David Bajo - Mercy 6

Silva winced at another text, bit her lower lip. Anyone would have thought she was playing a game on the handheld. Anyone would have wanted to join her.

“And?” asked Mendenhall.

“He said to ignore you.” Silva started for the nurses’ station.

“No.” Mendenhall touched her sleeve. “Let’s go to waiting. Where Verdasco was found. I’ll get your nurse to come to us. Save you that trip. That round of chatter. You having to submit.”

Silva went with Mendenhall.

“How do you know it’s the trachea?”

“The way she described that breath. Fleming’s little puff. Then forward collapse. That’s trauma right above the bronchus. Extreme trauma. Maybe involving the heart, too. A really hard punch to the middle of the chest or back. Commotio cordis.”

“That kills boxers?”

“And schoolkids.”

“You think that woman punched Fleming?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Not an infection.”

Mendenhall stopped Silva with a simple elbow touch. They stood midhall, that given privacy in hospitals. Silva squared herself to Mendenhall and raised her chin in a straight manner, not a tilt of skepticism, irritation, or humor. She just waited, open.

“Look,” said Mendenhall, “that stuff with Fleming’s roomie. I wasn’t trying to counter you or put you in your place. Or get you fired. It’s just more efficient sometimes to be… personable. It’s not bedside manner. It’s a form of examination, a safe way of opening up the wound. And I mean that literally. The psychological and emotional wounds start to clot immediately, too soon, screwing up memory, screwing up facts.”

Silva remained still, her breathing thoughtful, her look searching.

“Most cases of commotio cordis are caused by projectiles. There was no projectile.”

“ All cases of infection are caused by organisms. There is no organism. No virus, prion, bacterium, viroid, fungus.”

“So far.”

“Right.” Mendenhall nodded toward the waiting area. “So far.”

Mendenhall and Silva stood above the lounge chair where Verdasco had been found. The waiting area was empty.

Mendenhall had called Pao Pao and told her what they needed from the ICU nurses’ station. She knew what Claiborne must have been thinking as he scanned Fleming’s chest and back.

Internal trauma with no external signs. That would just intensify Thorpe’s mission, give him evidence for a new infection. They were pushing water. The metaphor depressed her.

She looked at Silva for some relief. The tech brushed her tablet, reviewing, exchanging. She and Verdasco would have made a beautiful couple.

“You be Verdasco.”

“You’re closer to his height,” replied Silva.

“Lie back. Be him. Use what you know. Before the nurse gets here.”

Silva reclined in the armchair, leaned her head back, stretched her legs. Mendenhall spotted the nurse heading toward them, hustling down the hall with the fear of Pao Pao in her. She found a car magazine, thought of Verdasco’s delicate fingers and pretty eyes, and switched to a local magazine featuring the city’s symphony.

She laid this across Silva’s lap.

“It was more on his chest,” said the tech. She realigned the magazine, then repositioned her arms. She held herself still, throat extended, lips softly closed. Light brown skin, black hair, red lips, pretty death.

“Eyes open,” said Mendenhall.

The nurse yelped when she arrived at the scene.

When they were finished with the positioning and the nurse interview, Mendenhall led Silva toward one of the newest rooms in ICU. Some visitors had returned to the waiting area, coffees in hand.

“Where are we going?” asked Silva. “I’m finished. I can’t go to Peterson.”

“We’re not going to Peterson.” They arrived at the open entrance to the little arboretum. Mendenhall looked at her watch. “You still have ten minutes left on your hour. Thanks to me. Come.”

By the way Silva assessed the room, Mendenhall could tell this was her first visit. The tech registered things with small, exact movements of her head, eyes aimed forward, blinking in between adjustments. The room was a tall hexagon. The entire ceiling was a soft amber light filtered through a lattice. One wall was covered by a smooth waterfall, its receiving fountain bracketed by dwarf palms. Ficus trees stood in the four remaining corners, shading the benches that lined the walls. Two visitors, a couple, sat together.

They leaned forward, elbows to knees, gazing at the ceramic floor design, a kind of algebraic spiral.

“Welcome to Mullich’s head,” she said to Silva. “One corner of it anyway. It used to be a chapel.”

They sat together on one of the unoccupied benches. Ficus shadows fell across Silva’s neck and shoulders as she brushed her tablet. They hadn’t learned much from the nurse who had been summoned to Verdasco by a startled visitor. He had presented a faint, irregular pulse, though Mendenhall wondered about that, coming from a nurse with quivering fingers. But they were able to get the positioning exact, the floor measurements for Mullich.

Timing was just an estimation, as the visitor had only noticed Verdasco’s glazed eyes when she had glanced up from her magazine.

“We might be able to verify a closer time,” said Mendenhall, “if we can ever get to that visitor.”

“Thorpe put her in quarantine,” Silva replied.

“His bank, you mean.”

“Why do you always question Thorpe? It’s the right procedure. Why is it you against him? What about this hospital? People in this hospital?” Silva brushed something distasteful into her tablet.

“What about the truth?”

“Okay. The truth is Thorpe’s a narcissist. The worst kind—a smart one, a do-good one.”

“You’re no different.” Silva tapped her screen, not looking up.

Mendenhall clenched her jaw, closed her eyes, and inhaled the smell of the waterfall and potting soil. She really believed that the best thing to do was let everyone go home and take hot showers and watch for symptoms, that the worst thing to do was seal up and mix the hospital’s innards, its illnesses and emotions. This metaphor caused her to shudder. Why, really, were they doing this?

Silva misread. “Sorry.”

“No. You’re right.” Mendenhall looked up to the glow of the lattice. “But lucky for you that I am. Lucky for you all.”

Silva returned to her comfort zone, their comfort zone, the facts on her handheld. “The oddest thing is the set of times we do have. Fleming and Dozier fell within the same five-minute span, somewhere between seven twenty-five and seven thirty. Verdasco and Peterson could fit into that span as well. We haven’t ruled that out.”

“Verdasco.” Mendenhall massaged her forehead, keeping her fingers from her eyes. She so wanted to press her eyes.

“What about him?”

“He’s beautiful, no?”

“So?”

“I bet that other visitor looked at him. A lot. Snuck glances. Like clockwork. You know? We could figure out the time if we could talk to her. Then it would be points on a line. Two suggests a line. Three determines.”

“There’s Peterson. They found her in that ventilation room a little after seven thirty. A few minutes before they took her to you.”

Mendenhall bowed her head and rubbed her neck firmly, tried to create some pain. “Thorpe kept Peterson alive on paper to get her to his wing. He needs a patient. But Peterson was just as dead as the others.”

Silva probably never looked confused. But her expression was skeptical, one eyebrow lifted, nose angled to her tablet. She looked like she really wanted to go.

“When you get back to Dr. Claiborne, have him zap Verdasco’s brain stem.” With her finger almost grazing Silva’s neck, Mendenhall drew a line following the angle of the tech’s intricate jaw. “Center there. Tell him that’s what I say.”