Mercy 6

Time? There was no time. Time was suspended. She had stopped it three hours ago with the first time-of-death call, the closing of the doors. Pao Pao was beautiful. She never thought like this, acted like this.

“He’s dead. Now,” said Mendenhall.

Pao Pao held the front of the gurney, braking it. Meeks lay between them, now on his back, his clothes askew from Mendenhall’s tending. His eyes were aimed at her.

“Do you always know why you do something?” she asked Pao Pao.

“Yes.”

“What about when you can’t know the why?”

“Then I do what I’ve done before. Or what others have done.

That’s medicine. Good medicine. What I see you do.”

Mendenhall saw the ID people coordinating the elevators. She felt her entire body wince.

“Dmir,” she called, “this one. This is the one.”

22

She went to the old file room to chide herself. When she saw that the lights were off, that the room was filled with the orange light of the outside loading bay, she knew she wasn’t alone. She started to back out, to give privacy.

“Dr. Mendenhall.”

She didn’t recognize the voice, male, Filipino accent. She didn’t see anyone at first, then spotted the EMT sitting on the floor beneath the big window, the one with the handprints. Cabral, that’s Cabral. The one who almost went hysterical with that first wave.

Him. The one who went down to get Meeks. The only one.

He remained on the floor as she looked at him. His knees were pulled up, his elbows resting there, head bowed, hands collapsed.

She could smell his sweat, both the dried and the fresh. It was an ER thing. The old was from the hysterics, the new from hauling Meeks all by himself. He had a bald spot but looked very young, as though the black hair was coming in rather than receding.

“How did you find me?”

“A lucky guess.”

He raised his head but not enough to meet her eyes. He seemed encouraged by her recognition, her interest. But still frightened.

“I was getting ready to see you,” he said. “To apologize. To explain.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she replied. “Either of those things.

You need to show me where you found Meeks. How he was. How he looked.”

Cabral nodded. “Okay, Doctor.”

“I’ll meet you down there,” she said.

When he left she walked to the window. Outside, more vehicles had gathered beyond the supply trucks. Carved in shadows at the light’s edge, their camouflage patterns drew the eye, framed the night. She pressed her forehead to the pane and shut her eyes. She pushed her hands to the pane also. Something for Mullich.

Learn to scold yourself first, her mentor had told her. Check your own pride before others do it for you. The specialist will always be coming down here to do that to you, to swagger into the bay and show everybody what needs to be done. All we have is our hands and eyes, our splints and Band-Aids and old crude drugs.

When she stepped out of the room and back into the bay, she sensed a creak in the entire building. Her mentor had told her about this. It’s not really in the building. It’s your body anticipating the change, adjusting. It sounds like vents activating, walls expanding.

But it’s you.

When she got to the subbasement, Mullich was there with Cabral.

The architect was explaining to the tech what they had done to the old boilers. Instead of cutting them up and hauling them out, they had stripped them down to their copper tanks and cut doorways into them, welded in shelves with the leftover copper. The new forced-air units loomed huge on either side of the old tanks. They hummed.

Mendenhall had been down here twice before to tend to injured janitors. One of them might have been Dozier. She had wondered about the boilers, put her fingers to the beaded weld lines. She remembered how warm they were inside, still trapping heat.

The long, narrow room was fully lit, though one fluorescent panel above the last boiler was blank. She looked at that. Mullich followed her gaze.

“It’s not unusual,” he said. “Each janitor changes an average of one fluorescent per shift. The new rods will never expire. It’s cost-efficient to replace the old rods one by one, as they expire.”

“You think he came down here for that? Was there a report?”

Mullich checked his handheld, startling both her and Cabral.

“No. No report.” Mullich stared into his tablet. Frowned. “But Meeks was old school. He probably saw it earlier, came back down.”

“Then where’s the replacement rod?” she asked. “Where’s the ladder?”

“They keep those down here.” Mullich was still fussing with his handheld. “This is their domain. Everyone should have their domain. Even the janitors. Especially the janitors.”

She went to the boiler beneath the dim fluorescent panel. One of the rods behind the translucent panel was still working, its bar distinct beside a dark twin. She brushed her fingers along the weld cut of the doorway.

“What do they keep in these things?”

“Snacks, little tools, magazines, coffee.” Mullich joined her at the doorway. “Themselves.” He would have to stoop to enter.

Mendenhall looked at Cabral. “He was in here,” she said to him.