Mercy 6

The figure only breathed. He stood guard as the others transferred Peterson to the truck. He slammed the button that dropped the slider, divided her from all of them. The drop softened at the very bottom, whispered shut.

She heard footsteps from atop the ramp and looked up,

expecting to be caught by Thorpe and his techs. But it was Silva, her form slight in oversized scrubs. The fluorescent lighting seemed to press her against the wall. She let her back slide down the edge, folded herself into a sitting position. She put her hands to her face. Her black hair fell forward. Mendenhall could tell Silva had been resisting her hands, putting them there.

She could have been drinking from them, pulling cool water to her skin.

Mendenhall walked up the ramp and sat perpendicular to Silva, let her legs angle down the slope.

“If we had cafeteria trays we could slide.”

Silva opened her fingers but kept them to her face. “We’d need ice.”

Mendenhall nodded.

“Rough in there?”

“I’ve been ordered to rest.” Silva smoothed her eyebrows, blinked, let her hands fall.

“That’s a challenge,” replied Mendenhall. “To find a place. These days.”

“Not down here. No one comes down here to rest. You can find empty beds in the labs. They’re not all steel.”

“But you’re here.”

“I was hoping to find you.”

“I’m never one to talk to.”

“You have Dr. Claiborne confused.” Silva looked toward Claiborne’s lab. “Confused and muttering. He didn’t try for slices of the sinoatrial.”

Mendenhall shrugged. “It was just a stab. Before I had to run.”

“He sliced the basal ganglia instead. The amygdala.”

“Did they catch him?” Mendenhall straightened her feet, bounced them a little on the ramp.

“He didn’t seem to care. He let them.”

“Thorpe. What did he say?”

“He just asked why he was doing that to a dead brain. If he had previous scans from when the patient was alive. Then they bagged Cabral and took him.”

“You found that strange?”

Silva flexed her jaw, muscles fingering between slender bones.

“Why not just stay there? Complete the scans and samples there?

Then take him.”

“Don’t expect any spontaneity from them,” said Mendenhall.

“Don’t expect good medicine. From them. Outside their own labs anyway.”

Silva looked at her, waited for her to turn more to her. Her eyes were almost black, but that was because of the darkness of the lashes, the even brows. Her lips hung in a pretty frown.

“But me,” said Mendenhall. “You want to know if my medicine is good.”

“I need to know it.”

“It is.” Mendenhall took hold of Silva’s foot, squeezed the small running shoe and wiggled it. “I observed Cabral the way I should’ve.

I reported it. To the pathologist. He exhibited signs of neurogenic shock. Delayed.”

Silva offered the other foot, and Mendenhall held it, with her thumb palpated the metatarsal slope. Silva lulled her eyes. “What good are scan slices from a dead heart, a dead brain? With no live comparisons?”

Mendenhall shrugged. “Probably none. But your boss is very good. He sees things in dead tissue the rest of us don’t. I presume.

Just like I see things in trauma behavior. I’m not as nuts as you think.”

“Will he let you back in there?”

“I can only try.” Mendenhall nodded back toward the hall. “Go find one of those dead beds. Sleep for a good hour. Like he ordered.

You’ll make better decisions, better observations.”

“How did you know he said an hour?”

“He’s a man who knows the value of time. Better than anybody.

He runs miles paced to the second. Bodies are clocks. Dead or alive, they are clocks, more intricate than any mechanical ones.”

30

Claiborne was working the laptop beneath the far wall of the Path lab. Above him were the gridded forms of the six patients, sublimate, occlusions marked as long red triangles. Two screens held three bodies each. A third screen illuminated two stochastic equations: one for continual progression, one for burst. The one for continual had four lines, the one for burst only three. The four steel beds were empty.

Mullich sat in his corner, below his screens showing the building grids. Had he been there all along? He sat as though he had, a mask hanging loose from his neck.

“Are they after me?” asked Mendenhall.

Claiborne turned to her, an elbow to the desk. “I told Thorpe what you said. Suggesting viral burst. He’s on the same page. We’re on the same page.”

“You tell him about the neurogenic shock? About Cabral and the others being struck close to the same time?”

“I’m not stupid. I’m not crazy.”

“It’ll show,” she replied. “Eventually.”

“Then let it. Let him find it.”

“He’s a virologist. Everything will show viral to him. He’ll always go forward, seeing everything as progression. Outbreak.”

“Everything does show viral.”

“Except there’s no virus.”

“That happens.”

“So does delayed demise due to neurogenic shock.”

Claiborne’s gaze held steady. His unfurled mask hung neatly over his tie and the lapels of his lab coat. “I saved you.”

Mullich turned to them. “She’s lying.”