Mercy 6

David Bajo Mercy 6

FOR ESME AND HER MATH

ONE

1

Something brushed her cheek. She smelled cloves, something close. Both sensations passed in the night air. Mendenhall might have thought nothing of them, dismissed them as nerves, except that nonvisual hallucinations had come to interest her again, since a man had been brought into the ER last week exhibiting taste, touch, and olfactory alterations brought on by the DTs. He had died before she could finish questioning him. He wore a nice suit, was clean-shaven, the bristles along his nape tapered, pleasant against her fingers. He spoke — to someone who was not there — of butterscotch, a hummingbird’s throat against his thumb, and the coarse scent of a horse’s mane.

People — normal, healthy people — perhaps have more of these than they fully realize. They resist, filter out, reject, reconstruct, disown visual and auditory hallucinations because these indicate abnormality, threaten their sense of self, their standing. She had asked the clean-shaven man if he was describing memories or sensations. He told her they were sensations, clear and new.

She was testing his lucidity as the EMTs hurried the cart to the bed. She knew that this high level of lucidity amid the DTs indicated imminent demise. He died before the cart arrived.

Mendenhall directed everything; she held the man’s nape. But it was all procedure. She felt him go flat, that unfailing surrender.

They injected, massaged, shocked, and recorded a lifeless body.

The nurse and the EMTs appeared befuddled. They had enough equipment and meds and knowledge to revive a mummy, at least into a coma. But Mendenhall knew before the cart arrived. She believed in life.

She caressed her cheek, where she had felt the brush in the night, breathed, trying to reclaim the clove scent. But the air was back to mineral. She twisted her heel against the roof surface, still expecting the crunch of gravel. The surface had changed a year ago, refloored with a light industrial tile, good for walking, impervious to the elements. Her heel made no sound, nothing above the traffic hum seven floors below.

She was being watched. The figure she thought of as the Dutchman was on the roof with her, taking a break, standing as usual beside the remains of a telescope fastened to the low wall. The city glow cast him as a bit more than a silhouette. She could see his demeanor, his feigned interest in the horizon, his vague interest in her. She liked vague. That was where science often lurked.

It felt hallucinatory, walking toward him. He was no longer seeking solitude — that was clear. But was she no longer seeking it?

Mendenhall walked into this question, its wonder palpable against the measure of her stride. She drew up next to him, shared his feigned interest in the horizon. He was tall; her eyes were level with his chin.

“You don’t like the new roof?” he asked.

“It’s okay.” She looked at her shoe, twisted the heel against the tile. “I just keep remembering the old surface. Keep feeling and expecting it.”

“Building memory,” he replied. “My worst enemy.” The last word revealed an accent, the e sounds too much alike. Maybe the Netherlands, maybe eastern Europe.

“I hate metaphor,” she said. “Metaphors kill. Life is actual. Death is metaphor.”

“I’m not speaking metaphorically. Buildings are memory. They are composed of and by memory. Buildings are the shape of memory.

If you removed memory from this building, it would collapse beneath us.” He remained in profile, watching the nightscape.

“That memory is the main conflict in my work. Literally my enemy, that which I must attack and overcome. Or accommodate.”

“Or surrender to.”

He finally looked at her, though he did not turn his shoulders. “I never surrender, Dr. Mendenhall.”

“You know me?”

“We met last year, though you won’t recall. It was in the ER.

You were busy. There was blood.” He turned fully to her. “You are my enemy.”

She angled her look.

“It is my job to redesign this hospital. Without interrupting. I started with this roof. Last year.” His last two words smeared into one, sounding foreign, too short on the a, too deep on the e.

She motioned toward the telescope relic beside him. “Why’d you leave that?”

“I had to. By law. It was part of the original building. The doctor who founded the hospital was an amateur astronomer. In the 1930s you could see countless stars from this roof. Probably the Milky Way. Now you can count them.”

They both looked at the sky. There was a lot of black space between few stars.

“Why am I your enemy?” she asked, still looking at the sky.

“Because the ER is my biggest challenge. And you, Dr.

Mendenhall, are the ER. I told you this when we first met. I asked you for ideas. But you have no memory of that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I got ideas from you.”

“How?”

“I follow you.”

She stopped looking at the sky, stopped measuring the distances between the few stars. She looked at him. He stared at the city.