Mercy 6

This was what Mendenhall needed most, to see Cabral in this light, caressed by this air, saved from the humiliation in the ER. She saw his first name on the overhead screen. Albert. Albert Cabral.

Claiborne was scowling as he worked, his dark brow furrowed into his mask, eyes aglare. But maybe that was from the extraction, the precision and force required to needle into the pelvis. From her stool Mendenhall examined the overhead screen. The occlusion appeared in the marrow but not the bone.

“What are you thinking, Doctor?”

Mendenhall started. She should have been ready with her phrasing. Maybe this was what she wanted also, what she needed in getting here with Cabral, Claiborne, and Silva. Focus, a hard external counter to her doubt.

“I’m thinking it … the infection … burst in all six at the same time — about the same time.”

Silva stopped entering data, looked at Mendenhall. Claiborne kept working.

“Meeks collapsed against warm metal, affecting temp and rigor.

Maybe,” Claiborne said. “But Cabral here? He survived. Why? No major organs?”

“No,” replied Mendenhall. “He didn’t survive.”

Now Silva dropped her arms and looked at Claiborne, perhaps awaiting orders to escort Mendenhall out.

“Explain.”

“Neurogenic shock. He was walking dead.”

Claiborne wagged his head as he focused on the final draw of the extraction. He treated Cabral as living, feeling, removing the needle with a graceful push-pull, push-pull.

“You’ve never seen it,” Mendenhall told him. “Only in charts, written. Neurogenic shock. I’ve seen it. Many times. I should have seen it in Cabral.”

“You’re stretching again.” Claiborne sealed the extraction in the syringe, carefully snapped the needle into a disposal bag, and handed the sample to Silva. “You’re fighting.”

“I did see it in Cabral. I just didn’t register it. I should’ve registered it. If I’d known him …”

“Stop.” Claiborne gazed upward. “We’re out of time. You need to leave here before ID shows up. They catch you here, you’re done.

I’m done.”

She stood, hesitated. “Close-scan the sinoatrial node. Before they take him. We know there’ll be incipient hemorrhaging in the brain, like all of them. We’ll see that again. But the sinoatrial …”

She hurried from the lab. Before closing the door, she looked at Silva, offered a nod of thanks. What she could muster.

29

Alone in the wide hall outside Pathology, Mendenhall heard the elevator arriving. She turned the nearest corner, found herself atop the ramp to the exit, where they had delivered the bodies to the outside. She pressed herself to the wall, near the edge, turned her head to the sounds. The elevator opened. Three sets of footsteps pattered on linoleum — a leader and two techs. Whom would Thorpe send to confront Claiborne? Maybe himself. She was tempted to look.

“When we go in,” said the leader’s voice, “remain behind at ease.

It’s his lab. If she’s in there, call for removal; don’t make me say it.”

The voice was hollow. They were wearing full hoods and face visors.

There was no point in looking.

She had seen Thorpe once, from a distance, from the rear of an auditorium, a doctor sitting in a line of experts onstage. She had stayed only to hear the first speaker, to show her face at a mandatory conference. She hadn’t paid attention to the introductions, never figured out who was who.

But that was him out there, no doubt. Why? For Cabral, the clear signifier of outbreak? For Claiborne, to lay some claim in Pathology? No, he was there for her. She turned the other way in order to trail silently down the exit ramp.

A body was there. On a gurney angled toward the sliding door, it was sealed in a white bag. On tiptoe, in a slow-motion sprint, she moved to it. She crouched behind it in case they checked around the corner before going into the lab. She counted to ten, then straightened and examined the bag.

It was Peterson. Marley. Mendenhall knew this without looking at the tag. Beneath white vinyl the nurse’s arms lay straight along her sides, her chin stiff, her stomach a soft rise, her feet at symmetrical angles. She and the other smokers used to wave as Mendenhall ran by them on the trails, laugh and raise cigarettes, try to get smoke in her face. “That will kill you, Doctor.”

She adjusted Peterson’s gurney, setting it perpendicular to the sliding door, less abandoned. Mendenhall was glad that she had found her, could wait with her. Mendenhall was screwing up everything. At least she could do this.

The slider buzzed and then rattled open. Mendenhall swung to the other side of the gurney and braced herself. The Disease Control truck was ramped open, its portable lab soft and white. Two space-suited figures hurried to the gurney, ignoring Mendenhall.

Another appeared from somewhere. He was tall, no face visible behind the tinted visor. He looked Mendenhall up and down. She saw her face reflected in the black plastic — wonder, fear, recognition.

“Mullich?” she said.