“You want to tell me something?” he asked.
“No.”
“You need to tell me something?”
I need to tell you everything. Everything I’m about to do.
“No,” she said. “No.”
“In medicine,” he said, “a double no means yes.”
“I’m not your patient.”
She looked at him—his lean form at ease against the desk edge.
She wanted him to come with her. She needed his expertise, his sketches. His pace. With his lips he shaped the opening syllable of her first name but made no sound.
When she returned to the hospital, she hoped he would remember this moment, remember it right.
44.
On her desk Pao Pao had left a small glass bottle of grape juice—Mendenhall’s favorite. How had she found it in all this? Too, there was a porcelain teacup filled with granola, a homemade mix with the scent of burned honey and cashews. Not from the cafeteria or any vending machine.
Pao Pao was in the bay, moving along Thorpe’s fever patients.
Mendenhall could see that the nurse was recording their body temps, entering them in a ledger she must have started on her own.
If Thorpe had ordered that, Pao Pao would have asked Mendenhall.
She must have been running trajectories, tracing the wax and wane of each fever, matching it to her floor log. Proving these patients false—or hoping to prove them false, healthy but empathetic. Pao Pao hunched into her procedure, sidestepped swiftly from bed to bed, shedding the thermometer sleeves behind her. It was not hard for Mendenhall to imagine her tending to soldiers lying on a battlefield amid fire and chaos, their eyes wide to her. Her firm and quiet line.
One man dressed in the purple scrubs of ID and two security guards with that special piping on the uniforms approached Pao Pao. They cut her off.
Mendenhall swooped into the bay. In ER mode, she was there in seconds. The ID guy rested a hand on Pao Pao’s elbow. The two guards had formed a bracket, and their arms hung restive.
“You,” Mendenhall said to the scrubs, “take your hand away from her. She’s the floor nurse. My floor nurse. You do not lay a finger on any personnel on my floor.”
The guards now bracketed Mendenhall. One put a hand to the hilt of his baton.
“Oh, try us,” she said to him. Bantamweight, she crowded him.
“You have no idea.”
She turned to the scrubs. “What are you gonna tell him? She was recording fever temps; we had to stop her?”
He drew his shoulders back, found his height. His glasses were outdated, his hair thinning and losing its color. Behind that was a slight attractiveness, a nice trim in his jaw and cheekbones.
“My advice,” she said to him, “do your job, your one job. Keep us from getting out.”
Mendenhall led Pao Pao to an open space on the bay floor, closer to her line of patients. She squared to the nurse, offered a shrug.
“Sorry, Doctor,” said Pao Pao. “It made sense.”
“Don’t apologize. It does make sense. It’s smart medicine. Running comparative charts between their symptoms and floor activity makes total sense for the good of this entire floor.”
Pao Pao offered her tablet. “I’ll send these, then, to you.”
“But then stop. For a while, stop. Let’s stay out of their way.”
Pao Pao looked back to their patients, her way of clearing.
Mendenhall could see that she was confused, maybe a little bit hurt. Mendenhall felt the need to protect her, to keep her from her own good sense, from her capable person. A person Mendenhall was about to abandon and betray. How does a body at once protect and betray another? How torn could she be and still navigate her way out?
She should’ve just gone, just done it.
45.
Mendenhall hung her lab coat on the right edge of her cubicle.
There it was. She hurried to the locker room. Its emptiness disappointed her. She had hoped for some company, a colleague or two to chat with, to test her volition and demeanor.
The hollow sound of her locker door and the still air only bared her thoughts. She scrubbed to her elbows, as though for surgery. She put on a fresh tracksuit and running shoes. It felt good to change her socks.
She sent one thing to her aunt: Say my name and scritch behind his ears.
An immediate reply sounded, but she let it go, a first thing for Silva.
She left her cell and key card in the locker. After removing the cash and zipping the bills into a pocket, she left her wallet. She remembered to leave the latch unlocked.
She met Mullich in the cafeteria. He bought her food and juice and made her eat. She passed on the sandwich but enjoyed a melon salad with mint.
“How did you get this?” She motioned toward the honeydew and mint tucked in her cheek.
“The cook’s actually a real chef. If you bring him things, he’ll prepare them for you. Gives him something fun to do.”
“You know this place better than any of us.” She tapped the table with her finger.
He took the opportunity to take hold of her hand. This startled her, but she enjoyed the gentle length of his fingers. He looked at her eyes. He released a tight roll of money, the size of a cigarette, into her palm. He continued to lace his fingers in hers, continued to look.
“Listen,” he said, “you’re being watched. We’re being watched. What you’re trying to uncover out there they don’t want known.”
He cautioned her with his eyes, kept her from looking away, from scanning. The cafeteria was still noisy and messy, smelling of bleach. With taste and touch, Mullich had separated her from that, found her respite in the crowd.
“Then how can I possibly do it?” she asked.
“I brought you here—to the cafeteria—because this is where you start.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
He told her what to do. He reminded her of the emptiness she would sense down there, down there in the very bottom, in that dead air between earth and building.
46.
Mendenhall left the table. Mullich remained, feigning interest in his salad. She walked toward the swinging doors of the kitchen, veered left at the fire extinguisher, found herself in the dead end of the little hallway that Mullich had described for her. She checked for followers, saw none. The outline of the dumbwaiter was thin as a pencil line where Mullich had cut the paint seal covering the relic. Hands and weight pressed to the panel, Mendenhall pushed in and up. Nothing gave, but there was a cracking noise. She wondered if it came from within her.
A woman—a nurse, of course—appeared at the open end of the hall, looked dumbly at her. Mendenhall pretended to be stretching for a run. She glared sideways at the woman, scared her off.
With another shove, the panel lifted, pulling Mendenhall forward, a drop in her stomach. She hadn’t really believed Mullich until this moment, this little fall of surprise. A musty coolness drifted from the dark cube. Whoever had sealed the relic had left a mason jar, an impromptu time capsule holding a dried rose, a Betty Boop figurine, a Vegas shot glass from the Golden Nugget, and a handful of marbles. When was the last time anyone had shot marbles?
She scooted the jar to a back corner and tried to imagine herself folded inside there. A caf worker slammed through the kitchen doors but could not see her, or made no effort to see her. Mendenhall took a breath, as if readying for a dive, and hurried herself into the cube. She was able to lift her head slightly, to wrap her arms around her knees. The panel fell, and the dark was overwhelming. The flash of phosphenes glided across her vision. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were opened or closed.