“I’m glad to see you,” Fiona said, brushing the bangs across her patient’s forehead. “But not really.”

“I know,” Marva said weakly. “Me too.”

“Let’s make a promise. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Fiona took a step back from her impromptu hair styling, and took a good look at her patient who had spent the day half propped and resting under a single sheet. Marva Hayes was a sixty-four-year-old diabetic. A retired laundromat worker. Slightly overweight. Poor eating habits. In need of help she couldn’t afford. “Let’s promise that we’ll never see each other in here again,” Fiona said.

“Okay,” said Marva, her eyes still closed, her skin still that sickly pale green. “I promise.” But her promise didn’t sound very convincing, just like her other promises to watch her diet and to check her blood sugar levels regularly. “Yes, I promise,” she said again, turning her head to one side against the pillow.

Fiona had almost gotten used to broken promises. But rarely did they hinge so perilously on the edge of life or death. For Marva, this precipice was slick with ice cream and the frosting of packaged cakes. It was a sweet, colorful trap that had been slow in the making. A lifetime of emotional eating. Of supplanting some need, filling some void with the emptiest of calories. Marva had tiptoed her way to the very edge.

“You came close,” said Fiona. “I’ve seen people with your levels get strokes. We’re actually really lucky.”

“I know.”

“We’re lucky that we can still make promises.”

“I know, and I’m thankful,” said Marva. “Thank Jesus.”

Fiona took Marva’s hand, the loose, thin skin sliding against hers. She squeezed it gently. “We’re gonna beat this, Marva. We’re gonna do this together.”

“Please Lord,” she whispered.

“We’ll fix you up. Get you stabilized. Get you walking again.”

“Please Jesus, yes.”

“And we’ll get you set up on the right program, the right routine, so that you won’t have to come back here like this.” Fiona returned to the hand with a cotton swab, rubbing alcohol over Marva’s fingertip. “Okay,” she said calmly. “You know the drill with this, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Marva said, opening her eyes to watch Fiona handling the gun-shaped glucose reader. “You tell me it’s not going to hurt, but it always does.”

“Just a little prick,” said Fiona, applying the sharp metal tip of the device to the end of Marva’s index finger.

“Oh, Lord, I hate this damn thing.”

Fiona shushed her quietly, and then started counting down from three.

“Lord have mercy.”

“Two . . .”

Fiona steadied the device and placed her finger on the injector button.

“One.”

Snap.

Marva’s body squirmed in discomfort as Fiona drew the device away. “Good Lord,” Marva said with disapproval.

“You’ll get used to this,” said Fiona cheerfully. “It’ll be just like brushing your teeth.”

Marva didn’t say anything. She probably wasn’t buying it. They never did.

Fiona checked back to the device, waiting a moment for the glucose reading to appear. Still nothing. Her patient, meanwhile, was inspecting the latest little sore on her finger as if it was some gruesome injury. “You okay?” asked Fiona.

She kept rubbing her thumb over the wound that had already sealed.

“Okay,” said Fiona, reading her blood sugar number. Ninety-one. “Everything looks good.”

“Yeah,” Marva said, unimpressed. She was still looking at her finger. “Is there any way that I won’t have to do that? Lord knows I hate needles.”

“I know, I know.” Fiona said it in as apologetic a tone as possible. No matter the wrong choices, she really did feel bad for Marva. She put the detector away, out of Marva’s sight. “I can talk to the doctor about that if you want.”

“Oh, yes,” Marva said, perking up. “I want that very much.”

That was the good news, there being an option aside from getting pricked with a needle every few hours. The bad news, of course, was that the option was not cheap.

“What’s your medical coverage like, by the way?”

Marva mustered a little snorting laugh. “What coverage?”

“You don’t have coverage?”

Her laughter died as quickly as it started. “Well, it’s not too good. Why? Is it expensive?”

Fiona smiled warmly. “We’ll see what we can do, okay?”

What they could do, maybe, if she could afford it, or if some miracle happened, was supply Marva with an insulin pump. Fewer pricks on the finger. No more constant monitoring. The device would take care of all that, offering real-time blood readings and administering automatic insulin injections. When Fiona explained all this, her patient’s eyes widened with a hope she’d never seen before. Her face lit up as if she’d just been told that her diabetes was cured.

“But you’ll still have to watch what you eat very carefully,” warned Fiona.

“Oh, of course. I know.”

“It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t get rid of—”

“I know, I know,” Marva interrupted, emphatically denying any possibility of slipping back into her old, unhealthy ways. Of course not. Of course she wouldn’t. “I just don’t want all those finger sticks. I’ll be happy with that, by God.”

“You’ll be happy when you feel better. When you can walk.”

“Oh, yes, that too.”

Fiona had realized that what the woman really needed was a therapist. Not just a dietician, but a psychologist, someone to undo a lifetime’s amount of mental conditioning. To that end, maybe the finger pricks were a good thing. As a punishment to keep her reminded. To keep her honest.

The old woman closed her eyes again. She took a deep breath. “Thank you, Fiona.”

She immediately felt guilty for having wished this poor old lady punishment. Hell, at her age, after raising six children and surviving brain cancer, she deserved ice cream and whatever else she wanted.

It was unfair, actually.

But Fiona couldn’t let her patient get a whiff of that, a sympathy that could grow inside her like a disease. It was a disease. It was pity. And pity never helped anyone.

“God bless you, Fiona. I just needed some good news.”

“The real good news is that you’ll be feeling better soon. And that you’ll take control back from this horrible disease.”

“Yes,” Marva said, sounding weak again.

“Are you still tired, Marva?”

“Yes,” she said again.

“Maybe I’ll let you rest up before breakfast,” said Fiona, checking her patient’s chart one last time. There was nothing of importance scheduled for the day. Just more bed rest and insulin. And blood readings, and insulin and readings and insulin and . . .

“My kids should be here,” said Marva.

Yes. They damn well should. Fiona couldn’t remember the last time Marva had any visitors. Where the hell was her family?

“They should be here any minute,” Marva said, trying to sit up straighter. “I need to stay awake.”

“They’re coming today?”

“Any minute.”

Fiona smiled, fluffed her pillow one last time, and prepared to get on with her day. She could feel better about things, knowing that Marva would at least have a visitor. “Enjoy your family time,” Fiona said cheerfully on her way out.

The busy hallway reminded Fiona of her long list of tasks that day. She had a whole slew of medications to administer. A round of BP checks. A blood transfusion. And a catheter removal—which she hated almost as much as catheter insertion.

She decided she’d tackle the blood transfusion first, just a simple matter of attaching tubes to a new blood bag. Something she could do in her sleep.

“Can I get your name, please?”

“Come on,” the man said sourly. “You know my name. You’ve asked about six times now.”

She approached him and took hold of his wrist. “They make me ask every time, Ronald.” She held up his wrist so she could read the tag. “Ronald Higgins,” she said loudly.

“That’s your procedure, huh?” He drew his arm away and tucked it under his sheet. “To save you from screwing up?”

She checked over his chart for his name, and for the doctor’s blood transfusion request. Everything had to be checked and rechecked and corroborated ad nauseam.

“No, it’s to save you.” She walked over to his bedside table to inspect his new blood bag. “We wouldn’t want you to get the wrong mixture. Right?”

“Ah, so what?” he grumbled. “I’ve been an alcoholic for forty-five years. I’m used to getting the wrong mixture.”

She did the customary patient ID check, matching up wrist band number to the blood transfusion record tag, and to the blood bag itself. She checked and rechecked, and then signed the blood transfusion record tag.

“What’s the mixture today?” he asked. “Bloody Mary? I like it with a stick of celery.”

“How about a stick of metal?” said Fiona, tapping on his infusion site.

“Exactly. The fun times are certainly over, aren’t they?”

Fiona was busy attaching all the new plastic tubing, setting up the drip apparatus, and then attaching and hanging the bag from it.

“Okay, Mr. Higgins, let me know if you feel anything different from this. If you feel cold suddenly, or dizzy, or if your skin feels itchy. Anything like that. Okay?”

“Why? What kind of blood’s in there?”

“Your type,” Fiona said, struggling to patch the tube into the blood bag. “It’s just another thing I have to say.” She was having some trouble getting the blood to flow into the tube. Maybe a defect in the plastic. The quality of the tubing seemed to be getting cheaper and cheaper every month.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “You need a hand with something over there?”

“No, I just need a new tube,” she sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

Three minutes later, Fiona was back in the room with a new tube. She turned the blood bag upside down in order to pull out the old tube. After throwing the old tube in a medical trash bin, she returned to the blood bag, peeled the cover on a new hole, and then inserted the new tube in the bottom. She returned it to the hang, hanging it upside down like usual, remembering too late that the bag was now opened on both sides.

Blood rushed out, immediately coating her whole arm, her sleeve wet and red, with the rest of the blood splashing onto the tile floor in a loud slapping sound. She gasped in horror, her instincts making her flinch away from the red liquid. And then she realized that she was supposed to be a professional, a nurse, and she had just made a huge mistake. Fiona tried to block out the sounds of Mr. Higgins, and reached up to stop the gushing blood. She grabbed the bag, which only pushed more liquid out, and then flipped it upside down so that what little was left went coursing through the tube.

“Fuck,” she finally had time to say, her fingers dripping.

“Get back” came a voice from behind. “Fiona, back away from the patient.”

She turned to see Wendy Welsh, her supervisor. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know—”

“Fiona. You need to go and wash up. Right now.”

Fiona looked back at the blood bag and at the pool of blood sliding and expanding over the white tile floor. She looked at all this as if there was still something she could do. Something she could—

“Fiona, just go.”

She left without saying another word, speedwalking past Wendy and into the hallway, holding up a bloody arm as if it had been wounded.

The other nurses knew, by her expression, what had happened.

“Trouble with the blood bag?” one of them asked, fighting laughter.

Fiona might have found it funny, too, if she weren’t already under the microscope of Wendy Welsh and the other supervisors. She’d been having a terrible month. A rough patch. It seemed to be facilitated by a brain fog that had settled and thickened with every day of bad news she received about her sister’s condition. There would be good days, of course. Good news. Sometimes. But for the other days, when her sister’s health would take a step backward, it seemed to directly correlate to things such as spilling blood all over herself.

The fog today was especially thick. She’d woken up surrounded in it, the dark mist crawling up over her bed when she first opened her eyes to a text on her phone. It was still with her on her drive to work, a clinging, damp, soul-sucking fog that seemed to have covered up a traffic signal. It cleared at the last second to reveal a red light. The car came to screeching halt, the seat belt almost leaving a bruise on her chest. And then there was the police car that similarly came out of nowhere, out of the fog.

But he was nice. Nice, at least, about checking her out to make sure she wasn’t driving drunk or high. He’d let her off with a warning about careless driving.

She hoped Wendy would be as forgiving about her careless nursing.

Fiona was stripped down to her bra and standing over a sink in the women’s room, scrubbing her arms with a thick lather, fighting back the tears. It was ridiculous to be crying. She knew that. And she knew it wasn’t such a big deal.

But the culmination of it all was getting to her.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Wendy from behind her. “It’s happened to me before.”

Fiona turned away from the mirror and looked at her supervisor. She had just entered and was holding a fresh towel. “Thanks.”

“What are you thanking me for?” She walked up and handed Fiona the towel.

“The towel,” she said, trying to smile, but she couldn’t. She ran the soft cotton up and down her arms, drying them. Even after years of being a nurse, it was off-putting to be covered in someone else’s blood. It was nice to be clean again. “How’s the patient doing?”

“He’s fine. He didn’t get any on him.”

“That’s good. Looks like I’ll have to get another bag, though.”

“No, it’s okay,” Wendy chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s already taken care of.”

“What, he doesn’t want me back in there?”

“It’s been taken care of,” Wendy said, this time without the smile or the chuckle.

“I’m sorry,” said Fiona.

“Don’t be. Just get back to work.”

* * *

Fiona got back to work after a new scrub shirt and an early coffee break, stepping off the elevator feeling fresh and confident in an unbloodied outfit. A fresh start awaited her. As did the medication rounds, insulin injections, and the vitals checks, and for some reason, a small crowd of people in the hallway staring at her.

“Can I help you?”

They kept staring, smiling now. A pleasant-looking couple. Or siblings? They each had the same shade of light brown hair. Athletic windbreakers. There was an older gentleman with a cane held by a liver-spotted hand. And a toddler squirming around everyone’s legs. Picture perfect.

But who were these people? And why were they staring like that?

“Are you Marva’s nurse?” the woman asked, looking almost embarrassed with the question.

“Well, everyone’s her nurse,” said Fiona, looking around at the rest of her staff as they rushed about. “We’re a team.”

“Yeah, but you’re Nurse Fiona?” The way she said “Nurse Fiona” made her sound like a kid, or at least much younger than her apparent mid forties.

“I am,” she said, suddenly remembering that she forgot to transfer her name badge with the change of clothes. “How’d you guess?”

“They said look for the red hairband,” the woman said, pulling out a small box of chocolates from her purse. “We just wanted to thank you.” She handed her the box. It had a little bow on it, on top of the intricate, expensive-looking packaging. Fancy chocolates.

“Oh, what? No, it’s . . .” Fiona tried to wave the chocolate away as politely as possible. She wanted to be clear, but not overly clear about it. “No, it’s nothing. Really. You don’t have to—”

“Marva can’t stop raving about you,” said the man. “You’re a real kind lady.”

“It’s just something we picked up at the gift shop,” said the woman, looking even more embarrassed now, but still holding out the chocolates.

The nurses were warned about accepting edible gifts. But this one was still in its plastic wrap. And the people gifting it seemed so nice and normal.

“It’s okay if you don’t want them or whatever,” the woman said. “We didn’t know the etiquette about that. But, anyway we just wanted to really thank you.”

“Well, thanks,” Fiona said, smiling. It was a nice change from the constant criticism and the stress and the screwups. It was unexpected, and a little strange, but it felt good. “Thank you; that’s very sweet,” she said, finally accepting the gift.

The old man said something, but it came out mumbled.

“What was that, Dear?” asked the woman, putting a hand on his slumped shoulder.

He was laughing. Toothless. “I said, just don’t tell Marva about those.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “We’re trying to get her off the sweets. You know.”

Fiona knew indeed. “Yeah, me too.”

“You too? You have diabetes?”

“No, I mean, I’m trying to get her off the sweets too.”

“She’s got the addiction,” said the elderly man, shaking his head. “Real sweet tooth that one is.”

Fiona wondered if he was her husband. Though Marva never spoke of a husband. Only “family.” At least they finally showed up. They were nicer than she expected. But then, by their never showing up, she’d expected the worst.

“So, you folks from out of town?”

“No,” said the man with a confused look. “Did she say that? She gets a little loopy.”

“Oh, no. I must have that confused with someone else.”

Fiona could sense someone watching her from behind. She could sense the glare. She could sense the power. Wendy, perhaps. Or anther supervisor. Or maybe even Dr. Wahl. She was in no mood to talk with any of them.

“Marva said you’re her favorite. You really are her favorite. I don’t know if that means you’re sneaking her snacks, but, by God, she has good things to say about you.”

The compliments were almost too much. She wasn’t that nice to Marva.

Fiona could still feel the presence behind her.

“She’s a very sweet old lady,” Fiona said. “It’s hard not to be nice to someone like that.”

The presence grew stronger. And then, she heard Wendy’s voice. “Fiona?” The single word was asked in a question, but it was really meant as an order. Stop chatting with the clients, probably. Get back to work. Refresh 18B’s bedpan. Check Mr. Harlan’s IV patch. Quit fucking up.

“We just wanted to thank you again. It means so much to us that Marva’s well cared for.”

“My pleasure,” said Fiona, feeling Wendy’s eyes burning into her back.

“’Cause we don’t get to come up here much. You know.”

“I know, yes,” said Fiona, wanting to turn around and tell Wendy that she could just wait a Goddamned minute. Why was she being so pushy? Couldn’t Wendy see that she was busy talking to these nice, normal people?

Wendy would probably say something about the chocolates. Probably shake her head. There would be some sort of problem about that. Or something else. Anything else.

“Have a wonderful day,” said the woman with a bright smile. “And God bless.”

When Wendy approached a few seconds later, the mood wasn’t as light. There was something seriously wrong. Something very dark in her eyes. Her lips were pursed together tightly.

“What?” said Fiona. “What is it?”

“Can you follow me up to the office?” Wendy asked. “You’ll get an extra break.”

She didn’t want an extra break. “Right now?” She didn’t want to follow Wendy to the office.

“Yes, right now.” Her face had softened. She looked almost sympathetic now.

“Wendy, what’s going on?”

“Dr. Wahl wants to see you.”

“Why?”

Wendy turned to grab the arm of a passing nurse, saying in a hushed tone, “Take over in 18B when you can.”

“I’ve got 18B,” said Fiona.

“Okay, are you ready?” Wendy asked her as if nothing odd was happening. As if Fiona had nothing to worry about. Was she ready to get fired?

“Is this about the blood bag?” Fiona asked.

“No,” said Wendy.

That was almost worse. If it was the blood bag, the spill, she would at least know what to expect. She could at least start formulating—

“Fiona, it’s okay. He just wants to talk with you.”

She looked at the box of chocolates in her hand, wondering where the nearest trash can was.

“If it was a big deal, I’d tell you.”

Fiona held the box out to Wendy and asked, “Want some chocolates?”