I read the fucking chart,I think at her.Why don’t you look at his fucking face?But when I look back down, 34’s eyes are blank again, and the shadow of a smile is gone. Was I hallucinating? “It seemed like he was there for a second.”
“He hasn’t had a coherent thought in his head for months,” Donny says. “And he never will again.” And again, that unspoken end to the sentence:If I have anything to do with it.
Asshole, I think.
I look back down. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. Back to being a heavily sedated lion. Was I imagining it? I do his BP. It’s high for how much he’s medicated. “One-twenty over eighty.”
Zara pushes off the wall now, annoyed. “That can’t be right. Move.”
I retreat back to where Donny stands while she takes 34’s BP. I’m starting to feel sweaty and a little bit wrong.
Zara calls out the BP results, which are lower—right where it should be for a man on all those drugs. I note it down on his electronic medical record. She thinks I fucked it up out of nervousness.
“Don’t worry, we gotcha,” Donny says. As you can imagine, he makes it sound like a threat.
I just nod. No words, just a nod. You never give a creep like Donny energy.
Zara puts the blood pressure assembly back in the cart, looking at me hard. “You up for doing the draw?”
“Of course,” I say, moving away from creepmeister Donny. I take my place at 34’s bedside, and Zara goes back to her phone, safely out of camera range.
Patient 34’s eyes are blank as sheetrock. Did I imagine that silent interaction? If I did, that’s bad.
If I didn’t imagine it, it means he’s faking. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, considering they have him tied up like he’s King Kong crossed with Hannibal Lecter.
I draw his blood. They probably had a dedicated phlebotomist on this at one point, but budget cuts have hit this sector hard. The phlebotomist would’ve been cut. I try not to watch his face at all.
I think about Donny’s crowing words—Never a coherent thought ever again.Like Donny is a victor over 34 in some imagined and unfair contest between them. That is so Donny, to have vendettas with the patients he’s supposed to be caring for. What did 34 do?
When I’m done, I press a cotton ball to the draw site and set a gloved hand on 34’s arm, which really is startlingly thick with muscle. I know I’m not imagining it.
I look into his golden eyes that gaze at nothing and everything. It’s likely he did horrible things—you don’t end up like Patient 34 because you’ve been a Boy Scout. But there’s a sliver of humanity in everyone. Hopes, dreams, things that unexpectedly touch their hearts.
This is something you learn from telling people’s stories.
“All done.” I squeeze his arm reassuringly, because everybody deserves compassion, and Zara and Donny can fuck themselves.
Chapter Two
Kiro
“All done,” shesays softly. She squeezes my arm. Heat floods my body. My heart pounds out of control.
She has piercing green eyes and hair the color of peanuts. She tries to hide it by pulling it back, but her hair is big and curly and will not be hidden. She purses her pink lips. I love watching her lips. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Again she squeezes my arm. She seems like a dream with her gentle touch and her talk of The Hulk, like she reached back into another life.
Is it a trick? Another one of their endless tortures? I fight for control, willing her to leave. I can’t concentrate with her here.
I should’ve let the drugs take me under today—that would have dulled the power of her. I sometimes let the drugs take me under as a break from the crushing boredom of this dead place with its buzzers and alarms and the ticking clock that never stops.
And the grating loneliness.
And now her, destroying my concentration. You can never show life in here, or they drug you even more.
She works for them. She’s just another one. I’ll kill her if I have to. I’ll kill them all if I have to. All that matters is getting home. Back where I belong.
How do they even know about The Hulk? I haven’t thought about him since I was a kid, locked up in that root cellar.