Chapter 3

I called the floor from the parking garage at ten to seven. Before the elevator. Before I put my bag down. Before coffee.

"Three east, this is Marcy."

"Marcy, it's Nora Keane. I need to be taken off fifteen."

"Fifteen? Renner?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I was standing between a concrete pillar and somebody's car. "I know her personally. I shouldn't be her nurse."

"How personally?"

"Personally enough that I'm calling you from the garage instead of walking upstairs."

A long pause. "Hang on."

I waited three minutes.

"Nora." She came back. "One nurse called out. My travel nurse started Tuesday. I have nine patients on this hall."

"I understand."

"There is nobody to hand her to."

"Give her to the new nurse. Give me two of hers."

"The new nurse has been in this building four days. Fifteen is a bleeding pregnancy that could go bad fast." She let that sit. "I'm not putting that on somebody who doesn't know where our ultrasound machine is."

"Nora. If you're telling me you can't take safe care of this patient, say those words, and I will make it work, and I will write it up."

I closed my eyes. I could not say them. Not because I am noble. Because they were not true. I can take safe care of that patient. I have taken safe care of patients whose husbands hit them, and a man who spit at me, and a man who called me a name I will not repeat while I held pressure on his leg.

Being able to do it has never once been my problem.

"I can be safe with her," I said.

"Then I need you on the floor."

She was asleep when I went in at twenty past seven. Somebody had brought her a phone charger and a blue sweatshirt, folded on the chair. I bought that sweatshirt. Costco, three years ago, for a man who runs cold in his truck.

I checked her wristband against her chart twice. I check twice for everybody. I checked slower this time.

"Shelby? I'm going to take your blood pressure."

She surfaced with the flat look people get under hospital lights. "Okay."

Her pressure was fine. Better than mine.

"Any more bleeding since they brought you up?"

"A little around four. Less than before."

"Any cramping?"

"No." She put her hand flat on her stomach. "Just scared."

"Scared is normal," I said.

I hung her fluids. I checked the pump. I wrote it down. She watched me do all of it.

"You're really calm."

"I've done it a lot."

"How long have you been a nurse?"

"Nineteen years."

She laughed a little. "God. You must have seen everything."

"Not everything."

The rooms on that floor run cold in October and she was shivering. So I went down the hall and got a blanket out of the warmer. I spread it over her legs and folded the top edge back so it would not sit against her chin.

She made a small sound. "Oh. That's—thank you." She pulled it up to her shoulders. "You're so nice."

"You're welcome."

There is a whiteboard in every room. The nurse's name goes in the corner. I have written mine on ten thousand of them. I uncapped the marker.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Sure."

"Do you have kids?"

Nine years married. Six of them trying. Eleven months of taking my temperature at twenty to six every morning before I let myself get out of bed, and writing it on a chart in the kitchen drawer. Two rounds of treatment we paid for on a credit card.

She had no idea. I could see it on her face. She was a frightened woman who had been bleeding at seven weeks, making conversation with the kind nurse who brought her a warm blanket.

"No," I said. "I don't."

"You'd be so good at it."

I wrote my name on the board. I asked if she wanted ice chips. She said yes please. Then I went out into the hall and put my hand on the rail outside room fifteen.

At the far end, the elevator opened.

Brady stepped off with two coffees.

He saw me. Scrubs. Standing outside her door. Her chart under my arm.

And he stopped walking.