say for sure. He’s not an idiot; he probably knew it would be too much.”
Sloane was listening, but she was also watching the other people in the waiting room. They were glancing over at them. Whispering. Shifting in their seats to take out cell phones.
“What was he like when he came back from the Drain site?” Matt said.
“Not good,” Ines said. “But making a good show of it. He said he was just worn out, and it was late at night—I didn’t think to check up on him—”
“It’s not on you,” Matt said. “You’re not a mind reader. No one expects you to be.”
“Hey,” Sloane said, jerking her chin at a twenty-something man with gel in his hair and his phone held out like he was recording video. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Slo . . .” Matt said.
She crossed the waiting room and plucked the phone out of the guy’s hand as he was fumbling to put it away, his eyes wide. She swiped to find the video, deleted it, then tossed the phone back into his lap. It hit him in the stomach, hard enough to make a slapping sound.
“Mind your own business,” she said, voice low.
Matt went to ask the receptionist if there were any spare rooms where they could wait, and Sloane sat next to Ines in silence.
They spent the next few hours in an empty hospital room, Ines sitting on the bedside table, Matt and Sloane in the chairs. Everything was taupe and muted sea-foam green, the same colors as Sloane’s kitchen growing up. Ines turned on the TV as soon as they walked in and changed the channel to late-night reruns of a sitcom she had liked as a child. Sloane’s body still remembered how to sleep through anxiety, so she slumped in the chair, leaned her head back against the wall, and dropped into a doze within minutes, the sound of a laugh track in her ears.
It was around midnight when the door finally opened, admitting a middle-aged woman wearing a lab coat over slacks and a blouse, her hair pulled back and her expression grave.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Dr. Hart. You must be Albert’s friends.”
Ines was sitting up, pushing her hands through her hair. Matt was already on his feet—he had been changing the channel on the television. Sloane was just staring at the doctor because she knew what was coming by the tone of the woman’s voice, by the hesitant curve of her shoulders.
“I have bad news,” Dr. Hart said.
Everything after that was just static on a television screen, the hum of a busy signal. Sloane picked up the highlights: organ failure, Albie, who should contact his family. Dead. The doctor would give them some time, come back later to answer any questions. She was sorry for their loss.
Sloane was just blinking at the two trashcans in front of her, one red, for biohazards, and the other white, for other refuse. On the wall was a drawing of the circulatory system, a man made out of veins and arteries.
There was nothing quite like the Drain for reminding you what people were made of. Sloane had had that thought the first time she saw one happening. The way people peeled apart right in front of you, displaying bone and muscle and internal organs all pressed together in the moments before they came apart. Sloane had an affinity for the mechanical; she liked to see the way things worked. She had always gaped at the complexity of the human body, displayed in such gruesome fashion, in the moments before the reality of death dawned on her.
But the Drain also revealed fragility. How soft people were, how easily destroyed. She had no trouble believing that Albie was gone, factually. His body was like any other, yielding, breaking.
But understanding it, the space he would leave behind—she couldn’t do it.
Dr. Hart had left them in silence. None of them cried. None of them moved. The clock ticked, and the TV droned the late-night news.
Finally, Sloane had to move, had to do something or she thought she might scream. She took her phone out of her pocket and opened her contacts list.
“I’ll call Esther,” she said to the phone screen rather than to Ines or Matt directly. “Can one of you get in touch with Albie’s mother? She’s never liked me.”
Matt was staring at her like he had no idea what she was saying.