Mickey Reichert - I, Robot - To Protect

“Me,” Susan said meekly.

Nate only bobbed his head, more in thought than answer.

Susan glanced up at the clock. It read twelve thirty; she needed to get back to her patients. Sweeping the sandwich container into the bag with the rest of her uneaten lunch, she headed back toward the unit. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Nate said, rising from his chair and heading back to his own work.

The unit phone felt like a lead weight in Susan Calvin’s hands as she punched in the Vox number for Dr. Sudhish Mandar and watched it enter the callback number. She considered using her own Vox but imagined she had a better chance of getting an answer if the neurosurgeon knew for certain the call originated from a number inside the hospital.

To Susan’s surprise, the callback came almost immediately. She picked up the receiver, her palms suddenly slippery. She felt as if someone had dried her mouth with a sponge and then shoved it, in a lump, down her throat. “Hello?”

A male voice in a thick, subcontinental Indian accent came through the receiver. “This is Dr. Mandar.”

Dr. Mandar himself. Susan had expected a resident or fellow, even a secretary or nurse to return the call for him. “This is Dr. Susan Calvin. I’m an R-1 on inpatient peds psychiatry. I have a patient —”

Anger tinged the voice. “You paged me during surgery!”

“What?” The word was startled from her.

“How dare you disturb the greatest neurosurgeon in the world in the middle of a procedure. I’ll have you know —”

Susan quailed, and her thoughts muddled. On her M-4 surgery rotations, the attendings and residents had always handed over their Vox to a nurse or unit clerk while they scrubbed. In her experience, surgeons never answered their own calls while performing an operation.

Dr. Mandar’s voice got louder, shriller, and ever more enraged. “The tiniest interruption can mean the difference between life and death. Who do you think you are that you can bother me while I’m completing —”

Susan stopped listening. She could not bear the thought of abandoning Starling, not when she had screwed up her courage to face the self-proclaimed greatest neurosurgeon in the world. She waited only until Mandar took a breath to say in a voice edged with deadly calm, “You can’t shout at me like this. I had no idea you would answer your phone in the middle of an operation. When you’re ready to have a civil conversation, call me back.” Decisively, she hung up the receiver.

Only then, tears stung Susan’s eyes. She found herself trembling in every part, and that only fueled her anger. She doubted anyone had ever spoken to Sudhish Mandar like that, and she wondered how long it would take for the consequences to reach her, how long before she lost her residency at Manhattan Hasbro.

Worried someone might see her in such a state, Susan wiped the tears from her eyes and sought a distraction. She saw the younger children lining up to use the outside playground, including a heavyset biracial girl who could only be Sharicka Anson. The four-year-old wore a pink dress with embroidered flowers, her hair swept back into a curly ponytail. Through the one-way glass, Susan watched Sharicka reach forward and pinch the boy in front of her.

The boy whirled, snarling, “Cut it out!”

Eyes locked on the television, Sharicka appeared innocently startled by his sudden movement, and the boy slapped the larger girl behind her instead. The other girl screamed bloody murder.

The nurse dashed over, pulling the two children on either side of Sharicka out of line and scolding them. Susan could not hear her words, but her face looked angry. The two youngsters waved their arms and shouted in reply, loudly enough for Susan to catch most of the conversation.

“She pinched me. Really hard.”

“I did not! He hit me for no reason!”

“She did, too.”

“It really hurt,” the girl said, sobbing.

Through it all, Sharicka remained focused on the television, appearing an oblivious spectator to the entire process. Susan suspected chaos broke out a lot in Sharicka’s vicinity; yet, somehow, she never became directly involved in the matter. Susan made a mental note to watch the girl closely, starting immediately.

Susan grabbed up her palm-pross and moved to the head of the line. The July sun beamed down upon the rainbow-colored playground, with its plastic slides, ladders, and runways. The sandbox contained the airy, antibacterial sand that had replaced the grit and cat turds that had characterized Susan’s own sandbox experiences growing up. A rideable ditch digger filled most of one corner, with pedals and levers for the children to dig in the sand.

A nurse unlocked the door. Susan went through first. The children followed, some pausing to blink in the direct sunlight and cautiously study their play area of choice. Others charged through the opening, heading pell-mell for the welcoming plastic structure, with its turrets, play bars, and tunnels.

Sharicka funneled through with the rest. Though she had surely played there many times, she scanned the equipment with a seasoned eye. Susan could almost hear the gears spinning in her little head as she marched to the tubes and ladders, climbed a slide, and rode down the plastic surface, bumping loudly against the sides. She seemed almost wooden in her play. She did not raise her arms to touch the wind, did not make “whee” noises, made no attempt to engage her caretakers or peers.

Susan feigned a complete lack of interest in the children, trying to look as if she were focused exclusively on her palm-pross and had only come outside to enjoy the beauty of the day. Sharicka went down the slide a second time, kicking and elbowing the sides but making no verbalizations. When she reached the bottom, she dug the toe of her shoe into a well-worn indentation in the recycled rubber. Soon, she became engrossed in it, scuffing at it with both feet while the boy at the top of the slide waited for her to move out of his way.

It soon became apparent Sharicka had no intention of clearing the path. Susan looked for the nurse and found her pushing a tall, silent girl in a swing, oblivious to the quiet drama unfolding at the slide. Susan did not interfere. She wanted to see what happened next.

“Sharicka, move,” the boy called down to her.

Sharicka continued exploring the worn spot without looking up, though she had certainly heard him.

The boy’s patience waned. “Sharicka, I’m coming down.” With that, he started down the slide.

Sharicka did not budge. Susan saw her roll an eye in the boy’s direction, but she did not step out of his way.

As he reached the bottom, the boy twisted sideways, hitting Sharicka in the side with his hip. Her knee came up as they fell, delivering a blow to his groin. As they tumbled over each other, he collapsed awkwardly to the ground, while she rolled a bit, then exaggerated it into a long, skidding movement that made it look as if she had sustained a heavy hit. She shrieked.

The nurse came running. “What happened?”

The surrounding kids started talking at once, describing the events of the last few moments from various angles. As Susan suspected, certain details became clear to the nurse. Sharicka had gone down the slide first. The boy had gone next and smashed into Sharicka. Therefore, it must be the boy’s fault.

Neither Sharicka nor her victim added much to the discussion. She only smiled, seeming to revel in the lecture the boy got about slide safety and in the tender way he walked, and let the description of the events play out in her favor. She headed to the other end of the play structure and crawled into a tunnel.

For several minutes, play continued without a problem. Then a smiling wisp of a girl entered Sharicka’s tunnel. Susan heard a thump. In an instant, the girl came out the other side, seemingly propelled and crying wildly. She had a red mark beneath her right eye that would surely bruise.