Page 18 of A Better World

“You think?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. I think.”

“But they don’t need to bribe anyone. Omnium really is safe as apples. I don’t get these studies they delivered. They must know it’s all junk. They’re supposed to be the smartest people in the world.”

Linda shrugged. “Nepotism. This company—this town—has beenaround for eighty years. Maybe they used to be the smartest people. Now they’re inbred.”

He looked at her for a beat, trying to figure out whether she was joking.

“I might be serious. I’m not sure,” she said. “But if this is the kind of work they’re dealing with, it makes sense they’d need someone like you, from outside. You’ve got better cards in your hand than you think.”

That Monday, she went to her morning hospital shift. They’d plotted a plan here, too, deciding she should ask for more work, maybe get on her own golden ticket track.

“Do you have any tips on fitting in around here?” she asked the PA, Greg Hamstead, after they’d cleared the whiteboard of a paltry two patients. Kids here didn’t have emergent health troubles. The hospital was clean and modestly sized, had a small-town feel though the technology was high end.

“Tips?” Greg asked. There were a lot of Hamsteads in the directory. She guessed he was third generation. “People come. People go. Try to be the people who stay.”

“And how would I do that? I’m seriously looking for guidance, here. I welcome constructive critiques.”

“Don’t worry so much.”

“Why not?”

“Causes wrinkles.”

Linda made a sour face, because there’s useless advice, and there’s the abyss.

Right before her shift ended, a harried man with wild eyes scuttled through the doors. He walked top heavy, his back bent as if carrying a great burden.

“Poop,” said Greg.

Poop?

Linda recognized the guy as the same one she’d seen at the soccer game. This time, he wore baggy jeans and a sweater, but hiscountenance carried that same buzzy anger. Even from a distance she could see that his eyes weren’t focused. They may as well have been turned inward. The expressionblind furycame to mind.

He bypassed admissions, a mandatory stop for all visitors, and headed straight for the elevator. The security guard rushed to intercept him.

“No you don’t!” the wild-eyed man shouted. His anger was a palpable thing that filled the hospital floor like poison gas. “I know you keep them here. I KNOW IT!”

From Linda’s experiences with violence on the outside, the scene was a punch before it happened. Someone would be hurt. There would be blood.

The guard spoke calmly, his words inaudible to Linda. Like a hand steadying a trilling alarm, he muffled the man’s shaking rage. The guard continued, practically hypnotic, as the man’s posture slumped even deeper.

“No,” the man groaned. He covered his face with his hands and began to weep. It was a disconsolate and finite sound.

The elevator door opened. Limply, the man allowed the guard to lead him inside.

“What’s that about?” Linda asked.

Greg appraised his sensible white sneakers, which were laced to the very top eyes. “Guy named Percy Khoury. He lost his kid last January. It happened in the tunnels. He gets confused, comes here looking for him. Thinks we’re hiding the kid, that we kidnapped him. He walks the whole town and the tunnels, too. It usually means he’s off his meds. You’d think they’d have come up with something better than lithium in the last hundred years. Patients hate lithium. He’s our lead nuclear engineer, or, used to be. People have been patient—he’s a hard guy to replace. Not everybody likes spending all their time down in the tunnels. And he’s stronger than you’d think. He went rogue one time. Took four of us to hold him down.”

It occurred to Linda right then that when she met the man, he’d been wearing his dead son’s shirt, watching his dead son’s former soccer team.

“What happened to the kid? How’d he get lost?”

“Freak accident.”

“He must be in so much pain. What do you do for people like that?” she asked.

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