She heard Rob slip out the door, closing it so slowly behind him that the click of the latch was drawn out to two syllables. She turned again in the bed wishing she could lie on her back and throw her arm over her eyes, but she was too afraid that the baby might sit on its own blood supply and strangle itself. She piled both pillows on top of her head and fell asleep again, into a sleeping dream — she had liked those, in school, because they made it seem like you were getting twice as much sleep as you actually were — where she was lounging on a table in the Council chamber, stretching and turning and spinning like the slow hand of a clock, so her head pointed at everyone in the room and she heard them murmuring about how peaceful she looked, and what a shame it would be to wake her. Eyes closed, still turning and spinning, she became convinced that she was riding in her parents’ car, feigning sleep, and hoping that her father would carry her into the house.
“It’s time to wake,” said the angel. “They’ll need you at rounds in thirty minutes.”
“Shut up,” Jemma said. “I’m asleep.”
“You’re awake now. I see it very clearly. Shall I tell you the state of creation outside?”
“Still wet, I know,” Jemma said.
“The water temperature is twenty-six degrees Celsius. The sky is overcast with a scattering of cirrus clouds. There are fifteen dolphins circling the second floor, a school of tuna outside the main entrance, and a large jellyfish outside the emergency room. Many children are watching it. Would you like to know who the children are?”
“I’m ordering you to be quiet,” Jemma said. “I have a busy day. I need to sleep through it.”
“You have a busy day,” the angel agreed. “Breakfast has already been prepared. I will shriek an alarm if you do not rise from bed in the next three minutes.” She began to count softly.
“They don’t need me up there,” Jemma said. The angel kept counting. Jemma flailed angrily under her covers, right to left and left to right, until the count had risen to a hundred seconds. When she rolled her legs out of the bed and touched her feet to the floor the counting stopped. It wasn’t comfortable, but she thought she could probably fall asleep again like that. When she didn’t move for another minute, the angel began to shriek, just softly at first, like a kitten horribly tortured but too small to make a very big noise. Jemma stood up before it got too loud.
“Good morning,” the angel said.
“Probably for somebody, somewhere,” Jemma said. She walked to the little table. Pickie had laid out breakfast for her, two boiled eggs, a kiwi, and a banana arranged in a hairy-nosed face. He’d written a note next to the tall glass of orange juice: it is breakfast.
“Would you like something else?” the angel asked. “The abomination touched that food. I witnessed it.”
“Don’t call Pickie names.”
“He is not yet clean.”
“Neither am I,” Jemma said, smelling her upper lip, then her hair, then her shirt: cat food, smoke, illness. Vivian was sick with the botch. Jemma had stayed late with her the previous night, and not washed her hair when she came back downstairs. She peeled the eggs but ate only the fruit, drank half the juice, then took a long shower, standing for fifteen minutes under the water, resting her head against the tile.
“They are waiting,” the angel kept saying, but no one was waiting for her when she finally got up to the sixth floor. The nurses barely met her eyes, and only the children, hurrying up and down the hall with bedpans or blood, or pulling bags of IV fluid in the little red carts in which they themselves used to be hauled, smiled at her. The younger ones were merely fetchers; the older ones were helping with jobs formerly performed by adults too sick now to work.
“I only have three patients,” said Cindy Flemm when she saw Jemma coming down the hall, “and I’m late for rounds. It’s my first time being late. Josh said they take away your patients, if you’re late.”
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Jemma said. “I think they give you more, though.” They walked together down the hall, Cindy going over the numbers on her three face-sized index cards.
“Josh has this fancy PDA, but I like the cards better. What’s your system?”
“Toilet paper,” Jemma said. “Slow down there, Speedy.”
“Sorry,” Cindy said, not slowing. She got to the conference room a few paces ahead of Jemma, darted in, then popped back out to hold the door. “Sorry,” she said again, and Jemma heard, Sorry you’re pregnant, Sorry everyone is afraid of you, and Sorry you’ve become useless.
Dr. Tiller looked up at her and gestured toward an empty seat. Timmy looked at her, too. Ethel Puffer, pulling a plate of brownies toward herself, waved. Josh was presenting a patient.
“She looks a little yellow this morning,” he was saying. “Do you think the botch could be getting to her liver?”
“Many things are possible, Dr. Swift,” said Dr. Tiller. “And some unpleasant business impossible today might be tomorrow’s reality. But finish your presentation and then we’ll consider those things.” Josh blushed. Jemma broke in before he could go on.
“Anika has a pneumo,” she said.
“I just looked at her film,” said Timmy. “It was fine.”
“When was it taken?”
“This morning, of course. It was fine. I went over it with Dr. Pudding.”
“Well, she’s got one now — it’s probably too small to warrant a tube but somebody should keep an eye on it. And Janie has a renal abscess and a little fluid in her pericardium and Dr. Neder is about to dissect her aorta. She should go to the unit right away. I’m going down there next. Want me to see if there’s a bed?”
“Have you examined the patients, Dr. Claflin?” asked Dr. Tiller.
“Of course,” Jemma said, which was true; she had examined them in her way, walking by every room and pausing by the door to direct her attention inside.
“And you’re quite sure about these assertions?”
“Sure as ever,” Jemma said, getting back up.
“How much fluid is a little fluid?” asked Timmy.
“About ten cc’s,” I think.
“Rounds aren’t over, Dr. Claflin,” said Dr. Tiller.
“I’m a busy lady, Dr. Tiller. If I notice anything else I’ll give you a call.” She waddled to the door, staring straight ahead.
“Don’t you want a brownie?” Ethel asked. Jemma reached behind her back, waved and hurried out, but she slowed as soon as she was in the hall. She wasn’t really a busy woman. She had nothing to do all day but her mystic snooping, and rounding took only as long as a walk through the wards. She couldn’t bear to go to the Council chamber yet, though she had a pile of papers to read and sign there. Instead she went downstairs, avoiding the ramp because she didn’t want to get caught up in a string of conversations. It was like a poll, she supposed, how every third person stopped her to say, I think you’re doing fine — this is all just craziness, but every second person scowled or turned their eyes to the floor or actually scolded her or lectured her on the fate of tyrants. The angel put her approval rating at 47 percent, not, Jemma figured, enough to save her, though the process that would decide her political future was not so grossly democratic as a recall.