Mercy 6

I don’t get to see scans of Cabral from when he was alive. From before he may have suffered … whatever it is you think he suffered.”

He thrust the open sketchbook at her. “So here.”

He was a good artist. She could see that. It made her sad to see that someone could be a really good doctor and also be something else. In charcoal, beneath studies of the amygdala, he had written ‘Albert Cabral.’

There was nothing for her to see in the charcoal except his interest, his consideration. And maybe he was done with that.

“Anything?” She raised the pad, tried a smile.

“Just the inclination. To draw, to go there with my eyes and hands.”

“Hands?” She turned her palms upward. “You use both hands?”

He held up his left hand and pointed to the outside edge of his thumb, where black skin curved into pink. “I shade and feather with this.”

“When?” she asked. “When do you do this?”

He shrugged. “When Silva leaves to take a little break. Little in-between moments. It only takes a few minutes.” He raised the sketch pad again. “These. Sometimes she catches me, at the end, brushing my thumb over the charcoal.”

She felt an unexpected, unclear twist. Had to take a quick breath, underneath.

“You want to tell me something?” he asked.

“No.”

“You need to tell me something?”

I need to tell you everything. Everything I’m about to do.

“No,” she said. “No.”

“In medicine,” he said, “a double no means yes.”

“I’m not your patient.”

She looked at him — his lean form at ease against the desk edge.

She wanted him to come with her. She needed his expertise, his sketches. His pace. With his lips he shaped the opening syllable of her first name but made no sound.

When she returned to the hospital, she hoped he would remember this moment, remember it right.

44

On her desk Pao Pao had left a small glass bottle of grape juice—

Mendenhall’s favorite. How had she found it in all this? Too, there was a porcelain teacup filled with granola, a homemade mix with the scent of burned honey and cashews. Not from the cafeteria or any vending machine.

Pao Pao was in the bay, moving along Thorpe’s fever patients.

Mendenhall could see that the nurse was recording their body temps, entering them in a ledger she must have started on her own.

If Thorpe had ordered that, Pao Pao would have asked Mendenhall.

She must have been running trajectories, tracing the wax and wane of each fever, matching it to her floor log. Proving these patients false — or hoping to prove them false, healthy but empathetic. Pao Pao hunched into her procedure, sidestepped swiftly from bed to bed, shedding the thermometer sleeves behind her. It was not hard for Mendenhall to imagine her tending to soldiers lying on a battlefield amid fire and chaos, their eyes wide to her. Her firm and quiet line.

One man dressed in the purple scrubs of ID and two security guards with that special piping on the uniforms approached Pao Pao. They cut her off.

Mendenhall swooped into the bay. In ER mode, she was there in seconds. The ID guy rested a hand on Pao Pao’s elbow. The two guards had formed a bracket, and their arms hung restive.

“You,” Mendenhall said to the scrubs, “take your hand away from her. She’s the floor nurse. My floor nurse. You do not lay a finger on any personnel on my floor.”

The guards now bracketed Mendenhall. One put a hand to the hilt of his baton.

“Oh, try us,” she said to him. Bantamweight, she crowded him.

“You have no idea.”

She turned to the scrubs. “What are you gonna tell him? She was recording fever temps; we had to stop her?”

He drew his shoulders back, found his height. His glasses were outdated, his hair thinning and losing its color. Behind that was a slight attractiveness, a nice trim in his jaw and cheekbones.

“My advice,” she said to him, “do your job, your one job. Keep us from getting out.”

Mendenhall led Pao Pao to an open space on the bay floor, closer to her line of patients. She squared to the nurse, offered a shrug.

“Sorry, Doctor,” said Pao Pao. “It made sense.”

“Don’t apologize. It does make sense. It’s smart medicine.

Running comparative charts between their symptoms and floor activity makes total sense for the good of this entire floor.”

Pao Pao offered her tablet. “I’ll send these, then, to you.”

“But then stop. For a while, stop. Let’s stay out of their way.”

Pao Pao looked back to their patients, her way of clearing.

Mendenhall could see that she was confused, maybe a little bit hurt. Mendenhall felt the need to protect her, to keep her from her own good sense, from her capable person. A person Mendenhall was about to abandon and betray. How does a body at once protect and betray another? How torn could she be and still navigate her way out?

She should’ve just gone, just done it.

45

Mendenhall hung her lab coat on the right edge of her cubicle.

There it was. She hurried to the locker room. Its emptiness disappointed her. She had hoped for some company, a colleague or two to chat with, to test her volition and demeanor.