Nicole followed Jane's gaze from the coffee cup to her scrubs. She wanted to say something pithy, possibly unkind, something that would establish where they stood - which was to say as far from one another as two people could be, a big, black hole fill with everything that had happened to them as children between them.
But she couldn't get the words out. "It's fine. It's a job." She didn't say it takes my mind off what they made me because it wasn't true. Keeping herself in check was a daily struggle. Nicole pursed her lips. "Have you been in Point Pleasant all this time?" She couldn't have imagined staying when she was a teenager, immediately after they broke out. Point Pleasant was a panic attack constantly waiting to happen and everyone in town looked at them weird. But Nicole had come back. She still wasn't sure why.