Pause

Lindsey furtively wipes her eyes on her sleeve before turning toward the hall, heading back to Medical Records. And comes up face to face with Marlene, Jenny, and Sono. Damn. She sniffs, hopes her eyes aren’t red.

“Break time!” Jenny shakes out her fingers, rotates her wrists. “They’ve got Crispy Cremes in the cafeteria today!” She flashes a mouthful of braces.

“Oh.” Lindsey blinks. “You mean those donuts? I’ve never had one.”

Sono shakes her head, chin-length glossy black hair bobbing. “Never had a Crispy Creme? Are you serious?” She pushes her thick glasses up and focuses on Lindsey.

Lindsey takes a breath. “I guess it’s time. Do you mind if I come along?”

Marlene blinks in surprise.

Sono pushes her glasses up again, then cracks a grin. “Let’s go before those greedy docs snap them all up.”

“Oh, no!” Jenny—thirtyish, plump, and single—has one of those high, breathless little-girly voices, and Lindsey is never sure if her matching persona is for real. “We better hurry then, those creepos!” She grabs Marlene’s arm and tugs her down the hall, breaking the awkward freeze.

Lindsey and Sono fall in behind, regroup at the elevator doors. Lindsey balks then, glancing over at the stairwell door—it’s only one flight down for heaven’s sake—but she bites her lip and goes along.

“Watch out if you go for one of your walks today, Lindsey, those protestors are out there again.” Jenny tugs her sweater down over her skirt. “I could hardly get through them this morning.”

“Yeah, I got more of those flyers about the park stuffed under my windshield wipers,” Marlene grumbles in her nasal tone. “If they’re so damn environmental, maybe they should stop wasting all that paper. Think they’re going to convince me some frogs and birds are more important than saving human lives?”

Lindsey takes a breath as the elevator door opens. “You’re right, I think they’re just antagonizing everyone by now. It doesn’t have to be black and white.”

Marlene frowns, then shrugs. “Well, I can tell you I just get the urge to strangle that jerk in charge. The puffed-up asshole with the bullhorn.”

A choking sound from Sono. Lindsey bursts out laughing.

Jenny stops where she’s hurried ahead to the cafeteria doorway, turns wide-eyed and puzzled.

Marlene’s looking a question from Sono to Lindsey.

Lindsey waves a hand, drags in a breath. “My ex.”

“What?”

“The guy with the bullhorn. My ex.”

Marlene’s jaw drops. “Oh.” She looks chagrined. “Oh. I didn’t mean….”

“No, you’re right on. He is a jerk.”

Sono ushers them all onward. “I can smell those artery-clogging fats calling.”

“Now don’t start on that, Sono!” Jenny giggles and hustles toward the line, skirt swaying over her wide hips.

“I’m in recovery from a deprived childhood of rice cookies and sushi.” Sono winks at Lindsey.

They pick up trays and hot drinks, corral the Crispy Cremes that just look like regular glazed donuts to Lindsey. After all the hoopla, she was expecting something like custard-filled at least. But anyway they’ve broken the ice, maybe she can do this after all. Fit in like a normal person.

“Can you believe those new forms?” Sono starts in, talking around a mouthful. “Act like we don’t have anything better to do. Like, oh yeah, just add on an hour’s worth of paperwork, and of course work twice as fast to catch up the backed-up transcription lines.”

Jennie wipes her hands on her paper napkin, shakes them out, and holds them up. “They’re starting to tingle at night, all the typing.” She rubs her wrists. “Lindsey, does that wrist brace help?”

“Well, bad keyboard position is the real killer, but especially at night if you get one of the braces with the rigid support and strap it tight enough, it does help. I’ll show you how to strap it.”

“Oh, thank you! That’s sweet.” Jennie smiles.

“…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.