CHAPTER 5 #3
There are doors at one, two, three on the right.
The third door is unlabeled. There is a door on the left at the count of two and it has a black plate with no lettering and I keep my eyes forward, my feet straight.
I walk straight. I deliver the cooler to the man at the third door who takes it with a nod and signs the paper-tag and returns it to me without speaking.
The corridor is the same on the way back.
The door at the end is closed.
I lift my badge again at the reader. The reader does not read it. I lift it again. The reader reads it this time and the lock clicks and the door opens out into the access corridor on the East Tower side, where the cable-trays end and the carpet begins and the air goes warm in a single step.
The door at the research-wing side closes behind me with the small mechanical thunk of an industrial lock setting.
I take the freight elevator up.
---
The residents' workroom is half-empty at six-twenty.
The fluorescents hum. The Keurig is on. The whiteboard at the chief's red marker still carries yesterday's scrawl.
I sit at my desk to finish the OR-4 case-note in the EMR. My handwriting on the paper draft is small and clean.
My fingers smell like chlorhexidine still, even after the gloves, even after the post-case wash.
The smell has gotten under my nails. I do not mind it.
The door opens at six-thirty-eight. My eyes stay on the EMR. The footfalls are heavier than Beatriz's and slower than a resident's and the brand on the loafers under the white coat is the brand the senior attendings wear because the senior attendings have stopped pretending they are not on their feet for nine hours a day.
Hayes. He has been back for an hour. The conference in Phoenix was about robotic minimally invasive cardiothoracic, which I know because his out-of-office reply said so, which I know because Beatriz forwarded it to me.
He sets a coffee on the desk two over from mine.
He uncaps the Montblanc Meisterstück 149 with the audible click that I have catalogued as his audio signature.
My head stays down.
I close the EMR. I save the case-note. I log out. I put the paper draft in my locked desk drawer. I stand. I take my coat from the back of the chair. The Keurig hums one more cycle and stops.
"Rossi," Hayes says, behind me. His voice is meant to be heard from the door. "How was the cardiothoracic case."
My back stays to him. "It was clean, Dr. Hayes."
"Clean. Mikhailov's a fine surgeon."
"He is."
"You and he had a nice morning."
He says nice morning like a coin rolled between two fingers. I file it. The turning, the look, the satisfaction he would draw from either — I keep all three to myself. I lift my bag onto my shoulder.
"I have a call-back, Dr. Hayes. The trauma bay needs a backup. I have to go."
"On a Friday night."
"On a Friday night."
I walk out of the workroom past him without looking up. He stays planted by the desk. Whether his eyes follow me out is his question to answer, not mine. I mark my steps to the door — eight — and then to the elevator — fourteen — and then I exhale.
At the elevator my badge phone vibrates once against my palm. No page. A schedule note.
Service exception entered: RN Rossi declined requested CT coverage. Attending note pending charge review. — M. Hayes
The words sit in the small blue hospital font, harmless as a lab value until you know what a file does when enough harmless lines are put into it. I read it twice. I do not answer it. I take a screenshot with the same thumb I use to silence a call light.
Beatriz texts before the elevator arrives. Do not reply. Forward to me. He likes paper trails until someone else owns the paper.
I forward it. The elevator opens. I step in. The doors close on the empty corridor and the cap-click I can still hear behind me.
The page on my pager is a real page. Alexei is short-handed for the overnight. They want a circulator who is already in the building and already cleared. The pager went off at six-eighteen. I am already cleared and already in the building. I am going.
---
The corridor lights cycle to evening at seven.
The fluorescents drop a half-tone warmer for the night shift.
The autoclaves on Floor 9 hum at their lower change-of-shift pitch somewhere two floors below — out of earshot until I reach the stairwell, then in it.
The chlorhexidine smell on my hands has stayed under the nails through every wash.
The heart gives its answer without needing the number. The pediatric pin is on my lanyard.
The phone in my coat pocket has four missed calls and I will read them when I sit down for the first time tonight — hours from now.
I take the south stairwell down because the south stairwell is faster and because nothing said in a stairwell carries.
The trauma bay is on Floor 9, east end, the door at the corridor's bend.
I badge in at seven-oh-three. The lock clicks.
The door swings out at the half. Alexei is at the charting station with his back to the corridor, his left hand on the keyboard, his right thumb turning the knurled steel ring at the joint.
He looks up as the door opens. His smoke-gray eyes find me at the threshold and stay.
I step into the bay.