She crept into the pathology lab and was enveloped by a mechanized hum. A newly acquired machine was running, the automated blood analyzer, moving vials of blood around the room in a big oval track. Machines worked on the vials at ten-foot intervals, labeling, reading, testing. All the jobs that were once done by humans. She knew one of those humans, and hoped he’d still be around.

Fiona tried to mask her uncertainty by fixing her gaze to a single corner of the room, and then walking there, with purpose. Or at least a seeming purpose. But it was really more of a hunch, a shot in the dark, that her friend would be among one of the turned white-coated backs, and that one of those heads would turn around to present a familiar face.

But someone else got to her midway.

“Can I help you?”

It wasn’t her friend’s voice.

Fiona stopped and looked him over. The first thing she noticed was his large upper lip. And his head was . . . too big. “Maybe?”

Her friend also didn’t have a slight Russian accent.

“You just seem kinda lost,” he said. He was smiling like he had nothing better to do. “We don’t get many nurses down here, so . . .”

“Right. I was just looking for someone. Do you know Tom?”

“Well, I know a lot of—”

“Tom Shields.”

“I knew Tom,” he said. “He’s not here anymore.”

“He quit?”

“He was . . . laid off, as they say.”

It was hard to believe that he wouldn’t have talked to her about it, or at least have said bye to her. They weren’t close, but close enough. She looked over to a long line of vials being pushed down the track by mechanical hands.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” the man asked.

“I just came to check on a sample . . . And to see Tom. When was he laid off?”

He shrugged. “Last week? I’m Vic, by the way.” He held out his hand, which she slowly accepted as her mind struggled with the information. “What sample were you looking for?” he asked.

She unrolled the small piece of paper from her pocket and read off the ten-digit alphanumeric code.

“Well, let’s see where we’re at,” he said, walking to the analyzer track. He lowered his head to read a small digital display at one of the label readers. And then he pulled back with a “Hmm . . .”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, edging closer.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Give me a moment?”

Fiona stood near one of the tracks of the blood analyzer while Vic began typing at a nearby computer. She looked at the vials as they rotated and tumbled along their tracks, as each of their caps was swirled off before getting placed in a large tray. “So is this why Tom got laid off?”

“Are you talking about the automated de-capper?”

“Yeah,” said Fiona. “They used to pay pathologists to stand here and unscrew caps?”

Vic chuckled to himself. “There’s a lot more to it than that. Budgetary issues, mainly. You haven’t heard about this place going broke?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve never heard of any hospitals going broke.”

“Well, I think there’s been some . . . mismanagement issues. But you didn’t hear that from me. Where are you from again?”

Fiona backed away from the track and said, “I’m just a nurse.”

“Right. A nurse checking a sample.”

“Is that weird?”

“No,” he said. “What’s weird is that the sample was taken off the automated analyzer, and processed manually instead.”

She walked closer to him, trying to read the small lines of text on his screen. “Why would that happen?”

“It would happen if someone wanted to do the procedure themselves. In this case it was a Dr. Wahl.”

Suspicion flooded her body, along with fear. The idea of Dr. Wahl not only handling her urine—gross—but presiding over the process that would determine her future as a nurse. It made her skin crawl.

“He signed off on it. Did it last night.”

She asked Vic, while trying to steady her voice, if he could print out the results. And when he handed the paper to her, she fought to steady her hand while receiving it, and reading that her sample tested negative for any drugs.

Fiona couldn’t decide which was stranger: Dr. Wahl doing the analyzing, or the fact that he hadn’t sabotaged the results. Despite his confiding in her during that awkward rant about Jasper, every other action he’d taken had seemed like a calculated mental and professional assault.

Wendy was much more optimistic, she supposed.

“Maybe he’s on your side after all,” she said. “He probably just didn’t trust the analyzer after all the technical problems.”

Fiona had found Wendy alone in a supply room, checking the inventory, and making little markings on a clipboard.

“Why are you using a clipboard?” asked Fiona. “You don’t trust the inventory gun?”

Wendy laughed, short and sharp.

“And we’re still performing surgeries in this place?”

“I think he was just being extra cautious,” said Wendy after Fiona told her what she’d discovered. “Are you upset with him for that now too?”

“I’m confused.”

“I think we’re all confused,” Wendy said, rummaging through a mess of cardboard boxes. “But at least you still have a job.”

“For now. It seems like they’re picking us off one by one.”

Wendy handed her a small stack of boxes. Latex gloves. “Can you take these down to surgery?” she asked in a suddenly professional, indifferent tone, as if they hadn’t just bitched about their jobs. As if she was fed up with Fiona’s paranoia, and her complaining, and probably the way she kept fiddling with her elbow. True, it wasn’t like her to complain so much. And to Wendy, hardly ever.

On her way to the service elevator, Fiona felt a buzzing at her hip. She grabbed her phone to check who had just vibrated her pocket.

It was her sister’s hospital.

Answering personal calls, normally, was out of the question. Especially under her current scrutiny. But there was absolutely no way she could let this one go. It wasn’t that she planned on having a long conversation with whomever was calling, nor did she want to. But answering this call was more about answering a single question that, if ignored, would eat away at her all day.

Her phone had buzzed four times before Fiona was able to make it into a stairwell. It was quiet, but probably only momentarily, the lack of thundering footsteps or her own echoed and amplified voice. But she wouldn’t be doing much talking.

She hoped.

Aside from a whispered “Hello.”

And then all she had to do was brace herself for whatever news was about to come her way and potentially rock her world.

It began in an eerily soft tone. Too warm and gentle. Too soothing, although it did no such thing for Fiona. It only spiked her anxiety, fed into those fears of—

“I’m sorry . . .”

No.

They were fucking sorry.

Why were they sorry?

Because they knew how hard this was . . . and they did everything they could . . .

The stairway suddenly filled with thunder.

“But she went peacefully . . .”

The thunder grew louder. But Fiona ignored it. She didn’t care if someone caught her using a personal phone, be it Dr. Wahl or Clarence Mitchell himself.

“ . . . such a hard decision . . .”

Fiona’s head slumped, and saw through her tears that the noise wasn’t from footsteps, but from the tumbling boxes of latex gloves that had spilled out of her shaking, useless hands.

* * *

She stayed until the hysterics passed, until her shoulders stopped heaving against the cold, unfinished concrete wall of the stairwell. She was almost perfectly still now, leaning like a mummified corpse. The tears had run their course, down off her cheeks and mouth and now mostly smudged into the moist fabric of her sleeve, as she began wiping them away. She felt confused more than anything, unsure of how to feel, the emotions so raw and unreal against her brain’s shrinking capacity for logic. That part of herself was stomped and flattened like a grape. But still there, and still telling her, quietly, in a roundabout way, more or less, to start getting her shit together.

Start trying to breathe a little more normally.

First, get off the wall. Maybe find a bathroom and see what kind of damage had been done to her face, to her makeup. But get on with it.

Get ready for the next steps.

What were they? What was she supposed to do?

It would be sensible to go home. Request an early leave. Go home and maybe to the hospital and start the process of “dealing.” Talk to her parents. Talk to the funeral home. Should she call them today? And the flowers? What were the steps?

Shit. Was she really dead?

Fiona saw her sister’s relaxed face in her mind. A close-up. So close she could feel her breath. So real, she was alive again. She was fine. She was just sleeping. Like always.

How did it happen, that she’d gone from sleeping to dying? What was the sequence of events? They weren’t explained to her over the phone, during a one-way conversation which ended prematurely. Had it been divine intervention, or Dr. Wahl sending over his own personal organ-poaching hit squad? The man has connections. An influence that could surely go beyond the walls of Lambert Memorial.

“Fuck,” she muttered in the stairwell, fighting back more tears. “Fuck it.”

She tried straightening out her clothes, her hair. Wiped her face one last time, wiping away the shiny film of dried misery from under her eyes.

Right when she was about to start climbing up to the exit, the door blasted open. The sound and the speed of it startled her and she lost footing and stumbled back into the wall. It was Vic, the helpful pathologist, racing through the doorway and into the stairs, and then suddenly stopping. He had his eyes trained on hers, the wild whites of his eyes showing, his chest heaving as his rapid breaths filled the echo chamber of a stairwell. It was Vic, but something was different. There was a mustache. A crooked mustache, half-slipping off and covering the corner of his mouth. It moved comically with each breath he took, and with each twitch of his pale face. She would have expected his face to be red from the exertion. But the shade was deathly pale. Almost a green.

She waited a half second, giving him time to explain the emergency, whatever fire had consumed how many floors, or where the active shooter was last seen. But all he could do was take loud grunting breaths. And stare at her like an animal eying a meal.

“Vic?”

He seemed to flinch at the mention of his name. His hand gripped the rail. In the other hand was what looked like a bunched up woman’s nylon stocking.

And that fucking mustache. Like a fake stage prop.

He grabbed it angrily and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Vic, what the fuck?”

“Nothing,” he said, breathlessly. “A joke.”

“What?”

“I was playing a practical joke on someone.”

He seemed unable to smile. Or to break his cold hard gaze at her, through her.

“What kind of a joke? You just put on a mustache and—”

“Yeah. Scare people.” He started wiping sweat off his brow, and then a ghastly smile crept over his lips. “Sorry. What’s your name again? Did I scare you? What’s wrong?” He shoved the stockings into a bulging pant pocket. “Were you crying?” He took a deep breath and turned around to glance quickly at the door behind him before looking back down the steps. “Fiona? Right? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she muttered, and then started climbing the steps to the door, her thoughts freezing over. There had already been too much to process. “I have to . . . go.” She just had to go.

“Okay,” Vic said. “Me too. I’m heading back down.” He moved aside for her. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

She slipped past him, and then through the door, letting Vic get on with whatever fucked-up little prank he was playing. She wasn’t in the mood for pranks.

She was in the mood to flee the hospital and never look back. To flee her life and start something new, somewhere else. It would all start with her finding Wendy, asking for the rest of the day off, and doing it without even mentioning her sister. She didn’t need an excuse. And from there, from home, she could crack a bottle of Chardonnay and start working on a letter of resignation.

Fuck.

Her sister . . .

The hospital . . .

She needed to go see her, whatever state she was in, and however she got there. She would walk to the service elevator, looking at her shoes the whole time to avoid eye contact, and then take that down to the staff level. Grab her things. Then go find Wendy.

She took a deep breath as the elevator doors shut and the small car began its descent. The lights flickered on her way down. It was the first time she’d ever noticed. Maybe her sister saying hello. Her spirit passing through. Maybe that was the cause of all the recent tech issues. Her spirit, holding on and fighting death and then, in a dull little ripple of elevator florescence, letting go of everything.

The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Fiona stepped out into a swarm of white and maroon coats, jogging with the panicked flow of coworkers. It was impossible not to get swept up in it, to get carried down the hall on some invisible wave. On her way, Fiona tried asking whomever she could whatever the hell happened, but no one seemed to be listening. They seemed too busy breathing heavily, muttering strange little unintelligible yelping sounds. It was probably like how Fiona sounded. A lost little puppy.

The yelping was suddenly drowned out by a loud alarm which filled the hallway with an even stronger sense of dread. She gave up trying to make sense of the situation, and instead followed the flow of traffic around two corners to where a crowd had already been congregating like ants around sugar.

Or blood. She could smell it.

Someone cried, “Get him up on the gurney!”

“No,” another said. “He’s already dead. It’s a crime scene now.”

Fiona, who was a few rows back, tried looking through a maze of legs to spot any part of whomever it was who’d apparently just died. But the only thing she could identify was the deep crimson pool of blood, a wide slick of it that people had to step over as they worked, awkwardly, lifting the body off the ground.

Someone kept insisting that they leave the body where it lay. But it was too late, as the victim was now being spread onto the gurney, an arm and a leg, here and there, being folded over onto itself, on the gurney.

“Make room!”

Fiona felt someone tugging on her arm, pulling her back toward the wall as the crowd quickly parted. As the gurney was pushed through the open seam, she could finally see the blood-soaked white coat. And a face, frozen in agony.

A horrifyingly familiar one.

Dr. Wahl.

He lay perfectly still atop the gurney as he was pushed away and down the hall. But then the crowd closed back up again, merging into the middle and obscuring her view. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Her head was looking straight down, her vision blurring. Darkening. And then there was nothing.