Mercy 6

They probably had an abandoned file room, somewhere they went to laugh, cry, push their weight into the glass.

She parted the first curtain, just the section at the foot of the bed, giving the patient a view of the bay. The patient seemed very fit, midfifties, a visitor. Beneath the sheet, his torso formed a wedge to his narrow waist. His face was lean and drawn, temples and cheeks forming hollows, a guy who ate plain tuna and nonfat cottage cheese and used his gym membership. A guy who believed the world was out to destroy his body.

In her early years she had felt no sympathy for psychosomatic arrivals, had seen them as selfish time-wasters. But by now she had developed some sympathy. It was their way of engaging with life, of acknowledging it. Her mentor had given her a book. The book’s premise was that life is the perfect crime. She liked it because it denied the metaphor, denied itself, found purpose in that denial.

She sanitized her hands, introduced herself, and took the patient’s pulse. The curtained nook seemed quaint: no equipment, no technology, light filtered through gauze, a neat stack of cool towels, and a cup of water. She pressed his forehead: 101.5.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked.

“I know that what you have is completely different.”

“You know that?”

“Yes. I was the first one. I’ve been working with Pathology. And everybody.”

Across the opening in the curtain, Cabral passed. She recognized him from his posture, downward and thought-filled. She was not surprised to see him return to the stall.

“Dr. Mendenhall.”

“Yes, Cabral. Open the other stalls. Like this one.”

He nodded. There was something about him. She sensed a retraction in her vision. When she looked back to the patient, she recognized what was happening to her. The familiar dizziness, one-sided, a physical click, pleasant above her brain stem. She needed to sleep. Stop everything and sleep. Lie down. She already yearned for the waking moment, that fresh blare of thought.

She smiled at the patient and told him to drink his water. As she passed Cabral, she told him not to open the drape to her stall.

She chose the stall three removed from the last hysterical. She enclosed herself within the curtains. As she sat on the bed, she removed her lab coat and readied it as a blanket. She knew Meeks had fallen at the same time as the others. She knew the rattle and thrum of the bay would lead her to sleep. She knew she would lose consciousness within seconds of sublimation. She knew how soft the pillow would feel. She knew there was something wrong with Cabral.

What she didn’t know was how long she would sleep.

TWO

26

The first waking was false, surfacing to dream glare. The stall hung white. She heard static. The sharpness of the real waking verified the first as dream. Eyes open, head lifted from pillow, she had trouble discerning between the two. Her heart rate, which had jolted her out of the dream, increased. Outside the gauzy enclosure of her stall, it was not quiet. Someone — a nurse — had screamed. Carts rolled, running shoes squeaked. Nurses tried to give orders. Finally one asked, “Where’s Pao Pao?”

Mendenhall knew Cabral was dead. She knew from the waking dream. This realization was what that two-second dream was about.

But it was hard to get her body to work. She had no grip. She needed to focus just to turn her wrist, to see her watch. She had slept for three hours, a stunning amount for her in the ER.

Dread sharpened her logic. If she stepped out there to do her job, to take charge, chances were high that ID would quarantine her, connecting her with Cabral, Meeks. If she left the ER along the periphery of the bay, took the elevator somewhere quiet — like Physical Therapy — only Mullich would find her. She would have to go into hiding. The only way she could survive that emotionally would be to stay involved in these cases. That involvement would reveal her.

Thorpe was the unknown factor. How accurate was her assessment of him? Was he power or science, more paper than blood? How strongly did she believe her claims about him, the ones she had voiced to Claiborne and Mullich, that he was paper? That he needed her science, their science, their blood work?

Undecided, she slid through the curtain opposite the commotion.

She knew all of the bay’s blind spots, every crease. Pao Pao spotted her immediately but said nothing. Mendenhall raised a staying hand. The nurse stood along the inner circle surrounding Cabral.

Again, that series of Busby Berkeley dancers swayed this way and that, people afraid but wanting to see. There were more ID people than Mendenhall had expected, purple and done up as surgeons, none of them where they were supposed to be. Only Pao Pao was positioned correctly, ready for orders. Dmir stood in the second circle, hesitating.