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“People spend their entire lives in this place. Sometimes they have no family, or family who care very little, in which case we bury them here.”

“That’s so sad,” I say, and I mean it; a man died at my feet. I saw him leave his body. He was and then he wasn’t.

“You’re young.”

“So are you,” I shoot back.

I feel the blood rush to my face. Crede stops in his tracks and gives me a long, hard stare. I wait to be reamed out or fired, but then I realize he can’t fire me—only Dr. Grayson can, and I haven’t even met him yet. If I don’t get to Dr. Grayson, I’ll never have access to the man I really came here for.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “New girl nerves.”

Crede is annoyed for a moment, and then his face softens. I breathe a sigh of relief when he nods. “It’s been a rough morning for everyone.”

I nod eagerly, and we start walking again. We reach the annex—a half circle with the care station against the flat side—and it’s been cleared of Otto Knott. I marvel at how quickly someone’s death can be cleaned up. An hour and it looks like he was never there. A lifetime of conflicts, love, and thoughts swept into a body bag. I think of Piper. My heart hurts.

“Hey!”

I jump. Crede is zoned in on the care station. I follow his eyes. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Bouncer!

“Where is everyone?” Crede is speaking louder than necessary, or maybe it’s the echo.

“Hey yourself.”

She’s been crying, and there’s blood on her scrubs. I don’t remember there being any blood on Otto…

Crede repeats himself. “Where is everyone?”

Bouncer stares at him.

“Where do you think?” she says finally. “Getting them settled down.”

The sound of chimes causes us all to jump, and I laugh out loud. He sighs, looks at his Apple Watch, then at me. “Guess you won’t be working hospice.”

A phone rings behind the nurses’ station. Crede looks pointedly at Bouncer. “Why don’t you show Iris the filing system until I get back?”

“Wait, where are you going?” Bouncer calls after him. “I don’t have time for this…”

“Boss wants to see me.”

That ends her round of questioning. But I have a question for her: namely, what the hell did she give me, because it sure as hell wasn’t Xanax? Crede walks to the only hallway blocked by a door and uses his key card to open it.

When he’s gone, she doesn’t look at me. Instead, she turns and disappears behind the door to what I presume is the records room. The door isn’t all the way closed. I push it open and follow her into a brightly lit records room. It’s a small room, gloomy and filled with filing cabinets. Two windows look out at the nurses’ station, their sills lined with small religious statues: Mary, holding a red heart in her hands, eyes to the sky in anguish, a wooden cross with a barely bloody Jesus, a stone statue of Buddha, and a couple of porcelain crosses that look handmade.

She examines me a moment, her face contorted in annoyance. I can tell that she doesn’t want to be left in charge of me. I was supposed to be in hospice today, out of the way. The resignation on her face is painful to look at.

Regardless, she shows me the filing system and teaches me how to search for records and then check them out of the system.

“Were you Otto’s nurse?”

She shrugs. “Everyone is everyone’s nurse here. We’re short-staffed.”

I stand in the doorway, propping the door open with my body. Bouncer stands at a desk, facing me.

“Yeah…” She looks over the monitor of a large desktop computer. “He’s been comatose for months,” she says finally. “It was like taking care of a plant.”

My reaction is automatic. “Wow, okay…”

She glares at me. “You got a problem, new girl?”