Impuls

Aster

Neuroscience, in fact, is.

Standing behind a small cabinet – very, very flat, Rebecca would be sure to let off some unfunny joke – Emily feels panicky.

More than anything, she wants to be invisible: in all the time she has worked here, she has never found herself alone with such people in an office, and now she has no idea what to do: answer an earlier question, repeat her directions, or run away, forgetting to close the door behind her.

But it's as if she's no longer noticed – after some quiet negotiation, all three of them lean over the scattered pieces of paper, and then stare into the wall-mounted negatoscope: six projections of the brain catch their attention more than Johnson, who languishes waiting for the right papers.

Emily looks at the back of the neurosurgeon's head – almost white, short-cropped hair, a sort of pixie haircut that crosses all boundaries: torn strands and real chaos instead of styling.

The nurses also wore the same kind of hair, only it was more flashy and provocative: pink, blue, green, with the addition of dreadlocks, long bangs, or shaved temples, but it looked like they were trying to get attention. Clark, on the other hand, seems to find a breeze in every second, allowing that hair to be styled in any way .

– …patch it up right here," her slightly husky voice made the air vibrate, "see if anything comes of it. It won't be completely repaired, of course.

– Can you do that?

Clark shrugs, and the outline of lace underwear becomes visible through the thin fabric of her gray blouse.

– I'll try," she answers evasively. – But I need more tests.

– Speaking of tests. Miss Johnson is still waiting for her referrals. – Donald turns to Emily. – Moss is going to write it all out, wait for him outside, please.

– Dr. Moss," Andrew whispers, "is too busy for paperwork.

Emily doesn't know why, but she flares up like a Christmas tree, as if she'd been rudely answered, or rejected altogether; she blushes so red her cheeks are hotter than a fire; and Moss stares at her with an angry look in his eyes.

She has to get out of the office; a step, a second, a third – a soft footstep on the parquet, the barely perceptible creaking of the door, the sudden stuffiness and the strange, almost black sky in the windows.

Emily leans her back against the cool brick wall, and the air around her crumples like old dry paper. Scary words flash in her head: panic attack, anxiety disorder, nervous breakdown; but her pulse quickly evens out, and the decrepit paper air crumbles to ashes, allowing her to take a breath of pure oxygen.

She remembers: she is seventeen, a dusty path to the tops of medicine, dozens of books and bitten pencils ahead of her. Becoming a doctor, Emily dreams, saving people, deftly wielding a scalpel, saying "dry" to the head nurse, and having dinner with her colleagues in some quiet place in the evening, pouting cheekily, and stretching the words, "Let's not talk about work?"

Bites her lip: the tuition bills, the failed exams, her mother's sneers, "Daddy's very unhappy," George's dark red uniform: equality, they said, is the foundation of the basics.

Emily remembers the numbers: ten thousand dollars a year; one loan; two jobs; three hours of sleep. Pathetic attempts at self-indulgence: this is not the worst thing that could happen to a dream.

And the realization: no, it's much scarier than that.

She doesn't even have a pass like everyone else – you can't use it to get benefits, to brag about it in front of her family, to put it in a nice cover or wear it proudly with a ribbon around your neck. St. George is not a place to be proud of, and four years is too little for a doctor and too much for a nurse; just as the next forty thousand is another stepping stone on the way to quite the wrong place to be.

Sigh.

Emily knows: this is going to be one hell of a fall.

* * *

When she returns with her cherished papers back to neurology, the door to room three hundred and thirteen is unlocked and the bed itself is empty, with only the sheets carelessly wrinkled and the recliner somehow pushed back in.

She should have handled it without leaving the girl unattended, but failed here, too. Now there's no use looking all over the hospital for the patient: she could be anywhere from the treatment room to the exam room. So Johnson sits back in his chair, tucks his legs under him, and taps his fingers on the table – he has to pull himself together and do something.

Fear should have possessed her by now, but Emily feels only endless fatigue weighing on her shoulders. Her own burden, as it turns out, weighs and presses her to the ground worse than someone else's.

My thoughts do not leap, do not rush, they stand still, frozen in space; and somewhere in the margins of consciousness a simple thought emerges: there are so many staff in the hospital that a blind and probably panicked patient would not be left without attention. So she is either in another room, or indeed taken to…

Dr. Higgins enters the room just as Emily prepares to fly out of it in search of him – sandy jacket, crumpled shirt, silver-tinted hair. They'd seen each other once before, Emily recalls, perhaps in the emergency room or in the lower therapy rooms.

– Good afternoon!" Mark salutes in greeting. – I took your Miss Anonymous to the next ward. Glad one of us thought to do the paperwork. – A nod to the pile of directions and a smile. – I don't like all that… By the way," he doesn't wait for an answer, "the angiography showed no vascular lesions. Now she's on an EEG and an Echo. Just give it to me, don't be shaky. – He reaches for the papers.