The young nurse was at the front desk before the morning shift, coat on, hands buried in her sleeves.
She told me the care board met at nine, and that Dr. Morn had already put my name on paper.
Trespass and interference. Filed before breakfast.
I had been called worse things in better rooms.
This time the room would have witnesses, and that was the one thing Morn had not counted on.
The boardroom had a long table, four gray heads, and one empty chair at the end for the accused.
Morn: She forced her way into a resident's room, countermanded a doctor's order, and upset my staff.
Odette: I stopped you giving a dying woman a pill that would have killed her.
Morn: No training. No license. I looked her over myself, and she had nothing wrong with her that a warm blanket wouldn't fix.
Morn: The Crays picked her off a doorstep, and a doorstep doesn't make anyone a physician.
One of the board members laughed into his cup and did not trouble himself to hide it.
Morn: She reads scraps over her betters' shoulders. That is the sum of her education.
Morn: She's a stray, and strays bite. Shut your mouth, you little gutter trash, before I shut it for you.
He crossed the room and put his hand on my shoulder, and he did not do it gently.
His thumb pressed into the joint until my knees wanted to fold.
Morn: One more word and you'll never get past a front desk in this city again.
Kell: Take your hand off her, Doctor.
The hand came off. Men like Morn always let go for a bigger man.
Dr. Kell was the senior surgeon on the board. Flat voice, white coat, no interest in anybody's feelings.
Kell: The antibiotic was started two days ago. Her pulse had already begun dropping on the first night.
Kell: Forty milligrams on top of her heart pill is a known interaction. It is in the first-year book.
Kell: Your signature is at the bottom of the order. You called a drug reaction old age.
Morn: It could have been her age. Half of them go like that and nobody writes a paper about it.
The gray heads bent together. It took them less than a minute.
Kell: The order is struck from her file. I'll be recommending a formal review of your prescribing, Doctor.
Morn: She had no authority to touch a patient. That part is still true.
Kell: She had the only pair of eyes in this building doing its job.
I did not smile. I had learned not to smile in rooms like that. But something in my chest stood very straight.
Morn: You think a room of gray suits saves you? You're nobody, and nobody's word lasts in this city.
Odette: Write that down and sign it. You're better with paper than you are with medicine.
I went to the south rooms with my hands still shaking in my pockets.
Hattie was propped up and awake, her white curls flat on the pillow and her color back where it belonged.
Hattie: There she is. Come here to me.
Hattie: My girl came and saved me twice in one night.
Hattie: My girl.
For the first time in years somebody looked at me like I was worth keeping, and I did not know where to put the ache.
I did not tell her about the board, or the signature, or the man with the red neck.
Odette: I'm here. Go back to sleep.
But one question followed me out of that room: if what I could do was this rare, who else would come looking for it?