Mercy 6

Covey handed over a map she had made of the crush lines through the city and was about to go fetch some cash for Mendenhall when something crashed against the door. It was the sound of a body driven into the steel door of Covey’s lab. Arms slapped against the basement linoleum. Mendenhall had heard it many times on the bay floor, nurses or EMTs tackling and subduing seizure cases, mean drunks, psychotics, or just those who wanted to fight, furious over wounds, death, life. Covey reached for the handle. Mendenhall stopped her, pulled her elbow, shook her head.

Mendenhall eased herself against the floor, concerned about the dress, the necklace. She peered through the sliver beneath the door, caught shadows moving swiftly across her view, a mix of dark steps and drags. Flesh-on-flesh noises buzzed her nerves.

Mendenhall rose, pressed Covey to the side, put finger to lips.

She kissed her cheek and left.

Again she felt certain to be stepping into deliverance. This time dressed for it, arms open to it.

The basement hall was empty. Two dimes of blood stained the gray linoleum. Doors with hip-handles lined both walls. She could’ve been in a hospital — the morgue, quiet and abandoned.

The lights went off. A hollow sound, either a groan or something dragged, rose through the floor, along the walls. How many basements did this place have? Only the green exit sign above the stairwell door remained aglow. She was okay with it. All of it. They were reading her wrong. So wrong. They were giving her a series of quick things, surfaces, dilations. They were giving her the bay floor.

She took the stairway. Through the little mesh window of the first floor door, she spied one man wearing the t-shirt/sports jacket look. He was standing dead center in front of the doorway to the building. She continued climbing. Between the third and fourth floor landings someone was descending, the steps heavy and athletic, booted.

She did not raise her head and kept ascending at a normal pace, giving herself over to her disguise, letting it work. She pretended to be adjusting her necklace clasp, unhooked it as she neared the government man.

“Pardon?” she asked, looking down, fingering the clasp at her nape. “Could you, please?”

His shadow loomed over her. Callused fingers brushed her skin, the knob of her vertebrae. His fingers were swift, adept.

“Thanks,” she said, felt for the clasp after he finished, tugged the peridot into even position.

He let his fingers graze her neck and shoulder as he trailed away, and she continued her ascent. She could sense him looking at her calves, checking her ass. If he gave chase, she felt ready to race, to get to the roof. Let them catch her there.

She climbed one more floor, then exited to the elevators, just to complicate her route. She pressed the up button, triggered to run back to the stairway if the elevator arrived occupied. The doors parted. It took her a moment to register the emptiness. She never received emptiness in the bay. Every gurney brought her someone, some immediate decision, some aimed expression, some blood or wrong bend of bone, inappropriate gaze or words or tone, sometimes bone through flesh, bloodless and absurd.

It would have been easier to step inside the elevator if it contained a wound — or corpse. She forced herself to go in and press the button to the seventh floor. In the hall a pair of students, one janitor dragging a trash cart, and a professor passed her. She received second looks from every one of them. The professor called her Jude.

Mendenhall figured her options. She could pull the fire alarm and maybe get out in the confusion. That confusion was hard to predict. Or she could give up in the face of fate, turn herself in to the guy on the first floor or his partner searching the halls and stairs, let herself be caught. But she wanted to trace Covey’s line — the crush line — back to Mercy General. Did she feel the crescendo only because it had become a possibility? Wasn’t that how crescendos worked? Was this thinking in metaphor? Feeling in metaphor?

And there was the blood on the floor, the struggle outside Covey’s door. It was no longer just a matter of giving up, of pride.

The fight was blood, apparently, to someone — to the ones who commanded the men in t-shirts and jackets.

Schrader’s door was partially opened. Protocol. A student sat in his office. She was pretty, appeared to be crying. Mendenhall pushed the door all the way open. Schrader looked up, kept his eyes on her. If he had checked the student, Mendenhall would have apologized. Instead she ignored the student, her tears. She leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb and folded her arms.

“I’m visiting from Molokai. I don’t want to eat alone. Can you join me?”

Schrader eyed the dress. “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me.” She held her pose. “I need cab fare. My card’s in limbo. We can dine somewhere nice. You know a place? By the ocean?”

“I have …”