Michael's eyes creased at the corners, the effect of what must have been an attempt to smile, but his morose gaze made a liar out of it. He also not very subtly slid his arm over the top of the paper he'd been filling out.
"Are you okay, Michael?"
"Sure. What's up?"
"You don't look okay."
"Nothing a little more sleep won't cure."
He sounded as convincing as one of their street junkie regulars promising to go straight.
Earl studied him. Michael had steadfastly denied anything was wrong, no matter how often Earl asked. Whatever had been getting him down lately, Michael either kept it to himself or blamed it on the additional stress of the SARS epidemic. Which of course it could be. Except Earl knew his friend would rather have a root canal than admit to a personal problem. Like most doctors, while inviting everyone to bring him their sick and needy, he viewed asking for help as his own defeat.
"Christ, Michael, will you cut the crap and tell me what's wrong?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, Jesus."
"Jesus?"
"Goddamn it, you are one stubborn idiot. Oh, and by the way, thanks for saving the department from the first-year residents, for about the millionth time."
Michael's eyes creased at the corners again, a bit more convincingly this time, and a chuckle rumbled out of his barrel chest. "You're welcome."
"But like they say in the song, 'You got to tell somebody.'"
Michael picked up a book and threatened to throw it at him.
"Okay, okay!" Earl closed the door and hurried out the triage entrance. What could be wrong with Michael? Had he reached his limit to seeing human beings reduced to flesh, blood, and a wet mess? That tipping point crept up on all doctors who worked the pit, one case at a time. Earl had counseled enough former colleagues through it to know. But burnout victims possessed a haunted look, as if they couldn't shut out the images of what they'd witnessed and were consumed by them. Michael had something else, a wariness about him, a watchfulness, as if on the lookout for something. And why would he conceal what he'd been writing on a death certificate?
At the exit Earl peeled off his protective gear, dumped it in the disposal bin, and stepped outside, where a cool summer breeze carried the fresh scent of open water from Lake Erie. The usual release of having shed pounds of sweaty clothing flooded through him. It felt as if he'd burst free of a dead skin.
He wheeled his car out of the lot and saw Janet's green Mazda convertible, a vintage 1990 model that she drove during the summer, still resting in its spot. A surge of disappointment destroyed his brief euphoria. Not for the first time he raged against the tyranny of obstetrics, but, long resigned to it and determined that Brendan would have at least one parent to tuck him in tonight, he sped toward home.
The cold woke her.
She forced herself to blink, but the absolute darkness remained.
She fought to crawl out of the sleep that still had a hold on her.
No change. Everything remained as black as if her eyelids were clamped shut.
Except they felt open. She also became aware that her head ached, and an acrid burning at the back of her throat made her want to gag.
The chloroform!
Plus something else.
Smells flooded through her head, and she remembered.
She leapt to her feet, swayed heavily, and immediately regretted the sudden move. Reaching into the darkness, hoping to find a place to lean on, her left hand landed on the wooden contours of an open mouth, nose, and cheeks, easily recognizable to the touch under the crinkling plastic of a body bag.
"Shit!" she yelled, but held on to the face to stop from tumbling into something worse.
The spiraling in her head settled, and she turned toward the corpse, intending to feel her way along the shelf it rested on until she reached the door.
How long had she been in here? And why did the stench of chloroform remain so strong? It seemed to be making her woozy afresh, yet the morgue door should have kept much of it out-
The fall!
She'd soaked her protective clothing in the stuff. The cooler temperature in here must have slowed the evaporation enough that there weren't the fumes to keep her unconscious, but she'd have to strip and shower, wash the volatile fluid off her entirely, or the baby might-
The urgency of getting out overwhelmed her.
Bodies be damned. She palpated herself past the top of what felt like a skull with its crown cut open, crossed over a gap, found a pair of feet, and worked up the legs. The torso, neck, and head led her to another pair of feet.
She stopped.
It couldn't be this far to the door. She must have headed deeper into the locker. Muttering more curses and trying to take shallow breaths, she reversed course and worked her way back over the dubious landmarks.
In seconds she reached a wall.
A step left and she felt the door frame. A second later she found the handle and pressed down.
It didn't budge.
Shit!
She tried again.
Nothing.
How could it be locked?
She threw all her weight behind it.
Same result.
This can't be happening, she told herself, trying to remain calm, growing colder by the second, and the contents of her skull once more looping through sickening swirls of an anesthetic haze. Any meat locker she'd ever been in had a round metal disc that released the door, to prevent anyone from being trapped inside. Surely it couldn't be different here. But feeling around, she found no metal disc or any other escape mechanism.
She stood back and forced herself to settle down, trying to think clearly. Hard to do with a mind still half sodden in chloroform. First she had to get rid of the fumes. And find a light.
More waves of nausea swept up to the base of her tongue.
Take care of the fumes first.
She shed her outer gown, blouse, and skirt, throwing them toward the inner recesses of the long, narrow room, figuring the farther away the better. Finding her underclothing to be dry, she quickly pulled her slip over her shoulders and balled it up over her mask, instantly cutting the noxious scent in half.
Now for light.
With her free hand she rapidly patted down the walls where the switch ought to be, but found nothing.
Must be just missing it, she thought, and, dropping her slip, used two hands, methodically sliding them over the surface, checking a square foot at a time.
But immediately the fumes in that closed space began to work on her nose, eyes, and head again.
Time to get rid of that chloroform wick once and for all. Bunching up her slip as before, she went down on her hands and knees and felt her way along the floor toward the rear of the chamber until she came to her discarded clothing. She then stood up, reached sideways to where she figured the nearest body lay, and inched toward it, her hand outstretched.
Her fingers brushed against the plastic cover and made a rustling sound. She pressed down and felt the telltale struts of a rib cage against her palm. She palpated her way toward the head, past the jagged ends of bones where the sternum had been sawed out, and found the tab of the zipper for the body bag. Pulling it open, she released a swell of the sickeningly sweet decay that, until now, had been but a lingering background odor. The legacy of all the sugar in a body's juices, she thought, trying to objectify the odor by breaking down the science of it, a mind game she sometimes used in the case room to lessen the impact of any foul stench. She also swallowed a lot, her usual technique to keep from throwing up, and stuffed the soaked clothing inside. "Sorry," she said to her unwitting host before yanking the tab closed. It sounded like shutting the front flap on Brendan's play tent.