A Five-Minute Life

“Okay,” I said.

Thea’s brows furrowed, and she tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear as if puzzled by her own words. “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? I’ve been away for a long time.”

“It’s what happened.”

Her smile was grateful. “That’s a good way to put it. I feel like…”

“Like what?”

“Like there’s more to it, but whenever I try to remember more, there’s nothing. I don’t even remember how I got here, to this table. With you.”

I had no words that could help her understand. I hardly understood her situation myself.

“But I know the doctors are working on my case,” she said. “I’ll let them worry about it. I’m just happy to be back.”

“Me too.”

Thea’s smile grew more brilliant, and she picked up her ballpoint pen ag

ain. “Tell me about yourself, Jim. And sit down, for crying out loud. You’re hovering.”

I glanced around for Alonzo, but he was nowhere in sight. I sat down across from Thea, telling myself I was only doing my job.

“That’s better,” Thea said, beaming. “What do you do?”

“I’m an orderly.”

“Oh, yeah? Where at?”

Alonzo might tear me a new one for talking to Thea mere seconds after telling me not to fuck up and say the wrong thing. The rising anxiety brought out the damn stutter.

“At the B-B-Blue Ridge Sanitarium.”

Shit.

Thea glanced sharply at me, then her gaze softened. “Do you have a stutter, Jim?”

No one had asked me in years, I’d kept it hidden so well. Humiliation dug deep claws into me as I inhaled and exhaled. “Sometimes. It shows up when I get n-nervous. Or pissed off.”

“You don’t look pissed off.” Her brows rose and her smile turned sly. “Do I make you nervous?”

Christ, was she flirting with me?

Thea patted my hand. “Don’t be. I don’t bite… hard.”

A flush of heat on my skin where her soft fingers touched me quickly became a jolt that surged through my arm, my spine, down to my groin.

She’s a resident, for fuck’s sake.

I gently pulled my hand away.

“I heard that line somewhere. A movie, maybe.” She cocked her head. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Not much.”

“Because of the stutter?”

I nodded.