Pause

“…say they’re working on new standards for the audit committee,” Marlene’s telling Sono, the two having veered off onto a new topic. “But all it amounts to is shuffling around the HDCA codes.” She sniffs, air laboring through clogged-sounding nasal passages. “If they were serious, they’d look at the complication rates for Dr. Bennerton –”

“Sshhh!” Sono leans forward to grab Marlene’s shoulder, looking alarmed. “She’s sitting over there by the window.”

“What?” Marlene looks startled.

“Keep it down,” Sono whispers, rolling her eyes toward the window, with a tiny jerk of the head. “It’s Mrs. Montague. She comes every day.”

“Who…?” Then dismay dawns on Marlene’s face. “Oh, no.”

Lindsey bites her lip, darts a look over toward the window tables. By herself, a middle-aged woman in a blue parka she hasn’t unzipped sits hunched, staring into a coffee cup. Montague. Her husband is the one Lindsey transcribed that emergency report about, the head injury over a month ago that Dr. Bennerton botched. The one they moved to the longterm care wing. The one on IVs and intubation. The one with no evidence of brainwave activity.

Nausea, sour and hot in her mouth. She wants to jump up, shout it out, tell Mrs. Montague what they’ve done to her husband, but she’s choking on the words. So many words swallowed. Burning sparks, molten lava roiling from her gut up her throat.

Lindsey drags in a breath, pushes her half-eaten donut away, stands in an awkward scraping of chair legs over linoleum. Her face is burning, boiling, she’s a pressure cooker ready to burst.

“Lindsey, what—?”

“Hot flash. Gotta get some fresh air.” To get to the outside door, she has to edge past Mrs. Montague, who doesn’t look up from her coffee cup.

Bile rises on the crest of more surging heat. Lindsey pushes out the glass doors and into the blessed coolness of gray drizzle in the garden off the waiting area. She sinks onto a damp bench, taking in deep breaths as the nausea subsides, fixing her gaze on the drops beading the tulip buds. She wants to fall to her knees and embrace them, but she just sits there, letting them fill her vision. They’re beautiful, perfect, a delicate pink veined with peach, swelling egg shapes of plant flesh on their vibrant green stems rising toward the sky and kissed by silver rain.