Nightshifted es-1

by Cassie Alexander

  “He doing okay?” Meaty asked. I didn’t know if Meaty thought I would hurt patients by my mere presence, or if I gave off a bad-nurse aura. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the repeated check-ins, I just didn’t like feeling like I must need them all the time.

  “He’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine,” I said, with just a touch of sarcasm. Meaty squinted at me, then went back to ordering morning labs on the computer.

  The desk between Meaty and me had the telemetry monitor on it, a computer screen that showed all the vitals from all the occupied rooms, in coded colors. Heart rhythms were largest, in bright green, and when alarms sounded these were usually to blame. It was hard to keep lead stickers on squirming patients who were sometimes slick with sweat. So when an alarm sounded, I glanced over, wondering who’d flatlined momentarily while scratching themselves.

  But none of the green waves changed, and the alarm went on. Mr. November’s corner of the screen lit up. I leaned in closer, actually reading numbers. After the obligatory oh-shit second, Meaty looked up, and I saw Mr. November’s oxygenation saturation go from an acceptable 92 percent, to a potentially emphysemic 85 percent, to an incompatible-with-life 40 percent.

  “Wake him up!” Meaty yelled.

  “On it!” I leaped and ran around the station to his room, racing inside without gear.

  Chapter Three

  I stood there for a second, overwhelmed. I’d left his right hand unrestrained, and Mr. November’d pulled his ET tube out. Inadequate ventilation = certain death. The heart monitor over his bed warned of an atrial fib before its green line dove flat.

  Charles blazed past me at a speed walk. He slammed the bed into CPR mode, and pointed at me. “Ambu bag, now!”

  I swallowed and nodded and pulled it off the wall. It felt like it took me an hour to assemble the pieces, to shove the face mask and bag together, the one that was supposed to be breathing for Mr. November but wasn’t until I finished the fucking job. I managed it, and shoved the bag over Mr. November’s open mouth.

  Which reflexively closed.

  On my left thumb.

  “Shit!”

  I yanked my thumb out, catching it on his teeth, and put my fingers under his jaw for a better seal.

  I hadn’t even seen Gina come in, but there she was, with epinephrine from the crash cart. Charles was already performing CPR. Meaty began counting cycles.

  “Fifty-nine—switch!”

  I vaulted onto the bed to straddle Mr. November, pumping with my injured hand, trying to pretend he hadn’t just bitten me, that a motherfucking daytimer had not just bitten me. What if the tests we had run were wrong? What if he was infected? What if it didn’t take repeated exposure? My thoughts flowed in time with my CPR, and just like his ribs, they resisted at first, then relented with a sickening crunch.

  “Epi!” Meaty announced. I saw Gina push it.

  Mr. November bucked beneath me, dislodging the ambu bag, sending the titanium-tipped ET tube by his head clattering to the floor. He stared at me, hard.

  “Save her!” he commanded—but he was only mouthing the words. He’d shredded his vocal chords when he extubated himself. “Save her!” he mouthed again, before collapsing beneath me, expiring.

  I sat there on his chest in shock. And then—the movies sometimes got this part right at least—he went from what’d once been a living, breathing thing, to a dough, then a dust. He crumpled in on himself, leaving a dark soot-colored stain on the insides of my thighs. All of the rest of his tubes and restraints fell and landed where they would have been were he an anatomically correct ash sculpture, something stolen from Pompeii. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, or what to do next—I sat there stunned, before dismounting with excessive care. Meaty, Charles, Gina—they were all staring at me, silent.

  “Can’t the Shadow-things fix this?” I asked, my voice rising. The Shadows were some mystical protection for our floor, or so I’d been led to believe in training. I hadn’t seen them myself, but I’d write Santa Claus and clap my hands for fairies right now if I thought it would help.

  “Nope,” Charles answered, and my shoulders slumped. He pointed at the remnants of Mr. November’s hand. “Wasn’t he supposed to be restrained?”

  I nodded and Charles shook his head. “Awwww, new kid.”

  “I’ll need an incident report,” Meaty said, dismissing the whole situation with a head shake. “Gina, stay here and show her what to do for the coroner.”

  My mouth went dry. I’d killed a man. My mistake killed him. No—not a normal man, a daytimer, a vampire servant, and likely already alive way past his normal life span. But—he’d looked like a human, and he’d felt like a human, and he’d died, because of me.

  A tall man I’d never seen before came up behind Meaty. His embroidered lab coat read DR. EMMANUEL TURNAS in red thread italics. “You rang?”

  “More sedation. Please,” Meaty said, without the hint of a smile.

  * * *

  “Don’t breathe the dust. It’s bad for you and it’s flammable.” Gina put my mask on me while I stood there, numb. She was my age or younger, I couldn’t tell, and Latina with dark even skin and straight black hair. Stylish bangs went from short at her right temple down to chin length at her left cheek. She’d probably be pretty if I ever got to see her smile. I suspected she wouldn’t start today.

  “First code?”

  I swallowed and nodded. “Down here, yeah. And ever. That too.”

  “I could tell.” She stared me down and then her gaze softened with pity. “You know, the last nurse who did something like that here died. I liked her a lot too.” I didn’t even know how to respond as she went on. “So look at it that way—you lived, right?”

  “Yeah. Right,” I said, my voice flat. If I hadn’t gotten cocky and undone his wrist, if I’d ignored him—if he’d just behaved!

  Gina ducked under the bed and unfastened the empty Posey vest. “Did you learn something?”

  “Don’t kill people?” I mouthed off—sarcasm being my best defense against crying—and instantly regretted it.

  She rose and frowned. “Will it make you a better nurse?”

  I sure as hell hoped so. “Yes.”

  “Well, then. Good.” She opened the drawers containing Mr. November’s personal items. “It’s a hospital, new—” I inhaled to complain, just as her eyes found my badge. “Edie. Sometimes accidents happen. He was agitated and undersedated.” She pulled out a huge black overcoat. “If Dr. Turnas believed us every time we told him patients were crawling out of bed, or if God forbid he was here himself to see it—”

  I blinked. “You mean this happens a lot?”

  “About once a year.” She shrugged. “No one believes night shift.”

  I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to make me feel better, but this conversation would be shorter if I pretended it did. “Great, I guess.” It was only then that I remembered my hand. It ached where Mr. November had bitten me. I snuck a look while Gina went through his coat pockets. I couldn’t even see where he’d broken the skin, if he had. But a flat purple bruise was growing, tracking the passage where his teeth had been.

  “Well, this is interesting,” Gina said.

  I looked up, quickly hiding my left hand behind my back. Gina held two small bottles with crude red nail polish crosses on their sides.

  “Holy water?”

  Gina spritzed the air and sniffed. “Unknown vintage, and who can say what it was cut with?” She handed them to me and I took them with my good hand. “Put them in the incinerator box.”

  The glass bottles clinked in my palm. They were repurposed cologne bottles—my mom used to sell Avon, I recognized the styles. “Why would a vampire have holy water?” I asked.

  “Maybe he was unpopular?” She shrugged.

  I could sympathize. I peeked at my hand and thought I saw the bruise on my bad hand beginning to spread. It might just be in my head, but— “Um, Gina?” I said, interrupting her search of his pants.

&n
bsp; “Yeah?”

  I held out my injured hand. “He bit me.”

  Gina squinted. She ran her gloved thumb over my naked skin, feeling for the telltale rough edge of torn skin. “That was dumb.”

  “I know.” I watched her inspect my injury and wished she’d say something comforting.

  “Looks like a bruise for now. Keep an eye on it.” She released my hand. “You didn’t get any of his blood on you, right? So you’re probably not exposed.”

  Probably fine? Was that good enough? Not when matters of my potentially becoming a vampire were at stake. But I bit my tongue and nodded like that was good news as she left the room, leaving me alone with a corpse.

  * * *

  I finished the rest of my charting and waited for the coroner to arrive. When he got there, he was a dour-looking man in a dark suit. The only color on him was a tie tack, a bright green Christmas wreath over an American flag. Maybe he had one for every season—perhaps I’d missed the flag-waving Thanksgiving turkey by mere days. He wore a canister vacuum under one arm, and in one hand he carried a package of vacuum bags.

  I followed him into the room wearing just a mask and gloves and collected Mr. November’s belongings to follow his vacuum bags into the afterlife. Shoes, shirt, the pants that Gina dropped—and in the pocket of these, a lump. I reached in and found a silver pocket watch. On the back of it, in a florid script, was a golden letter A.

  Nurses are natural kleptos. You don’t want to be in a room without enough supplies, so every time you walk past the med-cart you pocket another saline flush. By the end of the shift you can look like a chipmunk if you’re not careful. Some days it’s hard to remember that the gum at the end of the grocery checkout aisle isn’t there just for you.

  From beside me, the coroner began. The vacuum cleaner’s sound made me jump, and I had only a moment to decide what to do with the watch. I could announce that I had it, and then what—trust the coroner to turn it in? He’d probably trade it in for another tie tack. Mr. November’s death was my mistake, and the burden of figuring out who to give the watch to belonged to me. Staring at Mr. November’s pile of diminishing ashes, I put the watch in my scrubs pocket, next to the bottles of cologne.

  I waited until the coroner finished, as Mr. November was swept away. He’d probably lived for hundreds of years, until he caught pneumonia and met me. It would be nice to pretend that the pneumonia was where things had gone wrong, but I knew the truth. I finished my charting with a sinking stomach, then put all the paperwork on the nurse station ledge.

  I didn’t have to stick around to give the report to day shift. There’s no report to give when your patient’s become dead.

  Chapter Four

  I never turn my cell phone off. Not even when I’m asleep, after working the night before. I tell myself it’s because I want to be available if the County calls to offer extra shifts, but the real reason is that I’m afraid they’ll call after I’ve gone home, to ask me some important question, to remind me of something I should have done that I forgot to do or chart. And/or fire me. On the phone. I know I can sound a little paranoid, but it felt plausible today.

  My voice mail message says I work nights and sleep days. Everyone who knows me, knows this. And still, people who aren’t employed at the Nursing Office feel compelled to call me before three P.M. Certain people feel compelled to call me repeatedly, until I pick up—namely, dicks.

  I sent three calls to voice mail and then gave up and answered on the fourth.

  “Hello?” I croaked.

  “Edie—Edie, I need money.”

  And I already knew who it was. “No, Jake.”

  “Aw, come on, Edie…”

  “I have these things called student loans.” I blinked beneath my blindfold and rubbed it up onto my forehead. “Not to mention taxes. Lots of taxes.”

  My brother made an exasperated sound. He doesn’t know what I’ve done for him. At least it wasn’t the floor calling me, to tell me to not come in ever again—

  The events of last night came rushing back. Jake was asking me something but I didn’t hear him—all my concentration was on my left hand and the bruise upon it. I’d killed a patient. My patient. A daytimer—but still my patient. Any chance of sleep evaporated like cool alcohol off warm skin.

  “Edie? Are you listening?”

  I yanked off my blindfold. Had the bruise changed shape? I couldn’t remember. I leaned over my bed and rummaged through last night’s scrubs to find a Sharpie. Mr. November’s watch fell out, along with alcohol swabs and an empty bottle of heparin.

  “Come on, Edie—” my brother continued, just as whiny as every other patient I’ve ever had who knows that they are “allergic” to anything less than oxycodone.

  “I said no, Jake. No means no.” I braced the phone against my shoulder and traced the margins of my bruise in Sharpie so I could see if it expanded later.

  “Some help you are,” he said with exasperation.

  “I wish you knew,” I muttered, as he hung up on me. Finished with my personal arts and crafts project, I dropped the phone and picked up the watch.

  It looked old. The inlaid golden A remained clear, but any finer details on its silver case had been rubbed smooth by time. I found the latch with my thumbnail and swung it open.

  A photo was inside the lid, old if it was legit. A family portrait in sepia: two men, a woman, and two children, a boy and a girl. I guessed one of the men could have been Mr. November, give or take a hundred years. The men had strangely shaped hats, and the women wore kerchiefs on their heads.

  Which one was Anna? The woman or the child? I stroked my discolored thumb over their miniature faces.

  The watch itself was ticking. It might be worth as much as a student loan payment if I sold it on eBay. Which … maybe I’d do eventually, if I couldn’t figure out who it belonged to. It wasn’t like I could call up Antiques Roadshow—“Hi, I stole this off an elderly patient … where did it come from?” Who was I kidding, thinking I was Nancy Drew? I flipped the watch back and forth in my hands, its silver glinting in the light. I knew I didn’t want closure. I wanted absolution.

  An edge of the photo stuck out, rough against my thumb. I worked to pry the photo loose. It popped out and fluttered to land facedown on my floor—and the words “Reward if returned” stared up at me. I picked up the photo again.

  A series of addresses were written in a tight script. All of them were crossed out except the last: “336 Glade St. Apt 12.” With surprise, I realized I recognized the address. I’d driven my brother to that street once and pretended to not watch him score.

  My cat, Minnie, jumped onto the windowsill. “What are the chances that it’s the same place? In this city?” I asked her. She contemplated me with crossed blue eyes. “What are the chances that if I go there, they’ll steal my car?”

  “Meow.”

  “That’s about what I thought.” But it was still daylight, and there was always the train.

  * * *

  The train ride gave me just enough time to feel foolish. My coat was bulky but not worth stealing, my boots had steel toes, and my money was in my bra along with a credit card. I hoped my best “don’t fuck with me” look would do the rest—that and Mr. November’s bottles, which I carried in my pockets like guns in hip holsters, one to each side.

  The train shuddered to a stop and I was the only one to exit. Outside the station the buildings were tall, and the snow had an oily sheen. I passed a few tenements, ignored a few offers, and waited until Seventh before turning onto Glade.

  Glade has not been a glade since forever. Mr. November’s address was a single shorter building, surrounded by giants on both sides. I rang the bell.

  A woman who might have predated World War I appeared on the far side of the door. She squinted at me through a broken windowpane, a cigarette lolling from her mouth. “Yeah? What?”

  I hadn’t realized until that very moment that I didn’t have much of a plan. Hopefully someone lived here who reme
mbered him, and I could hand off the watch. I wouldn’t assume a daytimer had relatives, but I’d take anyone, from that Anna person to an affectionate neighbor down the hall. Maybe the kids next door looked up to him.

  Funny how much life you could wedge into someone else when you didn’t know anything about them at all.

  “I, um … That is, an older tenant here—his condition is grave.” Which was understating the situation quite a bit. “Does he have a next of kin? Someone named Anna?” She squinted at the name.

  “Not that I know of.” Her eyes narrowed even further. “You from the hospital?”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t have anything on me to prove that I was from the hospital, other than a set of plastic gloves in my chest pocket. Nurses and chipmunks.

  I held a limp glove up. “I need to get emergency contact information for him. If you could—” I suggested, hoping she’d fill in the rest.

  “Yeah, yeah. I seen House before. If I don’t let you in, you’ll just break in later.”

  Metal creaked and clicked while she undid the locks. I pulled on the blue latex gloves.

  “I appreciate your cooperation,” I said.

  “His rent’s good through the fifteenth. Any longer than that, and I’ll evict him. And tell him I won’t store his stuff.”

  “Will do.”

  She took my measure again. “Hang on.” She left me waiting in the doorway until she came back with three brown paper envelopes, addressed to this address. One said Andrei Tarkovsky, the other Novaya Zemlya, the third Trofim Lysenko, each with different handwriting.

  “I know there’s not three people living up there. But I’m not snoopy. That’s why people like to pay me rent.”

  I suspected if there were three people living up there, and the lease had only room for one, she was the type who wouldn’t let it slide. I put the envelopes into my pocket and she let me in.

  “If you find some weird fungus, I don’t wanna know.” She paused and reconsidered. “Maybe I want to know, but don’t tell the other tenants.” I nodded, and she stepped away from the door. “That guy’s on time with the rent, but there’s something wrong about him, you know?”