When I emerged onto the floor, Meaty was looking around the nursing station. All the shift’s paperwork had been done and filed, courtesy of me, Extra Help Edie.
“Good job, Spence,” Meaty said. “Go on break.”
I saluted, pleased with myself, and set off.
I badged myself into our locker room/bathroom combo area. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, but anyone who didn’t wash their hands before eating in a hospital was a fool. I turned on the faucet to wash my hands and face.
The sound of the water—I knew that sound. I saw it running in front of me, hot steam wafting up, but in my mind my vision of the bathroom blurred, and I saw freezing snow melt trickling down cement. I was cold, and there was no way I could get warm. Stagnation surrounded me, other things that’d washed into the gutter, rotting in the dark.
I wanted to throw up. My stomach lurched and broke the spell. I slammed the faucet off and clutched the edge of the sink. I had that sense of lostness, looking out at the ocean again, trapped by the endless nothing around me, immobilized by a fear … that I didn’t feel was quite my own.
“Anna?” I whispered. My right hand found my left and traced along its scar. “That’s silly. You know it is. You’re okay,” I told myself.
You don’t just get to be a nurse and see sad and strange all the time and not have it affect you. I knew stress came out in different ways. I’d give any patient I ever had more leeway than I’d given my recent self. I’d been attacked and bitten less than a week ago. And I’d just seen us pour two gallons of blood, easily, into a man, and then seen ten or so vampires drink it back out. Things like that just don’t come normal to people. It’s okay to have some problems afterward. Nightmares, even.
I stood there wondering who exactly I was convincing with this line of thought until the strange feeling passed. When it did, I turned away. I hadn’t washed my hands yet, but that’s what hand sanitizer was for.