Mercy 6

by David Bajo

  18.

  When Mullich returned to the lab they had to explain

  themselves. Claiborne had already moved back to Verdasco’s body, drawing Silva with a nod. He must have sensed the architect’s approach, the breach in his underworld. Mendenhall sat alone by the laptop, the video still looping, caught.

  Mullich let the door ease shut behind him. He sterilized his hands with lotion, pulled on fresh gloves, all while scanning the others in the room, the screen displays. Everything was there for him. Mendenhall started to explain, then caught herself. This was Mullich. She returned his gaze and drew back from the desk, letting him see. Claiborne and Silva continued their work, innocent.

  Mullich stood above Mendenhall and watched the loop.

  Intermittently he glanced back to the bodies. Then he moved to Claiborne’s desk, studied the scans showing the primary trauma patterns.

  When Mendenhall joined him, she said nothing.

  “In these two,” Mullich pointed to the scans of Dozier and Verdasco, “the cone is reversed.”

  “It’s not the cone we’re—I’m—focused on.” Mendenhall found a laser pen on Claiborne’s desk. She drew the bead of light across both diagonals, slashing the brainstems. Then she aimed it at the scans of the frontal lobes, Verdasco’s lung, Dozier’s liver, the vague clouds in each.

  “These show incipient hemorrhaging in peripheral organs.

  Major organs.” She let Mullich see, just see.

  “You think that,” Mullich pointed toward the video, “happened to them?” He held his hand toward the bodies.

  “Not exactly.” Mendenhall led him to Verdasco. Claiborne stepped aside, one eyebrow raised as he looked at her. Silva pressed Verdasco’s chin, extending the throat.

  “The body reacts in known ways, according to preset nerve patterns. We develop these as we go through life. Kisses, caresses, slaps, pinpricks, falls, dives into water that violently strain our necks. Innocent, little things we never really register. Things that begin in utero.

  “These bodies didn’t roil like that gel block. The nerve patterns just reacted as if they did, as if they would. As if they were shot through. The most vital and liquid organs anticipated hydrostatic shock, began to hemorrhage along the far nerve endings. The end of a whip. But without the whip.”

  She lunged toward Mullich, her fingers flashing straight to his eyes. He drew back. Silva gasped.

  “Like that,” said Mendenhall, keeping her hand raised, her fingers spiked before his eyes. “Actually, exactly that.”

  She lowered her hand. “Your body registered that all over the place. You closed your eyes, obviously. But feel. Look.” She motioned toward Mullich’s hands which had balled into fists.

  “And your heart,” she said as Mullich looked at his fists, opened them. “Well, maybe not your heart.” She motioned toward Silva.

  “But hers, yes. And your toes, I bet.”

  Mullich had gone slightly tiptoe. He lowered himself.

  “That’s her theory,” said Claiborne. “We’re testing the tissue samples. We have lances from all areas of hemorrhage.”

  “I’m right until they prove me wrong,” said Mendenhall.

  She sensed Claiborne’s amusement.

  “At least that’s how it should be,” she told Mullich. “But stupid me. I reversed everything, right from the start. I made that call. So they get to be right until they prove themselves wrong.”

  19.

  She hadn’t realized the dead were leaving. She didn’t know until she stood in the lower bay with Silva and Mullich, until after she had followed them past the turn to the morgue. After the turn her steps numbed, turned to dreams. Silva and Mullich were in full cover, including caps. Mendenhall suddenly felt naked. She pulled up her mask, tried to disguise her ignorance. Silva didn’t seem to notice as she stood near the sealed slider, hands crossed.

  Mullich did, watched Mendenhall adjust her mask, tighten her gloves.

  The bodies were being turned over to Disease Control. Claiborne had shooed her and Mullich away, away with Silva. He remained with the bodies in the lab.

  Mendenhall took her place in line by the exit, pretending.

  Something clanged on the other side. Silva pressed the buzzer.

  They heard the turning of the outside crank-handle. The steel slider lifted with a gasp, and the DC techs entered immediately, dressed in full gear, spacemen in Mendenhall’s dream. She couldn’t see their faces. There were four, one pointing orders, three heading back toward the lab to fetch the bodies from Claiborne. The suits slowed their movements. The leader handed Mendenhall a cap, which she put on immediately. She could tell by the straightness of his arm that there was nothing to say, no room for anything but the literal.

  He could have been expecting her, forewarned.

  The waiting truck, with its door rolled up and its ramp down, was white inside, a lab almost, with beds bunked along its side walls. Looming behind the truck, just beyond the entry light, a camouflaged jeep idled, its occupants hidden behind tinted windows.

  The DC people returned to the bay with the bodies on gurneys.

  The bodies were sealed in white bags. Mendenhall tried to identify them, found that she could. Dozier was the longest, Fleming the widest, Verdasco the thinnest. She recalled his cheekbones, how they reflected his hip points, paled the color of his skin.

  Soon after they were up the ramp, the slider closed and she was alone again with Mullich, Silva, and three empty gurneys.

  20.

  When they returned to the lab they shed their masks and gloves. Mullich and Silva removed their caps. Mendenhall kept hers in place, wondering how her hair looked. Mullich appeared fresh from the barber. Silva’s black hair cascaded into form and then shone even more as she pulled it into a ponytail.

  Who were these people? She calculated the hours of her current shift. She was due a shower.

  High on the far wall of the lab hung four large screens showing the four bodies in 3-D grids, blueprints. Claiborne stood working the desktop that controlled the screens. Like his main desk, that table was also a standing one. She wished she had his posture. His shift was just as long as hers.

  For a moment, the only real movement was the roiling display left on Mullich’s screen. When Mendenhall focused there, she saw that it had been changed. She moved to it, felt Mullich and Silva turn with her.

  On screen, the gel-block ballistic experiment had been replaced by another loop. This one showed the very old and famous clip of the circus strongman taking a cannonball to his stomach. Over and over, in slow motion, the cannon fired point-blank into the man’s belly, the huge iron ball trampolining harmlessly away while the strongman stood his ground. Claiborne had muted the sound, but Mendenhall heard it anyway, the prolonged and hollowed groan. Mullich and Silva were kind enough not to chuckle, but Mendenhall felt their smiles behind her.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “But it shows the same thing, just from the polar opposite. And I bet the guy died from it. Eventually.” She paused the video at the point of impact, the ball buried in the man’s stomach, just missing his lower ribs. “It’s the fat that saves him.

  And those big legs. But look, in this second he’s a bag of jelly with eyes and a mouth.” She pointed to the grotesque flap of his arms, the impossible angles of his elbows, the lifeless hands. “And there in the extremities you see the most damage being done.”

  She felt the sting of tears, a mix of frustration and fatigue. She set the loop into motion again and sympathized with the strongman.

  “Screw them,” she said. “Right, big fella? Screw them.”

  She headed to the surgeons’ lounge to take a nap. She would wake up and this nightmare would be over. Thorpe’s quarantines would expire into mere advisory and high caution, controlled exits.

  All the beds and chairs and couches in the surgeons’ lounge were taken. On one bed two nurses had doubled up, both snoring.

  She considered waking them, claiming the space. But her h
eart rate was up.

  Before she could leave the lounge, she felt a message ping. Two surgeons looked up from their magazines, one a cigar, the other a men’s health. At first Mendenhall thought to take it outside. But it was the magazines, their sheen. And the surgeons, with their legs crossed, their eyes going from the shallow pages to her, the disheveled ER fool who might mess with a personal communication to the outside. Her aunt started with the dog again.

  My friend loves Cortez.

  Give him.

  That cold?

  Mendenhall clenched against a sad shiver, a hurt that dropped along her left side. The surgeon with the cigar magazine appeared to notice, recrossed his legs, and pushed his pages flat and away.

  Give.

  Wait.

  She had nothing, no reply. She looked to the surgeons, and they turned back to their magazines, the health one first, then, a second later, cigar.

  How are you doing?

  Surviving. Scratch behind his ears for me.

  She took the elevator to recovery, found an empty physical therapy room, took off her cap, changed into scrubs, and stepped onto the treadmill. She set the incline and pace, began her run. She closed her eyes and pictured the trails outside, orange-lit in the night, shadow-crossed, air something between cool and humid—but moving, brushing her face and neck.

  When she opened her eyes she was startled by how much time had passed. Next to the LCD recording minutes was her pulse, the rate higher than what she felt. Her legs still thrummed with energy, ready to begin, amplifying her sense of disconnection, the illusion that the body is not the self. That particular defense mechanism.

  Even the sheen of sweat was not hers; it was cool and cleansing.

  She had once had an arrival who had dragged himself with his elbows for more than a mile. In an advanced stage of alcohol poisoning—years of poisoning combined with one more final lethal dose—he had lost function in his lower body. He had dragged himself to her because he did not want to die alone. He remembered her but could not remember anyone else in his life.

  “How?” she asked him. An athlete in his prime could not have done what this derelict had done. He looked at her as she pressed two fingers to his carotid pulse. She eased the pressure, let it be just a touch, the last thing he felt.

  She heard the door to the Physical Therapy room open behind her. She remained on the treadmill, waited to hear some nurse’s apology, the “Sorry, Doctor” that always grated on her nerves.

  Instead she heard Claiborne’s voice.

  “Those things never quite cut it for me.”

  She turned to him but stayed on the treadmill, surfing a little as it eased to a stop. “You need to find your inner hamster.”

  He had shed his lab clothes, stood straight in his shirt and tie, thin leather belt neat about his waist. “You have a much better imagination than I do.”

  “I dunno. Cannonball Man was pretty imaginative.”

  “I apologize for that.”

  “No,” she said. “I deserved it. It’s your lab.”

  He let the door close. “Okay. Here we are on neutral ground.”

  He opened his hands to her.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I asked Mullich.”

  “That’s scary. He’s scary.”

  “He guessed the surgeons’ lounge first. If that’s any consolation.”

  The ground did not feel neutral. The slant of the treadmill matched the tilt in her senses. She asked anyway. “What do you think it is? If you had to stop now, if all information stopped now?

  What would you say?”

  Claiborne crossed his arms, angled his waist to one side. “Virus.

  Hemorrhagic, fast like dengue HF, but obviously much faster. Not very contagious. Has to get into the stratum basale, start there, burst there. They got it in some weird way that isn’t being repeated.

  Mullich’s work is actually perfect for us here, centering on locale, degrees of separation among the four. DC taking the bodies is good. They can do much better work than I. They should reduce Thorpe’s control. They’ll get us out of here faster.”

  She fingered the rail of the treadmill. “I imagine them to be just like Thorpe. Thorpe squared. Men with protocol are worse than men with guns.”

  “Protocol will protect us. Protocol will release us in the morning.”

  “Protocol is ego.” She gripped the rail. “Literally. It’s ego put into writing.”

  “Ah, right. Dr. Metaphor.”

  “You want me to think in metaphor. I can do that. I can drink that poison. I think what’s most viral is the protocol and consensus.

  I think we just released it when we opened the morgue door. Now Thorpe is outside as well as inside.”

  Her workout scrubs had become clammy. Claiborne looked freshly dressed, relaxed in fine clothes. I run more than he does, she thought. I should be faster. I should look like that.

  “Okay,” said Claiborne. “Then what do you think it is? If we had to stop here?”

  “I would guess you’re right. But that shock is involved more.

  Toxic or physical.” To think pragmatically lifted her. She rolled her shoulders. She guessed this was an extension of Claiborne’s apology and liked him for that.

  “You know a virus that induces toxic shock?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not thinking that way. I’m thinking in terms of traumatic reaction. That the bodies responded as though toxic or physical impact occurred. Because it’s new. Even if no toxin or ballistic occurred, the nerves reacted as though they had or were about to. Isn’t that what TSS is? A physiological overreaction to a minor but unanticipated toxin?”

  He considered this, or pretended to, pulled at the back of his neck and looked askance. They were first and last. She knew this.

  There would always be too much information in between their specialties. He knew this, too, was calculating that gap, how far to lean her way.

  “I’m glad I found you. Like this.” Claiborne rested his hand on the door handle. “Disease Control will find whatever it is before I do. I never find the new stuff. We just lead them to it. They’ll find no reason for containment. We’ll be running the trail tomorrow.

  Take a shower and a nap.”

  He left the room, turning his shoulders in that way doctors do, showing their expert backs.

  Instead of a shower, she filled one of the metal whirlpools in the room with cool water, not mixing any heat. She stripped, dropped the scrubs into the hamper, and lowered herself into the water.

  The chill didn’t hit her until waist level, then increased around her breasts, forcing a shiver. She saved her head for last, pausing for breath before complete submergence. Underwater, eyes closed, she felt the jolt of the chill melt into relief. Sweat and salt and oil lifted in ribbons from her skin. To her surprise, she wanted to remain there, down there at the bottom of the big bucket. She imagined herself first as a specimen in a jar, then as an experiment growing in an old sci-fi flick.

  21.

  Mendenhall dressed, her clothes the same but at least freshly aired. In front of the PT room’s sink and mirror, she pulled her hair into a ponytail. She found an elastic finger splint as a clasp, enjoyed the tight sting along her nape. She applied tinted balm to her lips, then wiped the excess over her cheekbones, raising some color there. Her cell buzzed on the counter.

  Pao Pao. Mendenhall let the message come in and finish. She stared at herself in the steel mirror, thought she looked okay, still a catch because she was a doctor. This was a desperate ploy for normalcy. A message from Pao Pao could not mean normal.

  Mendenhall held the cell to her ear, close but not touching. The nurse’s flat tone was there, but the Samoan accent was in there, too, downward pulls: three arrivals, one very different. Hurry.

  The “hurry” meant be the first.

  When Mendenhall moved away from the counter, she thought of a blur of herself remaining in front of the mirror—staying, looking okay, ceding all c
ontrol.

  Movement in the ER was occurring in concentric circles, reminding Mendenhall of old swimming movies. The innermost circle contained three gurneys and spun with the direction and momentum of arrival. The outer circle of floor EMTs and nurses counterspun with the tangent of escape, with rubbernecking. The murmur swelled until Mendenhall broke through the circles.

  Two gurneys were more hystericals, pain and fever, a nurse and an aide wearing ICU colors. The third gurney was still rolling, pivoted on back wheels. Pao Pao was reaching to catch it. She was the only one attending it—and it was clearly the reason for the this-way-that-way sway of the crowd. Mendenhall immediately recognized this arrival: Lual Meeks.

  Meeks was physical plant, an experienced janitor like Enry Dozier. He was a guy all the doctors and nurses liked to identify as a friend, even though they knew nothing about him, nothing outside his ability to chat up anyone. Mendenhall was the only person in the entire hospital who didn’t like him. She believed he was, at heart, a misanthrope. She didn’t like the way his look lingered an extra second or two after his final good wish. She noticed that he did this with everyone, looked one or two seconds longer, his eyelids lulling, thoughts private.

  But Lual Meeks was dead. He lay sideways on the gurney, which was absurdly wrong. Whoever had attended him first had just tossed him onto the gurney, brought him, spun him into the bay, and run. Pao Pao, in gloves, mask, and chest apron, was the only one near him, stopping the gurney’s careen. No one had even bothered to help her tie her apron.

  Mendenhall cinched it for her and then took the gloves and mask. She looked at Meeks as she prepped, pulled the gloves tight to her fingertips, ready for touch. Meeks’s eyes were open, softened into that look she did not trust, as though he had just told her how young she looked today, how she looked like a goddamn Olympic pole-vaulter.