The Little Black Book
The price of knowledge
The time for feeling sorry for myself is over, it is time to buck up and get on with my life. Hey, my name is Riley Prestan. I am 29 years old and just got out of a bad break up. How can you just let go of something you spent so long trying to fix? We never had the best relationship but, when he wanted to, Alexander could make me feel as though I was the only person he would ever love; he made me feel so special.
I live in my parents’ basement, not really a luxury but it will have to do for now. I am a nurse and although it feels like I am in the hospital all day, everyday, I still have not saved enough to move out. My plan was to first try to pay off all my student debt, but it's hard to pay that off and save up. I love my job and would not change it for the world, I meet so many people and make so many new friends among the patients.
* * *
The story I am about to tell you, happened four months ago. What happened changed me forever.
It started with a meeting I had with a lawyer from a deceased patient’s estate. I got a little scared and nervous that the family might sue. I did nothing wrong though. The deceased I am talking about is Clarence, he was one of my patients and no matter what, he could always make me and everyone else laugh. He was loved by the entire staff.
After the meeting I could not believe what just happened. Was I being pranked!? The lawyer said that Clarence had left me $20,000 dollars, I didn’t believe him at first and just started laughing but he said he was serious. The lawyer gave me a cheque and a little bag of stuff Clarence wanted me to have.
The following weeks were a blur, I do not remember anything after I realized the money was real. I haven't spent a dime of that money though. While I need to pay off my debt and that would help me, it isn’t my money. I know it is now, but he spent years upon years saving that up, he told me about his job and how he wanted to save up for something special, but I didn’t think that I was it.
After some time I had decided to open the bag of things the lawyer gave to me, I haven’t had the courage yet. There are lots of things I had found that were very interesting! There is one of those Chinese dolls that you pull apart. It is very pretty. At the bottom of the bag I had found a book as well, it kind of looked like a diary, a little black book about an inch thick.
I learned a lot in that book, he had a lot of writings about his adventures, but about halfway into the book I found a picture of me and my family that I had thought I lost, the last place I saw the photo was on the hall table, and then one day it vanished. The further I got in the book, the more I saw that made my soul quiver. I always knew Clarence liked me more then some other nurses and doctors, but I never realized how obsessive he was. I found pages upon pages filled with information about me, like a timeline. I saw that he wrote about what time I had arrived at work and what time I would leave, he had written the exact time I would talk to someone or the time I would eat and what I ate. There was no way anyone could convince me now that Clarence wasn’t a creep. I was so scared and still am, how could he get all of this information about me? He could hardly walk in his condition, let alone get into my house and take one of the family photos. Since reading that book, I feel as though someone is watching me. I just wish that I had stayed oblivious and never opened that little black book to begin with.
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