Page 23 of Dark Obsession

“Okay.” Zenona pulled back the curtain. “You both need to go, right now.” She gathered a palmful of sanitizer and stepped out of the exam area, rubbing it into her skin and nodding toward the exit. “Goodbye.”

“He’s the one who made it weird,” Cody protested as he started moving. “Candyland?”

“Do you see what I work with day in and day out?” Jugs said as he passed Zenona.

“Oh, I’m very aware of what you both work with day in and day out.”

“That sounds like you’re blaming me.” Jugs’s voice held a touch of suspicion.

“Welcome to my world,” Cody said. “All the blame, none of the glory.”

He ambled down the hall, glancing into open triage spaces. In one, an elderly woman lay on a gurney, two younger women standing by the bed. The next bed held a middle-aged man looking annoyed as his wife fussed over him.

As he passed another triage space, Cody’s steps slowed. The conversation between Jugs and Zenona behind him faded out, replaced by the white noise of his blood rushing in his ears.

A woman was on the gurney inside the exam area, pale even against the crisp white of the sheets. Two bags hung from an IV stand on her left, one a clear saline solution and the other the thick dark red of blood. The line trailing from the bag of blood was red all the way to where the needle had been securely taped in place in the crook of her right elbow.

Cody’s breath grew shallow. The nurses’ station, tiled floor and white curtains of the triage spaces all blurred at the edge of his vision. He could almost smell the concrete dust and dirt, and caught himself touching the tiny scars on his neck.

Zenona snapped the curtains shut, the sound interrupting his memories. He swayed on his feet. A chill lingered along his skin, and he shivered.

“Let’s give our patients the privacy we’d all appreciate,” she said.

The sounds of the ED rushed back in. The buzz of the lights overhead now seemed too loud, the ringing phones piercing.

“Are you creeping on other patients?” Jugs said quietly, then rubbed his index fingers toward him. “Shame, Bonker. For shame.”

Cody knocked his hands away and stalked past. “Knock it off.”

At the exit, Cody palmed the button to trigger the pneumatic doors and stepped into the waiting area. Two more people, a man and a woman, had joined the previous trio. The new arrivals were ashen, slumped in chairs beside each other. A bruise darkened the skin along one side of the woman’s neck. The man had a white bandage taped over one wrist, with spots of blood providing a striking contrast. Cody held the mask over his face as he crossed the waiting area quickly into the hallway.

“You trying to set a land speed record?” Jugs asked from behind.

“No. I just…I wanted to get out of there. All that coughing and germs and stuff.” When they reached the atrium lobby, Cody snapped the strings of his mask and dropped it in a trashcan.

“Uh huh.”

Jugs sounded farther behind, and Cody turned around. An art piece constructed from aluminum hung above the trashcan, and Jugs was turning his head back and forth, checking out his wavy reflection in its surface.

“For the love of… You look great, okay? A-plus for neck reconstruction. Can we get out of here?”

Jugs squinted at him. “What’s got into you all of a sudden?”

“It’s a hospital, man. It’s full of sick people.”

Jugs didn’t look convinced, but he fell in step with him to the elevator. Cody could feel Jugs’s eyes on him as they waited for the slowest elevator on the planet. Cody’s face was tight: brows drawn down, lips pressed together. He couldn’t seem to stand still and kept shifting his weight.

The bag of blood suspended above the woman who was white as a sheet.

Two people in the waiting area, washed out and exhausted.

The bruise on the woman’s neck; the spots of blood on the man’s bandage.

Zenona managing the care of all of them.

The elevator arrived, and the doors opened. Several people stepped off, slower than a herd of sloths. They were the only ones riding up to the skywalk, and once the doors slid closed, Cody glanced over to find Jugs watching him.

”Stop giving me that look. I’m not getting you ice cream.”