Chapter 12 - THE NURSE WHO MOWED HER OWN LAWN
The freight elevator deposited us in a loading dock alley just as police sirens began wailing in the distance.
Gabriel’s convoy of black SUVs was waiting.
We piled in, and the vehicles sped away into the D.C. night, leaving the corrupt empire of Apex Medical burning behind us.
We drove in silence for a long time.
I stared out the window at the passing city lights, feeling the heavy, cold weight of David’s St. Michael medallion in my pocket. Beside it rested the silver flash drive.
Gabriel broke the silence.
“What happens now, Katherine?”
“Now, I send this drive to every independent journalist on the planet,” I said. “Let the billionaires explain to the public why they were found in an illegal underground lab.”
Gabriel nodded slowly. “And you? You can’t go back to your apartment. They’ll come for you.”
“I know.”
Elena leaned forward from the backseat. “Come with us. The Russo family can protect you. We owe you everything.”
I looked at Gabriel. I looked at Elena.
They were good people born into a terrible world, trying to fight their way into the light. But it wasn't my world.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “But I have somewhere else I need to be.”
Two days later.
The sun was shining brightly over a small, quiet neighborhood in Thuong Long, Phu Tho, Vietnam.
I stood on the sidewalk, holding a small travel bag, watching a seventy-six-year-old man stubbornly pushing a rusty lawnmower across his front yard.
He was sweating, refusing to take a break, because paying the neighbor kid to do it was still “how civilizations collapse.”
I walked up the driveway.
My father stopped the mower. He wiped his brow with a towel and looked at me. He didn’t ask why I was here unannounced. He didn’t ask why I looked so tired.
He just smiled.
“You look like you need a glass of lemonade, Katie.”
I felt the tears finally break. The tears I hadn’t let myself cry since the night David died. Since the moment I opened that oxygen chamber.
I walked over and hugged my stubborn, wonderful father.
“I’m home, Dad,” I whispered into his shoulder.
“Good,” he said, patting my back awkwardly. “Because the gutters need cleaning.”
I laughed, a real, genuine laugh, wiping my eyes.
May you like
The monsters were dead. The truth was out. The family I saved was safe.
And for the first time in five years, the nurse finally allowed herself to be taken care of.
