Mercy 6 (25 page)

“I'm trying to get back to my wife. As soon as possible. I thought you were down with this.”

“You should go to her. Right now.”

He scowled, did not look away, let his expression soften a bit, brow still furrowed, chin lowered to a more thoughtful angle.

“You're different.”

“It's not contagious, Claiborne. For now, anyone could fall. For those two reasons, you should go. You probably could find your own way out, you down here in your domain.” She began a step toward him, one foot, one Mary Jane, then held it. “There are probably a lot of others like Cabral out there. Right now.”

“What kind of nap did you take?”

She opened her hands, held them near her hips. “I brought one to you.”

“One what?”

“Just go.” She closed her eyes and pictured him on the trail, that way he passed her, shoulders angry, waist thin and balanced. “I can do the scans. From here, I can do everything.”

Claiborne tapped his keyboard twice, vaguely looked at the overheads.

“You've changed. Why?”

“I went out.”

Claiborne closed his eyes, clenched his jaw.

“I needed to see a specialist. Then I followed the sirens.” One truth, one lie. “At the site. Where the five fell. I saw others who looked struck. Like Cabral.”

“You
brought
one?”

“Her name is Julia. I have her down here. Oxygen and fluids.

Stabilizing. Awake. Alive. I believe she'll make it.”

He blinked, tightened his lips, chewed thoughts.

“Look, Claiborne.
You
need to wake up. Thorpe's sending you crap. You know that. He's giving you the lab work but not the context. He doesn't need to give any of us the context. Because the context was predetermined a long time ago. Everyone's blind to anything outside it, especially him. Anything outside virus. But not you. You saw. You drew it. You know. It's trauma. It's ballistic. Those five fell at once. I saw. They came right to me.”

“You're insane.”

“The woman I went to traces the path. She sent me to a bar right near where the others were struck. She predicted it. Government people followed me there. They know there's something to my diagnosis.”

“She sent you? How?”

“She has mapped it all. That's one thing she does. She sent me to the thickest part.”

“Thickest part of what?”

“This.” She jerked her arms outward, opened her hands.

“This city.”

Claiborne's eyes lulled.

“You're searching for a virus,” she said. “You see its work and its aftermath. You can't find it. You operate under the premise that it exists, that it reproduces, that it spreads vertically, fast, synchronized, then hides. You consider nothing else.” She moved in close and pointed at his brow. “Nothing else.
That's
insane.”

She looked at her pointed fist, pulled it back. Claiborne eyed her fingers, her lips. She tried to hide any tremor but felt a bundle of pathologies. He seemed unconvinced.

“I went out and found something,” she said, close to a whisper.

“Something that threatens Thorpe and the wider stratagem.”

“So what's he do with you?”

“They will isolate me, Claiborne. They will silence me.”

“I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing. For you or them.”

She took a tight breath. She wanted to join him fully to her sense of danger, threat.

“Tell me. Where's Pao Pao?” Her lips were thick and dry.

Quarantine
. She had to think it before she could let herself hear it.

“Quarantine.”

If she let herself imagine this, she would break. She thought of pacing him on the trail, pushing a challenge. “And Silva, too, right?

Although my guess is she was too quick and less trusting. My guess she's moving around, mostly down here but cut off from you.”

“She's left a note or two.”

“And Mullich,” she said. “Mullich you can't figure.”

“Sometimes,” replied Claiborne. “Sometimes he's here.” He motioned to the room. “Sometimes he disappears. Sometimes—”

Claiborne lowered a shoulder. “He got you out. Didn't he?”

“He showed me a way. I got myself out.” She pointed back to the lab door. “Julia. I had to bring her in. None of the EMTs were going to take her. Were even going to consider her. She's here. With maybe a chance. That's what I have to give her. So go. You should just go.”

“I can't go.”

She grabbed a nearby glove box and threw it across the lab. She searched for something heavier. “You Path people. Down here in your holy basement. Why are you the only one down here? The others ran. Whoever was on shift down here with you. Tehmul ran on me when he got the chance. Who ran on you? Gonzales?

Stuart? Both? Thorpe left a long time ago. Dmir came in. Disease Control came in.”

“And it spread. Out there. And it went where you were.”

Mendenhall shook her head, bit her lip. “It struck. In a line predicted by a specialist. A specialist like us. It traveled vertically in a packed hotel, like this place. It presented itself in the thickest crowds. Like outside that bar.”

“That shows virus.”

“They all fell in the same second.”

“Then they were all exposed in the same second, and the virus has a precise incubation.”

“Despite different metabolisms, different immune systems, different diets, different life paths?”

“Virus works.”

“It will always work. We say, ‘Go viral. It went viral.' What the hell does that mean? It's just how we see things. It's lazy and inaccurate. It's handy. Common. And powerful.”

“You honestly think Thorpe and DC are disregarding evidence?”

“Even manipulating it. Forced observation. It's willful misinformation designed to gain power and control.
The
stratagem.”

“And yours? You breach containment. Go into the public sphere.

Bring someone in?”

“If you thought I was wrong, we wouldn't be standing here.”

“I'm barely standing here.”

“So go,” she told him again. “Use whatever passageway you have down here. Go be with your wife. Take her to the park. Raise a glass to me.” The light was gray; air vents purred. “Raise a glass to me.”

The ER proved a mistake. Claiborne had tried to warn her, offered to go gather the supplies for Julia. “They pretty much stay out of the basement. But they know you slipped containment and will come looking for you,” he had told Mendenhall. Her patients had been moved to a far wall. Her cubicle was occupied by Dmir. He was sipping from a mug and tapping her keyboard. His furrowed brow tried to convey concern but showed confusion. A curtained partition now cut the bay in two, cutting off flow and sight lines.

Extra beds had been moved in, lights added, pale music. Security stood in pairs.

And Pao Pao was gone.

In a few seconds her vantage point would be compromised.

She slid to the next corner. Nurses doing nothing at the station recognized her. One pointed, and a security pair turned. Mendenhall charted her path. Behind her an elevator chimed. She didn't know if it was too late to simply retreat, to return to the basements and survive containment there, work there, cooperate. Claiborne could only guess. He had warned her, but she had needed to see. She had thought she didn't.

It was Pao Pao, the notion of her taken from the floor.

Mendenhall tried to resist the possibility that she was the cause, that she had betrayed her floor, that she had betrayed Claiborne, was still betraying him by not telling him everything, especially about Silva.

Getting fresh IVs for Julia was definitely not an option. She moved with the open whisper of the elevator, lost her trackers, evaded the nurses. Had they stepped away from their station, two simple strides, they would have seen her. She made it to the old file room. Some EMTs and nurses were in there, sitting on the floor, leaning their shoulders against the wall. The inside fluorescents were off, and the outside parking lamps cast a solemn glow and long shadows. One nurse was smoking; others were sipping coffee.

None of them showed any interest in Mendenhall.

A bedpan in the middle of the floor was filled with ashes.

Another beside it contained three cigarette butts that had been straightened and reshaped. The smoking nurse passed her cigarette to the EMT on her right.

Mendenhall positioned herself against the wall.

“The ante is two butts or one whole.” The EMT spoke holding his inhale.

“I just want to sit here.”

“You,” said one of the nurses. “You started this.”

“You're mistaken.”

The EMT released his smoke. The next in line, a feline nurse, her long legs crossed, her feet bare, pinched what was left, inhaled, cheeks hollowed. “No. It's you,” she said in slow exhalation, the smoke powdering her words.

Mendenhall curled beneath the cloud. “I just need to sit for a while.”

“You mean hide.” The long nurse passed the cigarette, a white speck in the shadows. She followed with a languorous stretch, toes pointed, then spread.

“I'm not hiding.”

“You should be. Your nurse should've.”

Footsteps sounded outside the door, stopped. Mendenhall hunched more against the wall, dipped in the shadows of the others.

The door opened, and there was the tall silhouette of Mullich. He took a half step in and spotted her. She knelt forward, didn't know what to do with herself.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Hi.”

He retreated, motioned to someone in the hall, and made room for two security pairs. One pair remained in the doorway while the others swept in and reached for Mendenhall. They didn't let her stand. Their grip cut the blood flow in her arms. A sharp line of pain slashed diagonally through her left shoulder, just over the heart. She sought dignity, legs together, chin up, thinking of countless ER arrivals sprawling and crying and clawing their arms and legs, shirts or dresses riding up, vulnerable, surrendered, prey for the nurses and EMTs. She braced her arms and double-fisted her hands together, ready to take a swing if freed. She took aim at Mullich's jaw, the angular shadow.

She had always pictured it as beds lined neatly behind glass.

Mercy's formal quarantine consisted of three adjacent rooms, four beds each, sliding glass doors. She was not there. She was in what used to be a laundry room. The machines were gone, but the concrete platform that had once held them was still there, pipes standing and capped. For her, there was a bed, table with pitcher, and bench. A flatscreen hung in a ceiling corner. The muted channel showed brush fires, then switched to a man in a DC lab coat talking about the outbreak. A helicopter shot of Mercy General filled the screen. It looked festive in the evening light, fires glowing behind the hills.

She was alone, and she felt empty. The fluorescent lighting made a sickening buzz, a pallor rather than a glow, something less than white. She was more angry with herself than with Mullich, not so much for trusting him but just for moving toward him, greeting him, showing herself as a fool.

Through the small door window she could see the adjacent room, another level of quarantine. Pao Pao was in there, tending to those who were still in their beds. Two patients played chess at a folding table. Pao Pao stopped by their game and adjusted one of the table legs, wedged a tongue depressor underneath for stability.

The players smiled thanks as she moved to the next bed.

Mendenhall pressed her face to the glass, palms to the door. Pao Pao was helping a patient flex his ankles and legs. She kept him covered as she fitted the heel of her hand into his arch and then pushed. She asked a question, then repeated the exercise.

Mendenhall backed away. She toyed with the copper standpipes as she watched the flatscreen. A newscaster was talking in front of footage showing covered bodies on gurneys being rolled into a building. Mendenhall didn't recognize the area of the city. The story changed to live shots of the brush fire. TV depressed and alienated her. She couldn't translate it, couldn't focus on it because it never explored or even touched what was fascinating. It slid by her, a dream of frustration.

She needed sleep, hours of it, a half day of it. The hospital was approaching the twenty-four-hour mark of containment. She resisted the bed. She didn't want to lie there and feel sick about what she had done to Claiborne, Pao Pao, Silva, what she had allowed Mullich to do to her.

The entire space reminded her of him. She could imagine a few possibilities: an interrogation room, a spa for surgeons and DC people, a gym—a room for crazies. A wave of fatigue passed through her. She poured herself a glass of water and sat on the bench, back straight, shoulders square, a muscle refresher taught by her mentor. Spend a little energy, gain a little more.

She faced straight ahead as she sipped her water. Someone had drawn an arrow on the wall. In pencil, it pointed to a back corner. When she stood to follow its direction, she noticed that the arrow disappeared. It reappeared when she sat back down and straightened herself on the bench. She tested this effect three times, making the arrow disappear with any angle outside 90

degrees.

Mullich.

She stepped through the row of standpipes and turned to the back corner. The walls were whitewashed, bare. She pressed her left shoulder to one and looked 90 degrees forward. Nothing.

She touched her right shoulder to the adjacent wall and faced 90

degrees. A thin pencil outline of a square, much the same as the one that had marked the dumbwaiter. With her thumb she brushed the line. Something as if from a moth wing dusted her fingers. It vanished with slight movement, reappeared.

She wasn't sure she wanted to follow this, wasn't sure she was up for it, wasn't sure her legs and brain could make it. She could sleep away containment, quarantine, wake up to the normal chaos of the ER. In the far corner the TV showed fire, then the guy in the lab coat, then the newscaster.