Pao Pao was clearing a corner of the bay for fever arrivals, forming slots between empty beds for incoming gurneys. Mendenhall felt the dull nausea of defeat, nearing surrender. She could just play this out, let Thorpe get everything he wanted. How long could this last?
Three, four days at the most? But she had trouble imagining an end, Thorpe never managing to isolate anything.
Because there is nothing to isolate. She entered this on her screen.
She needed to read it, to close her eyes, then open them and see it again.
Pao Pao stood at the opening of the cubicle. Her expression was one of flat assessment, the Samoan lift in her eyes checking the grim line of her jaw.
“Are you right?” she asked.
Mendenhall tried to nod but only lifted her chin, looked.
“Because ID is going to fill up,” said Pao Pao. “They will start to pick and choose from these fevers, sending some back here. I plan to work through it. Working makes work pass quickly.”
“Does it matter, Pao?” Mendenhall sighed. “If I’m right?”
“To me, yes.”
Mendenhall pivoted her screen for the nurse, pointed to the last entry.
“Say it,” said Pao Pao. “Please can you say it, Doctor?”
“I’m right,” said Mendenhall.
“That convulsion,” said Pao Pao. “That convulsion surprised you. I saw.”
“That was my fault. I contributed to the hysteric. I left my hand in one spot too long. She thought I found something.”
“Did you find something?”
Mendenhall shook her head. “I’m right.”
15.
She tried to be Thorpe, to see as Thorpe. On her screen she brought up the latest studies on toxic shock and viral hemorrhagic fevers. When she read the descriptions, the symptom variations and anomalies, she could see the possibilities.
Both could mirror sudden trauma. Both could strike a final blow suddenly, earlier symptoms hidden in the general malaise of grief, work, recovery. But when she let her vision rest on the ER bay, her self-doubt waned.
Two figures wearing the black and purple of ID entered the bay. Overdressed with surgeon’s cap and booties, the leader moved directly toward Mendenhall’s line of patients, the beds nearest the main station and elevators, the ones Pao Pao had arranged for her.
Even with his exaggerated getup, Mendenhall recognized Dmir.
She had never bothered to figure out his title, his position. She just knew him as a sort of containment executive, Thorpe’s link to the profane. Dmir liked to dress up as a doctor, did that whenever he had the slightest opportunity. The surgeon’s cap was new.
His trailing nurse appeared embarrassed by it, slouched and hanging back a half step. Mendenhall swooped into the bay. It felt that way; she didn’t sense her legs, any of herself—on wings.
As she moved to cut off Dmir, she tried to reengage with her body, her thoughts, distill and purge the metaphors. Dmir was metaphor. Mendenhall was real. She sensed Pao Pao sliding in to cover the flank, drew from this.
“Doctor,” she said to Dmir, stepping between him and his trailing nurse. As a child she had watched a show hosted by a purple dinosaur. She thought of that to gain some strength, some touch of earnestness. “Oh,” she said when Dmir turned to her, “it’s you. Just you.”
“Dr. Mendenhall,” he said, “we need this line of beds. We need this wall cleared.”
This did not surprise her. But something about him did. Dmir had a freshness about him. Maybe it was all the purple, the way he filled it. Pao Pao was tending one of her patients along the wall, just tucking the sheets, tapping the chart, saying something low.
But she was right on Dmir’s flank, drawing a glance from him and halting his trailing nurse. Mendenhall took one full breath.
“I have nine. Two ballistic traumas we’re stabilizing, three poisons we’re dissipating, two ODs—oxy and alcohol—and two nearing DTs.”
Dmir creased his brow, confusion disguised as concern.
“To answer the first question you should’ve asked,” said Mendenhall, just loudly enough for the patients and the nearby EMTs and nurses at the station, “I cleaned, sutured, and medicated the ballistics. They cannot be moved yet. Getting shot—even in the arm or leg—is highly traumatic. The wound is nothing compared to what happens to the whole nervous system—but you know that.”
She lowered her voice, offered Dmir an inclusive raise of her eyes.
“Moving the others would also compromise the stability of the first two. By attrition.”
Dmir straightened a bit, though still appearing stooped, in costume. Mendenhall remembered the music from the show with the purple dinosaur. The show had been good for her. She had been too serious as a girl, too concerned with real life.
“But it’s your call.”
“Attrition,” said Dmir.
“Yes. Attrition. The same thing that produced those three new containments.”
Pao Pao moved down one patient, creating some distance from Dmir but widening the flank in this battle.
“Look it up,” said Mendenhall. “You’ll like it. Hysteria is highly contagious. It flies.” She sensed Pao Pao’s warning glance. She backed off, drew a discreet breath. “I’ll clear the wall for you. As soon as we outpatient the ballistics.” She raised her voice. “You concur?”
Dmir looked at his watch.
“Two hours,” Mendenhall said before he could speak. “Tops. You can make the arrangements with Nurse Pao Pao.” They both turned toward Pao Pao, who was looking flatly at Dmir. “Or I can do that for you.”
Then she realized what exactly was new about him, the freshness.
He had come in—after containment. Dmir never stayed past five—not like real doctors. He had night air about him, cocktail hour.
His watch glittered. She could almost feel his pulse, measure its increase.
She remembered what she had hated about the purple dinosaur, the hate that made her want the show, need it. She would solve math problems during the episodes, lists of them, filling pages, all corners and margins, both sides, her fingers smeared with pencil lead. During songs she would draw the periodic table, delineate the inert gases, all subgroups. Babysitters stood horrified, their expressions not unlike those on the faces of the EMTs and nurses now watching her step once toward the station before cutting away from all of them, stepping to her patients.
Her patients. The longest anyone could be her patient was about two hours; then they were either discharged or assigned to the proper specialist. She had repeats—drunks, addicts, prostitutes, some ballistics. But ER repeats eventually disappeared. Into their lives, her mentor had told her, the lives they choose. See it that way.
Dmir lingered. Pao Pao was starting to leave, then halted between them. Mendenhall squinted at Dmir.
“What? What more?”
“Who’s Cortez?” he asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“We,” he said, “we want—”
“That was from my aunt. That was personal.”
Pao Pao spoke, her voice low, her look flat, but there was relish in the angle of her head, the motion of her fist toward the floor between Dmir’s shoes. “Cortez is her dog.”
Dmir looked to Mendenhall for verification.
“Cortez,” Pao Pao repeated. “A terrier, about the size of your Clarks. A little Scottie. Cortez. Cortez the Killer.”
“The Killer?” Dmir raised his brow, not sure which woman to address.
“From the song.”
“What song?”
“You don’t know anything, Dmir. You don’t know anything about anything,” Mendenhall said. “Tell Thorpe to stay off my personal messages.”
“You relayed information. Outside containment.”