Evidence of Mercy by Terri Blackstock

it a try.
    Making the decision almost as quickly as the thought came to her mind, she sat up and moved her feet over the side of the bed. The checkerboard floor was cold beneath her feet, and she felt a wave of vertigo as she sat up. Fighting it, she stood slowly. Her muscles strained, and she touched the place on her abdomen where her spleen had been removed. The pain in her head got worse, and she stood still a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
    Steadying herself with a hand against the brick wall, she put one foot in front of the other, stepping carefully until she reached the door. Already she felt soul weary, but she knew that ICU was just one floor up. If she could just get to the elevator. . . .
    Opening the door, she peered up the corridor. A visitor was going into another room, but she saw no one else. She closed the door behind her and took a barefoot step up the hall.
    Miraculously, a wheelchair sat parked against the wall. Mumbling a “Thank you, Lord,” she dropped into it. For a moment, she tried to catch her breath, but then, fearing she’d be caught if she didn’t hurry, she grabbed the wheels and tried to push herself along.
    Her left arm was stiff and sore, and pain stabbed through her ribs, making her perspire, but she pushed on nonetheless, passing the nurse’s station without being noticed. She made it past the waiting room, where two or three people sat watching television, and breathed another “thank you” that none of them knew her.
    Waiting anxiously beside the elevator, Lynda glanced up the hall. Nurse Jill stepped out into the hall from someone’s room, and Lynda turned her head away. The elevator doors opened, and quickly she rolled on.
    She pressed the button for the next floor up and waited, trying to fight the pain sending clouds circling through her head. The elevator stopped and she got off, careful to avoid the nurses clustered at the coffee pot near the elevator.
    She was growing fatigued, and she pushed more slowly, wondering whether she’d made a mistake. But the doubts fled when she caught sight of the glass doors to the Intensive Care Unit.
    A sign warned against unauthorized personnel entering ICU, and she knew that in the wheelchair she’d never get through that door and to Jake’s bed. Taking a deep breath and bracing herself against the pain, she got to her feet.
    Slowly, she opened the door and slipped inside.
    A nurse was on the phone, and another one bent over a monitor. Stepping carefully, and battling the dizziness threatening her again, she made her way past them.
    A little girl lay in an oxygen tent behind one curtain, and further down she saw an old man. She reached out to steady herself against the wall and checked a file on a door. Heather Nelson and then Lawrence Sims—
    She froze as she came to the next room. Inside was a man with a bandaged face lying still on his bed, tubes and wires attaching him to the monitors and machines that hummed and beeped.
    She searched for the name on the file on his door.
    Jake Stevens.
    A sob choked her, and she stumbled into the room. He was as still and pale as death. A bandage covered one eye and half his face, and large patches of skin were scraped from his arm, his hand. . . .
    â€œJake?” she whispered.
    He didn’t stir. Muffling another sob, she stood over him, thinking how carefree and healthy he had looked this morning, driving up in his Porsche and irritating her with that lethal grin.
    â€œJake, I’m so sorry.” Clutching the bed rail, she leaned over him. “I don’t know how—”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?”
    The voice startled her, and she swung around and saw one of the nurses she’d seen outside, a black woman, standing in the doorway. “How did you get in here?”
    â€œI—I had to see him,” Lynda wept. “I had to.”
    Instantly, the nurse was at her side. “It’s all right, child,”