Chapter 11
The cat was back before I noticed it.
I hadn't heard it jump. One moment the nightstand was just the notebook and the glass, the next there was that thin gray-white tabby settled at the far corner, tail curled around its paws, eyes fixed on the glass of water. It didn't blink. The late afternoon light from the large window on the right cut straight across the wooden nightstand and made the water look too clear, too still.
The guard was still by the wall near the window. Hands clasped. Sunglasses on despite the indoor light. He hadn't moved since the patient had spoken to me. I'd felt his stare the whole time I'd been writing.
My pen was on the last line of the false entry. The dose I'd logged wasn't the dose I'd given. The numbers were neat, small, black ink in the lined notebook. Legally binding, the agency had told us. What you write is what happened. I'd written what they wanted to see. The patient's voice was still in my head — tell the truth in the chart — and my hand was shaking enough that the last zero wobbled.
The cat's tail flicked. Once. Twice.
I reached for the glass without thinking, to move it farther from the notebook. My fingers brushed the base at the exact second the cat stood and stretched.
It wasn't a big movement. It bumped the glass with its shoulder as it repositioned, a light, casual push. The glass tipped.
I tried to catch it. I didn't.
Water went sideways across the nightstand in a fast, silent sheet. It hit the open notebook and pooled instantly. I jerked the book up but it was already soaked, the pages drinking it in. The black ink ran. The lines I'd just written feathered and bled, the numbers turning into blurred blue-black clouds. The dose, the time, the initials — all of it smeared into an illegible stain that spread with the water off the edge of the page and onto my wrist.
"Shit," I said before I could stop myself.
The guard took two steps forward. He looked down at the nightstand, at the water dripping off the edge onto the parquet floor, at the notebook in my hands with ink running down the gutter.
The cat jumped down. It landed soft on the floor and sat there watching us, tail still flicking.
I held the notebook out, pages dripping. "It's ruined."
He didn't answer right away. I could see his jaw work under the sunglasses. He glanced at the bed — the patient was turned away under the dark blanket, breathing audible — then back at the notebook.
"You need to rewrite it," he said.
"I have to," I said. "You can't read any of this. No one could. If the agency audits this, a smeared page is a violation on its own."
I set the notebook back down on the wet nightstand and carefully peeled the soaked page up. The paper was translucent, tearing a little at the corner where it had stuck. The ink had bled through to the next blank page underneath, a faint ghost, but the top page itself was destroyed. There was no saving the entry. No way to dry it and make it look intentional. It was an accident, plain and visible, with water still beading on the wood.
He stared at it for a long moment. I could feel him weighing whether to tell me to just trace over it, to try to recopy the same lie. But the whole page was gone. Any attempt to rewrite the exact same false numbers would look like what it was — a copy made after the fact. And he couldn't stand there and dictate a false dose while the real event was still wet on my hands. Not without being a witness to it.
"Start a fresh page," he said finally. His voice was flat. "Log it clean."
I nodded and reached for the roll of paper towels I kept in my brown crossbody bag on the chair. I mopped the nightstand, wrung out the corner of the blotched page, then flipped past it. The next lined page was dry except for that faint bleed-through at the top. I smoothed it down. My pen was still in my hand. The water glass lay on its side, empty, a few drops still sliding down its rim.
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I didn't write yet. I let the ruined page stay open beside the fresh one, water still darkening its edges. The guard stepped back toward the wall, hands clasped again, but he didn't take his eyes off the notebook. The cat had disappeared under the chair.
I looked down at the blank lines. For the first time since I walked into this suite, there was no trace to erase. No need to cross anything out or make it look like a correction. Just a fresh page, open and waiting, and a spill no one could argue with. My hand was steady now.
