Nora leaned back and gave me a plain business card with her phone number on it. “Call me if you need a ride, anytime. This is my full-time gig, so I’m usually available. And you know, I’m not scary, and I won’t put you in the trunk.”
“Thanks,” I said, grinning, pocketing the card. “I’ll give you a call later tonight.”
I stepped out onto the glittering brick street and walked toward Silla’s. I pulled out my phone and started to text Kara when I spotted her standing with Curt in a leafy courtyard outside the building. She waved, and I walked over, grinning.
Kara threw both arms up in the air and waved. She had put a lot more effort into her going-out look than I had; she’d dressed up in a miniskirt, a sparkly top, and earrings that dusted her shoulders.
“You came!” she squealed and flung her arms around me.
I grinned. “Hey, I should come out sometime, right?” I thought back to the last time I’d been someplace other than my apartment or the hospital. Hmm. Two weeks ago, I’d gone to the dentist. I led an exciting life.
Curt, as usual, put no effort into his appearance. His lanky frame leaned against an ivy-covered wrought-iron fence, and he slouched in a t-shirt and jeans. He grinned when he saw me. “I didn’t think that they were gonna let you out of there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. The forms. So many forms.”
Kara crossed her arms. “So, what the heck happened?”
I grimaced. “No shop talk, remember?”
“A guy crawled off Garnet’s OR table, flung himself through a window, and bounced. Or got bounced. I’m not real clear on that,” Curt said.
Kara turned to him, her dark eyes wide. “No. How did that happen? Did you screw up the anesthetic?”
Curt held up his hands. “No way! I put that dude under, all the way to Neverland. I have all the documentation. And witnesses. Which didn’t stop them from putting me on administrative leave.” He looked away and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, Curt.” I backed away from my stance against shop talk. Getting put on admin leave was serious. I touched his arm. “Are you all right?”
He shrugged and screwed up his face. “Eh. I mean, I could use the time off, but...” he trailed off. He shook his head. “The investigation will sort everything out.”
I rubbed my brow. If Curt had gotten put on leave, I was pretty sure I’d be next. The hospital would find someone to blame. I was sure I ran through all my checklists, but... Doubt crept over me. What if I’d missed something? What if I’d screwed up and hurt that guy? What if he’d felt my hands groping his lungs? Jesus.
“Who was that guy?” Kara asked, her brow creased. “Superman?”
Curt shook his head. “Police got his prints in the ER and were able to run them. The guy’s name is Boris Garman, thirty-two, a private investigator.”
“Interesting,” I said. “I wonder if he pissed somebody off.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not buying the theory that he got mangled in the machine at the bowling alley.” Curt shook his head. “I think, based on what you said, that he had people after him. And that they found him.”
I suppressed a shudder. An awkward silence settled over our little group.
Kara chirped brightly. “Let’s go get some drinks!”
“Yes,” I agreed, and Curt nodded. We linked arms and headed for the door. I glanced up at the charred brick above the door. It looked as if a word had been scratched into the char. I craned my neck up to look, seeing the word Sanctuary scrawled above the lintel.
My thoughts traced back to Nora’s story about her friend. I hoped that this place would be safe. I wanted to step out of my everyday world and forget work, forget that horrible image of that man falling to the pavement. I tried to forget his ravings and the pale people who came for him. I wanted to forget the idea that this could somehow all have been a preventable mistake.
We crossed the threshold, and the scent of incense immediately struck me. It was a smell that I associated with the church I attended as a child. It had been easily a decade since I’d set foot in a church, but it stirred in me a soft sense of serenity. A pair of bouncers who were thick as trees flanked the interior of the door, so still that my gaze didn’t immediately register their presence. A thumping bass beat jingled thousands of glass beads suspended from the industrial ceiling by thin wires. Red and blue lights shone down through the beads, illuminating a dance floor, tables, and a polished bar at the far end of the room. The walls were painted with stylized images of angels and devils, entwined around each other in seductive embraces.
A hostess ushered us to a table near the dance floor. She had a fascinatingly long set of nails painted gold, and I had no idea how she was able to work like that. I stared down at my short-cropped naked nails that got scrubbed within an inch of their lives many times a day.
I glanced over at the dance floor. It was beginning to fill up with bodies gyrating to the beat. The people here were pretty—I saw a couple that might have been models, and I felt immediately self-conscious and a little older than I usually felt. I saw more that were just pretty weird, though—a dude dancing in a helmet and a woman wearing what looked like a pleated disco cape from the seventies. I tapped my toe against the polished cement floor in time with the music. I didn’t have time to keep up with music trends anymore, but I liked it.
“What do you guys want to drink?” Curt nearly shouted to be heard over the music.
“White Russian,” Kara responded.
“Some kind of red wine,” I said. I wasn’t picky, but I was kind of a lightweight. “Surprise me.”
“On it.” Curt slipped away from the table to approach the packed bar.
I rested my elbows on the wobbly table and put my chin in my hands. “I feel bad for Curt. It wasn’t his fault.”
Kara extended her hands and shook my arms lightly. “Stop. It sounds like one of those freak things that’s nobody’s fault. It’ll probably come out that the guy was high on a ton of drugs and that messed everything up.”
“Maybe,” I admitted glumly. But it was my OR, and I felt to blame for anything bad that happened in it.
“If he was coked out of his head, that could interfere with the anesthetic. There was a guy in the cardiac unit whose girlfriend slipped him some coke,” Kara said. “It took ten people from security to wrestle him down. Shit like that happens.”
Curt returned and distributed drinks. I stared into my wine glass, as if some answers might be found there. On impulse, I downed about half of it. It wasn’t particularly good stuff; it tasted like watered-down Kool-Aid and stale cough drops that might have been stirred with a tree branch.
“Look,” Kara said. “You were right. No shop talk tonight.” She stood, grabbed my wrist, and dragged me out to the dance floor. I flung my jacket at Curt, who caught it and reached toward my drink to finish it off.
Kara and I melted into the gathering crowd. A thin striation of incense smoke swirled above the dance floor, and I gazed up to the ceiling, mesmerized by the glitter of the beads strung in constellations above us. The thump of the music was more powerful here, and it thundered against my chest as I danced. My eyes drifted closed as I let myself get lost in the music.