I never turn my cell phone off. Not even when I’m asleep, after working the night before. I tell myself it’s because I want to be available if the County calls to offer extra shifts, but the real reason is that I’m afraid they’ll call after I’ve gone home, to ask me some important question, to remind me of something I should have done that I forgot to do or chart. And/or fire me. On the phone. I know I can sound a little paranoid, but it felt plausible today.
My voice mail message says I work nights and sleep days. Everyone who knows me, knows this. And still, people who aren’t employed at the Nursing Office feel compelled to call me before three P.M. Certain people feel compelled to call me repeatedly, until I pick up—namely, dicks.
I sent three calls to voice mail and then gave up and answered on the fourth.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Edie—Edie, I need money.”
And I already knew who it was. “No, Jake.”
“Aw, come on, Edie…”
“I have these things called student loans.” I blinked beneath my blindfold and rubbed it up onto my forehead. “Not to mention taxes. Lots of taxes.”
My brother made an exasperated sound. He doesn’t know what I’ve done for him. At least it wasn’t the floor calling me, to tell me to not come in ever again—
The events of last night came rushing back. Jake was asking me something but I didn’t hear him—all my concentration was on my left hand and the bruise upon it. I’d killed a patient. My patient. A daytimer—but still my patient. Any chance of sleep evaporated like cool alcohol off warm skin.
“Edie? Are you listening?”
I yanked off my blindfold. Had the bruise changed shape? I couldn’t remember. I leaned over my bed and rummaged through last night’s scrubs to find a Sharpie. Mr. November’s watch fell out, along with alcohol swabs and an empty bottle of heparin.
“Come on, Edie—” my brother continued, just as whiny as every other patient I’ve ever had who knows that they are “allergic” to anything less than oxycodone.
“I said no, Jake. No means no.” I braced the phone against my shoulder and traced the margins of my bruise in Sharpie so I could see if it expanded later.
“Some help you are,” he said with exasperation.
“I wish you knew,” I muttered, as he hung up on me. Finished with my personal arts and crafts project, I dropped the phone and picked up the watch.
It looked old. The inlaid golden A remained clear, but any finer details on its silver case had been rubbed smooth by time. I found the latch with my thumbnail and swung it open.
A photo was inside the lid, old if it was legit. A family portrait in sepia: two men, a woman, and two children, a boy and a girl. I guessed one of the men could have been Mr. November, give or take a hundred years. The men had strangely shaped hats, and the women wore kerchiefs on their heads.
Which one was Anna? The woman or the child? I stroked my discolored thumb over their miniature faces.
The watch itself was ticking. It might be worth as much as a student loan payment if I sold it on eBay. Which … maybe I’d do eventually, if I couldn’t figure out who it belonged to. It wasn’t like I could call up Antiques Roadshow—“Hi, I stole this off an elderly patient … where did it come from?” Who was I kidding, thinking I was Nancy Drew? I flipped the watch back and forth in my hands, its silver glinting in the light. I knew I didn’t want closure. I wanted absolution.
An edge of the photo stuck out, rough against my thumb. I worked to pry the photo loose. It popped out and fluttered to land facedown on my floor—and the words “Reward if returned” stared up at me. I picked up the photo again.
A series of addresses were written in a tight script. All of them were crossed out except the last: “336 Glade St. Apt 12.” With surprise, I realized I recognized the address. I’d driven my brother to that street once and pretended to not watch him score.
My cat, Minnie, jumped onto the windowsill. “What are the chances that it’s the same place? In this city?” I asked her. She contemplated me with crossed blue eyes. “What are the chances that if I go there, they’ll steal my car?”
“Meow.”
“That’s about what I thought.” But it was still daylight, and there was always the train.
The train ride gave me just enough time to feel foolish. My coat was bulky but not worth stealing, my boots had steel toes, and my money was in my bra along with a credit card. I hoped my best “don’t fuck with me” look would do the rest—that and Mr. November’s bottles, which I carried in my pockets like guns in hip holsters, one to each side.
The train shuddered to a stop and I was the only one to exit. Outside the station the buildings were tall, and the snow had an oily sheen. I passed a few tenements, ignored a few offers, and waited until Seventh before turning onto Glade.
Glade has not been a glade since forever. Mr. November’s address was a single shorter building, surrounded by giants on both sides. I rang the bell.
A woman who might have predated World War I appeared on the far side of the door. She squinted at me through a broken windowpane, a cigarette lolling from her mouth. “Yeah? What?”
I hadn’t realized until that very moment that I didn’t have much of a plan. Hopefully someone lived here who remembered him, and I could hand off the watch. I wouldn’t assume a daytimer had relatives, but I’d take anyone, from that Anna person to an affectionate neighbor down the hall. Maybe the kids next door looked up to him.
Funny how much life you could wedge into someone else when you didn’t know anything about them at all.
“I, um … That is, an older tenant here—his condition is grave.” Which was understating the situation quite a bit. “Does he have a next of kin? Someone named Anna?” She squinted at the name.
“Not that I know of.” Her eyes narrowed even further. “You from the hospital?”
I nodded, even though I didn’t have anything on me to prove that I was from the hospital, other than a set of plastic gloves in my chest pocket. Nurses and chipmunks.
I held a limp glove up. “I need to get emergency contact information for him. If you could—” I suggested, hoping she’d fill in the rest.
“Yeah, yeah. I seen House before. If I don’t let you in, you’ll just break in later.”
Metal creaked and clicked while she undid the locks. I pulled on the blue latex gloves.
“I appreciate your cooperation,” I said.
“His rent’s good through the fifteenth. Any longer than that, and I’ll evict him. And tell him I won’t store his stuff.”
“Will do.”
She took my measure again. “Hang on.” She left me waiting in the doorway until she came back with three brown paper envelopes, addressed to this address. One said Andrei Tarkovsky, the other Novaya Zemlya, the third Trofim Lysenko, each with different handwriting.
“I know there’s not three people living up there. But I’m not snoopy. That’s why people like to pay me rent.”
I suspected if there were three people living up there, and the lease had only room for one, she was the type who wouldn’t let it slide. I put the envelopes into my pocket and she let me in.
“If you find some weird fungus, I don’t wanna know.” She paused and reconsidered. “Maybe I want to know, but don’t tell the other tenants.” I nodded, and she stepped away from the door. “That guy’s on time with the rent, but there’s something wrong about him, you know?”
I nodded again. After all, she was right.
As I walked up the slumping stairs, past apartment doors with loud children and louder TVs behind them, I supposed I should be grateful to House M.D. I’d only been able to watch it until I’d started nursing school and actually hung around a hospital. After that, the idea of a doctor doing lab draws and hanging IV bags was preposterous. They didn’t even know how the pumps worked.
I reached Mr. November’s apartment and knocked on the door. “Hello?” I tried the handle; it wasn’t locked. Would a vampire ever bother to lock their door? Wouldn’t they encourage Jehovah’s Witnesses? Unlikely in this neighborhood, but a vampire could dream, right?
I reached inside the door and flipped on the light switch. The few working lights illuminated dirt created from the kind of privacy that only consistently on-time rent could guarantee. A low table crowded the entryway, surface cluttered with knickknacks. Cobwebs stretched out from these like lonely neurons seeking company, and I knew one thing Mr. November hadn’t had—a dust allergy.
“Hello?” I repeated, making a right turn off the hallway. I found a small kitchen with an old refrigerator. I pulled the lever-action handle and peeked inside.
Unwise. Bags upon bags of cats in various states of decomposition were neatly stacked and labeled, like an honors bio class had recently vacated the room. My stomach didn’t turn, but I was extremely grateful for my gloves as I slammed the door shut.
That … was a lot of cats for just one daytimer. And on Y4, I’d never seen a cat on a dinner tray.
“Hello?” I tried again. “Anna?”
I could leave now. No one would know I’d been here. It wasn’t like some other vampire was going to go to the police and report me. “She just walked in and looked at my dead cat collection, Officer.” I was, so far, still safe.
And it was still daylight, wasn’t it? Y4 was underground to protect its patient population. So if there was another vampire here, they’d be asleep. Unless it was a daytimer with a two-cat-a-day habit.
“Hello?” I tried again. “I’m from the hospital—” I announced, walking farther in. There was an open closet in the hallway, taped shut around the edges of its sliding doors, with an empty sleeping bag upon its floor. That was a relief—unless it was his spare bedroom. I turned a corner, trying to be prepared for anything.
Of course, that didn’t work. Because sometimes, nothing can prepare you.