Текст книги "Impuls"

Автор книги: Aster

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Chapter 3

these people think that doctors live somewhere

for them: I wish I could get through, I wish I could shout;

Who will take the responsibility of collecting

those moaning with phantom pain in their shoulders?

Emily turns around.

The woman in front of her must be like a thousand other women; except that the world around them doesn't shrink, doesn't chew itself up, doesn't beat a cold, bright light in her face. And, of course, these other women do not look as if they are not human, but expendable. A pebble stuck in a pointy-toed shoe; a tiny crease on a perfectly pressed blouse from a new-fangled designer.

Her gaze catches Emily's, pauses a little, puts a branding – an annoying, nagging factor that it is not customary to talk about out loud; an unnecessary element of decor in the office; a formally donated statuette for the next anniversary of the company.

Of course she was mistaken, Emily keeps telling herself, just mistaken, saying the wrong name, just mixed up, well, it happens to everyone, yes, she repeats, trying to stare at the floor, but sees only her reflection in the lacquer of the black pumps.

– Ah, Dr. Clark! We've got another mystery here," the one who was praising Emily a few minutes ago announces all too happily.

– Send her to the diagnosticians.

– How did you know it was a girl?

– I meant the riddle. – Clark puts a Kraft bag and two cups with R&H logos on the table. – It's 8:00 in the morning, Donald. What's with the gathering in my office?

Emily, standing slightly behind the woman, steps away from the desk as inconspicuously as possible; bumping into the owner of the office, her supervisor, and apparently a colleague is in no way part of her plans for the day.

Neuroscience, in fact, is.

Standing behind a small cabinet – very, very flat, Rebecca would be sure to let off some unfunny joke – Emily feels panicky.

More than anything, she wants to be invisible: in all the time she has worked here, she has never found herself alone with such people in an office, and now she has no idea what to do: answer an earlier question, repeat her directions, or run away, forgetting to close the door behind her.

But it's as if she's no longer noticed – after some quiet negotiation, all three of them lean over the scattered pieces of paper, and then stare into the wall-mounted negatoscope: six projections of the brain catch their attention more than Johnson, who languishes waiting for the right papers.

Emily looks at the back of the neurosurgeon's head – almost white, short-cropped hair, a sort of pixie haircut that crosses all boundaries: torn strands and real chaos instead of styling.

The nurses also wore the same kind of hair, only it was more flashy and provocative: pink, blue, green, with the addition of dreadlocks, long bangs, or shaved temples, but it looked like they were trying to get attention. Clark, on the other hand, seems to find a breeze in every second, allowing that hair to be styled in any way .

– …patch it up right here," her slightly husky voice made the air vibrate, "see if anything comes of it. It won't be completely repaired, of course.

– Can you do that?

Clark shrugs, and the outline of lace underwear becomes visible through the thin fabric of her gray blouse.

– I'll try," she answers evasively. – But I need more tests.

– Speaking of tests. Miss Johnson is still waiting for her referrals. – Donald turns to Emily. – Moss is going to write it all out, wait for him outside, please.

– Dr. Moss," Andrew whispers, "is too busy for paperwork.

Emily doesn't know why, but she flares up like a Christmas tree, as if she'd been rudely answered, or rejected altogether; she blushes so red her cheeks are hotter than a fire; and Moss stares at her with an angry look in his eyes.

She has to get out of the office; a step, a second, a third – a soft footstep on the parquet, the barely perceptible creaking of the door, the sudden stuffiness and the strange, almost black sky in the windows.

Emily leans her back against the cool brick wall, and the air around her crumples like old dry paper. Scary words flash in her head: panic attack, anxiety disorder, nervous breakdown; but her pulse quickly evens out, and the decrepit paper air crumbles to ashes, allowing her to take a breath of pure oxygen.

She remembers: she is seventeen, a dusty path to the tops of medicine, dozens of books and bitten pencils ahead of her. Becoming a doctor, Emily dreams, saving people, deftly wielding a scalpel, saying «dry» to the head nurse, and having dinner with her colleagues in some quiet place in the evening, pouting cheekily, and stretching the words, «Let's not talk about work?»

Bites her lip: the tuition bills, the failed exams, her mother's sneers, «Daddy's very unhappy,» George's dark red uniform: equality, they said, is the foundation of the basics.

Emily remembers the numbers: ten thousand dollars a year; one loan; two jobs; three hours of sleep. Pathetic attempts at self-indulgence: this is not the worst thing that could happen to a dream.

And the realization: no, it's much scarier than that.

She doesn't even have a pass like everyone else – you can't use it to get benefits, to brag about it in front of her family, to put it in a nice cover or wear it proudly with a ribbon around your neck. St. George is not a place to be proud of, and four years is too little for a doctor and too much for a nurse; just as the next forty thousand is another stepping stone on the way to quite the wrong place to be.

Sigh.

Emily knows: this is going to be one hell of a fall.

* * *

When she returns with her cherished papers back to neurology, the door to room three hundred and thirteen is unlocked and the bed itself is empty, with only the sheets carelessly wrinkled and the recliner somehow pushed back in.

She should have handled it without leaving the girl unattended, but failed here, too. Now there's no use looking all over the hospital for the patient: she could be anywhere from the treatment room to the exam room. So Johnson sits back in his chair, tucks his legs under him, and taps his fingers on the table – he has to pull himself together and do something.

Fear should have possessed her by now, but Emily feels only endless fatigue weighing on her shoulders. Her own burden, as it turns out, weighs and presses her to the ground worse than someone else's.

My thoughts do not leap, do not rush, they stand still, frozen in space; and somewhere in the margins of consciousness a simple thought emerges: there are so many staff in the hospital that a blind and probably panicked patient would not be left without attention. So she is either in another room, or indeed taken to…

Dr. Higgins enters the room just as Emily prepares to fly out of it in search of him – sandy jacket, crumpled shirt, silver-tinted hair. They'd seen each other once before, Emily recalls, perhaps in the emergency room or in the lower therapy rooms.

– Good afternoon!" Mark salutes in greeting. – I took your Miss Anonymous to the next ward. Glad one of us thought to do the paperwork. – A nod to the pile of directions and a smile. – I don't like all that… By the way," he doesn't wait for an answer, "the angiography showed no vascular lesions. Now she's on an EEG and an Echo. Just give it to me, don't be shaky. – He reaches for the papers.

Emily obediently hands over the forms, filled in Moss's fine, cursive handwriting, and looks expectantly at Mark: the general practitioner, in his sixties, looks forty-something thanks to his light clothes and some inner, radiant smile.

– She likes you. – He takes a pen out of his breast pocket and signs. – Our Jane Doe*.

– Where did she come from? – Emily mechanically unfolds the bedspread. – I mean," she corrects herself, "how was she found?

– Oh," Mark sits back in his chair, "it's a very interesting story, Miss Johnson. All she remembers is that she was found by the paramedics. They themselves say someone called 911 anonymously to report the girl.

– But the police…? – Emily frowns.

– What about the police? – Higgins splashes his hands. – They came, talked to someone from the emergency room, and left, didn't even take her chart. Don't you think they've got enough of Jane's kind? Though maybe Donald or his secretary will fax them all the data, but that's when it's-" He shrugs. – You know, Miss Johnson, there may be something you can do for this young lady…

– What?

The ringing of an old gray Nokia interrupts the professor. The standard message tune cuts to the ear, then abruptly cuts off by the incoming call. Higgins frowns as he listens to the caller, nods without asking anything, and then just tosses the phone back into his jacket pocket.

– Change of plans, Miss Johnson. Forget about Jane, her namesake is waiting for us. – Mark stands up abruptly. – The other doe has a complication and needs to be prepped for surgery. A cyst.

– The other doe? – Emily's looking blankly into the void. – Professor, wait!

* * *

– What the fuck?! – Moss is furious as hell, and the air around him is saturated with electricity, threatening to turn into a storm. – We looked at his labs this morning, they were clean, did that crap come out in two hours?

– We looked at his head, not his back," Mark corrected him gently. – And we thought the pain was from hitting the pavement.

– There's a sack of shit for half the picture! – Andrew turns around so sharply that the flaps of his robe fly into the air. – How can you not see it?!

Higgins only shrugs his shoulders:

– It's been too little time, Andrew. We haven't even finished the general tests yet, and a new pain has arisen. It's no use blaming the poor orderlies.

– I'll get Neal to pump out the fluid and put in his miracle patches. – Moss signs the papers one by one and almost throws them at Emily, who is standing next to her. – Take this to Ray later. Where the hell did she come from?" The neurologist puts the scans back in the envelope. – Give this to our surgeons. And take care of the patient… – he yells again and storms out of the room before Emily can say okay. Mark follows, not even glancing at Johnson, holding a pile of unstitched files.

The other Doe, in Emily's opinion, needs no preparation: he sits perfectly still and doesn't take his gaze off her. His chart was almost blank-no test results, no allergies, no-whatever, as if they'd forgotten to fill it out, and there was no time to gather a medical history. Especially since he'd already been to some kind of procedure-the nurse sees a couple of cotton lumps glued on with a Band-Aid, a fresh IV line, a fresh bandage on his head, too.

Emily knows: it's just under an hour to surgery, which means that now we have to figure out what he's been doing and eating before; and when you consider that this is another memoryless man, the level of difficulty doubles.

Well, at least he can see her.

– Hello," she says. – I'm Emily. I will work with you.

Silence.

– The anesthesia doesn't hurt," she continues. – But first I need to remove all your jewelry, braces, and piercings. If you have lenses or hearing aids, they also need to be removed for the operation. But I'll get them all back to you afterwards, don't worry. – The smile on duty.

Silence.

Emily begins to get nervous: dark green eyes of the young man closely watching her every movement, as if analyzing.

He repeats:

– Are you wearing any of the things I have listed?

And looks expectantly: maybe he will at least reach out to her, or show her his ears, or nod; nervousness is quickly replaced by irritation: let him already do something, as long as he gives signs of life.

Emily scrutinizes his face: barely noticeable wrinkles in the corners of the lips, a scattering of freckles, high cheekbones, circles under his eyes. If you meet him on the street, you think he's a high-school student, lacking only a backpack or a laptop bag. His head is bandaged tightly, so you can't see any hair at all, but one or two strands of red at his ear are dishevelled and tugging ridiculously.

* * *

– What the fuck?! – Moss is pissed as hell, and the air around him is electrifying, threatening to turn into a storm. – We looked at his labs this morning and they were clean, did that crap come out in two hours?

– We looked at his head, not his back," Mark corrected him gently. – And we thought the pain was from hitting the pavement.

– There's a sack of shit for half the picture! – Andrew turns around so sharply that the flaps of his robe fly into the air. – How can you not see it?!

Higgins only shrugs his shoulders:

– It's been too little time, Andrew. We haven't even finished the general tests yet, and a new pain has arisen. It's no use blaming the poor orderlies.

– I'll get Neal to pump out the fluid and put in his miracle patches. – Moss signs the papers one by one and almost throws them at Emily, who is standing next to her. – Take this to Ray later. Where the hell did she come from?" The neurologist puts the scans back in the envelope. – Give this to our surgeons. And take care of the patient… – he yells again and storms out of the room before Emily can say okay. Mark follows, not even glancing at Johnson, holding a pile of unstitched files.

The other Doe, in Emily's opinion, needs no preparation: he sits perfectly still and doesn't take his gaze off her. His chart was almost blank-no test results, no allergies, no-whatever, as if they'd forgotten to fill it out, and there was no time to gather a medical history. Especially since he'd already been to some kind of procedure-the nurse sees a couple of cotton lumps glued on with a Band-Aid, a fresh IV line, a fresh bandage on his head, too.

Emily knows: it's just under an hour to surgery, which means we now have to figure out what he's been doing and eating before; and when you consider that this is another memoryless man, the level of difficulty doubles.

Well, at least he can see her.

– Hello," she says. – I'm Emily. I will work with you.

Silence.

– The anesthesia doesn't hurt," she continues. – But first I need to remove all your jewelry, braces, and piercings. If you have lenses or hearing aids, they also need to be removed for the operation. But I'll get them all back to you afterwards, don't worry. – The smile on duty.

Silence.

Emily begins to get nervous: dark green eyes of the young man closely watching her every movement, as if analyzing.

He repeats:

– Are you wearing any of the things I have listed?

And looks expectantly: maybe he will at least reach out to her, or show her his ears, or nod; nervousness is quickly replaced by irritation: let him already do something, as long as he gives signs of life.

Emily scrutinizes his face: barely noticeable wrinkles in the corners of the lips, a scattering of freckles, high cheekbones, circles under his eyes. If you meet him on the street, you think he's a high-school student, lacking only a backpack or a laptop bag. His head is bandaged tightly, so you can't see any hair at all, but one or two strands of red at his ear are dishevelled and tugging ridiculously.

Emily patiently repeats:

– Are you wearing any…

– I can't hear you," the young man says suddenly, licking his dry lips. – I am deaf.

If Emily could, she would shriek in surprise and some ridiculous horror of the situation, but she just smiles and nods; and then takes out a pen and writes the words on the back of the blank form: piercings, braces, rings, hearing aid?

He shakes his head.

Then Emily deduces: put a score on overall pain – and hands him the pen.

7/10, the answer follows.

The next part of the conversation resembles a comic sketch: Emily takes turns drawing a glass of water, coffee, a sandwich, and for some reason a slice of watermelon; then she draws a clock face – and after ten minutes she finds out that the patient had eaten nothing since morning and drank only water an hour ago after another blood sampling.

She points again to her name on the nametag, waits for the nod, and puts on her gloves; four ampoules, apparently brought by Moss, lie on the table, waiting to be filled: the anesthetic enhancer midazolam, the respiratory reflex inhibitor atropine, the stomach-soothing metoclopramide and the anti-allergenic Benadryl. Emily knows this sequence by heart.

The patient's hands are cold and scrunched up; Emily searches for a vein that hasn't been used before giving the injection, and then barely stops the blood spurting out of the blue. There is no doubt that she administered the injection correctly, but the young man shows no emotion – no pain, no panic, nothing. A perfect, absolute emptiness.

Emily writes nothing more, only sits down heavily beside him, feeling the fullness of the day's woolen shawl cover her shoulders. Now she should be saying comforting, soothing words: everything will be all right, our doctors are professionals in their field, and that-that-someone-Neil is just a luminary of modern surgery.

But she won't say.

And he just looks at her with his dark green eyes and speaks a little in a chant, as if addressing someone invisible behind her back:

– And he who knew no sin made him a sacrifice for sin.

Emily is silent: the overcrowded mind does not immediately identify the biblical quote – and afterwards the patient's eyelashes tremble as he leans back on the pillows and closes his eyes, and Johnson puts a pulse oximeter on his finger in fear, but the perfectly even numbers glow green.

He's just asleep – the nuclear mixture of drugs must have had an effect, or he, too, may have had a hard day, or maybe his whole life; Emily gazes into his young but tired face and tries to imagine his life before the hospital: maybe he was a wandering musician, or a secretary, or a simple student; or, like her, a medical student, too.

And then, picturing clear, colorful images, she whispers quietly, a little hesitantly:

– That in sin we may be made righteous before God.

Emily picks up the file again – the rest of the lines need to be filled in, and then she takes everything to the rooms; and soon the patient must be taken away for anesthesia – here her work ends, the operating nurse comes into play.

The glass door swings open and strikes the stopper so loudly that Johnson jumps up – and then owes a sharp edge of paper that cuts his skin.

A disheveled, panting kid in a white overcoat, with his nametag miraculously held in his pocket, stops in front of Emily, trying to lick off a drop of blood.

She almost succeeds, and only the long, thin scratch on the back of her hand is a reminder of what happened.

Something clicks in her head.

– Emily Johnson? – The student tries to catch his breath. – Let's go see Miss Clark.

Chapter 4

And in her eyes is the unexplored Milky Way;

the unguided stars wander back and forth;

all roads end with Rome someday,

but without Rome the roads will never end.

The student leads her down service corridors-networks of narrow, windowless passageways with dim yellow lights and an endless string of doors without any identifying marks-so it's a mystery to Emily how he navigates through them. They enter the neurology department in two and a half minutes – the familiar break room, the cubbyhole, and the large space of the main part of the ward.

Emily enters Clark's office, holding her breath – if she had messed up or made a big mistake, she would have been reprimanded by either the attending or the head nurse, but not by the neurosurgeon: he has nothing to do with the junior staff, unless, of course, it was his own team.

Clark stands half-turned, his arms crossed over his chest, his white coat sloppily slung over his shoulders, his lips curved into a semblance of a smile.

Emily's spine sucked – fear mixed with a strange kind of awe. If it were Rebecca, she'd have pressed her lips together, relaxed her shoulders, and looked at the whole thing through a spiteful squint. But Emily isn't Rebecca; all she can do is wrinkle the already creased fabric of her gown and wriggle from foot to foot.

Of all the hospital's sixty-thousand-person staff, Miss Clark needed her.

Or…?

– Johnson," the neurosurgeon's heavy stare is almost physically palpable, "is our psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Clark.

Oh shit. Good thing she didn't say a word to him.

Her lungs run out of air as the student who called her here sits down on the padded couch and puts his leg over her leg; but-she's willing to swear! – at that moment, mischievous sparks flicker in his dark eyes.

The prank was undeniably a success.

Charlie had a mop of blond hair, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt with the Beatles emblem on it. Emily mentally excuses herself: Anyone would mistake him for a student intern; only the gray nametag that had fallen off his long robe gives him away as a doctor.

She looks closely: a long black Swatch strap, gray and blue Balmain, and a careless, as if intentionally placed blot on the lower left field of the robe – another famous logo, the name of which she does not remember. An envious sigh – in Britain, doctors are paid almost more than in other countries.

– Miss Johnson…

– You can just say Emily," the nurse says quietly, trying not to be distracted by her thoughts.

Are they brother and sister or husband and wife? Which one is older? And what is this woman's name anyway?

Why is she here…?

Charlie only silently spreads his hands as if answering unasked questions.

– Let's get right to the point. – Clark-whose-woman sits down in a wide, high-backed chair. – They say you spent the morning with a certain patient with a very strange diagnosis, right?

– But we didn't talk for more than half an hour. – Emily shakes her head. – I was only asking…

– You were talking about the mosaic. – Charlie leans his head back relaxed and looks up at the ceiling. – Just so you know, a mosaic, Emily, is part of a system.

– What system? – For the second time today, Johnson feels like a complete fool.

– Her memory, of course.

Everything Emily gives out in response fits into a simple, «Eh?»

– Our brain," Charlie explains patiently, "tries to cover the gaps in our memory with memories from nowhere. Or, if the trauma is too severe, it clings to words, places, actions-and inserts them like missing pieces.

– Like a mosaic," Emily guesses.

– That's right," the psychiatrist nods contentedly. – Her brain is clinging to two factors: it is you, Emily, and the puzzle. The puzzle. A fragment. A stumpy piece of life – whether past or present. And this idea-that she had something to do with it all-is now firmly planted in her head and taking root there.

– Like a virus?

– Exactly. Like a virus.

– She's about to have surgery. – It's like the neurosurgeon didn't even hear them talking. – We're gonna cut her head open again to see how she's doing. – A funny joke from her lips sounds like black irony. – She'll be conscious for a while, and Dr. Clark advises that you should be around. Maybe this way we can provoke… something.

– «Intraoperative brain mapping,» Emily says in a cursory voice. Nightly vigils over textbooks have had their justifiable effect – Clark throws her a look full of surprise. I guess she's the kind of person who thinks all nurses are idiots.

– You think there's a tumor in there?

– We don't think anything," cuts off Clark-who-is-anything-woman. – It's Higgins who's thinking. And while he decides it's a good idea to open up her skull and make sure there's no sign of a tumor and her visual center has been removed for some other reason that the CT and MRI don't show. And he doesn't care at all that the scans don't show that very tumor.

– Do you mind? – Emily asks timidly.

– I'm not sure that prying into someone else's head without a good reason is a good idea," the neurosurgeon answers grudgingly. – But Mark insists on reducing all risks.

– By increasing them? – Johnson barely audibly clarifies. Clark-sitting-in-a-chair rolls her eyes.

– That's because nothing just happens," Charlie says. – You can't wake up blind or deaf or dumb and then go about your business in peace. And you can't go blind in a second and keep your eyeballs intact. She doesn't have any external effects, does she? So there must be something inside. – He folded his fingers into little arrows. – So it turns out that in order to know the causes of blindness, we need to know the previous diagnosis. If we know the diagnosis, we know what was treated. We find out what, we find out where and who. – Charlie yawns. – And so on.

Drowned in so much information, Emily finally loses hope of a lifeline.

– But why me?

– You'll sit with her for the whole operation," the neurosurgeon begins to lose patience. – What don't you understand?

Johnson makes a mental note: one of the two Clarks is definitely annoyed with her.

– As a pageant host for one," Charlie smiles. – You need to talk to her and make her listen. She knows you, so we get rid of unnecessary stress and emotional strain on an already overloaded brain.

– But…" Emily looks up. – But I don't know her at all. I was just doing a background check. I'm not sure that I…

Clark-who thinks she's an idiot-waved her hand, silencing her.

– I don't want to hear it," she cuts him off. – That's your job. Or can't you handle it?

Emily is tempted to mutter something like: Actually, it is the job of a neurologist or a psychiatrist or an attending physician, but not of a nurse, who is not related to the patient – but she just nods silently.

After all, it's not like they're going to eat her.

Well, at once.

* * *

When Emily slips into the nurses' room at the end of the day, she feels worse than sick: her legs ache from the unaccustomed running around all over the floors, her head buzzes with thoughts, and her hands, which are now and then administering injections and shots, start trembling treacherously at the end of the twelve-hour shift.

She never got a chance to eat or even drink tea; all she could manage was a couple of sips of water from the coolers, and then she had to run again. Higgins must have thought she was assigned to him, so he kept her busy, both with files and with patients. He would appear stealthily, disappear quickly, and then loom up behind her again, repeating that time was of the essence.

Melissa diverted from her business and sat down next to her on the stiff bench, looking exhausted, too – except her shift was smoothly turning into a night shift.

Well, there's at least one person in the world worse off than she is.

– What's up, Johnson, rough day?

Emily leans her back against the cold metal of the locker and nods, pulling the studs out of her head. The back of her head immediately begins to whine.

– What's to come.

Melissa claps her on the shoulder, is silent for a minute, and then gets up and walks out without saying a word.

Emily changes as quickly as her tired body will allow; she searches in vain for a hair band, but finds none, and decides to leave her tangled, curly hair this way: it is unlikely that anyone will notice her.

Olivia – still vivacious and full of energy – again fails to notice her, and Emily leaves the hospital for Whitechapel. At eight o'clock at night, the street is crowded, with couples and companies lounging on benches, music blaring from cafes and bars across the street, and people trying to cross the street in the wrong place, hurrying to the subway.

Emily adjusts her bag, breathes in the London air and walks slowly toward the crosswalk across from Turner Street.

– Hey, do you need a lift?

She turns around-more reflexively than interested-and sees two figures running out the front door behind her: one in ripped jeans and an acid-green leather jacket, the other skinny, tall, throwing a small leather backpack over her shoulder.

– I'm on mine," a woman's voice came over her.

– Does she still drive? – Laughter in response. – Maybe you should get a scooter.

– Fuck you," the woman replies laconically.

– After you, sister!

She tries to say something back, but the sound of the engine starting and the momentary screeching of the tires interrupt her; the woman's shoulders slump tiredly.

She walks forward seven meters – a little more, and she will be at Johnson's side – and then she flicks the alarm, and the dark blue MINI Cooper flashes its headlights; a minute more, and the roof moves back, obeying an invisible command.

That's the car they were asking about, does it drive?!

Emily sighs enviously again – what could be better than rushing through the London highways in a convertible after a long day at work…?

The light of a passing car illuminates the face of a stranger for a moment, and Emily is surprised to recognize her as Clark.

Without knowing why, Johnson stands and watches until the car disappears in the distance; only then, on her way down to the subway, she smiles to herself: it's a good thing she ended up in neurology after all.

Maybe this is her tiny chance to get better.

The next two days pass all too quickly – both the night and day shifts are devoted entirely to the emergency room: Emily hasn't really figured it out, but some major accident outside the city has thrown her schedule off, turning it into a 24-hour shift. For almost twenty hours she relentlessly bandages, washes, stitches, and injections, filling out thousands of papers at the same time. Nothing is heard from neurology – either they have forgotten about her, or the date of surgery has not yet been set. Johnson hears from the ear that the operation in a deaf boy is going well – but does not pay attention to it: is not enough deaf young men all over the hospital?

By morning, Emily no longer knows where anyone is, doing her job on autopilot, and then, collapsing with exhaustion, she crawls to her locker, where she somehow pulls off her white coat, crumples it into a ball, and throws it on the tin floor.

Nothing, Johnson thinks, in two weekends she will have washed it three times and ironed it four times.

Somehow the fact that she has had to work so hard, as if for an entire shift, makes her angry; but this anger is not bright flashes or flashes of thunder, no; rather a humming and gray longing for calm.

Melissa puts her hand on her shoulder, encouragingly, saying that everything will be all right; but Emily does not react: it seems that if you put a pulse oximeter on her, it will show solid zeros.