by David Bajo
“There is a chain of agreement. Thorpe is one link. My office just does the resetting because we know how. There is no single button.”
Mullich led her up the short flight of stairs and out to the roof.
They headed to the telescope relic.
She paused to eye the stars. “Are you comfortable with all that?
That chain of agreement? With policy, with Men Who Know Best?
Containing things to keep the public calm.”
“It might be the best first course of action.”
She shook her head, continued to skim the stars. “First course of action becomes the only course of action. With policy and its makers and enforcers. Our nerves are built for power. They feed on it.”
One step short of the low wall, Mendenhall closed her eyes and drew a full breath of night air. Cool and damp, it opened her lungs.
She took the final step blind. She opened her eyes in exhalation, her look aimed toward the dark running trails below.
“Still,” she said, “it all comes down to someone pressing enter.
No?”
“You watch too much television.”
They stood side by side, she tracing the trail run she craved, he aiming his scope over the parking lot.
“What will Thorpe think?” she asked. “If he notices I tried to come out here with you?”
Mullich was aiming his scope at a white truck blocking the parking-lot gate. “That I’m out here explaining things to you.
I’ve already brought him out here. I told him I would bring other doctors involved.”
She followed his aim as he glided it to other targets. The red dot spotted three more white trucks that she hadn’t noticed: one parked in the center of the lot, one at the ambulance-only turn, another far down the hill road. The last truck was just a pale smudge in the darkness. The dot of his aim made a tiny red star.
“What is that thing?”
“A range finder.” He continued measuring targets.
“How accurate is it?”
“Inside, at those distances, within two millimeters. Out here, within centimeters.”
She pointed to the moon, a gray crescent. “Can you hit that?”
He took the scope from his eyes, which was all she wanted him to do. “Theoretically. But you would have to account for the refraction in the atmosphere, the bend of gravity from both moon and Earth, the time, and the scatter.”
“The scatter?”
“Of light. By the time this reaches the moon, assuming we calculate all those factors, the light would dissipate into a large field several hundred meters wide.”
“Circle or square?” Her thoughts were dissipating, what she had hoped for on this roof.
“A kind of X, actually,” he replied. “Not quite axes, not quite perpendicular.” He was making entries on his tablet, its blue illuminating his face, paling the angles.
“What did you see out there?”
“On the moon?” he asked. “Or here?”
“Here. Where I want to be. Not the moon—where I should want to be.”
“Containment is increasing,” he said.
She quit looking at the moon, the lot, the dark trails, and turned to Mullich. She parted her lips to speak but remained silent.
“It’s to be expected,” he told her. “When they brought me here, design for containment was a priority. This made sense. They showed me their patterns, and I showed them the patterns of my research from other hospitals around the world. The evolution of infections outpaces the hospital. That’s no secret. Even something as common as staph trumps the Mayo. MRSA becomes VRSA. The infection grows increasingly resistant to control, though it remains the same contagion.”
“You’ve spent too much time with Thorpe,” she said.
“You deny those facts?”
She shook her head. “But another fact is that Thorpe fantasizes a world where everyone is contagious. The whole world his ID ward.”
“As opposed to one big ER?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Which is what it really is.”
She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, looked to the trails below. “I’m not going to Peterson with you. I don’t care about Peterson. She’s dead. She was dead when she got to me. She’s Thorpe’s specimen. Claiborne and I can approximate her time of collapse using Thorpe’s requests.”
Mullich raised a brow.
“It’s simple,” she explained. “His questions for the others will show what he knows about Peterson.”
“But there is something, then,” he said. “Something you want me to get. For you. Without letting Thorpe know.”
“Just ask one question for me. When you’re in there with your key. Ask that witness how many times she looked at Verdasco. How many times she looked before his eyes turned to glass. Beautiful glass.”
Mullich made no reply, just stared at her.
“You can tell Thorpe exactly what you tell me. Tell him how many times she looked at Verdasco before she noticed something wrong. Would that satisfy you? Is that transparent enough?”
“If you’ll come to one more place with me.”
He took her to a file room on the first floor. It was the room she had gone to after her very first shift in the ER. She had gone there to cry. She had gone there to hide. Her mentor had found her right away, two stale coffees in hand. The room’s window faced east.
Beyond the delivery trucks one could see blurry mountains rising from the city haze.
Mullich did not switch on the light and stopped her from doing so. The room was filled with the orange glow of the delivery bay outside, some pale reflections off the shipping trucks, too.
Styrofoam cups littered the tops of the steel file cabinets. The room smelled of ashes, burned filters, and rancid coffee.
At first she was frightened; of what, she wasn’t sure. Mullich, yes, but of what he could predict or of what he intended? Then, from the way he surveyed the room, she could see that it was his first time here. He went to the window, and she followed.
“Why here?” she asked. It was an ER question, one that suggested understanding, opened to possibilities.
“I want to help you decide. Blood or paper. I want to make sure you see.”
With a very small flashlight, a key-chain thing, he illuminated the window. The light was icy, almost blue. It turned the window opaque. On the glass near the edge he focused on a cluster of smudges, angling the light.
“Someone tried to slide it open,” she said. “So?”
“Not someone. Two people together. Very recently.” He angled the light to sweep the broad plane of the window. Four handprints were clearly visible in the middle of the pane. “They shoved at it.
From where we stand now.”
“How did you know?”
“You can see by the handprints that they stood together. One shorter than the other, the taller one more desperate, his prints more smeared.”
“Not that,” she said. “I can see that. How did you know to come here? You’ve never been in here.”
“Not physically, no.”
She gazed at a single handprint, the highest one. The fingers were fully splayed, the thumb smeared along in a series of adjustments, a stop-motion effect. Mullich enhanced the effect by angling the light.
“In about an hour,” he said, “there will be a few more.”
“Or it will just be open.”
“That would be impossible. All lower-floor windows were replaced. We don’t use glass anymore. These windows don’t slide anymore. They don’t break.”
“Are the blueprints in your head, or do you have to check?” She motioned to the tablet in his lab-coat pocket. “With that.”
“I don’t have to check.” He evened himself to her, dousing the flashlight. The room became amber. “It’s not that difficult, Doctor.
Much less than what you have memorized. In your fingertips. How quickly do you go to the throat of a patient? Or the right kidney, a certain spot beneath the
ribs, beneath an arm, into the ear? Without thinking, your hands moving on their own, two fingers ready?”
He illuminated the handprint again, singling out the highest one.
“I’ll go in and get that answer for you.” He lifted his face closer to the print, seeing something new. “If you make the fight about blood.”
“It’s never that simple. Sometimes you have to use paper. When paper trumps blood. And I’m good at faking when I need to get something from a patient. But I’m not good at fooling myself.”
In the dimness, she could still see his gaze. He was looking at her face, her eyes, her mouth, back to her eyes. She was being honest. He remained silent.
“When you go in there,” she told him, “she’ll be scared. You’ll be another doctor. You can’t approach her like this. Like this, with me. She’ll swear she didn’t even touch Verdasco. She won’t listen to your question. She’ll want answers first. She’ll want to know why things are attached to her.” Mendenhall wiggled her index finger at Mullich. “Why this?”
She pointed to the range finder hanging from his neck. “And take that off before you go in.”
14.
Mullich left the file room, pausing to offer the window to her, the space, kept the light off, softly closed the door. She watched the door eclipse his long shadow on the linoleum. The outside light from the loading bay reminded her of hard candy. Now that she knew where to look, she could see the four handprints on the window, the cluster of smudges where they tried to slide the pane.
She could see them only with averted vision, her focus the supply truck beyond.
She was testing the effect, letting the handprints vanish and reappear, when a message pinged. Anything from outside her hospital life chimed that particular way. It was her aunt.
Cortez
?
He misses you.
Not fair.
Take him back.
You see why I cant.
Then when this is over.
Then no.
Are you ok in there?
Yep.
Safe?
And sound.
She slung the cell in its holster and pressed her wrists to her temples, rolled her jaw. She leaned against the wall and was about to let herself slide into a sitting position, stare at the window, when Pao Pao buzzed her. The zap on her hip made her clench her thigh, trailed the sciatic path. She let Pao Pao record her message. The nurse worked best that way, uninterrupted, no questions, no false assurances.
Mendenhall picked up when she saw that Pao Pao had finished.
They had four new arrivals, all high fevers and pain. Mendenhall counted three even breaths in the resinous light before she left the file room.
Pao Pao had the four gurneys arranged in order of arrival, the EMTs kept at bay. Only one other nurse was working with Pao Pao, like her dressed in gloves, mask, and glasses. Patients in the beds lining the ER walls watched Mendenhall’s approach. An EMT offered her a fresh protection kit. She took the gloves and waved off the rest as she headed to the arrivals.
Arrival one was a nurse, her expression widening as Mendenhall neared. Mendenhall looked at the nurse’s eyes, then her fingers, then her length on the gurney. She eyed Pao Pao. “Let me guess.
Third Floor. Pain . . .” Mendenhall palpated the sternum. “Here.”
Arrival one gasped. Mendenhall checked herself, took a breath.
The EMTs had formed a line. Within this line gathered some of the ER nurses. Mendenhall wondered how they gauged their distance.
What possible piece of medical knowledge had they gleaned that told them that twelve feet was safer than ten? What was gathering now in their sympathetic little nerve bundles?
She turned to Pao Pao.
“Fever 102, sudden fatigue,” said Pao Pao. “Chest pain.”
Mendenhall surveyed the three other arrivals, resting her hand on the sternum of the nurse from ICU. All three were focused on her, lips parted, heads lifted. One was an EMT; two were nurses.
Mendenhall moved away, tried to disguise her anger in quickness, and conferred with Pao Pao.
She raised a finger to stop Pao Pao from speaking. “Listen to my guesses first. If I’m right—pretty much right—then we’ll know.”
Pao Pao nodded once, jaw firm.
“The EMT’s from here; one other nurse is also from Three, the other maybe from Seven. The one from Seven—neck pain. I’d say the other nurse from Three has the highest fever: 102 five, by the look in her eyes. Chest pain. The EMT, no pain at first, then neck and chest.”
Pao Pao said nothing, blinked once, then waited.
“One came in about five minutes before the other from ICU.
The other two right after.”
“Cabral—the EMT,” said Pao Pao. “He—”
Mendenhall raised a hand. “He. He just kind of joined in. When he saw them coming.”
Pao Pao waited. Blinked.
Mendenhall spoke as softly as possible. “Here’s what we do.
We’re going to give Thorpe one of these.” She checked arrival one.
“I focus on her, tend to her. You remove your mask and goggles and touch the other three, push them away, get that other nurse to join you. Get her to chat them up.”
Cabral sat up and scooted to the edge of his gurney before the nurses reached him. He was still in his EMT scrubs. He peeked at Mendenhall and inhaled through parted lips. Mendenhall said nothing to her patient as she palpated beneath the arms. She was tracking Pao Pao and the other nurse. They made a good tandem: Pao Pao silent, her arms swift and deliberate, the other nurse stooped and cooing.
Mendenhall felt something along the brachial crease, a spasm, realized too late that she had let her fingers linger there. A second later the woman convulsed, hips thrusting, head pushing back.
Perspiration dampened her brow and neck, visible to all in the tendrils sticking to her skin. The nurse with Pao Pao lifted her hands away from their patient, held them there, her eyes widening along with the sudden spread of her fingers.
Three went to ID. Cabral would maybe escape. Mendenhall sat in her cubicle, trying to fashion her entries. She was hoping to just leave Cabral out of the charts. There would be more of these hysterics; he might be forgotten.
Pao Pao was clearing a corner of the bay for fever arrivals, forming slots between empty beds for incoming gurneys. Mendenhall felt the dull nausea of defeat, nearing surrender. She could just play this out, let Thorpe get everything he wanted. How long could this last?
Three, four days at the most? But she had trouble imagining an end, Thorpe never managing to isolate anything.
Because there is nothing to isolate. She entered this on her screen.
She needed to read it, to close her eyes, then open them and see it again.
Pao Pao stood at the opening of the cubicle. Her expression was one of flat assessment, the Samoan lift in her eyes checking the grim line of her jaw.
“Are you right?” she asked.
Mendenhall tried to nod but only lifted her chin, looked.
“Because ID is going to fill up,” said Pao Pao. “They will start to pick and choose from these fevers, sending some back here. I plan to work through it. Working makes work pass quickly.”
“Does it matter, Pao?” Mendenhall sighed. “If I’m right?”
“To me, yes.”
Mendenhall pivoted her screen for the nurse, pointed to the last entry.
“Say it,” said Pao Pao. “Please can you say it, Doctor?”
“I’m right,” said Mendenhall.
“That convulsion,” said Pao Pao. “That convulsion surprised you.
I saw.”
“That was my fault. I contributed to the hysteric. I left my hand in one spot too long. She thought I found something.”
“Did you find something?”
Mendenhall shook her head. “I’m right.”
15.
She tried to be Thorpe, to see as Thorpe. On her screen she brought up the
latest studies on toxic shock and viral hemorrhagic fevers. When she read the descriptions, the symptom variations and anomalies, she could see the possibilities.
Both could mirror sudden trauma. Both could strike a final blow suddenly, earlier symptoms hidden in the general malaise of grief, work, recovery. But when she let her vision rest on the ER bay, her self-doubt waned.
Two figures wearing the black and purple of ID entered the bay. Overdressed with surgeon’s cap and booties, the leader moved directly toward Mendenhall’s line of patients, the beds nearest the main station and elevators, the ones Pao Pao had arranged for her.
Even with his exaggerated getup, Mendenhall recognized Dmir.
She had never bothered to figure out his title, his position. She just knew him as a sort of containment executive, Thorpe’s link to the profane. Dmir liked to dress up as a doctor, did that whenever he had the slightest opportunity. The surgeon’s cap was new.
His trailing nurse appeared embarrassed by it, slouched and hanging back a half step. Mendenhall swooped into the bay. It felt that way; she didn’t sense her legs, any of herself—on wings.
As she moved to cut off Dmir, she tried to reengage with her body, her thoughts, distill and purge the metaphors. Dmir was metaphor. Mendenhall was real. She sensed Pao Pao sliding in to cover the flank, drew from this.
“Doctor,” she said to Dmir, stepping between him and his trailing nurse. As a child she had watched a show hosted by a purple dinosaur. She thought of that to gain some strength, some touch of earnestness. “Oh,” she said when Dmir turned to her, “it’s you. Just you.”
“Dr. Mendenhall,” he said, “we need this line of beds. We need this wall cleared.”
This did not surprise her. But something about him did. Dmir had a freshness about him. Maybe it was all the purple, the way he filled it. Pao Pao was tending one of her patients along the wall, just tucking the sheets, tapping the chart, saying something low.
But she was right on Dmir’s flank, drawing a glance from him and halting his trailing nurse. Mendenhall took one full breath.
“I have nine. Two ballistic traumas we’re stabilizing, three poisons we’re dissipating, two ODs—oxy and alcohol—and two nearing DTs.”
