Mercy 6

“No. I mean why are you following me?”

“Because I plan to stay alive. If I go where you go, I have a chance.”

“But you see that’s not true.” Covey spoke quickly, releasing. She glanced in the rearview. “Those people back there? Five?”

“It’s more than that,” he said. “Bigger than that. I saw more men heading to another part of the city.”

Mendenhall closed her eyes, yearned for the ER.

Covey angled another peek into the mirror.

“I hate laying around. She,” he nodded toward Mendenhall,

“hates waiting around. Waiting around to die. Where she goes, I go.

At least we’re doing something. Stay close to death, and you live.”

“Yeah? And how does that work?” Mendenhall stared at the syringes in her hand.

“It’s something I do with my older brother. The one who doesn’t do anything wrong follows the one who does, knocks stuff around.”

“Stuff.”

“People and stuff.” Kae smiled at the hand holding his, strapped to his. “My escape trail messes up yours.”

“How many did you leave out there? In your — our — trail?”

With tiny eye shifts, he counted. But didn’t answer.

Mendenhall recounted. One during escape. One in Covey’s lab basement—“the second guy.” Two in the bar.

“Four,” she said.

He counted with his eyes again, barely breathing. Then: “Six.

Yeah. No. Seven.”

“They had cells.”

“I took those.”

“They need ambulances.”

“Maybe the one.”

She held up an orange syringe. “What other colors? What other colors did you stick in them?”

“Some purple ones.”

“They need ambulances.”

57

Covey leaned into the drive, kneaded the wheel. Mercy

General was visible from the freeway, windows aglow against approaching dusk. “It looks like a night factory,” she said. “How do we get in?”

“We?” Mendenhall checked Kae, Patient X, Covey.

“I still have things to show you.” Covey shifted as Mendenhall remained silent. “I didn’t tell them where you were going. I didn’t… Maybe they followed.”

“You showed, they showed.” Mendenhall looked back to Kae.

“How would you add that up?”

“One plus one equals blue.” He was looking at the hospital.

“How high are you?”

Kae flattened his free hand, measured it to his chin, up to his nose.

“The stuff I gave you?”

He nodded, then tilted his head side to side.

Covey was watching in the rearview. “What does that mean?”

“Plus two, give or take,” said Mendenhall. She sighed, trying to breathe away exhaustion and frustration. She was in a car with two high patients and one free radical. She was taking them into a world that would be twice as mad as when she left it.

“My line,” she said to Covey. “My crush line. Is your crush line.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Don’t give me that. I’m a physician. I say that all the time.”

“Okay. Yes.”

“What happens now? What is happening?”

“Nothing that hasn’t happened before. This city — the world—

has changed toward it, grown. You know?”

Mendenhall made a fist.

Covey shrugged over the wheel, changed lanes to approach the exit. “I’m not being evasive. I’m not sparing you my expertise.

The molecules are too small to have impact. They wouldn’t really function in the larger world. They wouldn’t be involved. Or we certainly didn’t think so. There were times I imagined them passing through me. As I bent over the collecting dishes.”

“What about those collecting dishes? The ones in your basement?

Those splash-looking things you showed.”

“They look like splashes, but they’re not. Just like constellations look like they’re grouped together, but they’re not. Galaxies are not pinwheels; they’re more like whirlpools, drains. The universe is not dark and limitless. It’s full of light and finite and intricately shaped.

We design the surfaces of those dishes to indicate the slightest disturbance, the tiniest spark.”

“Fine, but what about the people? Bodies?”

“I didn’t know about that until you came.” Covey paused. “ I work in the crush line all the time, believing they pass through me, wanting that. These must be different. There’s a strange amount of sameness in the universe. The periodic table, you know. Everything that’s been gathered fits within the table.”

“I thought you said velocity was the only factor,” Mendenhall said.

“A particle and its velocity can’t be divided. The velocity is the particle. And vice versa.” Covey eased onto the exit. “It really isn’t simple. This time. The line is intricate, in flux, more weave than mere stitch. Calling them particles isn’t accurate. For you, maybe, think synapse.”

Mendenhall felt drained, hopeless. It would always show virus.

Calling it, predicting it would just make her look the good doctor.

Her guessing the occlusions for Claiborne. The same population densities that proved her case also proved Thorpe’s. She was right; Thorpe was wrong. But people were still dead; more people were still going to die.

“So.” Covey eased the car along the base of the hill, choosing an entry, “back or front?”