aloft. “I’ve got a little fellow for him to babysit for a few days. But you’re going to have to bring him to Dad for me. I need to stop off somewhere else first.”
Morty stared at the dog. They sized each other up. “He looks like trouble,” Morty said, but his voice was friendly and the terrier wagged his tail in reply.
“He is trouble.” Maggie laughed. “But you and I both know that Dad loves troublemakers.”
“That he does,” Morty agreed.
Morty drove off with the dog, who was happy to throw his lot in with his new friend. I threw my lot in with Maggie. I was pretty sure I knew where she was headed and within minutes my guess was confirmed—the facade of the hospital loomed skyward before us, as stark and forbidding as a monolith built to appease the gods. Most windows were dark, but the lights above the emergency room were shining bright in the night like a beacon.
They would not let her see the old man yet. They were still working on him in a treatment room. But Maggie had other people to visit as well. I followed her up three floors and down a deserted hallway. Sorrow filtered out of each room, clinging to me like wisps of cotton candy. The people here were sick, and more than a few were weighing whether it was worth staying alive when staying alive meant so much pain. But the sorrow did not come from them, it came from those who loved them and had visited earlier, leaving their fear behind.
Two night nurses were bent over their charts at a well-lit station. When they saw Maggie, one barely looked up, but the other clearly knew her well. “Hey, Maggie. How have you been?”
Maggie stopped to talk. “Same as always, Lexi. Working hard. Catching bad guys. Bad girls, too, these days.”
The nurse smiled at her. “Your mother would be proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said, a catch in her voice. And then it was there: a flash of memory so brief I barely had time to catch on to it and understand what I had seen: a frail woman lying alone in a hospital bed, surrounded by darkness lit only by the electronic screens of the machines keeping her alive. Her face was emaciated and pulled tight against the bone, the skin as dry as parchment, the mouth hanging open as she waited for breath. Maggie stood by her, holding her hand, staring down at the body struggling to hold on to life in the bed before her. “It’s okay, Mom,” Maggie was whispering. “You can let go.”
In an instant, the memory was gone. Maggie would not allow it to linger any longer.
“What are you doing here tonight? I didn’t see you when I came on duty.” The nurse was staring at Maggie, waiting for an answer.
Maggie shook off her memory and managed a smile. “A friend was brought in earlier tonight. I’m here to see her. I know it isn’t visiting hours.”
The nurse looked down at her papers, amused. “It’s okay, Maggie. I wouldn’t let a little thing like visiting hours stop you now.”
Maggie was still smiling when she entered Peggy’s room. She was asleep, her body sprouting endless cables and tubes that connected her to a cluster of machines humming by her bedside. She did not wake when Maggie took her hand, but her vitals were strong and I could feel her fighting the injuries that threatened her body. Peggy would be fine. Peggy would live to once again explore the miniature landscapes of the lab she loved so much.
Maggie was at home in a hospital room. She pulled up a chair and sat for a few moments, doing nothing more than holding her friend’s hand, letting the darkness surround them, absorbing the calm and the quiet. Maggie pulled the safety of the room around her like a cloak, gaining strength from her surroundings.
I sat at the foot of Peggy’s bed, watching Maggie, wondering how she had managed to train herself to shut off her memories whenever they got in the way of the present. It would keep her a mystery to me.
After fifteen minutes, Maggie left her friend and, waving a quick good-bye to the nurses, returned to the first floor, where the fear and the jangled remnants of violence hung in the air, choking away the peace I had gained watching Maggie with Peggy. The emergency waiting room was dotted with people in various stages of