The Warden by Madeleine Roux Page A

couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

W arden Crawford looked up at her briefly in between each page of her application.
    Jocelyn squirmed. Wasn’t this already a done deal? She thought her application had been approved. Why else would she have made the exhausting trip from Illinois to the coast? That bumpy, cold bus trip hadn’t exactly been a Tijuana pleasure cruise.
    Keep still , she reminded herself. Eyes forward.
    The warden’s office was surprisingly cluttered for a doctor’s. She always imagined men like him leading lives as clean and upright as a drill sergeant’s. But papers stuck out of every desk drawer and cabinet, almost haphazardly. Her eye twitched. She was a neat person by nature, a character trait that her supervisor at school had said made her an excellent candidate for nursing. An eye for detail was absolutely required—nursing was hard, unforgiving work, with long hours and immense amounts of pressure and stress.
    If a grill cook flips the burger too late the meat is burned, oh well , her supervisor used to say. If you make a mistake a patient could die. Do you understand me, Ash? Are you going to flip the meat too late?
    Jocelyn bit the inside of her cheek. She hated that image. She hated that it made her think of humans, of human flesh, like meat.
    â€œChicago is a long way from here,” Warden Crawford said lightly. He had a twinkle in his voice, like every statement might turn sharply into a joke. “I don’t think our pizza measures up.”
    â€œNot a problem, sir,” she responded crisply. “More of a chowder girl myself.”
    That drew a warm laugh from him. He sat back in his leather chair and put down her application, removing his spectacles and letting them settle in his white coat pocket. “A sense of humor. Good. You’ll need that here. It can be morbid work, Ms. Ash. Sometimes you need to laugh or risk going mad yourself.”
    Jocelyn flinched. Right. Gallows humor. Madge had warned her that doctors could be crass, even rude. It’s just how they talk , she’d said. It’s just how they blow off steam . Anyway, Jocelyn couldn’t protest; doctors were treated as gods. Nurses were expected to stand when they entered the room, like they were royalty or something. The whole thing seemed eye-rollingly over the top. Didn’t anyone want to stand for the ladies changing bedpans day in and day out?
    â€œYou’re young,” he observed. Jocelyn flinched again. His lips hovered between a smile and a scowl. “Perhaps too young.”
    â€œMy evaluations speak for themselves,” she said. Her voice had become pinched, and so had a nerve in her neck that made her twitch with distress. No matter what, she was not getting back on a bus to Chicago.
    Warden Crawford toyed with his spectacles for a moment, pulling them out of his pocket, unfolding the stems, and then putting them right back where they had been. “And what brought you to this profession?”
    â€œI want to—”
    â€œAnd don’t say you want to help people.” He chuckled, the twinkle back in his voice as she stammered into silence. “That’s what everyone says.”
    â€œIt’s probably also true,” Jocelyn replied, maybe impertinently. She never knew quite when to keep her mouth shut, and now she felt more words spill out faster than she could control. “I have to say, I’m confused, sir. My teachers at Grace Point told me there was a job here. Is that not the case?”
    Warden Crawford jerked his head back, either in surprise or offense, she wasn’t quite sure. He had a young face, but the gray at his temples suggested a more distinguished age. And he was handsome, exactly the kind of serious but gentle doctor Madge was no doubt hoping to snare. Her eyes strayed to his left hand. No ring. It seemed odd that a man of his age would be single. Jokes aside, Camford wasn’t