Mercy 6 (2 page)

She felt all eyes on her. EMTs held raised paddles. Pao Pao's jaw was clenched.

They're dead, thought Mendenhall. “Go!” she said anyway. “What are you waiting for? What are you looking for?
I
look,
you
go.”

She moved to the first, knowing that was the real way to start this. In the old days, in her mentor's time, they had DOA. She wanted to look back to find Mullich, to ask him: Could we have that back?

She pressed her fingers to the patient's carotid, the brush of his beard softer than anticipated. She pushed deeply, trying for any kind of flutter. The throat of a hummingbird. Anything. Peterson, she thought. This guy. This guy, too. We know this guy, too.

She drew back, looked for blood, for angled limbs or necks, for grimace, for posturing. All carts ceased. EMTs and nurses returned to ready positions. She spoke to Pao Pao.

“They're all from here.”

Pao Pao nodded, frown parallel to jaw.

“No sign of injury or trauma.”

Mendenhall looked across the bay to the entrance, the huge sliding glass orange from the night beyond. She sensed the gathering bristle, some of them following her gaze.

She carefully chose the order of her commands to Pao Pao.

“Close the doors. Get Infectious Diseases.”

Three of the EMTs and two nurses ran for the door. Others along the bay floor gathered what was happening and tried to escape with them. Mendenhall stopped caring about them. Pao Pao would get the doors sealed. In an hour they would open and everyone could drive into the night, eat sandwiches, drink, watch TV, go online, go still.

Mendenhall spoke to the nearest nurse and nodded toward those who ran. “Write down their names.”

She then fingered the carotid of each patient.

“They're dead.” She looked at her watch, the cheap digital she used for running. “Seven thirty-six.”

Two of the nurses ignored her and made an EMT keep attending to Peterson. Those origami hats, thought Mendenhall. They should still have to wear those. She offered some vague expression to the two nurses, a kind of wince. It could have been a frown. It could have been dismay. She could have called them fools. All of these gave permission. Anything but “No, stop” gave them permission to try to revive Peterson.

Activity in the bay swelled near the closed doors. Outside, an incoming ambulance slowed, then sped away to another hospital, its lights pulsing against the glass, sirenless. Mendenhall spoke to Pao Pao, who had finished making the calls.

“Who was here before me? Who ran off ?”

“Dr. Tehmul,” said the nurse.

“How close did he get? Are they his? Did he touch them?”

Pao Pao shook her head. “They're yours. They're all yours, Dr.

Mendenhall.”

She retreated to her station, which was just a three-walled cubicle at the far end of the bay. It was connected to another cubicle that three other doctors shared. They shared because, unlike her, they weren't ER specialists, they weren't permanent, they had other floors, they had careers. Her desk faced a side wall. She remembered when it had been moved away from the back wall.

She liked it better this way because it gave her screen privacy. But now she knew the reason it had been shifted: this way gave her peripheral vision into the bay. Mullich was still following her. He stood at the entrance to her cubicle.

“What is happening?” He laced his fingers at his waist and leaned against the wall, first testing its strength with his shoulder.

“I mean, I've seen this before, this containment. But I always had to surmise and read dry protocol. What is really happening?”

“Tag.”

“Pardon?”

“Tag,” said Mendenhall. “We're playing tag. That's what doctors do in ER. And I'm speaking literally. You touch first, you're it, they're yours. Right now I'm it. For all four. Tehmul ran away the moment he saw. You have to give him credit for surmising things so quickly. If he was real lucky, he ran outside. Escaped containment.”

“But they are dead.” Mullich tugged his ear. “What does it matter? To you?”

“It means I have to do all four charts. Until someone else takes them. In this case, Pathology.”

“Maybe not for the one,” Mullich told her. He was looking toward the bay floor. “They're pushing the one away. The nurse one.”

Mendenhall brought the schedule up on her screen and touched ID, Infectious Diseases. She hurried but tried to hide it by smoothly moving her hand, not bending her wrist, an old bedside trick. She felt Mullich watching.

“Now what are you doing?”

“I'm seeing who's on for ID right now. If it's one guy, we might get out of here. If it's the wrong guy . . .” She saw that Thorpe was on for ID. She bolted from her perch and started weaving through bay personnel and equipment.

“The wrong guy?” asked Mullich, staying with her.

“But we still have a chance,” she replied. “Because they split away Peterson—the nurse one. Thorpe will go there first.”

“Where are
we
going?”

“To Pathology. The morgue.”

“Shouldn't you go to Peterson?”

“Peterson is going to Thorpe.”

When they reached the steel elevators, Mendenhall jammed her express card into the slot. The doors opened immediately. Inside, she waved the card at Mullich. “Can you make one that turns back time? Or vaporizes things?”

“Things like what?”

“Like Thorpe.”

He flinched, crossed his arms, pulling his shoulders in.

“Sorry.” She apologized in order to get an explanation. She wasn't sorry.

“It's okay.” His accent bent and held the last syllable. “But I have worked on buildings where requests like that were not jokes.”

The elevator was silent, felt still. Mendenhall wondered if they were even moving.

“I love basements,” Mullich said, his breath still quickened from her pace. “The morgue is the only space in this hospital that makes sense.”

Pathology felt quiet. They heard music coming from one end of the ward, something spare, a contemporary chamber piece.

Which meant Claiborne was on duty, which meant hope

for Mendenhall versus Thorpe. She quickened her steps toward the music, enjoying the emptiness, the distilled basement light, no nurses. They saw a lab tech in mask, gown, cap, and gloves cross the center foyer. The glass walls were dark except for one section. Mendenhall led Mullich to that door and reached for the handle.

“Shouldn't we prep?” he asked her.

“Prep?”

“Like them.” He nodded to the tech and Claiborne, who stood in full surgical garb behind the glass, their hands held still and curled above the bodies.

Mendenhall opened the door. “Just wash your hands after. And try not to breathe.”

Claiborne pulled down his mask when they entered. “Dr.

Mendenhall.” The blue mask bobbed under his chin. He ignored Mullich.

The three bodies were uncovered but still clothed. A violin, a cello, and a piano took turns playing the same phrase. The janitor's name was Dozier, E.; the patient's name was Fleming, L. and the visitor with the pretty eyes was Verdasco, R. Verdasco's face was pretty, too. His hands, which lay straight along his sides, were delicate. He could be playing this music, thought Mendenhall. Any one of the instruments. Then she noticed something about Dozier.

His shoulders were in slightly concave position, a tiny beckon in his arms.

“You see posturing there?” She nodded toward Dozier.

Claiborne dipped his shoulders side to side, sizing up the body.

“That's a stretch. They found him on his ladder. He was about to replace a fluorescent. I mean, the ladder could be the cause of the shape.”

“No,” she replied. “It's posturing. Let's get scans of his head and neck. Right away.”

Claiborne wagged his head. The tech looked at him. She was about to draw blood. Mendenhall had placed Claiborne in a moment, in a decision that might determine whether they all went home tonight or whether they had to spend a night in Castle Thorpe while his ID team ran blood work. If she could find trauma in Dozier, they might be free. Claiborne eyed her. They sometimes saw each other running on the exercise course, a path woven around the hospital grounds. This was the expression he gave her whenever she attempted to pass him. He would check her, a flicker of exasperation across his features, then increase pace and pull ahead. He had the waist of a sprinter.

“I was supposed to be done at seven,” he said. “Surgery sent me three biopsies, then these came down. I got shows to watch tonight. My wife made pad thai.” He widened his hands above the bodies. “But these really do seem to be Thorpe's. All from here in the hospital, all generally from the same time. All fast.”

“Just give me this one? So we have some leverage on him?”

“They still yours?”

Mendenhall nodded, hoping. “I have to do all their charts.

Except her. ” She motioned toward Fleming, the one with the patient gown and bracelet. “She's somebody else's patient.”

“No, her, too,” he told her. “Seems she was officially checked out. Was gabbing with her roommate in recovery, having a Jell-O

together, then collapsed across her roomie's bed. You get to start a whole new chart.”

Mendenhall sighed, started to raise her hand to her brow, then thought better of touching her face. “What was she in for?”

“Foot surgery.” Claiborne nodded toward Fleming's right ankle.

The toes were thin and pale, the nails freshly painted red, post-op no doubt.

Mullich finally spoke. “How come you know everything?”

Claiborne only glanced at him before going back to Mendenhall.

“Because this is Hell. We end up knowing everything that happens.”

He motioned toward the ceiling but kept his eyes on Mendenhall.

“Up there.”

He kept looking at Mendenhall as he spoke to Mullich.

“Following her will give you the wrong impression of this building.

I wouldn't advise it. Dr. Mendenhall still does the footwork. No one does that anymore. Not even the nurses. Just like now. Just like she came here.” With his gloved hand still curled, he motioned to the laptop on a side table. “On that screen there are probably five requests—orders—sent by Thorpe. Blood work. But right there,” he punched his hand toward Mendenhall, “is her. In person. Here to see me. Pay us a visit. Help us.” He extended the last two words. “I haven't even seen Thorpe for over a year. To him, I'm a name at the bottom of a result.”

“It's because I like people so much.” Mendenhall looked at Claiborne's tech.

“It's because you like bodies. The body.” Claiborne blew a hard breath, then gave orders to the tech. “Start blood work on Verdasco and Fleming. Zap Dozier.”

“Thank you, Dr. Claiborne.”

“Just get us out of here before midnight.”

She started to reply, but Claiborne raised his hand and closed his eyes. He held a gloved finger near his lips, shushing. He pointed up to the music, the weave of the violin, cello, and piano. “This is the best part.”

They listened to the quiet music and watched as the tech rolled Dozier to a corner of the lab. Mendenhall couldn't really see the posturing anymore, any real lift in his shoulders that might indicate trauma. Infection was most likely, given the timing, place, and disparate persons. A janitor, nurse, patient, visitor. But the timing was almost too good. All must have been found within the same five minutes or so. All must have died fairly quickly, fairly together, either before or during their transport to the ER. A janitor slumped over a ladder. A patient slumped over another's bed. Where had Peterson and Verdasco been found? How long had each of them lain undiscovered, unattended? . . . How bad was this hospital? She looked at Mullich, who was scanning the room, using Claiborne as a pivot for his gaze. How sick was this building?

She returned to her ER cubicle to do charts. Mullich was no longer following her, no doubt more intrigued by Claiborne's Hell. Doctors hated charts because charts were menial, below a physician's station. Mere data entry, what her mentor had called paperwork. But the most profound cause of that hatred was the fact that charts acknowledged an overseer, reminded a physician that all her decisions and acts were up for assessment, even though 99 percent of those decisions and acts were repetitions, determined by precedent. And that last fact was the most difficult part of the acknowledgment, that what they were all doing was mimicking, robotics, child's play.

But these four new charts tagged on to the end of Mendenhall's long day were different; she saw them as an act of organization and self-checking, probably what charts were originally meant to be, way back when Mercy General had been built, when the telescope on the roof had been whole and aimed toward the Milky Way.

Enry Dozier was a fifty-three-year-old janitor with a clean work record during seven years of employment at Mercy. His medical history was in the system and showed nothing unusual, nothing more than a slightly elevated BP, almost average for a black male. He never missed the hospital's required checkup. He had been found slumped over his ladder in the seventh floor hall, one fluorescent tube leaning against a rung, the other shattered along the floor, presumably dropped. He was at the far end of the hall, past the patient rooms, so it was unknown how long he had been like that before being discovered by a patient taking a prescribed hall walk.

He had been unresponsive during transport to the ER.

Lana Fleming, a sixty-three-year-old retired middle school teacher, had been admitted for surgery to scrape bone chips from her talocrural joint. The procedure had been successful. Her medical history was in the system and showed nothing unusual, nothing more than being overweight, average for a white female over sixty.