Mercy 6

Silva’s lips parted; her brow dipped. She lifted her hand, began to reach.

“I want you to come with me,” Mendenhall said, “by staying here. I’m going out. I’ll be back. I need you to stay here and cover my leaving….”

The lab tech kept her head bowed and nodded, expecting Mendenhall’s words, knowing them before they were spoken.

Mendenhall felt an unexpected pang. Despite this, she delivered her prescription: “I will leave all my stuff in my locker. You go in there and take my cell phone, carry it with you. You must listen to any message so that it appears I’m still in Mercy. You must make occasional calls to the ER desk. You must take my key card and use it in the elevators and doors. You must try to open the roof door with it. Answer my e-mails. Send some e-mails. Move things around on my desk. Drink juice left for me. When Nurse Pao Pao is on break — if she ever goes on break — you must change the dressing on my patient Kae Ng.”

Silva put her hand to her mouth. “I can’t—”

“Yes,” said Mendenhall. “Yes, you can do that. You have to be me. That’s what you have to do. And you will find ways that I don’t even know. Things about myself I don’t know.”

“But that nurse.” Silva turned away, the green light bending in her hair. “Pao Pao.”

“Yes. Pao Pao. She’ll eventually figure it out. She might confront you. She might let you continue. She might help you, join you. I trust her. I trust her more than I trust myself.”

Silva shook her head. She breathed through rounded lips.

“When?” she asked.

“Today. I need to set something up first. I need to talk to Mullich one more time. When I’m ready, I’ll hang my lab coat on the right edge of my cubicle. When you see it there, you’ll know it’s time to start.”

Mendenhall returned to her cubicle. She received a reply from Ben-Curtis: I understand.

Surrender or confirmation? She had to trust the latter.

She sent him what she had ready, in her head, her fingertips. It would be the last message for him. Thorpe’s readers could make of it whatever they wanted. When we were lovers, two was always best.

42

Mullich was waiting for her on the roof. He was not standing by the telescope, stood instead where she had stood that first night, away from him, just before all this happened. She took her place beside him. He stared at the horizon.

“Broad daylight is best. Two is perfect, though soon. You sure?”

She shrugged.

“Night wouldn’t work. They’d be on higher alert, would catch movement. He’ll need bolt cutters and a spade.”

“I can’t tell him that,” she replied. “I have to trust he’ll be ready for almost anything. I have to trust him to be good at what he does.

He wants to infiltrate, he’ll bring tools to infiltrate.”

Mullich changed the direction of his gaze, lowered it toward the running trails. “When you emerge, don’t head downhill. And don’t try for your car. Don’t go away. Use the running trails. Look as if you’re going for a jog. I’ve seen runners and strollers out there during this containment, people coming from neighborhoods in the canyon. They get watched. They are approached if they venture too close and are warned away. Don’t think you won’t be seen.

Hope that you won’t be seen right away. Get to the trail and then to the canyon and then to the neighborhoods. I hope you’re in good shape.”

“I feel ready to run a marathon.”

“You ever run a marathon?”

“Not my thing,” she said. “I like a fast, hard five. You know?”

43

She returned to Claiborne’s lab. This time she entered and asked Silva to leave. Claiborne appeared a little exasperated, the way he looked whenever she passed him on the trail.

Silva complied, said nothing, hurried by Mendenhall without eye contact. Claiborne faced Mendenhall, eased back against the edge of his stand-up desk, crossed his ankles, and folded his arms. He shrugged.

“You have sketches,” she said.

“I have lots of sketches. It’s one thing I do. When I’m home, with my wife, after dinner.”

Mendenhall had an apartment instead of a home, no spouse, didn’t really eat dinner. The closest thing to a sketch pad was a set of golf clubs her mentor had bought for her. The irons were still shiny.

“Please don’t do that to me.” She hugged her shoulders, let her hands run down her arms.

“Do what to you?”

“Hurt me.”

He looked at her for a moment, then bowed his head and nodded.

He turned to his desk, opened one of the secretary drawers, and removed a sketch pad. He raised it. “Sketches of Cabral’s scans.”

Eyes closed, she sighed, then looked. “Of the basolateral complex.”

“The amygdala.” He flipped through the pad. “Don’t be coy.”

“Why make sketches?” she asked. “Why make sketches of scans?”

He stood assessing his own work before showing her. “It’s a way of interpreting. Of getting myself free to interpret. You don’t need to do that. With you — up there — it’s all about being light on your feet, ready, making quick reads. And I don’t always get comparisons.