Cassie Alexander: Shapeshifted

I was quiet while she gave me the rest of the tour. There were three small rooms that they saw people in, in addition to Dr. Tovar’s private office, and a slightly larger office in the center of the building with an attached break room. Then she put me into the first patient room and said, “Wait here.”

I waited. I tried keys until I found the one that unlocked the cabinets, so I could figure out what was where. I was shoving boxes of gauze aside when the doors opened behind me and a man walked in.

“He’s got a fever. His name is Frank,” Catrina called from the hall behind him.

I knew hazing when I saw it—or smelled it. I stepped aside, and gestured for him to sit down on the table. He was Caucasian, but he’d been in a lot of sun. He stumbled over to the table, leaned against it for a bit like he might puke or fall to the floor, before remembering to turn around and sit down.

He had an odor like stale beer and pee and whatever else you smell like when you never take a bath and you’ve worn the same pants for a month.

“Hello, Frank. How can I help you?”

He looked me up and down—even his gaze was disgusting. Between my nurse radar and a lifetime of being female, I knew then that the next phrase out of his mouth was going to be inappropriate.

“You can give me a kiss,” he said slowly, leaning dangerously forward.

I put a hand on one shoulder to press him back upright. “No, thank you. Why’re you here?”

He laboriously rolled up one sleeve, revealing the scars of living down here. Divots of healed ulcers from skin popping, and some straight cuts over his wrists, maybe self-inflicted when he was sober. The price of hard living and infrequent access to medical or mental health care.

Not finding what he wanted on that arm, he rolled up the sleeve of the other, and I saw it. A wound dressing that was almost as grimy as he was, right in the bend of his arm. He’d punctured himself either with a dirty needle or into an unclean site, and pushed germs from the outside world inside his flesh where they could grow.

I knew from my own brother that there weren’t any safe needle exchange sites in this town. I pulled on an extra set of gloves.

Unfortunately, looking at his wound required being in breathing range of him. I tugged at the tape, which had fused with his arm hair. He grunted in pain until I managed to rip it loose. When I did, the packing at the center of the abscess popped out. It smelled worse than he did, and I was surprised there weren’t maggots inside waving hi.

“You wanted this changed?” I asked him. His whole arm was red and swollen, and I didn’t need a thermometer—I could feel his fever through my gloves. He seemed stuporific. Was this his natural state? Pickled from alcohol? Or had the infection gone to his brain? It was hard to say when you didn’t know someone’s baseline. “Hang on.”

I grabbed an entire box of alcohol wipes out of the cabinet, and started using them one by one to draw grime away from the wound, to find its margins. The surrounding area was puffy and tight, and the center gleamed with lymph and pus. Once I determined the edges of his infection—heated swollen skin down almost to his wrist and going up his upper arm, like the points of a flame—I made a face.

“You’re going to need some antibiotics.” From a hospital. I didn’t envy whoever was going to have to start his IV. He muttered something; I didn’t know if he was talking to himself or to me. “I’m gonna get the doctor, sir.”

I took a step toward the door, then turned. “Hey,” I said, and held up a hand to wave until his eyes tracked on me. He did live down here, after all. “Do you know anything about Santa Muerte?”

With his good hand, he tapped a cross over his chest. And then he passed out on me.

I stuck around to help watch him until the paramedics came. He woke up a few times and tried to get out of the room, until I redirected him. Luckily, he couldn’t talk well enough to refuse medical care. Nothing was sadder than a patient who was lucid enough to say, “Leave me alone, the liquor store closes at nine.” The paramedics navigated their gurney in through the narrow hall and out again like pros, lashing him down onto it with casual efficiency. Unsurprisingly, they already knew him by name.

Once they were done, Dr. Tovar came back from signing papers and jerked his chin at me. “Cellulitis? Good catch.”

Not really. Just looking at him, smelling him, you knew that he was going to have something. I’d bet money he was covered in MRSA. Good thing my immune system was already strong-like-bull from prior hospital time.

I couldn’t not wonder how my brother was doing. If he even knew about Mom’s cancer. If he even cared.

Frank had a mother too.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Dr. Tovar asked, eyeing me. He seemed concerned.

I shook my head, and caught back up with reality. “No. Just not used to working days yet is all. But I will be, by the end of this week,” I promised with a smile.

His gaze softened. Maybe he knew false bravado when he saw it. I bet he saw a lot of it down here. He exaggeratedly looked at his watch. “Why don’t you go to an early lunch then? There’s a bench in the parking lot in the back. Or you can eat inside.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded at me as he closed his office door.

I got my lunch out of the small fridge in the break room. There was no one else taking a break yet. Dr. Tovar wandered by again, called by Catrina into another one of the smaller rooms. I found the bathroom, then took myself on a repeat tour. There was one door that Catrina hadn’t opened. I tried the handle, and it gave. The men’s bathroom perhaps? Dr. Tovar was the only man I’d seen so far here. I peeked inside and saw a storage room, with a second small fridge at the back of it.

Medical fridges were different from house fridges; they were all lockable and stainless steel. I felt the weight of the keys in my pocket and fished them out, looking for the shorter ones that would fit its smaller lock.

One clicked, and I opened the door.

There were three racks with tubes in them. I reached in and picked one up. The tube had a red top, which matched its contents. I tilted it back and forth. It looked like blood to me.

“What are you looking at?” Caught, I jumped, dropping the test tube to find Catrina standing behind me.

“Nothing,” I said instinctively—even though I was. I regrouped and picked up the test tube on the ground. I held it out to her. “What are all of these for?” None of the tubes had a label.

“None of your business.” She took the tube from my hand and wedged herself beside me to replace it inside. I shuffled back out of her way while she slammed the fridge’s door and relocked it. Afterward she whirled on me. “I gave you the wrong set of keys.” She snapped her fingers and held her hand out.

There was no good reason to collect or keep label-less blood. But I’d just gotten hired. I couldn’t get fired before I managed to figure anything out. I frowned. Even if I gave her the keys back, I knew what I’d seen. Reluctantly, I dropped the key ring into her hand. “What’s all that about?”

“None of your business is what,” Catrina informed me, pocketing the keys, then glaring at me. “I don’t know why he hired you. Don’t be a brat.”

I swallowed. There was no space in this small room for me to get away from her. “I’m just asking why. It’s not like I’m going to tell anybody.”

She squinted at me, and her lips puckered thoughtfully. “I have you figured out now. You’re here because you’re a troublemaker.”

Proving myself to people today was taking an exhausting turn. This wasn’t an argument I could win—and if I was honest, she did have a point. “Obviously,” I said, and made a show of looking at my watchless wrist. “But it looks like I’m a troublemaker still on lunch break,” I said, and then I walked around her.