Chapter Text
She hovers at the man's bedside, some thirty inches above the polished laminate rail, watching the shuddering breaths he sucks through a blue rubber mask. The wife, a waxy cough-drop of a person, crouches close, clutching his hand with both of hers, slim knuckles bulged white, eyes squeezed tight as if a wish, or a prayer, might stop the inevitable. They can't see her - nobody can. This never bothers her until the night shifts stretch, until the hearts tick slower and the air in the ward grows dense, sharp with bleach and that molded caulking of medical decay.
She doesn't touch the body, but she angles her hand across his brow, and in the gossamer curl of heat rising from his skull, she finds it. Not a soul, but more like a residue, a brightness just beginning to run thin. She holds, she waits. She counts the rhythm in her head. On the monitor, the heart’s digital whine syncs to her pulse - a countdown, a warning. She waits for the precise moment. That hairline crack between life and the after. When it comes, a flutter and a static sigh, the residue peels itself from the man’s scalp and floats in her palm, impossibly light, dry, like old dandelion parachutes.
It’s the nurse, finally, that breaks the spell. He’s young, hungover, and has an allergic gleam. He storms through the curtain with his cart, rubber gloves flapping, and she slips aside, pressing herself into the seams of the wall. The wife starts sobbing, but the sound is muffled, distant, the two humans sunk in a fish tank, movements slow and filtered blue through the tide of oncoming chemical cleaners.
She pockets the brightness in her jacket and hurries down the corridor, shoulders hunched against the onslaught of fluorescent light. Even here, distilled antiseptic and lemon cleaner can't quite mask the sour heat of grief, old urine, stale cigarettes from the nurse’s last break. The elevator at the end of the hall dings, and she slips into its chill, shadowed pocket, careful not to brush the night janitor as he pushes his cart out. They never notice her, even when she stands beside them, close enough to feel the static pop from their sleeves.
She stares at her reflection in the gold-veined paneling above the buttons. Blonde hair pulled into a loose tail, oversized black hoodie, the downy crescent under her left eye that morning always spread like a bruise. Frowny little mouth. She looks so young, here, younger than the interns. She pokes her tongue out at herself, a dumb, lizardy gesture, and the girl in the reflection does it too, all sass and none of the confidence. She wonders if she’d look older in worse lighting.
The elevator shudders closed, a casket with advertising for St. Edmund’s Hospice pasted where you’d expect a prayer. Floor three. She considers jumping the car, just dropping through, seeing if anyone would finally notice her, maybe even try to stop her. But the risk is wasted; nobody’s watching. She lets herself sag, shoulders hitting the wall, the brightness in her jacket prickling as a live wire against her ribs. She can’t feel its heat on her skin, only its uncanny presence, and it gnaws, unignorable, all the way down the slow grind to the lobby.