Free A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev Page B

couldn’t possibly rest until those bastards were off his streets.

8
    Today Nic brought me flowers. No big deal. Except it’s minus fifteen outside and there are no florists here. His flowers were drawn by Nagma on his prescription pad. He lets her hold it when he examines her amputated leg. He brought me the flowers and pressed them into my hand. Then he cried into my lap. Because she has gangrene.
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    â€”Dr. Jen Joshi
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    N ikhil grabbed hungrily at the scent of freshly washed linen flooding his senses. The feel of long-fingered hands clutched at his skin. Soft strands of the darkest silk pressed into his face. He fought consciousness with everything he was worth. He knew at the other end lay horror—the absence of what wrapped him up right now.
    Sure enough, emptiness welcomed him as he broke through to wakefulness. Emptiness and the cold kiss of air against his skin. He had fallen asleep on top of the sheets. His shoes were still on his feet, his overstarched uniform still on his body.
    For no reason at all, he thought of the night before when he’d awoken under the sheets. His shoes had been removed, his foul-smelling shirt had been pulled off, and he’d been so out of it he hadn’t even noticed.
    He turned to the note still sitting on his nightstand and picked it up. The look in Jess’s eyes when she’d admitted to coloring her hair flashed in his head. He folded over the piece of paper and slipped it into the drawer. He still couldn’t believe what he was choosing to believe.
    But he’d never judged a person wrong in his life. His gut had never let him down. Unless an excess of Jack had erased that ability, he knew he’d seen truth in Jess’s eyes. Not all of it, because the girl was a clam. How could he not follow this thread she’d handed him? Even though it threatened to unravel the very fabric of him.
    He was steady on his feet when he got out of bed. There was a dull ache in his temples. Quite possibly his body’s way of rebelling against his sudden forsaking of the Jack. Or maybe his body was thanking him by showing him how much better this was than the usual head pounding he woke up to. He scrubbed his fingers across his forehead. His ring hung loose around his finger. The day Jen had slid it on his finger had smelled of roses. The thick, sweet-smelling garlands hanging from their necks had entangled when he’d broken protocol and kissed her after the priest had finished chanting their vows.
    That sweet rose scent, the tang of her sweat, the purifying burn of sandalwood-scented fire—how did one forget a moment wrapped up in those smells? If happiness could fill you up, turn you from the wisp of a sketch into a fully formed sculpture, that moment had been it for him. He had become a life-sized version of who he had played at being. He had been set in stone. You couldn’t re-form stone into anything else. Not without crumbling it to dust first.
    His thumb found his ring and spun it. Dust. He wanted to be dust.
    For the first time since he’d moved into this room, he started his day without his face hanging over the toilet.
    He showered and shaved and put himself together with as much care as he had used to assemble Mr. Potato Head as a child. Basically, anything went anywhere. When he stepped out the door he realized that it was only seven in the morning. The clinic wouldn’t open for business for another two hours. He headed down anyway.
    * * *
    A woman, thin and tanned and dressed like she was off to brunch with royalty, was waiting outside the clinic door, clutching the elbow of a little boy who was pressing a washcloth to his knee. It was soaked through with blood.
    â€œDoctor?” The woman raised her impressively arched brows at his name tag and waited for an answer to a question Nikhil hadn’t heard.
    He punched the code into the alarm panel and smiled at the boy. He had to be no more than five years old. Not