I brought one weapon with me. At the bottom of my duffel bag. I push aside T-shirts and socks and ziplock-bagged toiletries as I dig for it.
Our chef’s knife. Thick as my wrist, biggest one in the kitchen. I unroll the sweatshirt wrapped around it.I’ve Been To Oklahoma!it shouts in proud pink letters. One of my mom’s sweatshirts that became mine as a half hand-me-down, half gift.
I cut myself with the knife meant for my mom’s heart, that final thing I owe her, and press the incision to my lips. It tastes like nothing. Like less than nothing. Like tap water with too many minerals, like disappointment, like failure. I dig a Band-Aid out of the glove compartment, press it over the seam in my forearm, and bury my face in the sweatshirt. It smells like my mom. I wish that were comforting.
I want to call Veer. It was so easy, when it was just us and the road. When we sped down Highway 95, was the flayed man already watching? Was my future already carved into the lengths of his claws?
I wipe the knife on my jeans and return it to its place at the bottom of my bag. Despair thickens into a searing fog that threatens to burn my throat. I can’t put my hunger off any longer.
I’m not quitting my search. I just need to do this in order to carry on.
I desperately don’t want to do it.
Time to light up the last bridge left to me. There’s always work for a nurse, I’ll find somewhere new. I just need to survive long enough to find my mom.
I pack away the medical supplies and climb back into the driver’s seat. Then I typeSunrise Hospitalinto my GPS and head for work.
22
CHANEY’S AT THE TRIAGE DESK WHEN I COME IN. I’VEchanged into scrubs, better to go unnoticed around the hospital, but I still feel like everyone’s staring at me.
“You’re on tonight, Karsten?” Her eyes dart from side to side, appraising me.
“Covering for another floor,” I lie. The sliding doors gasp open, letting in a torrent of wind and the turpentine smell of fresh asphalt.
Don’t turn around. Don’t hope that it’s Veer. But I do, I can’t help it, and the medic is a stranger who’s somewhere between a linebacker and a Labrador retriever. Ying is right behind him, stone faced as always.
“Hey, Chaney,” the linebacker calls as they slip on through. He looks back over his shoulder, and again I recognize the up-and-down look of inspection. Then he turns back and mutters something to Ying.
When it hits me, my stomach twists up around the rest of my organs. Veer didn’t tell me where they took Joanne, but Sunrise is our local trauma center.
I watch the medic’s back until he turns the corner. I want to scream, I want to snarl, I want to curl up and disappear. I’m not a monster, you motherfucker. Neither is my mom.
I can’t bring myself to look at Chaney. I rear back from the desk and head for the safety of the elevator. Hunger sets hooks into the soft flesh of my gums, and I count heartbeats in between the hollow dings of each new floor we ascend. The doors draw open like curtains before the last act.
My joints whimper. My curse salivates.
Through two doors and into a waiting room, where an older woman in flip-flops and a blue dress turns to me with a smile that asks if I’ve come for her. Past a window where a nurse buries her face in a computer screen, through another door and down a hall, navigating more by smell than sight.
I find an empty room and a tray of blood samples on the bottom shelf of a rolling cart. My knees lock at the smell of the samples, the sour tang of plastic tubing dissolving into iron richness. I could do it now. I could pop off the cap and pour it into my mouth.
Too late. There are already footsteps behind me.
I tuck the entire tray under my arm and start walking. I don’t know where I’m headed, but in a hospital, people always pay you less attention if you’re moving.
“Excuse me?” The nurse’s voice is raspy. She smells like cheap jewelry and wilted spinach. “Where are you taking those?”
Deep breath. Keep moving. “I can take them down to the lab.”
“The lab sent you?” She’s young. She looks exhausted. I remember how that was, the terror of authority over patients, and the worse terror of having to take all the other nurses’ shit and grin through it.
“Yeah. Yes.” How have I bled away every instinct I had for lying?
The nurse leans in and eases the tray of samples out of my grasp. I smell espresso and aspartame. “Usually we have someone take them, not the other way around. Who sent you up here?”
I could grab one of the vials right now and clench my fist so tight it shatters. I could sink my teeth into this woman. I could tear her apart.
“Let me just call down and check.” She squints at the ID card clipped to my belt. “What’s your name?” I choke on the antiseptic smell, the slither of recycled air down my throat.
