to catch her words when she speaks again. “Handle this…best you can…it’ll be okay…again…”
The basement of the building mirrors the structure of the first level: it’s T-shaped, one long hall running horizontally—this one packed with expensive-looking medical machines—the other, with a series of doors, intersecting it. The sheet tells me to bring each kid to office number twelve, which seems to be at the other end of the hall. Small gift. It lets me glance inside the rooms that have been left open, assess what’s still left inside. Shelves, filing cabinets, more than one computer.
I bump shoulders with a PSF hauling a stack of boxes in his arms, but he’s concentrating too hard on not dropping them to level me with a cutting remark or hit. I draw the girl over to the side to make way for more uniforms and boxes, and we narrowly avoid colliding with two women in gray scrubs. Nurses, I think. They’re weaving in and out of all of us, shouting, “Coming through!” with what looks like bags of blood in their hands.
I glance back, alarmed, just as the first door on the right opens and two men step out, allowing the nurses inside the room. One is O’Ryan, rubbing his buzzed hair, the other is in a white coat. We reach office twelve before their words can carry down the echoing hallway, but I feel unsettled as I guide the girl inside and kick the stool over so she can climb up onto the metal examination table. Two sharp, dark thoughts try to connect to one another, and then a third, but I force them out. I need to be focused on finding a way back into the kennel today. I have to make sure she’s okay.
I position myself by the door, near the small counter with its jars of cotton balls and ear swabs. I let my hand rest on the flat surface, fingers inching over to the computer’s mouse. At the smallest touch, the dark screen erupts with light. It’s on, I think, but the screen it brings up is locked and the only thing on it is a space for entering a password.
The door swings open behind me and I straighten, shifting to allow the person in. Gray scrubs, reddish-brown hair—it’s the guy from the landing, the one who’d been arguing with Olsen. When he turns to shut the door, he takes a moment to collect himself and clear the anger clouding his expression. When he faces the girl again, he’s not smiling, but he no longer looks like he wants to rip someone’s head off.
The nurse steps past me to get to the computer. My eyes dart down to the keyboard as he types his password: Martin09! I track his progress as he clicks through several different programs and screens to bring up the girl’s file. Chelsea. Her name is Chelsea.
“How are you feeling? The cold giving you any trouble?” he asks, and, to my surprise, there’s no malice or irony coating the questions. The girl relaxed the moment she saw him and is no longer trying to wring her hands raw. She shakes her head, keeping her eyes on the toes of her shoes.
Right. No eye contact.
The nurse reaches up into the cabinet on the wall and unlocks it. Inside are rows upon rows of bottles and jars. I shift my gaze back to the ceiling as he turns around and fills a paper cup with water from the sink. Chelsea accepts it along with two pills.
He takes a long, thin piece of latex and ties it around the girl’s arm. A tourniquet. He’s drawing blood. Only, even when he gets a grip on her arm, she’s trembling so hard he’s struggling to get the needle in.
“You have to stop shaking,” he says.
Her gaze slides over to me before jerking back to the nurse’s face. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, bloodless with how hard she’s biting it. A look of understanding breaks across the man’s face. The way the girl clutches the examination table makes me feel like I’m wearing a disgusting Halloween mask I can never take off.
Oh, I think.
“Oh,” he says. To his credit, it only takes him a second to steel his nerves and turn toward me with that same calm face. For the first time I see the name on his ID tag: R. Dunn. “Step out for a moment.”
I don’t release the breath I’m holding until I’m in the hall again,