Somebody, probably a resident, nodded to Danny by way of acknowledgment and the team closed him out. Nothing new about that. He looked around for Mr. Patrise and the other men, but they had disappeared. He wandered out into the waiting room.
It had the usual litter of old magazines, empty cardboard cups, and smokers' debris, and an unmanned counter of ancient varnished wood. The room smelled both musty and of disinfectant. As he started to feed change to the drinks dispenser, a woman's voice said, "Don't do that. Even if you are near a hospital."
A muscular, dark-haired woman in surgical scrubs, stethoscope draped around her neck, was standing in a doorway. "You're Doc Hallownight?"
"Daniel-uh, yeah."
"Lucy Estevez. I'm the lucky bozo in charge of the Knife and Gun Club tonight. It was pretty quiet until you got here." She held out a hand and Danny shook it. "Come on back and have some actual coffee. It's probably just as toxic as the machine stuff, but at least it's free."
They went back to a nurses' station, facing a row of a dozen curtained cubicles, about half of them with signs of occupancy. Dr. Estevez poured coffee from a heavily stained pot into two mugs bearing the names of drug companies; one was advertising an antihypertensive, the other a stool softener.
It was real coffee, as strong as he'd ever tasted it. It made Danny's chest burn and his head stand up and cheer. "Thanks."
"McCain said you were a paramedic."
"Yeah."
"Hey, relax." She told him a story about a motorcycle decapitation, down to the last splintered vertebra and drop of O-negative. He told her one about a disk-harrow accident. He'd had the conversation before, at Adair County. He relaxed. He knew this place.
Dr. Estevez got a bottle of peroxide and a towel to take the blood off Danny's denim jacket. She fingered his blue chambray shirt. "I think this one's had it. Mind accepting a loaner?"
'Sure." He was given a blue scrub shirt, found a bathroom to change in. In the mirror, there was more blood on him than he'd realized. He rinsed his chest and slipped the shirt over his head. It was Stamped STOLEN FROM MICHAEL REESE HOSPITAL.
When he came out, Dr. Estevez was emerging from a cubicle. "The young lady ought to make it," she said. "You do good work."
Danny nodded.
"I mean that. You did it all dark?"
"There was light in the back seat."
"I mean, you didn't use any magic."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. You're from the country?"
"Duz it show s'much?" he drawled.
"When you came in, you said, 'We've got a woman.' One of the local people would have said, 'white female.' "
Danny thought hard about that. Things were going to be different here. People were going to be different, in more ways than one.
Dr. Estevez said, "I don't suppose you're looking for a job. W 7 e can always use another van jockey."
"Well, actually, I just got here, and… I guess a job sounds pretty good."
"The pay's fair, but I guarantee the hours stink worse than anything you're used to. And you know the New Paradigm?"
"No."
"There are never enough of us, so if you bring somebody in and don't have another call right away, you can get drafted as an ED assistant. OR too, sometimes. And you do know which end of the baby to grab?"
"Did it for real once."
"Good enough. Anyway, it's all the fun of being a first-year trauma resident, without ever getting to be a doctor."
"We did all that at home. We didn't have a name for it."
McCain appeared from somewhere in the back of the ward. "Mr. Patrise wants to see you, Doc."
"Offer's open," Dr. Estevez said, and went into one of the cubicles.
McCain led Danny to another cubicle. ('loudhuntcr u as waiting outside, holding a hand inside his coat. Danny had no doubt there was a weapon tucked away there. The elf opened the curtain and Danny went in.
Patrise was sitting up on a bed, his shirt off. His chest and arms were very thin, and his dark brown skin had the blue-gray cast of heart disease. EKG wires ran to a monitor; Danny saw a slightly abnormal rhythm, probably valvular trouble.
On Patrise's right chest was a black bruise the size of Danny's palm.
"You didn't tell me you'd been hurt."
"A ricochet. My coat stopped it." Patrise tilted his head back. His face was delicate, even-featured, thin-lipped. His hair was black and combed straight back from his forehead, caught in a silver clip at the back of his neck. "Some first night in the big city, eh, Hallow? What's the time?"
Danny looked cautiously at his watch. It showed just numbers. "Three-ten."
"Little late to show you the bright lights, then. But you're still going strong. That's good. Night people are at an advantage on the Levee. Lincoln."
McCain looked in. He had a broad, rocklike face, all planes and crevices. His eyes were sharp blue. When he looked at Danny they seemed friendly enough; Danny didn't want to see unfriendly on McCain.
Patrise said, "We'll go by the club; Doc can shake some hands."
McCain nodded and left. Patrise said, "They always treat your clothes like something dangerous. Find my shirt."
It was on a hanger nearby. The label said TURNBULL and ASSER. As he helped Patrise put it on, he realized that it was silk. He had never in his life seen a man's silk shirt.
Patrise fingered the rip in the shirt above the bruise on his chest, touched one of the EKG wires glued to his skin. "Shut that gadget off. I don't want them thinking I've died. Too many people have ideas already."
Danny switched off the monitor. Patrise peeled the electrodes off, buttoned his shirt.
"Mr. Patrise, the doctor on duty offered me a job here."
"I'm not surprised. Lucy can see competence a mile off. I'm sorry to disappoint her. Don't worry 7, Lincoln will make the excuses." He paused. "Perhaps it wasn't clear: you have a job. With me. Personally. There's no room for moonlighting." He pulled on an elastic-sided shoe. "You'll have plenty of your own time, but you work for me. Understand that and you'll have no cause to complain."
"Mr. Patrise, this is-I mean, I just drove into the city. You don't know me, it was just an accident-"
"There aren't any accidents." Patrise examined his slim hands, rubbed away a bit of electrode paste. "You have options, of course. You could work here. It's a nice place, if you don't mind the pay and the hours, the homicidals and the positive Wassermanns, all that. And, too, Norma Jean's family is Gold Coast, and they'll probably want to express their gratitude in a concrete way. But you'd regret it." He looked up, smiling. "That isn't a threat: I won't make you regret it. You just will." He stood up, wavered a little; Danny caught his arm.
Patrise looked up at him, eye to eye. "As for not knowing you.. ask me again in a month if I know you. Cloud."
Cloudhunter pulled the curtains open, held Patrise's coat. At the nurse's station, McCain was signing some papers. Dr. Estevez waved as they passed. "Have fun, Doc," she said. "If you ever get tired of the good life, give me a call."
They got into the car, Patrise and Cloudhunter in back, McCain driving. Through the clear glass in front, Danny could finally see the city. A long building with lit strips of stairwell would be the hospital; beyond it was the hollow concrete shell of a structure just as large. McCain turned into a broad street lined with burnt wood, broken bricks, empty windows, lit only by the car's headlights and the orange sky hovering low above everything.
"People live out there?"
"Not so you'd call it that," McCain said. "This is the Boneyard. The Penumbra if you're in a fancy mood. Went in the big shakedown. You saw the first big wreck back there? They blew that as a firebreak, to save the hospital. Now it's too far out of the World and the Shade both for either to care."
There was more red in the airglou now. "It burns like this all night? Every night?"