by David Bajo
On the edge of her vision she saw the elevator open to reveal three figures from ID dressed in full garb, including head covers and tinted face masks. Even while focusing on Meeks, she could tell that the big one in purple was Dmir—leading the way.
If it had been anyone but Dmir—if it had been Thorpe
himself—she would have done things right. Her legs and arms felt disconnected, moving with gut reaction. She sidestepped away from Meeks to hover over the two hystericals, their gurneys surrounded by attending nurses and techs.
When Dmir and the two others from ID entered the circle, Mendenhall almost bowed as she spoke.
“These are yours. Intense fevers.” She nodded toward Meeks.
“That one looks like an injury, a fall.”
Dmir went for it. All the action and attention was there with the two hystericals. Mendenhall’s lie had some truth to it; Meeks did look like a fall victim, frozen on his side, legs bicycled.
She returned to Meeks, joining Pao Pao. The nurse was glaring at her. She ignored this and pressed two fingers to Meeks’s carotid.
No pulse, but the skin was warm and loose. Her heart flipped.
She reached beneath his shirt and felt his armpit. Warm.
“They found him in the subbasement,” Pao Pao told her. “Near the old boilers. Like this. Just like this.”
“Who? Who wheeled him in?”
“They ran off.” Pao Pao adjusted the gurney brakes, avoided eye contact.
“Pao?”
The nurse held still for a second, continuing to look down, before turning to retrieve a packet holding two syringes and a thermometer.
Mendenhall scanned the bay. The crowd of nurses and aides and techs had swelled around the others, was shifting to Dmir.
Mendenhall took the thermometer offered by Pao Pao and inserted it into Meeks’s mouth, counted to ten. Then ten again. She blocked out Dmir, all other action.
The thermometer read 101. About what she feared.
“Did they even give CPR?” Mendenhall could tell by how Meeks lay what the answer was.
Pao Pao shook her head. “Someone here got the call. When they got to him, Meeks was alone.”
“Did Meeks make the call?”
Pao Pao shrugged. “His cell.”
“You?” asked Mendenhall. “You had to go?”
Pao Pao shook her head. “The other two had come in, and I was directing there. It was Cabral. Cabral went by himself. Looks like he would only touch his clothes, a belt-and-collar hoist. Lift him, plop him, push.” She checked the time. “Four minutes ago. At least he was fast.”
Dmir and his attendings hurried their patients toward the elevators, pulling the crowd with them. But to Mendenhall it felt as though she were the one spinning away, out of orbit with Pao Pao and Meeks.
She looked at her watch but did not call time of death, did not do it right. It was the first time she had checked her watch since the last call. It was ten twenty-nine.
Pao Pao was holding the paddles.
“We’re taking him to Pathology.”
“Time?” asked Pao Pao.
“I’m not calling it.”
“Then we have to do something, Doctor. I’m not joining you on this. Unless we do something.”
Mendenhall rolled Meeks onto his back. Pao Pao put the paddles away and moved to help. Mendenhall shook her off. “No.
Just stay close. I’ll do it.”
Meeks was looking at her. She pressed his sternum with both hands, precisely, released. Counted. Pressed. Released. Meeks stared at her. She pressed, counted, released.
“Let’s go,” she told Pao Pao.
“Call it, Doctor.”
Time? There was no time. Time was suspended. She had stopped it three hours ago with the first time-of-death call, the closing of the doors. Pao Pao was beautiful. She never thought like this, acted like this.
“He’s dead. Now,” said Mendenhall.
Pao Pao held the front of the gurney, braking it. Meeks lay between them, now on his back, his clothes askew from Mendenhall’s tending. His eyes were aimed at her.
“Do you always know why you do something?” she asked
Pao Pao.
“Yes.”
“What about when you can’t know the why?”
“Then I do what I’ve done before. Or what others have done.
That’s medicine. Good medicine. What I see you do.”
Mendenhall saw the ID people coordinating the elevators. She felt her entire body wince.
“Dmir,” she called, “this one. This is the one.”
22.
She went to the old file room to chide herself. When she saw that the lights were off, that the room was filled with the orange light of the outside loading bay, she knew she wasn’t alone. She started to back out, to give privacy.
“Dr. Mendenhall.”
She didn’t recognize the voice, male, Filipino accent. She didn’t see anyone at first, then spotted the EMT sitting on the floor beneath the big window, the one with the handprints. Cabral, that’s Cabral. The one who almost went hysterical with that first wave.
Him. The one who went down to get Meeks. The only one.
He remained on the floor as she looked at him. His knees were pulled up, his elbows resting there, head bowed, hands collapsed.
She could smell his sweat, both the dried and the fresh. It was an ER thing. The old was from the hysterics, the new from hauling Meeks all by himself. He had a bald spot but looked very young, as though the black hair was coming in rather than receding.
“How did you find me?”
“A lucky guess.”
He raised his head but not enough to meet her eyes. He seemed encouraged by her recognition, her interest. But still frightened.
“I was getting ready to see you,” he said. “To apologize. To explain.”
“You don’t need to do that,” she replied. “Either of those things.
You need to show me where you found Meeks. How he was. How he looked.”
Cabral nodded. “Okay, Doctor.”
“I’ll meet you down there,” she said.
When he left she walked to the window. Outside, more vehicles had gathered beyond the supply trucks. Carved in shadows at the light’s edge, their camouflage patterns drew the eye, framed the night. She pressed her forehead to the pane and shut her eyes. She pushed her hands to the pane also. Something for Mullich.
Learn to scold yourself first, her mentor had told her. Check your own pride before others do it for you. The specialist will always be coming down here to do that to you, to swagger into the bay and show everybody what needs to be done. All we have is our hands and eyes, our splints and Band-Aids and old crude drugs.
When she stepped out of the room and back into the bay, she sensed a creak in the entire building. Her mentor had told her about this. It’s not really in the building. It’s your body anticipating the change, adjusting. It sounds like vents activating, walls expanding.
But it’s you.
When she got to the subbasement, Mullich was there with Cabral.
The architect was explaining to the tech what they had done to the old boilers. Instead of cutting them up and hauling them out, they had stripped them down to their copper tanks and cut doorways into them, welded in shelves with the leftover copper. The new forced-air units loomed huge on either side of the old tanks. They hummed.
Mendenhall had been down here twice before to tend to injured janitors. One of them might have been Dozier. She had wondered about the boilers, put her fingers to the beaded weld lines. She remembered how warm they were inside, still trapping heat.
The long, narrow room was fully lit, though one fluorescent panel above the last boiler was blank. She looked at that. Mullich followed her gaze.
“It’s not unusual,” he said. “Each janitor changes an average of one fluorescent per shift. The new rods will never expire. It’s cost-efficient to replace the old rods one by one, as they expire.”
“You think he came down here for that? Was there a report?”
Mullich checked his handheld, startling both her and Cabral.
“No. No report.” Mullich stared into his tablet. Frowned. “But Meeks was old school. He probably saw it earlier, came back down.”
“Then where’s the replacement rod?” she asked. “Where’s the ladder?”
“They keep those down here.” Mullich was still fussing with his handheld. “This is their domain. Everyone should have their domain. Even the janitors. Especially the janitors.”
She went to the boiler beneath the dim fluorescent panel. One of the rods behind the translucent panel was still working, its bar distinct beside a dark twin. She brushed her fingers along the weld cut of the doorway.
“What do they keep in these things?”
“Snacks, little tools, magazines, coffee.” Mullich joined her at the doorway. “Themselves.” He would have to stoop to enter.
Mendenhall looked at Cabral. “He was in here,” she said to him.
“You found Meeks in here.”
The tech nodded.
She stepped inside the boiler, felt the contained heat. She crouched near its far wall, where it curled below the shelves. She moved her hand along the curve, recalling Meeks on the gurney, his bicycling form. “Right here.”
“Yes.”
Mendenhall placed her palm against the smooth copper. It was warm. She guessed 101.5.
“I have a thermometer,” said Mullich.
“Of course you do.” She remained in her crouch, gazing at the smooth cup of copper that had held Meeks. “You can tell Claiborne Meeks was in here, against the wall. The wall is 101.5. You can double-check me with your thermometer. With your lasers.”
“You should tell Claiborne.”
She stood but stayed inside the boiler, felt the sweat from her workout returning, reblooming along her forehead. She stepped out and addressed Cabral. “His eyes,” she said. “You didn’t touch his eyes.”
“No, Doctor. You caught me doing that once. Told me never to do that. Close their eyes.”
She nodded. She didn’t remember. She looked at his name tag, saw the A. after his last name. She had no idea what it stood for.
“You did good work, Cabral.”
It sounded okay like that, somehow equal. Egalitarian, Mullich would have said.
“Will they put me in Q?” Cabral asked her.
She put a shushing finger to her lips. She nodded for him to leave. He had a resolute bearing about him, not forced but new.
She hadn’t noticed it before. She saw it in patients sometimes, quiet internal decisions to go forth after seeing an X-ray, learning the extent of an injury, hearing bad news from her.
After the tech left she spoke to Mullich. “I can’t tell Claiborne.
I doubt he would even speak with me.”
Mullich raised one eyebrow.
“I almost did a very bad thing up there. Which is the same as doing the bad thing.” She pointed upward to the ER. “Pao Pao saw it. Dmir saw it. Everyone saw it. Don’t even mention my name when you tell Claiborne. Unless you want him to hate you, too.”
“What will Thorpe do?”
“Thorpe will be okay with it,” she said. “He’ll like it. That I backed down. That I gave in.”
“I have a theory, Dr. Mendenhall. That you and Thorpe are the same.”
She lifted her chin. “Yeah? I have a theory that you are Thorpe.”
Mullich took more of his laser calibrations. Mendenhall leaned against the cool wall across from the boilers, crossed her arms, and watched. Mullich took a vertical measurement from the outside edge of the old boiler to the ceiling. He moved easily into a crouch, pivoted with no excess movement. But in between measurements, he repeatedly glanced at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Cortez.”
“Those are personal. I offer nothing about what’s going on in here. You and Thorpe can go—”
Still in his crouch, Mullich put his hand up, then brought it to his chest. “He showed them to me. I—”
“You what? You just did your job.”
“No. That’s not my job.” He stood. “I only wanted to ask you something. Something about your dog.”
Her anger turned to fear. How much of her did he want to peel away? “At least you knew he was a dog.”
Mullich remained on point. “Do you miss him, or do you regret not having that life? That life one can have with a dog?”
“The second thing,” she said. “But no. Both.”
“People,” he replied. The word heightened his accent, the e a bit short. “People like Cabral and Silva. They are drawn to you. They want something from you.”
“Cabral and Silva are nothing alike. Cabral’s a med tech, a hoddy.
You don’t even need a college degree. Silva’s a research tech. She has that and more. She’s probably Brazilian. He’s Filipino. But you’re right. They both have brown skin.”
He bristled, which was what she was trying for. He remained in his crouch, his laser pen aimed at her. “I am not like that. You know this. But I don’t like the joke. I meant they are both people who want to learn what medicine is. What it really is.”
“They’re interested in me because I’m familiar. I go to patients—
to bodies—and put my hands there. Listen. They want medicine to be that. But it isn’t.” Without unfolding her arms, she pointed at his tablet. “It’s that.”
He looked at his tablet.
“It’s that,” she said again. “Until you get to the surgeons. Or Claiborne. I’m nothing, Mullich. Stop trying to find me.”
“Your cynicism is false.” Mullich stood.
It was difficult for her to remain relaxed against the wall.
“Your action betrays you. You hurried down here to see, to prove something. To yourself. Then to Claiborne, whom you respect.”
“To prove what?” She tightened her arms about herself.
“Something you know. You moved like someone who knows.”
“I don’t feel like that,” she said. “Like someone who knows anything.”
“Come back to the lab. Let’s see.”
“Claiborne’s?”
“He won’t be there.” Mullich checked his tablet. “Yes. He’s up with Thorpe.”
She eyed the tablet. He brushed it.
“Silva’s there. That’s all.”
“She’ll have orders,” said Mendenhall.
Mullich put away his laser pen and raised his card. “I have this.”
“Then you go in first,” she told him. “Set things up for me, let me in. That will be most efficient. I need to make an appearance on my floor. I don’t want to look like a runaway.”
23.
The building continued to shift. Arriving from the subbasement, Mendenhall sensed a gathering and sliding of weight in the important floors above, the strides of those assuming charge and knowledge. Others, she imagined, lingered close to doors and windows, false exits. Her own floor was escaping her. Her nine patients appeared pushed aside, separated now by a blank slot along the wall. They didn’t look at her as she passed them, did not offer that expression of salvation reserved for the doctor. At the nurses’
station, two dressed in ID purple had sequestered counter space.
Both were focused on their notebook screens.
Mendenhall slipped into her cubicle. Someone, probably Pao Pao, had left her an orange juice. She drank it, felt the physical need rush through her. It was proper medicine to treat the Meeks case as evidence for further containment. She knew this, but she did not feel it. She was beginning to fear she couldn’t trust her instincts, wondered how much they were skewed by what she sensed from the floors above and what might be happening outside.
On her screen, she entered the trauma forum and started a discussion thread for the five cases. She usually enjoyed this part of her profession. Rarely did ER specialists get to partake of such deliberation and exchange
. Even in a worldwide exchange, their cases almost never lasted long enough for true discussion, ending in demise or reassignment to the real specialists.
She kept her information blunt and scientific, using Claiborne’s summations, reserving her doubts. She merely asked for similarities.
She knew Thorpe—one of his techs anyway—would monitor this exchange. She liked to imagine that her mentor checked them. She used that for control.
Within the moment it took her to rest her eyes on the bay, the Thorpe tech added corrections and extensions. Good wishes and promises came from ERs in Calcutta and Dublin. Then one more from Montreal, who had heard.
What usually emerged from these forums were strange ways that people died or didn’t die. Patients hauled from the bottom of frozen rivers who were revived after several hours, unharmed, relating dreamy visions of the underside of the ice. Or the Phineas Gages of the world, those who staggered from death, dazed, changed, alive.
24 .
Mullich let her into Pathology. Claiborne was not there. Silva stood facing the far wall, the screens showing the hollow body outlines above her. There was already one for Meeks, showing the same trauma pattern, his passing through the left torso, the upper lobe of the lung and shoulder muscles. All five body patterns were gridded, set in sublimate position, arms and legs slightly spread, hands turned and open. She thought of the Da Vinci sketches. Silva said nothing, did not acknowledge Mendenhall’s arrival.
Mullich stood before the adjacent wall, his screens showing floor and building diagrams, points of discovery marked by red dots. Mullich, at least, was facing her.
“I blame you,” she told him. “Mostly.”
He offered a confused expression.
“You and your building,” she said, “for taking me away from my medicine. Away from where I should’ve stayed. Inside the bodies.
Inside what I know.”
“You don’t strike me as the blaming type.”
“I’m trying to be different.” She turned to Silva, who remained facing her work, manipulating the overhead screens. “And you, too.
For calling me out.”
Silva did not turn around but flexed her shoulders. The black line of her ponytail remained still and straight down the middle of her small back.
