The south room had a window and a bathroom of its own, and Hattie had been asleep in it for an hour.
I went down the hall for tea. Coming back, I heard Suki's voice through the door.
Suki: You should hear how she tells it. The pill, the board, the old doctor.
Suki: She's the hero of the whole building now. Except nobody moves that fast unless they started the fire.
Preston: The nurse said you were in that corridor before Morn was even called.
Preston: Standing there. Waiting.
I pushed the door with my elbow and set both cups down on the tray without a word.
Odette: Get out of her room.
Suki: There she is. She's been crying in the hall. She's so good at that part, Preston.
Suki: She needs this woman sick. A sick old woman needs somebody every hour, and a job like that comes with a warm room.
Preston: You're a stray with a talent for standing near dying people who have money.
Preston: The Crays' table, now this room. You live off whoever's weakest and you call it love.
Suki: Look at her hands. She's had them in an old woman's purse for two years and she's calling it nursing.
Suki: That chair is her office.
Hattie: You watch your mouth in my room.
Hattie: That woman slept in that chair two nights running and held my hand when I couldn't lift it.
Suki: She's not well, Preston. Look what this is doing to her heart.
Preston: You've got her worked up so she'll cry for you.
His hand closed around my upper arm and squeezed until the skin went white around his fingers.
He walked me back into the doorframe, and the wood caught my shoulder blade.
My head knocked the edge of it and I bit my tongue, and the taste of iron came up fast.
Preston: Say one word about Suki again and I'll put you through that window.
Preston: I'll tell them you slipped. Nobody in this building would write your name down.
Odette: You want a scheme? Here's one.
Odette: I keep her alive for free, and you can't stand it. You've never once done a thing for anybody without a receipt.
Odette: You believed her about the paper. You'll believe her about this.
Odette: That isn't loyalty, Preston. That's a man too scared of being wrong to look at anything himself.
I knew those fingers would leave five marks on my arm by morning.
Hattie: Let go of my girl.
She had pushed herself up on one elbow, and her voice was not an old woman's voice anymore.
Hattie: This is my room, and she is my girl, and you will not touch her in it.
Then her elbow went out from under her.
The cup went over and the tea ran across the sheet, and her face slid sideways.
Odette: Hattie!
Her mouth pulled down on one side, and her words came out slushed and wrong.
Odette: Somebody get a doctor! Right now! She's having a stroke!
Suki's crying stopped like a tap turning off. Preston's hand came off my arm and stayed in the air.
Nobody said a word. The whole room was dead quiet except for Hattie's breathing.
Odette: Stay with me. You don't get to leave me in this building.
Her breath came slow against my wrist, and behind me a nurse was shouting Dr. Kell's name into the phone.
All I could hear was Hattie trying to say my name and losing it.