Mercy 6

by David Bajo

  “Don’t worry,” said Mendenhall. “I have something for him.”

  They put the men in the elevator and sent them up to the ER. They would both be out for at least four hours.

  “You’re clear of all this,” she told Silva.

  The tech said nothing, hung her head, gazed at the base of the elevator doors. On the worst nights in the bay, when every drunk falls, every addict ODs, every bar breaks into a fight, the moon is full, great new stuff hits the streets, no questions asked, everybody knows everything, nobody’s saying nothing, Mendenhall would take hold of Pao Pao’s forearm. The nurse would pause and lift an eyebrow.

  Without a word Mendenhall would release and turn and face the next arrival, the next scream, the next sour breath, the next open wound. She touched the cool bend of Silva’s hair.

  She led her to Julia’s room.

  “I need you. You’re the one to do this. They got me. They get to have me.”

  62.

  Claiborne was with Covey in the makeshift room. They stood on either side of Julia. Claiborne was running a new IV, something fresh he must have brought from his lab. Mendenhall had never seen him—or any pathologist—do this, tend to a live patient. She wanted to start all over, to be as he was, run as he ran. To be what you had to be, do what had to be done. Even in the ER, her world, where she was most confident, she still always felt she was winging it, fighting herself, off center, leading with the wrong fist.

  He had also brought a soft light to add to the green exit sign’s glow, a quaint-looking lantern set on the nightstand. With her thumb Covey was applying pressure to Julia’s forearm vein.

  “I drew some more blood.” Claiborne kept his eyes on his work as he spoke. He seemed reluctant to look at Silva. “I took arterial blood first. Hypoxemia was pretty clear, anyway. I tried testing parasympathetic—”

  Mendenhall cut him off. “Parasympathetic, enteric, and sympathetic will cross-indicate. Forget those.” She moved to the foot of the bed to get a long view of the patient. Julia’s eyes did not track her, appeared to see her once, then lose her. Mendenhall held her hand out and up, trying to catch her vision. She snapped her fingers. Covey, Claiborne, and Silva looked; Julia did not. “One pupil might be dilated, the other constricted. All three ANSs are vying at once.”

  Claiborne and Covey watched Mendenhall. She turned to Silva.

  With her hand she made slicing motions above Julia’s body.

  “Measure reflex, bottom up.” She uncovered Julia’s feet and grazed a fingertip along her instep. “Starting here. My guess is she’s struck through the upper thigh, somewhere with large muscle mass/lower vessel ratio. It doesn’t really matter, though. I think let her fall asleep now. Maintain oxygen, fluids, and glucose. Have Silva hold her hand. Make sure Silva is holding her hand and looking into her eyes as she goes under. Say her name. Say her name. I think she likes singing. Don’t let go of her hand as she dreams. If she makes it, others will, too.”

  She turned and headed for the door. She never heard him coming, he was so silent and quick. Claiborne took hold of her elbow, crowded her into the door, his length pressed to her. He whispered into her ear.

  “You need to sleep.”

  “I need to get off this floor, get them away from here. I’ll be fine.

  I’ll sleep in Q after they nab me.”

  “You know what I mean.” His lips were touching her ear. She wanted to breathe in his scent, the clean cut of his shirt. “You need to let yourself go under.” He touched the side of her shoulder, indicating where Julia lay. “Like that. With us around. I brought plenty of IVs. I got the time.”

  She lifted her eyes to his.

  “You were struck with her,” he whispered. “But you were more down on sleep. Way down. You’re worse off than she is. You know this. Let yourself know this.”

  “I know this.” She rested her forehead against his chest.

  “You ER people are all the same. I hate you.”

  “Left shoulder.” She spoke softly against his collar. “No lung, no vessel.” She ran her hand up his biceps, over his shoulder, pressed her thumb to the point of impact. She held it there, let him feel, think, imagine. She sighed against his neck.

  “Listen. I’ll try.” She felt his arm across the small of her back.

  Nothing could have held her better, contained her nerves. “I’ll try and set myself up.” She nodded toward Julia. “Like her. But Silva stays here, with Julia, because she stands the best chance for survival, and Silva is the best chance, anyone’s best chance. I got to Julia quickly. I was on it. You need to oversee. Covey needs to get back to her work.”

  Claiborne jostled her. “That leaves—”

  “Mullich.”

  They laughed softly together. Together they whispered, “Hell.”

  Then, for once, she overtook him, got the jump. She made a feint toward the bed, let Claiborne try for the lead, then went the other way, out the door.

  Her eyes wouldn’t adjust to the light. The hall appeared different, as though she had gone through the wrong door. She didn’t anticipate the emptiness, the silence. She moved away from the door and farther up the hall, getting to the elevators. Something had changed. She stopped where she had injected the DC guards, where she believed that to be. The elevators remained quiet.

  The blood spray was gone from the wall. She traced her fingers along the arc, where it had been. Was she imagining now, or had she hallucinated then? She tried to feel her own symptoms, the push and pull between sympathetic and parasympathetic, her limbic system haywire. There was definitely something off with her vision, but she couldn’t discern between constriction and dilation; the light was just wrong.

  She faced the elevators, seeking some kind of answer in her warped reflection. When had she known? When Claiborne had said it, she had known, known as though reminded. Oh, yes, when I felt split, when I reached for two, one fallen, one still alive, what I often have to do, every day, several times. When I was ten. Or was it when I was on the roof with Mullich the first time? But no, Claiborne scanned me, found me pure and whole. So the one that pulsed through Julia pulsed through me. Or the one on the roof with Mullich just grazed my cheek, too shallow for any scan but just enough, enough. The one that killed the Mercy Six.

  The elevator opened. She stood still, expecting one in DC garb and two security. The emptiness spread through her nerves. She felt herself opening with the silver doors, hollowing. The elevator remained open, waited.

  She entered, stood in the center, faced the hall. She didn’t have her card. She had two syringes, one in each fist, caps off. With her knuckle she jabbed the button for Seven. As the doors began to close, Covey entered the hall and began running toward her.

  Covey’s hair swung, her strides long and athletic. Mendenhall halted the doors with her foot. Someone running like that, let them in, let them join. Someone looking like that, just the possibility of her wanting to help, hold the door.

  Covey drew up next to her, not even breathing hard.

  “Who sent you?” Mendenhall let the doors close.

  “The woman. She got a message.”

  “What message?”

  “Send Covey, too.”

  “Mullich?”

  “Yes. Who’s Mullich?”

  “He’s a guy on the roof.”

  Covey eyed the syringes in Mendenhall’s fists. “Are those the purple ones?”

  “They’re what I have left.”

  “Give me one.”

  Mendenhall remained still, looked at Covey’s swimming

  reflection doubled on the metal doors.

  “You need me. You need me when the doors open.” Covey pulled and flipped her hair into a soft knot. She applied lip gloss, looking at the smears of her reflection. “You need me for that guy on the roof. To help him with you.”

  She gave Mendenhall the gloss, and Mendenhall gave her one purple syringe.

  “Under the ribs is probably best. Otherwise the needle could snap. Press wi
th your thumb. Then let them try whatever they want.

  They’ll have less than a minute. Mine will go down right away.”

  “Will they be all right? Afterward, I mean?”

  “If found soon enough. And we leave the empties.”

  “Did you call in the men Kae stuck?”

  “He did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s fifteen. He has a brother.” And then she knew she was right. “And he’s my patient.”

  With the elevator’s lift her symptoms intensified. She tried to focus on her reflection, Covey’s, keep them distinguished. But Covey’s impression appeared to switch with Mendenhall’s. Her memory stopped, then jumped, lost temporal order but sharpened in other ways.

  The door opened on an early floor. Someone came in. Or the elevator didn’t move at first. It was just she and Covey, needles ready. Or the door didn’t open. No one came in. Her mind went back down to Pathology, retraced the ascent: They stopped on Four; Ben-Curtis came in, and she knew what he was thinking. She heard what he was thinking. I’m going out. To watch.

  She told him to go to a room in Pathology first. To see who was there. To talk to them, watch them for a little while. Then go out and find Thorpe.

  The elevator didn’t move at first. She felt it begin to rise, focused on Covey’s reflection in the doors. Her own had folded into itself, vanished, appeared halfway, slunk again into invisibility. No one came in.

  Then empty syringes were on the floor. Mendenhall and Covey were off the elevator and inside the entryway to the roof. The purple empties rolled, made hollow noises. Mendenhall’s right thumb was sore, sprained. Covey was trembling. Blood trickled down her forearm. Not her blood. She had no wound. She trembled and did not appear able to move.

  Mendenhall’s left wrist was sore, also sprained.

  “Follow me,” she told Covey. She used the hem of her t-shirt to wipe clean the blood. She offered her hand. “Take a deep breath and follow me.”

  “I don’t care if no one finds them,” said Covey. She would not move. From the back Mendenhall wrapped her arms about Covey, gently cupping her elbows. They held still together, matched their breathing. Covey’s form relaxed against her. She lightened.

  Mendenhall imagined her rising, slipping upward through her arms.

  “Come.”

  Mendenhall pushed open the roof door. She had forgotten it would be night. She was expecting day. Ashes fell from a black sky.

  A red laser twirled in the whitefall. They could smell distant fire.

  63.

  Mullich stood beside the relic, his silhouette tall against the orange night sky. Smoke veiled the stars. He was slicing the laser over the backlit hills, the beam made solid by the fine ash filling the air. Mendenhall held her arm across Covey’s shoulders, let her lean into their shuffle across the roof.

  “Give that to Jude.” Mendenhall waited for Mullich to turn.

  He seemed to understand as he faced the two women, offered the laser to Covey. She took it, rolled it between her palms as though warming it, then led them to the roof edge. Mendenhall kept her distance from Mullich, sensed him inching closer, avoiding eye contact but still trying to note things about her: her step, posture, hands. She tried to hide her self. Her fists were clenched as she worked out the tension from her last confrontation with security, the one she could not recall. She felt it, though, the quiver in her elbows, the tendons in her hips and ankles still jumpy, her wrist aching. Her blouse smelled of Demerol, Trapanal, adrenaline, and something else, something she couldn’t remember from the purple syringes. Covey must have sprayed her during the struggle.

  Her vision cleared a bit as she scanned distant points of the city. Covey was testing the laser, arcing the red line through the ashy night. Mullich’s dark hair was speckled with ash. The scent of doused coals came heavy on the breeze, and feathers of water shot from the hilltops. The firefighters appeared tiny, without substance against the enormous fire sky.

  Covey’s aim was adjacent, cutting across the cityscape from mountains to sea. Emergency lights pulsed blue near downtown and the university, where the five had fallen, where Julia had been struck, and where others had been struck in the Marriott. I am not with them, thought Mendenhall. She brushed her cheek.

  Mullich saw this.

  “We can be more exact for you,” he said to Covey. He motioned her over to Mendenhall, then stood between them. Using her shoulder, he centered Covey in the precise spot where Mendenhall had stood the night before. “Here,” he said. “At a 67-degree angle.”

  He took Covey’s hand in both of his and helped her aim the laser at the spot between her feet, slanted a 67-degree pitch. He released. She started there and drew the line for them, from horizon to horizon. All the way to Reykjavik.

  “How wide?” asked Mullich.

  “Three meters either side, if nothing changes.”

  “What changes?”

  “Anything.” She aimed at the moon, which loomed behind the ash veil. “Everything.”

  “Should we even be standing here?” Mullich motioned with his arms, indicating a channel around them.

  Mendenhall felt she wasn’t there, was just seeing them, dreaming them. She held her hand out so she could look at herself. Of course we should be standing here. It’s what we do. Every day we go into ER, into where life happens, life strikes. Every afternoon those people gather on that wide downtown sidewalk, where the bus stops, where the sun ricochets its way between the glass buildings, down to light the faces, hopeful eyes, desperate shoulders.

  She spoke while she felt she still could. She nodded to Covey.

  “Claiborne can get you out. He’s your best bet. He’ll say he can’t, but wait and then he will. If not, then go back the way we came.”

  She sat down on the roof and leaned against the low wall. The moon appeared to be sliding as the ash blew across its face. She took two deliberate breaths, measured her heart. “It would be nice to set me up out here. But do it right. Pick out a quiet basement room and a nice bed. Claiborne will tell you what to get.” She looked at Mullich, tried a smile but felt only a quivering. “I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to get the stuff.”

  Covey and Mullich crouched near her.

  “Stay with me,” she said to Mullich as forcefully as she could, whatever was left of her ER voice.

  From the waistband of her skirt, she removed the final syringe, saved just for this. She popped the cap with her thumbnail, kept eye to eye with Mullich as she did so. Then, using the moon as backlight, she measured out the dose and snipped the needle dry.

  “This much will let me walk but not much more. Basically I go under here. I’ll be thirsty when I wake up. Put a slice of lime in my water.”

  She checked to see if both Covey and Mullich registered this. She wasn’t sure her words were sounding. The moon appeared different, closer, clearer, alien. She’d never seen sympathy on their faces, certainly not on Mullich’s. They both expressed comprehension, though, and she at least took that.

  A low dread brushed along her nerves. If she didn’t survive and Covey didn’t escape, it would always show virus.

  Mullich took her hand, then released it. The heat of his touch lingered in her palm.

  Mendenhall tried to start the injection but could not focus well enough to find a vein. Covey took the syringe and pressed it to Mendenhall’s forearm, constricted the brachial vessels. She injected the dose to begin everything.

  Mullich placed his hand on her arm. The scent of damp coals fell about them with the ash. Covey and Mullich moved to ready positions. She felt herself being lifted and dreamed she was rising.

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  Thank you Dr. David Reardon and Dr. Philip Bajo for your expertise and support. The ER imagined here emerged from the many stories told by Dr. Suzanne Town. I am very grateful to my editor, Fred Ramey, for his foresight, openness, and intelligence. I am lucky to be represented by Peter Steinberg, a thoughtful friend and the be
st agent a writer could have. I have no idea why Elise Blackwell stays with me, but she does, and because of that my life and writing are better.