it, tipping her head back when I said to and keeping her eyes closed without being asked, patient and quiet while I worked the conditioner through.
Maple watched this. “I don’t need my hair washed,” he said.
“You do.”
“It’s not dirty.”
I reached over and ruffled it once and showed him my hand.
He looked at it. “That could be from anything.”
“Hold still.”
He held still, but made a sustained low sound of protest throughout as Rosy opened one eye to look at him and closed it again.
By the time I had them both rinsed and out, the bathroom floor had more water on it than the bath, Maple had wrapped his towel around his shoulders like a cape and was refusing to acknowledge it was a towel, and Rosy was standing very straight while I worked a comb through her hair. “Ow,” she said once.
“Sorry, almost done.”
“You said that last time.”
“This time I mean it.”
Amber appeared in the doorway and took in the scene without comment, which was one of the things I appreciated most about her. She just stepped in, picked up Maple’s pajamas from where he’d dropped them on the floor and held them out to him.
“Cape off,” she said.
“It’s not a cape.”
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“Pajamas on.”
He looked at her, looked at the pajamas, and accepted his defeat.
Amber got him dressed, and I got Rosy into hers while she stood cooperatively and asked if the fox in the book had eventually been okay.
“He was,” I said.
“Did he tell the truth in the end?”
“I think he did.”
She thought about that, pulling her sleeve straight with small careful fingers. “Good,”.
Amber settled them into bed while I stood in the doorway – Rosy first, tucked in with her book on the nightstand at exactly the angle she preferred, Maple next, who required two adjustments to his blanket and a brief negotiation about whether the door stayed open or closed before he accepted the terms.
Amber read them the last four pages of the chapter in the voice she did for the fox, which was slightly ridiculous and which both of them loved, and by the end Rosy’s eyes were going heavy.
I turned the lamp down and we stepped out together. In the hallway Amber gathered her bag from the hook by the door and kept her voice low. “He was asleep before I finished the last page,” she said, meaning Maple.
“I know,” I said. “He’ll deny it tomorrow.”
She smiled, pulling her coat on, and I looked at her for a moment.
“Amber,” I said.
She looked up.
“Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Something crossed her face, before she arranged it back into her usual composure. “You’d manage,” she said. ” You always do.”
“I’d manage worse,” I said. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Nicole.”
The door clicked shut behind her, I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, and while I waited for it to boil I stood at the counter with my hands flat on the surface. I was in the kitchen with the kettle on when someone knocked.
Marlon stood in the doorway with his jacket over one arm and a manila folder in his hand, and he looked at me for a moment before he said anything. “Can I come in?”
I stepped back and let him through. He set the folder on the kitchen table and put his jacket over the back of the chair and didn’t sit down, which meant this wasn’t going to be short as I turned back to the kettle.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “What I said on the rooftop about the contract, about handling Tracy quietly, I was measuring your decisions against what I would have done.” He paused. “That wasn’t fair.”
I found two mugs without answering.
“You know that world better than I do,” he said. “You have always known it better than I do. And I stood there and told you how to navigate it like I had spent years inside it instead of you.” He pulled the chair out and sat down,
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finally. “I’m sorry, Nicole.”
I set a mug in front of him and sat across the table. “I know why you said it.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” I agreed. “But it makes it forgivable.”
He was quiet for a moment, both hands around the mug. “Whatever you decide – about Tracy, about the assignment, about any of it – I’m with you.”
Something about the plainness of it made my throat tighten in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I looked down at my tea for a moment.
“Thank you,” I said.
“But remember you report to me. Anything that sounds wrong, anything that feels off –
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“Agreed.”
“And if at any point it becomes too much”
“I’ll tell you.”
you tell me immediately.
He nodded, once, and I could see him deciding to believe me. “I’ll have you formally assigned by tonight,” he said. “Residential care badge with a standard attendant protocol. Have you got the disguise sorted?”
“Wig, contacts, glasses,” I said.
He nodded once, then pushed the folder across the table toward me. “The documents you’ve been waiting on, It’s all in there.”
I looked at the folder without touching it.
“If it becomes too much tonight,” Marlon said, “you don’t have to read all of it at once.”
“I’ll read it tonight,” I said.
He looked at me like he wanted to argue, and then decided against it. He finished his tea, shrugged his jacket back on, and paused at the door. “Get some sleep, Nicole. At least a few hours.”
I said I would. The door closed and the flat went quiet. I pulled the folder toward me and opened it, and started to read.
Morning came earlier than I wanted it to. I was up before the alarm, dressed before the light had fully decided what it was doing.
Maple appeared in the bathroom doorway before I had even opened the contacts case, hair everywhere, still in his pajamas. Rosy was right behind him with her book already in her hand, which meant she had been awake for a while and hadn’t bothered to mention it.
“What are you doing?” Maple asked.
“Getting ready for work,” I said. “Go back to bed.”
Neither of them moved. I put the contacts in while they watched – Maple with open fascination, Rosy with the quiet attention she gave to things she found interesting but wasn’t ready to ask about yet. When I settled the wig
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and reached for the glasses Maple leaned against the doorframe and tilted his head.
“You look different,” he said.
“That’s the idea,” I said. “Amber will be here at eight. Don’t let your brother leave this room before she arrives,” I added to Rosy.
“I know,” she said.
Maple looked mildly offended. “I wasn’t going to.
I picked up Tracy’s medication file and walked to the residential wing.
Her door was open. Sophia was already inside, arranged in the chair by the window with her shoes off and a glass of something in her hand, and Lily was on the small sofa, and they had made themselves comfortable.
I knocked on the open door. “Good evening. I’m your assigned care attendant for the duration of your stay.” I stepped in and moved to the bedside table, opening the file. “I’ll be covering your daily medication schedule, morning vitals, and general residential needs, your evening medication is scheduled for nine.
Here’s the summary of everything prescribed and the dosage intervals. I’ll leave a copy with you and keep the original on file. Any questions before I go through the routine?”
Tracy was at the vanity. She glanced at me in the mirror. “Fine,” she said, and looked back at her own reflection. I moved through the routine. Medication tray, water carafe, the logbook entry.
Sophia glanced at me once, a brief sweep of her eyes that found nothing interesting, and looked away.
Lily did not look at me at all. I noted the time, closed the file, and said I would be back at nine for the evening dose but no one answered.
I pulled the door closed behind me and stood in the corridor for a moment, the file against my chest.
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