Plus One by Elizabeth Fama Page A

the badge on his lanyard with his other hand. “Day Emergency Medicine. And I have a Plus One,” he said.
    “Is the patient Day or Night?” the girl droned mechanically, bored with her job.
    Try factory work, you spoiled Day brat.
    “Night,” he told her. “She’s being transferred.”
    “Where to?”
    He hardly paused for a fraction of a second. “Psych ward.”
    I scowled at him, and he raised his eyebrows—a facial shrug. She looked at us then, finally taking an interest. I must have seemed believably nuts. I was internally frantic about my lack of a solid plan, my ponytail had more hair out of it than in, I was greasy and stale, my stomach was still upset and ragingly empty, and I hadn’t slept in—how long had it been?—more than twenty-four hours. A corner of her glossy pink mouth turned up.
    Her eyes moved from me to Day Boy, and I saw her face change—I saw her scrutinize him and reach across the desk for his tag, checking his face against the photo. He moved closer to her, leashed by the lanyard around his neck, and stood patiently, whereas everything in my body urged me to run. I couldn’t bear the tension, but he seemed to be in his element. He squeezed my fingers, either to scold me or to reassure me. It had the desired effect of keeping me still.
    “Are you coming back this way after you drop her off—um”—she glanced at his tag again—“D’Arcy?” Her voice was fluid and deep; her eyes were as wide as a Kewpie doll’s. She fondled his badge in her fingers. She was only flirting with him. I slowly breathed out a lungful of air.
    “Alas, no.” He smiled at her. He had a narrow space between his two front teeth. Another perfect imperfection, the little bastard. “I’m off duty and I’ll be leaving through the west exit.”
    She dropped the tag and leaned back in her chair. “Another time, then.”
    He let go of my hand and gave me a gentle shove. “Let’s go, Plus One.”

 
    Wednesday
3:30 p.m.
    There may in fact be a god, because I prayed for him not to let my niece be rooming in with her mother, and lo and behold, the baby was in the Day nursery, swaddled and sleeping in one of dozens of clear plastic bassinets.
    We had walked through the maternity ward past most of the patients’ rooms, and I had studiously ignored the ones with open doors, not wanting to catch a glimpse of my brother.
    Day Boy stopped at a cabinet before we reached the nurses’ station and took out a hospital visitor’s gown for me. It was two sizes too big for my emaciated frame, which was just what I needed. I slipped it on over my hoodie and tied the strings behind my waist. He looked clinically at my hair—which was disgusting by this point—and handed me a scrub cap made of a fibrous cloth. He pulled out two pairs of disposable shoe covers from a pop-up box, one pair for him and one for me, and two surgical masks from a box on another shelf. We put the booties on and left the masks dangling from one ear.
    “Let’s get this done quickly,” he said. “Officer Dacruz will expect to pick you up in the ER in the next couple of hours, and I’m the one who will take the heat if you’re not mended by then.”
    We walked up to the window of the nursery to study the babies in the bassinets. It was a room full of new life: innocent, mostly napping, new Day life; little people who didn’t yet know they had the world wide open in front of them. There were two nurses tending to the babies, one male, wearing a surgical mask, and one female. My heart sank. There were too many people here for this to work. The male nurse looked at us through the window. He was black and skinny, and his eyes locked on mine for a second before he turned away, oddly flustered. I thought with despair that he’d gotten a good enough look to identify me.
    “Why didn’t you try to see your sister-in-law and brother as we passed through the ward?” Day Boy said to the window.
    “Why don’t you mind your own business?” I