Faithless

“Thank you,” the mother said. “Thank you for coming in so early.”

“It’s fine.” Sara had never been good at taking praise or appreciation. She walked them to the door, holding it open as she reminded, “Call me if he’s not better.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sara pulled the door shut after them, taking her time as she walked back across the lobby, not looking at Jeffrey. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it, asking, “Anything on the Jane Doe?”

“No,” he said. “We might get something later on when the West Coast opens for the day.”

“She doesn’t look like a runaway to me.”

“Me, either.”

They were both quiet for a beat, and Jeffrey didn’t know what to say.

As usual, Sara broke the silence. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, walking back toward the exam rooms. He followed her, thinking he was hearing good news until she said, “I want to draw some blood for a hep and liver panel.”

“Hare already did all that.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, leaving it at that. She didn’t hold the door for him, and he had to catch it before it popped back in his face. Unfortunately, he used his left hand and the hard surface caught him smack on the bandaged cut. He felt like someone had stuck him with a knife.

He hissed, “Jesus, Sara.”

“I’m sorry.” Her apology seemed genuine, but there was a flash of something like revenge in her eyes. She reached for his hand and he pulled back on sheer reflex. Her look of irritation at this persuaded him to let her see the bandage.

She asked, “How long has it been bleeding?”

“It’s not bleeding,” he insisted, knowing she’d probably do something really painful to it if he told her the truth. Still, he followed her down the hall toward the nurses’ station like a lamb to the slaughter.

“You didn’t get that prescription filled, did you?” She leaned over the counter and riffled through a drawer, grabbing a handful of brightly colored packets. “Take these.”

He looked at the pink and green sample packs. There were farm animals printed on the foil. “What are these?”

“Antibiotics.”

“Aren’t they for kids?”

Her look said she wasn’t going to go for the obvious joke. “It’s half the dose of the adult formula with a movie tie-in and a higher price,” she told him. “Take two in the morning and two at night.”

“For how long?”

“Until I tell you to stop,” she ordered. “Come in here.”

Jeffrey followed her into an exam room, feeling like a child. His mother had worked in the hospital cafeteria when Jeffrey was a kid, so he had missed out on going to a pediatrician’s office for various bumps and scrapes. Cal Rodgers, the ER doc, had taken care of him and, Jeffrey suspected, had taken care of his mother as well. The first time he had heard his mother giggle was when Rodgers had told a stupid joke about a paraplegic and a nun.

“Sit,” Sara ordered, cupping his elbow as if he needed help getting up on the exam table.

“I’ve got it,” Jeffrey told her, but she was already unwrapping his hand. The wound gaped open like a wet mouth, and he felt a throbbing ache pulse up his arm.

“You broke it open,” she admonished, holding a silver basin under his hand as she washed out the wound.

Jeffrey tried not to react to the pain, but the truth was it hurt like hell. He never understood why an injury hurt more during treatment than it did when you first got it. He could barely remember cutting his hand in the woods, but now, every time he moved his fingers, he felt like a bunch of needles were digging into his skin.

“What did you do?” she asked, her tone full of disapproval.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he thought about the way Sara had smiled with that baby. He had seen Sara in a lot of moods, but he had never seen that particular smile.

“Jeff?” she prompted.

He shook his head, wanting to touch her face but afraid he’d pull back a bloody stub where his hand used to be.

“I’ll wrap it again,” she said, “but you need to be careful with this. You don’t want an infection.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, waiting for her to look up and smile.

Instead, she asked, “Where did you sleep last night?”

“Not where I wanted to.”

She didn’t take the bait, rather she began wrapping his hand again, her lips pressed together in a tight line. She used her teeth to cut through a strip of surgical tape. “You need to be very careful and keep this clean.”

“Why don’t I drop by later and you can do it?”

“Right…” She let her voice trail off as she opened and closed some drawers. She took out a vacuum tube and a syringe. Jeffrey felt a moment of panic that she was going to stick a needle in his hand but then remembered she wanted to draw blood.

She unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve. He looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to watch, waiting for the sharp sting of the needle. It didn’t come- instead he heard her give a heavy sigh.

He asked, “What?”

She tapped his forearm to find a vein. “It’s my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

She waited before answering, as if she needed to think about how to phrase her response. “When I left Atlanta, I was in the middle of my vaccinations for hep A and B.” She wrapped a tourniquet around his biceps, pulling it tight. “You get two injections a few weeks apart, then five months later you get the booster.” She paused again, wiping his skin with alcohol. “I got one and two, but when I moved back here, I didn’t follow up. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, let alone whether or not I was going to keep practicing medicine.” She paused. “I didn’t think to finish the series again until around the time…”

“Around what time?”

She used her teeth to uncap the syringe, saying, “The divorce.”

“Well, that’s good, then,” Jeffrey said, trying not to jump off the table as she slid the needle into his vein. She was being gentle, but Jeffrey hated shots. Sometimes just thinking about them could make him woozy.

“These are baby needles,” she told him, more out of sarcasm than consideration. “Why is it good?”

“Because I only slept with her once,” he said. “You kicked me out the next day.”

“Right.” Sara hooked up the vacuum tube and released the tourniquet.

“So, you were finished with the vaccinations by the time we started seeing each other again. You should be immune.”

“You’ve forgotten that one time.”

“What one-” He stopped, remembering. The night before the divorce was finalized, Sara had shown up on his doorstep drunk as a mop and in a receptive mood. Desperate to have her back, Jeffrey had taken advantage of the situation, only to have her sneak out of the house before the sun came up the next morning. She hadn’t returned his calls the next day and when he had shown up at her house that night, she had slammed the door in his face.

“I was in the middle of the series,” she told him. “I hadn’t had the booster.”

“But you had the first two?”

“It’s still a risk.” She slid out the needle and topped it. “And there’s no vaccination for hepatitis C.” She put a cotton ball on his arm and made him bend his elbow to hold it in place. When she looked up at him, he could tell he was about to get a lecture.

“There are five major types of hepatitis, some with different strains,” she began, dropping the syringe into the red biohazard box. “A is basically like a bad flu. It lasts a couple of weeks, and once you have it, you develop antibodies. You can’t get it again.”

“Right.” That was the one detail he remembered from his visit to Hare’s office. The rest was pretty much a blur. He had tried to listen- really tried- as Sara’s cousin explained the differences, the risk factors, but all he could really focus on was how to get out of the office as fast as he could. After a sleepless night, he had formed several questions, but couldn’t force himself to call Hare to ask them. In the ensuing days, he had found himself swinging back and forth between denial and cold panic. Jeffrey could remember every detail of a case from fifteen years ago, but couldn’t recall a damn thing about what Hare had said.