Candy stood in front of Doctor Leonard's desk.
"So, Miss White, what have you decided concerning your future work?" the doctor asked, fiddling with his glasses.
Dear God! She completely forgot to talk to Neil about her job. But she will continue working. This is her business and her decision.
"Yes, of course, Doctor Leonard! I will work, just like before."
"Stop it!" said Leonard with a blow on the table. "I see you're lying. You haven't talked about anything, you just forgot about my request. And you forgot that I had warned you to be more self-disciplined. And so what? On the very first day you have smashed the medication that is very hard to get!"
The girl appealingly pressed her hands to her chest.
"But Doctor Leonard... I'm sorry! I... It won't happen again. It was just one time, and could've happened to anyone..."
"No, it couldn't!" the head doctor stood up. "Such things happen only to you, for some reason. I think it would be better for everyone if you wrote a resignation notice right now."
"What?" Candy went cold. For God's sake, why?
"It would be better for everyone if you retired without a fuss," Doctor Leonard repeated dryly looking out of the window.
Miss White sat at the desk and took a sheet of paper and a pen.
"I shouldn't argue with you because you have already decided everything, right?" she uttered quietly.
"Miss White. I try to be fair to everyone. Think of it - why do you need a job if you are going to marry a rich man?"
"But it's my life's most-"
"Hold it. You are playing your mission, your path, playing a nurse. And some girl really does need this job, these duties and yes - this salary! And you are occupying her place playing a nurse."
"I'm not playing!" Candy put away the pen. "I studied at Mary's school."
"Yes, you were not playing back then. But now you have turned your activity into foolery. Don't you think so yourself? You are going to come to work in an expensive car, go inside and start changing bandages?"
Candy had nothing to answer, because it was exactly what she wanted to do. She didn't want to quit the work that she had devoted all her life to. Is it totally incompatible with marriage?
As in a fog, the girl scratched a few lines on a pristine white piece of paper and handed it over to the doctor.
"Great. Starting from tomorrow you are free. File your reports to Natalie today and pack your things. Tomorrow you'll get your dismissal pay."
It's overwhelming how fast you can get rid of a person if you have such power! Doctor Leonard must have decided everything while Candy was on a vacation leave.
The nurses didn't support her either. For some reason, when they heard she was "going to marry a rich man", everyone became cold and hostile to her.
"Why would you need a job?" every one of them kept asking her. Like she hadn't been working with them all those years... Like it all could be just crossed out by Leonard's only phrase - "foolery".
Candy packed her things and suddenly remembered she had left her book behind at the front desk, so she went there. Tomorrow she would come here as an employee for the last time...
There was no one at the front desk - the nurse must have gone out. Miss White took her book and then her gaze landed on the telephone.
The girl sat down, picked up the receiver and instinctively dialed a familiar number.
"Put me through to mister Legan, please."
There were some clicks, and then his voice replied. So powerful and confident.
"Hello?"
"They fired me," Candy uttered, and suddenly her throat twisted with convulsion. She didn't cry at Doctor Leonard's office, she was calm when she was packing her things and saying goodbye to her colleagues and patients, but now she realized what had happened. She sobbed and burst into tears like a child.
"I'll come to you. I'll come to you right now, you hear me? Don't go away!"
"Okay," the girl said in a weak voice, wiped her face and hung up.
She took the bag with her things, almost on her tiptoes left the office and sidled along the corridor.
Having left the building, Candy walked up to the bench where she usually waited for Neil after work.
There she sat, mechanically crumbling the bun that she had taken for lunch, feeding pigeons and trying to calm down.