Then Lovejoy is reaching for it and Stein hands it over.
Lovejoy fires.
Click. Nothing.
He lets it fall to the sand.
“Private Noles. Give me your gun.”
“What’s happening here?” Duane says. But he hands Lovejoy the weapon. Lovejoy aims it out into the desert. Fires.
Click.
Nothing.
Larry gives his next.
Click.
Nothing.
“Oh fuck,” Duane says. “Oh fuck.”
“What’s going on here?” Stein asks. He can tell the others are thinking the same thing.
Greer explains it.
“The sound,” he says, “rendered a United States nuclear warhead impotent.”
“So, are you saying—”
Lovejoy tries Philip’s gun.
Nothing.
He drops it onto the pile of others.
“Jesus Christ,” Larry whispers. And this time he says it like someone does when they mean to say there is trouble.
The platoon stares out into the desert. As if weighing the risk of facing it unarmed.
“Listen to it at quarter speed,” Philip says. He’s pointing to the Ampex. “It’s footsteps.”
Greer turns to him.
“What do you mean, Philip?”
“The tape, slowed down. It’s . . . footsteps.”
“As if someone’s coming,” Duane says.
Philip looks to the pile of useless guns.
“As if someone already came.”
Again the soldiers look farther out.
But they can’t see much of anything now.
The sun is down.
And the desert has gone dark.
“Lights out,” Duane whispers.
28
Ellen walks alone. Her small figure, in white, cuts a flickering image, as the edges of the hall, where the floor meets the walls, are dark, and the distance behind her is shadowed. But with each overhead light she is detailed and feels exposed.
Ahead, Nurse Francine is approaching, walking in the opposite direction, emerging then disappearing beneath the overheads, like Ellen does.
“Evening, Ellen.”
“Evening, Francine.”
They pass this way, white uniformed shoulder to white uniformed shoulder, one on her way to visit Philip in the padded soundproof Rehabilitation Unit, the other on her way to a place she shouldn’t be going.
Ellen has no doubt Francine did not notice her left hand stuffed into her left uniform pocket. She also has no doubt it was the right thing to do; keeping the spare keys quiet with her fingers, not letting them clang as Francine, someone who knows the sound of hospital keys, walked by.
At Philip’s empty unit, Unit 1, Ellen peers inside, despite knowing that he’s not in there. The cot remains unmade, the sheets rumpled from when Philip rolled himself onto the floor. They say he broke three bones in his face. Rebroke. Ellen cringes at the thought. She scans the room and sees nothing is out of order. She wonders, though, if things have changed in there. Things unseen.
Wearing a mask of professionalism, Ellen leaves the threshold to Philip’s unit and continues down the hall, past the office on her left. Inside, Nurse Robin, a regular temp, nods a sweet hello and Ellen delivers one of the finest, most believable colleague-to-colleague smiles that have ever graced her face. But when Robin is out of sight, and Ellen turns left, away from the hospital’s front door, no trace of that smile remains.
Ahead, the washroom door is in complete darkness, but Ellen can see a shimmering of the knob. She turns left again, taking the hall without patients, the hall no nurse has any business frequenting unless they’re Nurse Francine at night and Nurse Delores during the day: the nurses responsible for the distribution of drugs to the patients.
Ellen keeps her composure, though she is well aware that there exists a door, at the very far end of this hall, the east door to the Rehab Unit where Philip Tonka now lies, three rebroken bones in his face. And presumably beside him is Nurse Francine, who would have entered through the west door, as she injects him with . . .
. . . what?
Ellen grips the keys to keep them soundless and arrives at the unit marked STAFF ONLY: MEDICATION. But the appellation isn’t entirely true; the nurses’ station also harbors medicine, the kind with names that are already familiar to people like Philip Tonka and the greater part of the United States of America. Ellen wonders if the drugs in this room ought not to be called medicine, not until they’ve been proven to work.
One glance up the hall, one glance back, and Ellen removes the key from her pocket. She’s resigned to the fact that if Dr. Szands were to suddenly return from Des Moines early, if he were, say, inside the very room she’s entering, she would simply laugh, say nothing, and run. There’s no excuse she could manufacture that could properly explain her presence in this hall, in this room, and any attempt would be as transparent as Szands’s desire for curing Philip quickly has become.
In her six years at Macy Mercy, Ellen has never seen Dr. Szands so focused on the expediency of a patient’s recovery.
Why?
Ellen opens the door and, fast, slips inside.
She closes the door behind her, leans against it, and waits.
It’s very dark in here.
She’s still for a long time, too long to feel comfortable, counter-intuitive to how she wants to behave—rapid, efficient, in and out. She waits for her eyes to adjust to the dark; she will not turn on the light in this room, won’t have the frosted glass illuminated, worries already that her own shadowed form will somehow stand out from the other dark shapes.
And the white fabric of her uniform might stand out.
So Ellen removes it. Beneath it, she’s wearing black nylons, a black long-sleeved shirt, black socks. She folds the white uniform and tucks it onto the bottom shelf of the steel storage rack to her left. From the breast pocket of her black shirt, she removes a box of matches.
One step, two steps, ten steps deep into the room, she strikes the first match.
She’s surrounded by bottles, vials, swabs, and gauze.
She blows out the match.
She waits. She listens. She wonders how thick the door is. Would she hear a creaking, a person in the hall? Would she hear someone speaking out there? Would she hear someone being quiet?
She doesn’t want to wait, but she waits.
And no sound comes.
She lights a second match.
The bottles are all grouped together; things are not as chaotic as they first appeared. Ellen brings the match head close to the labels, but they don’t tell her much.
Zaxan. Midocol. Words and names she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, has never had to learn.
She studies, holds the match close to the row of bottles. Nothing but names. Not what they do, not where they come from, not what they’re made of. Ellen knows that even if the ingredients were listed, it would be of little help.
She questions why she came in here at all.
What is she hoping to uncover? Hoping to find?
The match is burning too low and Ellen blows it out.
The doorknob turns behind her.
She’s stuck, for a moment, in place. Did she lock the door? Is the door about to open? Right now, with her standing in the middle of the room?
The sound of keys in the hall.
Ellen moves fast to the far wall, hoping she doesn’t knock something over—a vial, a glass—on her way. The tall steel shelving doesn’t quite reach the bricks and certainly won’t hide all of her, but Ellen slips into the space there, feels like it’s slimmer than she is. Like she’s crushing bones, flattening herself, to fit.
The door opens.
The lights come on.
Her face is fully exposed between two steel shelves. But Francine hasn’t noticed her. Not yet.
“Sneezin’ up a storm,” the older woman sniffles. Shakes her head. Talks to herself.
Ellen doesn’t move.
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Because the space is tight, and the light is bright, Francine looks bigger than she normally does; her body tests the hem of her white uniform; her arms and hands look like wrinkled laundry. Every detail in here is exposed and all Francine has to do is turn her head six, seven inches in Ellen’s direction.
Then what?
Run?
“Cold after cold,” Francine says to herself. “And that’s what you get for working in a hospital.”
Ellen looks past her, to where her own uniform is stashed on the lower shelf by the door. It’s not hidden well. It shows.
Ellen, needing support, needing anything, digs her fingernails into the brick wall at her back.
Francine adjusts her black glasses, eyes the same bottles Ellen was studying. She sniffs the air. Ellen knows it’s the match. Knows Francine is about to survey the room, like anybody would, looking for the source of that burning, the unmistakable scent of a recently extinguished match.
Ellen almost says something. She’s that sure, that ready, for Francine to spot her.
Instead, Francine wipes her nose with her bare arm. Ellen can see the thin film of snot on the older nurse’s wrinkled skin.
Francine removes items from her pocket. A pair of syringes.
“Shoulda been a security guard,” Francine says. She’s half whispering, still talking to herself.
She takes two bottles from the rack and places them on the table at her waist. She uncaps the first syringe, loads it. Ellen looks at the bottle. She can’t read what it says, but she knows which one it is. Francine repeats the action with the second bottle, second syringe.
The belief Ellen has, the absolutely certainty that Francine must notice her before exiting this room, is paralyzing. Any alternative is impossible. Should she do something first? How close is Francine to seeing her? And what will follow? Ellen can see it play out; a moment of herself stammering, feigning confusion, perhaps even laughing, desperate to make light, then Francine’s slow realization that Ellen is lying; Ellen striking the woman, fleeing; Francine racing from the Medicine Unit, whinnying into a scream, howling for help from the orderlies; She’s getting away! SHE’S GETTING AWAY!; Ellen rushing from the front doors, scared, out of breath, running to . . .
. . . where?
Francine sneezes.
She breathes deep and shakes her head again. Even this, just this shake, is movement enough to put Ellen in her field of vision.
Ellen holds her breath. Digs her fingernails into the wall.
Makes a scratching sound.
Didn’t mean to.
Francine looks up, as if the scratching had come from the ceiling. She stares there, her mouth hanging open, her gray eyes magnified to the size of drink coasters. Ellen listens to her breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Stuffy. A cold.
Now, Ellen thinks. She will look at you now.
Francine does. She turns, faces Ellen completely.
Ellen doesn’t move.
The overhead lights reflect off Francine’s glasses, obscuring her eyes.
Ellen opens her mouth to say something. Francine moves her lips, makes a squishing sound.
Ellen almost speaks; a single guttural syllable, the birth of a moan, rises in her throat.
Francine, I’m sorry. I can explain.
The words are coming, already on the way up, when Francine turns her attention back to the bottles.
She caps both syringes, caps both bottles. She places the syringes in her pocket and puts the bottles back where they belong on the rack.
Sniffling, she turns and exits the Medicine Unit. On the way out, she turns off the light.
In the hall, she locks the door.
Then, silence. No sniffles. No keys. No footsteps.
Ellen doesn’t move for another four minutes. She’s trembling. She’s staring at the door. She’s imagining Francine’s face, inert, staring back at her, transposed, the immediate indelible memory, as if Francine is looking through the frosted glass now, staring still into the deep shadows of the Medicine Unit, where the shelving doesn’t quite reach the brick wall.
But she’s not.
Nurse Francine is gone.
Ellen squeezes out from her hiding spot and steps to the table, to the rack holding the bottles Francine used.
She looks to the door, waits. Waits another two minutes.
She lights the third match. Brings it to the bottles.
Even if Ellen hadn’t seen the two Francine used, she’d be able to tell what they were; both rest unevenly in the rack.
Ellen pulls them out, sets them on the table.
She reads the labels. Doesn’t understand them. Doesn’t know what they are. Turns the bottles around. Nothing. Looks underneath them. Reads something.
A-9-A
She blows out the match and waves the smoke away. She looks to the frosted glass, scared to see a shadow pass, or worse, a shadow becoming a solid, against the glass, a face, eyes looking in.
But no face.
She retrieves her uniform. Quickly puts it back on.
She steps to the door and turns the knob and actually pulls the door open a crack before quickly closing it again. She returns to the table and places the bottles back on the rack.
Almost forgot to do that. What else has she almost forgotten to do?
She pauses, forces herself to think. She has the keys. Has the matches. Right? Does she have all the matches? Ellen checks her pockets. One, two, three. Yes, three burnt-out matches. Are the bottles back on the rack? Yes. She did that. Yes. Is her uniform on? Ellen actually looks down to her white uniform, shining even in this darkness. She looks back to the space between the shelf and the wall. Her nails. She dug her nails into the wall. Does she need to check if she’s left a mark?
You have to get out of here.
Ellen lights a fourth match. Walks to the shelving, holds the match by the wall. No visible mark. But the flame is flickering, unstable, unreliable.
What is she afraid of? What does she think is happening in this hospital?
Why do they want him to heal so fast, Ellen? What do they need him strong for?
She doesn’t know.
Are you afraid?
Yes, Ellen is afraid.
She blows out the fourth match. Turns to face the door. She’s ready to leave. Must leave.
She crosses the Medicine Unit once more and places her hand on the knob.
Hesitation. A pause. Listening through the frosted glass. Into the hall.
Anything?
Nothing.
Ellen opens the door.
Enters the hall. Feels exposed by the light though the light is dim. Her hand shakes as she locks the door. Pockets the key. She wonders if it’s written all over her face: fear, hiding, confusion. If somebody, anybody, were to turn the corner, walk toward her, would they notice? Would they remark upon it later?
Dr. Szands, I saw Ellen in the second hall tonight. I don’t know what she was doing there, but she was doing something.
She was hiding.
She was afraid.
Ellen allows her black hair to hang in front of her eyes. She stares at the ground as she walks. Feels less visible this way. Then she tucks her hair behind her ears and lifts her head up. She’s got to look normal. Like she always does. What does she always look like?
She turns the corner, exiting the second hall. The front door is ahead. She could walk right out, never come back. Get in her car and drive home, pack some things, then leave Iowa. Go to California. Find an apartment. She has enough money for gas. She knows how to meet people. She could get a job there, start a new life, exit this place of growing shadows, begin anew.
At the front door, she turns right, heading down the length of the first hall. This is the hall she spends all her time in. And yet, she feels only marginally safer for having entered it. Ahead, only a few feet, typewriter clacking pours out of the open office door. When Ellen steps even with it, she looks inside. She doesn’t want to see Francine. Doesn’t want the older woma
n to turn from her seat at the typewriter and look at her with that same open-mouthed expression.
Guess what I’m doing, Ellen? I’m writing a report. Guess who I’m reporting, Ellen? I saw you in the Medicine Unit. Saw you hiding like a scared little girl.
But it’s not Francine at the typewriter. It’s Robin. The temp. Most likely entering the nurse’s notes. Busy work. Making them official. Filing.
“Hello,” Robin says, sensing someone in the doorway, turning to see Ellen.
“Hello.”
“A lot of work!” Robin says, shaking her head. The age-old exchange between coworkers, the knowing expressions.
“Yes.”
“Well, back to it for me.”
“Yes.”
Ellen continues down the hall, unsure if she should look to the ground, look up, afraid to meet anybody’s eyes, afraid she’ll suddenly scream out, Why does he need to heal so fast? WHY?
She isn’t certain exactly where she’s going. If Dr. Szands were to exit any door that lined this hall, if he were to ask Ellen what task she was engaged in, she isn’t sure she’d have the presence of mind to lie.
Halfway down the hall now. Got here too fast. Retains a blurred, faint memory of Robin in the office. An impossibly fresh face smiling above a new white uniform.
At the end of the hall is the Rehab Unit. And in that unit is Philip.
Is Francine in there? Has she brought the drugs to him? Of course she has. That’s what she does. She administers. She drugs.
Ellen reaches the unit too quickly. She stops. The door swings open before she touches it.
Francine’s face.
She looks so different, Ellen thinks, out here.
A shriek from behind Ellen. A patient crying out.
“Oh!” Francine shrieks herself, looks past Ellen. Then at her. “Good timing. I need you.”
Behind Francine, Philip is sitting up.
“How is he able to do that?” Ellen asks, incapable of keeping the question in. The man broke almost every bone in his body.
“I need to assist that patient,” Francine says. “Administer the shots to Mr. Tonka. Can you do that for me?”
Philip raises his fingers to the door. No less bruised, but up. Sitting up. Able to.
Ellen feels a tray at her waist.
“Ellen?”