“Rene?” A frown crossed Alberta’s face. “Don’t call him that, Erico. I don’t like it. It’s unkind. I don’t ever want to hear it again.”
Erico put his hands into his pockets and cocked his head to one side, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry. What’d he do? Rene Boniface. What’d he do while he was in here?”
“All I saw him do was sit next to her and hold her hand. I don’t even think he said anything.”
“What was her face like? What did Alicia’s face look like?”
Alberta shook out the draw sheet and crossed the bed with it. She stood up, glanced at Erico, and said, “You know what her face looked like.” She looked down at the bed and returned to her work. “It’s not wrong, you know. What Rene does. It’s not wrong.”
“I’ll know that once I know what the hell it is that he does.”
“He put a smile on that little girl’s face, Erico. That’s what he does.” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with angry tears. “That’s what he does!”
The morgue was dark, the door closed. It was at the end of a doglegged corridor in the basement level, far from the hospital cafeteria, far from where a civilian could accidentally stumble upon it, helping to keep the secret that death really hadn’t been conquered. Erico Ramos pushed open the door and looked inside. It was a minimalist operating room with lights, drain table, sink, supply shelves, and a desk with an automatic coffee maker brewing upon it. There were files, forms, and paperwork cluttering up the desk between the coffee maker and the morgue’s computer terminal. Beyond the insulated door on the opposite side of the drain table was the cold room. Alicia would be in there as well as the motorist and passenger crushed by Dana Storey’s flying Oldsmobile. Perhaps others might be in there, as well. There were the two cancers on the sixth floor, the premature birth on the eighth, and the incredibly old man on the fifth. ICU wasn’t the only unit where they died.
Erico felt as though he couldn’t breathe. Death was in the room. It’s feel, its smell, its clammy presence. It crowded him. Images of skulls, mould covered hands, spider webs, and ancient dust raced through his mind. Grave stones, tombs, black veils, flowers, and organ music. Coffins, satin, ministers, old men and women viewing the remains, counting their own remaining moments.
He remembered his father’s face as the dead man rested in his coffin. Hector Ramos’s corpse had been brushed, powdered and rouged. Erico had been eleven and he remembered thinking that he had never seen his father look so neat and healthy. He was like a department store dummy taking a nap, his mouth sewn shut. He was even wearing a necktie; one that he hated. Everything about the funeral, everything about death, seemed unnecessarily disrespectful, needlessly cruel. Death took no notice of his father’s smiles, his angers, his moments of fear, compassion, hope and love. His father’s strengths, his skill as a stone mason, his weakness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups; death cared nothing for any of it. All of those special qualities and moments that had made Hector Ramos who he was were gone, and death didn’t even notice.
Death.
Dead.
Gone. The end.
Cold.
Dark.
Still and silent.
Erico leaned his back against the wall and slid down until he was squatting, his sobs making him choke for air. “God!” he cried. “God, your rules suck!”
“Erico?”
He turned and started as he saw Rene looking down at him. The man’s face was completely cast in shadows, obscuring it. He was carrying a donut and napkin in his hand. Erico felt his heart beating hard enough to thump against his rib cage. “Jesus!”
He pushed himself to his feet and almost leaped into the corridor. Once away from the morgue door, he steadied himself by leaning up against the wall. He took deep breaths and tried to keep his heart from racing.
“Are you all right?”
Erico turned his head and faced Rene. The morgue orderly still had that donut in his hand. “Yeah.” He nodded once and took another deep breath. “I’m okay.”
“You sure? I can get some help down here if you want. You look like hell.”
“I’m okay,” snapped Erico. “That place, the morgue. It made me feel like things were closing in on me for a bit. Maybe I have a touch of the flu.”
“It’s going around.”
Erico stood up and glared as he snapped, “It’s always going around!” He forced himself to calm down, looked into Rene’s eyes, and asked, “You and the girl; when you were in her room, what did you do?”
Rene’s face, dark and filled with compassion, became expressionless, wary, as he seemed to back off a bit. “I visited her. I was only there for a few minutes, then she died. I was sitting next to her the whole time.”
“Did you kill her?”
Rene’s gaze remained fixed on Erico’s face as he slowly shook his head. “No.”
“You sure you didn’t help her along? Pinch her drip? Dick with the oxygen?”
“I didn’t kill Alicia Fuentes. I did nothing to accelerate her death. Perhaps I did help her, but that was limited to holding her hand.”
“How did she know to call you, Rene? Why did she have me ring your extension?”
“You’d have to ask her that.”
“Well, that’s just a little hard to do, now, isn’t it?”
Rene shrugged and half turned back toward the morgue. Erico grabbed the man’s arm and stopped him. “Then here’s something you can answer. How come you didn’t need the phone call? You were already on your way up to ICU when I called. How did you know?”
“I just know. I always know.” He looked down at Erico’s hand and pulled his arm free. Looking at Erico’s eyes, he said, “I can’t afford not to know.” He turned and walked back to the morgue.
Some days passed. Erico concentrated as hard as he could on minding his own business, to no avail. The head of nursing had him moved from the night shift and ICU both. He was now on the morning shift at the rehab unit. Instead of warring with death he had been traded down to the war against better living through chemistry; a harder form of death to see. “Just until you get back on track,” Maureen Staples had assured him. Getting back on track was the head nurse’s way of saying, seeketh thou a wigpicker. Picketh thy wig, go forth and freak no more.
Erico hadn’t objected to the shift and unit changes. He felt he needed a vacation from death, a vacation from Rene Boniface. Rene had become, in his mind, what Dr. Landry had called an angel of death. The association between death and the morgue orderly had become so strong in Erico’s mind that he was beginning to convince himself that Renewas death personified: that the morgue orderly was responsible for the deaths on the unit, perhaps even all the deaths in the world.
It was silly; insane. He knew this, and he welcomed his transfer to the rehab unit. Erico needed some distance until he could get his head straight. Because he couldn’t think of a single thing about his condition that he was willing to admit to another human being, he decided against the shrink. The wig would not be picked. Instead, he threw himself into his new duties and tried to bury himself with work.
The big players on the rehab unit were the group counselors. Erico dispensed medications three times a day, took vitals, escorted rehab patients to their various appointments for tests, physicals, and other kinds of therapy, and kept patient charts up to date. The rehab nurses, most of whom were recovering addicts themselves, were a breed different from any other kind of nurse he had ever worked with. By and large they were the most positive, uplifting coworkers he had ever had. They had problems, but they talked about them to each other, without shame, and listened to each other as though they cared. The floor counselors and group counselors were the same. So were most of the patients. Eventually the patients who weren’t like that began to disturb Erico.