WATCHED

The coffee machine had my money and the call came before I could kick it. I left the cup under the spout. If somebody took it, I hoped they liked hot water.

Dani was backing the monitor into the trauma bay when I got there. She’d caught her hair under her mask again. A red curl stood out beside her ear, and she kept blowing at it while she untangled the leads.

“Gunshot. Ambulance is on the ramp.”

I put on gloves and went to the transfuser. The blood was ready. Somebody had left the linen cart across the entrance; I shoved it against the wall with my hip as the medic came through backward. His uniform was wet across the shoulders. On the stretcher, the man kept turning toward his oxygen mask. There was blood on his shirt and more under him.

“Right lower abdomen. No exit that we could find. Pressure’s still falling.”

We got him across to the bed. I kept the oxygen tubing clear while the medic pulled the sheet out from under his shoulder, then cut the shirt. The cotton stuck to his stomach. I peeled it away from the hole and wished whoever had shot him could stand here and do this part.

As Dani put the leads on, the cuff finished its cycle.

“Wren.”

“I see it.”

I checked the line and opened the flow. I bent where he could see me, but his eyes wouldn’t follow.

“Stay here. We’ve got you.”

The surgeon came through the doors with her gown open at the back. I made room for her beside the bed and kept hold of the tubing. She examined his abdomen, asked the medic to repeat his report and sent the transporter to call the operating room. He started answering a question about where they’d found the patient.

“Call them now,” she said.

I called the new reading and got the blood ready for transport.

The transporter returned with a bed. I kept the blood line clear of the rail and wheel. His pressure was coming up when they took him out.

I stripped off my gloves and followed Dani to her illegal coffee pot behind the binders, under the handwashing notice.

“You good?” she said.

“I’m always good.”

She poured me a cup.

“Machine still owes you.”

“I’ll put it in my will.”

The coffee was burnt. I drank it anyway and reached inside my collar for my mother’s locket. The clasp caught my thumbnail, as usual. I let it shut and went to see who still needed me.

An older man sat in the family waiting chairs opposite the vending machines. He had his head turned toward the empty snack spiral. His daughter kept offering him a mint from a tin; he refused it each time. His checked shirt was crooked at the collar, and the hand on the armrest wouldn’t stay still.

“Have you been seen yet?” I asked.

The daughter closed the tin. “He’s here for his hip. They said to sit here.”

“Who’s your nurse?”

She looked down the corridor.

“I don’t know. The other place thought he could be having a stroke, but then they sent us home. He won’t let me call an ambulance again.”

“I’m sitting right here, Joanne.”

“I know you are, Dad.”

I crouched beside his chair.

“I’m Wren. Tell me about your hand.”

He tried to hold it still with the other. “Didn’t come in for the hand.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Joanne started with the hip, then went back to breakfast and the hospital that had sent them home. Her father interrupted to correct what he’d eaten. I let them finish. When I asked about medicines, she gave me her phone with the list already open. Thank you, Joanne.

Lithium was on the list. I asked if anything had changed, and she pointed to the water pill they’d added for his ankles.

“Could that be it?”

“It can affect the lithium. The doctor needs to look at him.”

“They looked at him.”

“Here,” I said. “Our doctor.”

I checked his speech and his smile, had him follow my finger and lift his arms. Joanne got out of the way without leaving the chair. When I stood, she stood too.

“Stay with your dad. I’ll bring her over.”

I found the attending at a computer and told her what I’d found and what had changed. She came with me.

We moved him into a monitored bay. The attending repeated the examination and ordered blood work.

“Does this mean I’m not going home?” he asked.

“It means we’re getting you comfortable while she works out what you need.”

“Never comfortable in here.”

“No. The pillows are terrible.”

He let me put a pillow behind him.

The lithium result came before I could finish his chart. Toxic, and his kidney results were badly off his previous ones. The attending went straight back to his bay. I followed to tell Joanne we’d found something we could treat.

Joanne was crying into a tissue she’d worn through. Her father held out his shaking hand for the mint tin, and she took it between hers instead. He tried to get her to stop by asking about the car. She nodded at everything he said. I stayed beside the curtain while the attending explained the treatment.

“Marlowe.”

Charge had a green pen behind her ear and tomato soup beside the keyboard. Her cardigan kept falling off her shoulder. She hooked it back with her thumb and looked at the board.

“Go home.”

“I have to finish his notes.”

“Finish them, then go home. Before I find somebody else for you.”

I went back to his chart.

* * *

Dani found me at my locker with my coat on and her name still on the duty board. Her phone was in her scrub pocket with the recording screen lit. She’d been working on the podcast during her break, some story about a nurse who’d disappeared with a patient and the chart. I’d asked what happened to the patient. She’d told me I was ruining the episode.

“Tell your listeners I was indispensable,” I said.

“I have listeners who know you.”

I shut the locker. She stayed between me and the door.

“Come and look.”

In the staff room, the television was on above the microwave. A woman in scrubs filled the screen, her St. Luke’s badge clipped so close to the edge of her collar that I wanted to fix it. She’d been missing since leaving her night shift. Her car was still in the employee lot.

“My cousin works there,” Dani said. “Peds. They’re going out together now. Nobody goes to the lot on their own.”

“You could wait for me.”

“I’m tired.”

“Then I’ll get transport to walk you to the bus stop.”

The bus stop was past the waste compound. I’d be waiting there with the rats instead of home with my shoes off. I told her that, and she started to take out her phone.

“I’ll call you a car.”

“I’m not paying for a car.”

“I am.”

“No.”

“Wren, let somebody do something for you without making it an argument.”

“I’ll text when I get in.”

“And put your scarf on. It’s freezing.”

“I can’t find it.”

“The gray one?”

“I think I left it somewhere on the way home yesterday.”

“For God’s sake.”

“You can put that on the replacement.”

She caught my collar and pulled it shut. There was coffee on her sleeve. I wanted to stay until her shift finished.

“I’ll text,” I said.

“You’d better.”

She let me past.

* * *

The October wind got under my open coat in the ambulance bay. I stopped beyond the parked rigs to button it. My hands had split across the knuckles again, and the buttonholes were too stiff to manage without bending them. I still had my scrubs on underneath.

I took the river road. The loading doors were down along the warehouses, and wind came through the gap where the old freight track reached the water. It smelled of diesel and mud. Across the river, the lights broke into strips whenever the water moved. An empty bus passed me. I watched the lit seats go by and reconsidered my position on public transport.

A dog began barking behind the warehouses. It stopped before it finished the bark.

I kept walking past the loading bays. Then I heard a footfall that didn’t belong with mine.

At the next dock, I bent to retie a boot that didn’t need it, and listened.

Nobody passed.

I looked back from beside the dock. Under the streetlight, the pavement was empty. The doorways beyond it were dark, and I’d picked a stupid place to crouch.

“Get up,” I told myself.

I stood and waited until the bus was gone and I could hear the river again, then went on.

At the Meridian, a man had the window booth to himself and a plate of pie. His paperback lay flat under his hand, and he turned the page with the fork still in his mouth. I wanted whatever he was having. I could sit where people could see me, order pie and call Dani for the car she’d offered.

The man took the fork out and licked it. I smelled my own scrubs under the coat and kept going.

Above the door, the neon buzzed through MER DIAN. I could hear it until I reached the laundromat.

My building stood between the laundromat and the dry cleaner, with a narrow entrance the delivery drivers kept using for their boxes. The cleaner’s lights were off. I could barely see the clothes behind their plastic covers. Dani’s dress was in there somewhere; she’d asked me to pick it up when the button was done.

Next door, the washers were still running. A woman had fallen asleep. Her laundry basket occupied the chair beside her. I wanted to knock on the glass and ask if she was done with the chair.

I stopped on the wet front steps and looked back. Nothing moved between the parked cars.

The stairwell smelled of fried onions. I could hear a television behind the door off the bottom landing, louder than it ever needed to be. Somebody had chained a bicycle under the stairs without its front wheel. The fork rested on a folded rag. I stepped around the pedal that stuck out over the bottom tread and went up.

The bulb below my landing was still out. I’d been asking the super to replace it for long enough that he’d started pretending not to hear me. I kept my hand on the rail through the dark part, then reached the window beside my door.

My key was in the lock before I saw the scarf.

It lay across the rail. Gray wool, folded along its length, an end toward the stairs. I picked it up before I looked around.

Dani had put it on me herself at Christmas. She’d stood on her mother’s porch step so she could reach over my head.

“Gray,” she’d said. “So you don’t have to think about colors.”

I’d worn it nearly every cold day since. Yesterday, I’d searched my coat pockets at the bus stop until the bus came. There hadn’t been time to go back.

I looked down the stairs. From the landing I could see the turn of the rail and part of the floor below it. Nobody came up. I waited for the television to stop, or a door to open, or somebody to call that they’d found it outside and recognized it.

The television kept going.

I opened the folds. No note. The wool was dry, and the pale fringe hadn’t picked up dirt from the sidewalk. I rubbed it between my fingers anyway. The rail was dusty where it had lain.

One of the neighbors could’ve found it. I tried to remember who I’d seen when I came home. The woman with the laundry? Had that been yesterday? I’d nodded to someone outside the cleaner’s, but I couldn’t bring back a face, only the plastic garment cover between us.

I took out my phone.

Dani: Home?

I let myself in before I answered. The deadbolt was stiff, and I had to pull the door toward me to turn it. I put the chain on too. I usually left it hanging.

Home, I wrote.

In the kitchen, I kept my coat on. The streetlight reached the counter. Her tea stood beside my kettle with the lid of the box open, though she knew perfectly well I didn’t drink it. She could come over when she finished work. I could ask her now, and she would complain about my coffee and bring something from the bakery.

Look for your scarf. I bet it’s in the bag you never empty.

I brought the wool to my face.

Soap. I tried again. The pink soap from the wall dispensers at work.

I laid the scarf beside the tea.

You were right. Work bag.

Her typing dots appeared.

Obviously. Sleep. Love you.

I sent Love you back. Then I turned the phone facedown beside the scarf and took off my coat.