Chris Adrian - A Better Angel

Above them, while Bonnie moved her fingers over the lowest section of the keyboard and started a new song, Beatrice stepped off the balcony and began to float down. She managed a perfect landing on the piano, and sat down cross-legged on it, staring intently into the faces of Bonnie and Denis, who were not looking at each other. Bonnie stopped playing.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Sure,” said Denis. “Thanks. It’s weird how it got to me like that.” He did not plan ever to tell anyone that he had been in love with the jumping lady. He could not explain the attraction to himself; how would he ever explain it to someone else?

“I think it’s a good thing,” she said. “You’d make a good doctor.”

“No thanks.” A nearby elevator opened its doors and a security guard emerged from it. He approached them warily.

“You’re not allowed to be playing that piano,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” said Bonnie. “Whatever.” She launched into “Chopsticks.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to stop that.”

“If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to shoot me,” said Bonnie.

“Maybe we should be going,” said Denis.

“I’m enjoying myself,” said Bonnie. “Is it a crime to enjoy yourself in a hospital? Are people allowed only to suffer and die here?” She began to play “Für Elise.” The guard peered at their nametags and made notes in a small black book.

“We’re on our way,” said Denis, pulling at Bonnie’s arm.

“I’ll have to file an incident report,” the guard said.

“File away!” said Bonnie. She felt giddy. Perhaps it was the after-effect of having Denis in her arms, or of being next to him.

“I’ll see you up in the lab,” said Denis. He got up and walked away. She stopped playing and walked after him.

“Wait!” she said. “Let’s go find the food cart.” The guard walked away, thinking of all the patients wanting their sleep. Beatrice remained on top of the piano. She lay on her back and looked up all the way to the top of the atrium, seven stories up. She saw people walking by occasionally, along the balconies, carrying blood to the lab or moving a patient. She saw the beautiful Filipino woman who worked in the dietary department wheeling the third-shift food cart along the balcony and eating a candy bar.

She closed her eyes and imagined all her friends from the lab standing spread out on all the different levels and balconies while she herself floated above the piano. She imagined them calling out to one another: Olivia to Otto, Otto to Denis, Denis to her, she to Luke, Luke to Bonnie, and Bonnie to Denis.

When she returned to the lab, Beatrice found it in chaos. The respite they’d been enjoying was over, and things were very busy again. She sat in the window and watched Luke as he rushed around, looking hapless.

He felt lost in a rush of fluid. They were getting tests now not just for blood but for urine, and CSF, and all manner of effusions. Nursing assistants came and dumped specimens in great quantities at the window. There were even small pieces of people coming up now, discrete bits of organ or tumor to be processed and frozen for a pathologist to look at in the morning. Someone dropped off a whole human brain in a Tupperware container full of formaldehyde.

And there was much stool, most of it quite runny, packaged in blue plastic containers that looked to Luke a lot like the containers in which delis packaged their potato salad. In the hurry to get things done, he dropped one. He was acutely grateful that it didn’t break open on the floor. Instead it bounced and rolled, coming to rest nestled against Olivia’s shoe.

“Sorry,” he said.

“That’s okay.” Olivia had another moment of perversity in which she imagined picking up the container and throwing its soupy contents all over Luke, and all over the walls and windows of the lab, all the while shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“I’m getting very tired,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” he said. Much time had passed, though Luke barely noticed. It was almost five. He could go home at six. They all could, but he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. He wondered if one day he and Bonnie might leave together and go to his apartment. Otto wandered up from the chemistry lab.

“Make it stop,” he said. “I don’t want to work anymore.”

“I think it’s slowing down,” said Luke.

“Where’s Bonnie?” Otto asked, sitting down at one of the empty terminals.

“In the back,” said Olivia. “With Denis.” It was a quality of her perpetually sweaty palms that they made a sucking sound when ground together and rapidly pulled apart. She made those sounds now, and winked. In fact, Bonnie was only helping Denis do differential cell counts. He had forgiven her for causing a scene, and she had been so bold as to make plans with him for later in the day.

“I’ll be right back,” said Luke. He walked out of the lab, down the hall, and into the men’s bathroom. Beatrice followed right behind. She watched him at the urinal, craning her head around his side to get a glimpse of his penis. It was not very exciting, and she realized with a very mild sort of sadness that she did not really desire him physically. Rather, she dreamed of haunting him, of climbing unseen and unfelt into his single bed at night, of lying there on him and in him and by him while he gazed at the two-by-four-foot hole in his ceiling where the plaster had fallen down one night. He had woken with a start when it fell near the foot of the bed.

She leaned against the sink while he washed his face, then watched him stare into his own eyes in the mirror. Putting her face next to his, and staring where he stared, she could hear perfectly what he was thinking. It was, What’s wrong with me?

When Luke and Beatrice left the bathroom, the phlebotomists were arriving. Luke continued back to the lab, but Beatrice stopped to watch them pass. Every morning she came up to watch the arrival. It was like a parade. They came down the hall in twos and threes, some with their arms around each other, some having recently left the same bed. Their names were Alan, Elaine, Wendy, Randy, Eric, Arthur, Phuong, Louisa, Amanda, Loric, Oliver, Nathan, and Elizabeth. Beatrice thought they were all very pretty, especially Oliver, who had a humongous head and beautiful pale skin that was always pink and vibrant-looking from the cold when he arrived. He looked to Beatrice like the sort of boy who drank great quantities of milk.

She liked to smell them, because each one wore a different cologne or perfume. Some days she spent her whole morning following them around as they slipped in and out of patients’ rooms, drawing blood. But she would not do that today.

Today she waited patiently at the window and watched her friends as they finished up their work. She waited an hour before everyone was ready to go. It was customary for them all to go out to breakfast together. Otto suggested a pancake house. Everyone said that was a fine idea except Luke, who said he was too tired to eat and started off down the hall. Beatrice did not follow him right away. She paused to watch her other friends walk off together in the opposite direction. She sent a prayer after them.

Let it happen this way, she said, gathering up her hair and waving it at them as if that might make what she wanted for them so. Let it be that Olivia and Otto encounter in each other something lovely, and Denis and Bonnie inspire each other’s joy, and let something nice happen to Luke.

She knelt in an attitude of supplication and willed joy on her friends. In her mind’s eye she could see the future as she desired it to be: Denis and Bonnie kissing in the bitter cold inside her car while they waited for the engine to warm; Otto and Olivia rubbing their feet together as they watched a movie in his apartment, and falling asleep with their heads touching and their breath on each other’s faces. But for Luke she could imagine nothing.