Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital

“I only have three patients,” said Cindy Flemm when she saw Jemma coming down the hall, “and I’m late for rounds. It’s my first time being late. Josh said they take away your patients, if you’re late.”

“Wouldn’t that be great?” Jemma said. “I think they give you more, though.” They walked together down the hall, Cindy going over the numbers on her three face-sized index cards.

“Josh has this fancy PDA, but I like the cards better. What’s your system?”

“Toilet paper,” Jemma said. “Slow down there, Speedy.”

“Sorry,” Cindy said, not slowing. She got to the conference room a few paces ahead of Jemma, darted in, then popped back out to hold the door. “Sorry,” she said again, and Jemma heard, Sorry you’re pregnant, Sorry everyone is afraid of you, and Sorry you’ve become useless.

Dr. Tiller looked up at her and gestured toward an empty seat. Timmy looked at her, too. Ethel Puffer, pulling a plate of brownies toward herself, waved. Josh was presenting a patient.

“She looks a little yellow this morning,” he was saying. “Do you think the botch could be getting to her liver?”

“Many things are possible, Dr. Swift,” said Dr. Tiller. “And some unpleasant business impossible today might be tomorrow’s reality. But finish your presentation and then we’ll consider those things.” Josh blushed. Jemma broke in before he could go on.

“Anika has a pneumo,” she said.

“I just looked at her film,” said Timmy. “It was fine.”

“When was it taken?”

“This morning, of course. It was fine. I went over it with Dr. Pudding.”

“Well, she’s got one now — it’s probably too small to warrant a tube but somebody should keep an eye on it. And Janie has a renal abscess and a little fluid in her pericardium and Dr. Neder is about to dissect her aorta. She should go to the unit right away. I’m going down there next. Want me to see if there’s a bed?”

“Have you examined the patients, Dr. Claflin?” asked Dr. Tiller.

“Of course,” Jemma said, which was true; she had examined them in her way, walking by every room and pausing by the door to direct her attention inside.

“And you’re quite sure about these assertions?”

“Sure as ever,” Jemma said, getting back up.

“How much fluid is a little fluid?” asked Timmy.

“About ten cc’s,” I think.

“Rounds aren’t over, Dr. Claflin,” said Dr. Tiller.

“I’m a busy lady, Dr. Tiller. If I notice anything else I’ll give you a call.” She waddled to the door, staring straight ahead.

“Don’t you want a brownie?” Ethel asked. Jemma reached behind her back, waved and hurried out, but she slowed as soon as she was in the hall. She wasn’t really a busy woman. She had nothing to do all day but her mystic snooping, and rounding took only as long as a walk through the wards. She couldn’t bear to go to the Council chamber yet, though she had a pile of papers to read and sign there. Instead she went downstairs, avoiding the ramp because she didn’t want to get caught up in a string of conversations. It was like a poll, she supposed, how every third person stopped her to say, I think you’re doing fine — this is all just craziness, but every second person scowled or turned their eyes to the floor or actually scolded her or lectured her on the fate of tyrants. The angel put her approval rating at 47 percent, not, Jemma figured, enough to save her, though the process that would decide her political future was not so grossly democratic as a recall.

Connie’s bar was open all the time now — Karen’s had closed, not just because she was dead but because no one else could make coffee like she did, and the wet black espresso grounds looked too much like what was leftover after the botch finished with a body — full of daytime lushes and shirkers, extra people who were too depressed by the new circumstances of their community to dance or stand on their heads in front of their class, but unwilling to leap back into the business of taking care of the sick. They were rare and distinctly unpopular. Among Jemma’s unfinished work in the Council was a resolution that would draft every last one of them into service again, but for now they were miserable and free, and this morning she was one of them, too.

“Hey, honey,” said Connie, as Jemma took a seat next to Dr. Chandra, the only other patron. “Shall I surprise you?” Jemma nodded, and Connie served her up a tall glass of alcohol-free Impeachment Punch, complete with a tall stick of fruit-kebab and a twirling umbrella. “Drink it all down,” she said. “It’s good luck.”

“Does that mean I’ve got your vote?”

“Honey,” Connie said, tossing her stringy hair over her shoulder and shaking her wattle in a way that Jemma knew she saved for very serious pronouncements. “You know I’ve got to hear the evidence. We all do. We’ve made our rules and now we have to lie in them.”

“You’ve got my vote,” said Dr. Chandra. “Not that it matters. Not that anything matters.”

“Darling,” said Connie. “Darling, don’t put yourself down. Of course it matters. Not very much, but it does. You just have to hang in there and try not to put yourself down to much, until you’re recovered. Then you’ll see. You’re going to stand so tall your head will scrape the skylights.”

“Whatever,” said Dr. Chandra. That was her line, the same one she spoke to all the sad souls she ministered to down here. The botch had put them in a slump like it put others into respiratory failure. They just had to be patient, and keep in their heart a willingness to let the sun shine in when it rose again, as it surely, surely would, Honey. To Jemma it was as viable and stupid as any other sort of pep talk, colder but just as effective, which was to say not at all, as the ones that Rob gave her.

“Thanks,” Jemma said to Dr. Chandra. “It does matter.” She looked at her watch: there were still five hours until her trial.

“Everyone’s going fucking crazy,” he said. “What they’re doing to you is crazy, and all the other shit is crazy, too. It’s the Program, back again to claim us all. Why would they let us out, just to start it all over again? What am I supposed to do now?”

“That’s botch-talk, Honey,” said Connie.

“Maybe,” he said. “It’s probably in my brain. Sometimes I think I can see it, when I close my eyes. It’s big and tall and hulking. It looks just like Tiller. It’s probably there… Do you see it?” He spun on his stool and grabbed Jemma’s hand. She did see it, not in his brain but tucked away in his abdominal organs, a seemingly impotent series of shadows.

“No,” she said.

“Lighten up, Botchcake,” said Connie.

“Lighten up,” she says. “Tell it to Dr. Tiller, coming for me with her red dripping claws.”

“They need everybody they can get,” Jemma said.

“Don’t give me that,” he said, tearing his hand away from her. “Any moron will do in a hopeless situation. Anybody can ask the angel for anti-arrhythmia potions. And I may be just another moron, but I’m not her moron, not yet. She can just fuck off.”

“Well,” Jemma said, taking another sip of her punch. She was about to whisper, A little fucking off might do her good, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Ishmael.

“Hello, handsome,” said Connie. Dr. Chandra blushed and looked into his drink.

Ishmael ignored them both. “We need to talk,” he said to Jemma.

Dr. Snood had launched his impeachment proceedings in the thirtieth week of the flood — it took another week to bring the matter to a trial presided over by Dr. Sundae. Jemma hadn’t even realized she could be impeached — the protocol was been hidden in a sub-sub-paragraph of the constitution, something she hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to, because it was boring and because she knew that the laws had been composed with the expectation of never needing them; nobody thought they’d still be floating around when her forty-month term expired. Offenses and conditions warranting impeachment included being caught in a lie, egregious public sexual misconduct, acting against the interests of the hospital in collusion with a foreign power (should one ever be encountered), verbal or physical abuse of a child, murder, insanity, and willful harm of a patient.