High, precise brows over wide, heavily made-up eyes; lips outlined in red, with the lipstick fading in between, from time spent kissing Javier’s forehead. Her straight black hair spilled down the bed to his armpits.
“Hi. I’m Edie, I’m going to be your nurse for the next four hours,” I said over the sound of his crying mother. He grunted.
I ran the blood pressure cuff, took his temperature, felt for pulses, listened to lungs. A small dressing beneath his right clavicle was stained with the color of old blood. I took a Sharpie and drew its boundaries, just in case it opened up again.
“Are you in any pain?”
Javier flicked dark eyes toward me, then back at the ceiling. “No. Never.”
The woman standing beside him nodded and resumed petting him. His mom kept sobbing, wordless sounds.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked him, then included the room at large.
“Cafe,” said the not-crying woman. She was definitely the girlfriend. I knew from the way I saw her look at him now.
“Certainly,” I said, and retreated out the door.
I walked down the row of other rooms on the trauma floor. None of them had happy people inside. That, multiplied by the time of year, made everything particularly grim. I went to the room labeled NUTRITION, like it was from
The charge nurse called to me as I passed her desk on my way back. “Hey, float. Send all those people home.”
It took me a second to realize who she meant. “All of them? Can’t someone stay?”
“We don’t allow that here.”
I frowned at her. She didn’t look up to see it. “He can feel things now but by tomorrow morning, he’ll be insensate,” I said.
“So?”
“Only till midnight. Then it’s December twenty-sixth.”
“So someone can stay till midnight?” I asked, trying to work in some innocence and charm. I really didn’t want to be the bad guy. Not this time.
She stopped typing and turned toward me. “One person. And that person better have a ride home, we’re out of bus passes.”
I’d take what I could get. “Okay. Thanks.”
She went back to typing on her computer, without response.
I slunk back to Javier’s room with the good-bad news. “I got permission for one of you all to stay till midnight.” I hated myself a little for hoping the designated visitor didn’t wind up being his mom.
“Luz,” Javier said, in a whisper. I was sure who he meant.
Javier’s mother started crying again, and blotting at her face—at this rate, the other eyebrow didn’t stand a chance. I stood outside the room while they said their good-byes. They hugged him. It would be the last time he was able to feel it. There was a knot at the back of my throat, and all the swallowing in the world couldn’t get it to go away. I felt like I was spying, so I opened up my chart and tried to disappear.
“Pretty girl. Pity she’s with him,” said a person standing next to me. I startled and looked up.
Sike stood beside me. Sike was a Rose Throne daytimer, and while Anna trusted her, I did not.
In her day job, Sike was a model and as such professionally gorgeous, but right now she wore little makeup and her red hair was pulled into a high bun. A dour lab coat covered her slender frame’s soft curves. The name VERONICA LAMBRIDGE was embroidered on the pocket over the words LABORATORY TECHNICIAN. I knew Sike was neither Veronica, nor a lab tech. She patted the white lapel. “Fits nice, doesn’t it?”
I looked around at the floor. “You should have called.”
“Oh, I’m not here for you.” Sike smiled at me, and her face didn’t match her tone. “Let’s not be an idiot in public. I’m just your friend from the lab.”
“Lab workers and nurses don’t fraternize.” I hoped that “Veronica” was merely off duty and not stuffed into a trunk. “If you’re not helping me, then why are you here?”
“I need you to take me to Y4.” She put her hand on my arm just as Javier’s parents walked out, the father propelling the mother around my desk and toward the doors. We were both quiet until they passed.
“I can’t leave till my break,” I whispered.
“When’s that?”
“Nine. You’ve got an hour to kill.”
It was obvious from her bearing that this was untenable. But there was no way she could drag me off in front of so many people without causing a scene. She wasn’t a full vampire, just a daytimer, she didn’t have look- away yet. She let go of my arm.
“Just go yourself,” I said, massaging blood back into my tricep.
“I can’t. The elevator doors won’t open for me.”
I pretended to read Javier’s chart. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No.”
Well. Saying that was not good was probably an understatement. “There’s a lobby behind those doors. Go wait by the fish tank.” She looked down at me, full lips pursed in frustration. “I’ll come as soon as I can,” I added.
“You’d better.”
If it wasn’t one vampire, it was another … in a manner of speaking. I waited until I was sure she was gone, then went into Javier’s room for his hourly feeling check.
“Can you feel this?” I poked the cap of my pen against the side of his ribs.
“No.”
“This?” I asked, trying higher.
“No.”
I looked up at his face and saw his jaw clench, between answers.
“This?”
I marked it. Another half a centimeter of feeling, gone. It was like he was slowly drowning, no way to turn around, walking farther and farther out into an inexorable sea.
“Is there anything—” I began, because I had to.
“Just go,” his girlfriend said, then added, “Please.”
I nodded, and did so.
I noted his new loss of feeling in his chart. The charge nurse came by, I thought to break me early, but she handed me a printout from a news website instead.
An hour is a long time, sitting outside of someone’s room. On Y4, I could have made myself useful, restocking things, making bedrolls, reading charts, but here I didn’t know the flow, and didn’t want to get in anyone’s way. I doodled some in the margin of my non-official report sheet, sketching a flaming heart. When I heard a strange beep from inside the room, I looked up. Luz was texting on her phone, and she walked toward the door.
