Mercy 6

Each body was shown in both profile and sublimate position. She felt herself already gone into ER mode, three seconds of assessment before moving.

“When it’s crazy bad,” her mentor had explained, “count to three before moving. You’ll save time. You’ll spare yourself, the front end of your nerves.”

But this shouldn’t have been crazy. There was only one thing—

Claiborne. The scans above, the two bodies multiplied, were throwing her, casting her perception into a high wind. She snapped on fresh gloves and rushed to Claiborne. His lips were parted, his fingers in a gnarl, no respiration. But she wasn’t waiting that long, long enough to watch for breathing. In front, her gloved hand felt disconnected, leading.

He bolted upright before she touched him, and she froze, hand raised, two fingers ready. He blinked and then focused on her hand.

“You put on gloves. You were going to check for pulse.”

She nodded upward to the screens. “It was them, the other bodies. Sorry.”

Claiborne pulled at the back of his neck, flexed his shoulders.

“Don’t be. It shows there’s hope for you. It shows you kind of really might think it’s viral.”

“I’ve been thinking that,” she said. “Mullich got me thinking. I told him it was in there. In him. In them. Us.”

“Well.” He motioned to the screens. “It’s not in you or him.”

She realized the one screen was her. She flinched and turned to the one for Mullich.

“What?” asked Claiborne. He nodded to the scan of Mullich.

“What’s he have you thinking?”

She resisted looking at the scans. She focused on the cello music, imagined breathing it. “What if it is in us? Some of us.”

“You’re thinking syndrome?”

“Why not? We have nothing but death and indicators. Maybe we can’t find the one thing because there are two things. It happens to us all the time in ER. Maybe it’s like Reye’s. Working off a common virus. Coryza plus something else. Zoster plus something else.”

He almost laughed, no smile but a straightening of the shoulders.

“You and Thorpe are still going the same way. He’ll like that. I think.”

“Assuming the virus is horizontal,” she replied. “In us. Then the other factor has to be vertical.”

“They’ve taken all the air filters. All disposal receptacles.”

At first she felt a sense of headway, almost a rush. She examined the overhead scans, briefly hers, focusing on Mullich’s form, sublimate to profile. That could take forever, to search and test for the vertical factor. It would split resources. They could never find it.

As in Reye’s Syndrome. We just know it’s there. We just know the two ends of the equation: pox plus aspirin plus childhood times y equals sudden death. Remove any one additive and we’re okay; damn that unknown variable.

She sympathized with Thorpe and hated him at the same time.

She was almost able to picture him, to recall which one of those onstage experts he was.

On the overheads Mullich’s scans looked better than hers.

Sublimate, his form appeared ready, arms and legs evenly spread; in profile, the form was serene, jawline perpendicular to throat. He displayed himself proudly. Both of hers were askew. In profile, her face angled toward torso, a body fearing itself. Sublimate, she had swept her left arm inward, turned the right foot more outward. The form was almost Chaplinesque, or Kabuki.

She returned to Mullich’s scans.

“You trust him?” she asked.

Claiborne looked at the scans, studied Mullich’s. “All I can say is that I’m glad he’s set up down here.”

She traced the outline of Mullich’s face, squinted, pretended to see something. “Did he ask for these, or did you request them?”

“After I took your blood and your scans, he told me I should do the same for him. Told me he was there with you and Cabral.”

Mendenhall clicked her tongue. “Did Thorpe ever find out who called in Meeks? Who found Meeks first and called ER? Used Meeks’s cell?”

Claiborne shook his head. “If it wasn’t Meeks himself, we figured it was somebody from physical plant who was scared. Scared of infection, scared of quarantine. Makes sense they would call it in quick and then dash, use Meeks’s cell.”

“But it doesn’t make sense that Thorpe can’t find that person,” replied Mendenhall. “I mean, I could find that person. You know what makes more sense?” She pointed directly to the middle of Mullich’s sublimate form. “That. Him. Who else would be poking around the basements? Who would want the body to get to ER — to me, then maybe you?”

She knew. She could picture Mullich down there with his laser pointer and range finder, blueprints in his head. She didn’t need Claiborne’s confirmation.

“Like I said.” Claiborne bowed his head and massaged the back of his neck. “Glad I got him down here.”

“He’s everywhere.” Mendenhall kept her gaze on the scan.

“Everywhere and nowhere.”

34