The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious by Sarah Lyons Fleming Page A

if I don’t see it again, I’ll be tempted to throw open the kitchen door to check it out.
    “I’m coming if he does,” Grace says.
    “Me, too,” I say.
    “All right,” Jorge says. “We’ll drop off the food on the pediatric floor, then hang the signs and go up.”
    We fold the finished sheet signs and load the prepared food on a cart. I throw five chocolate bars in because I know kids like candy, but that’s about all I know. Having been a kid myself should’ve given me some experience in how to interact with them, but they usually flee for their mothers after a minute of conversation.
    They kept nine of the sickest kids up there. The rest were sent home with their parents, as were all the ambulatory patients. The patients in the basement are the lucky few who made it downstairs via service elevator when their floors were overrun. My mother’s section—inpatient hospice—was supposed to be emptied of visitors by a nurse in the hours before my mother died. It was Jorge who insisted they check when that nurse never returned.
    One hall of Pediatrics is painted with a mural of animals romping in nature. Another wall has an outer space theme. They’re well done, rather than the usual primary-colored, slightly frightening crap you see on the walls where children congregate. In the corner it reads By the Children of Sunset Park Community Center .
    They’ve moved the patients to the rooms closest to the nurses’ station, and the hall beyond that ends at double doors with papered-over windows. Pediatrics is a small part of this floor, and beyond it roam zombies in a maze of hospital departments and corridors. They debated whether or not to move the kids downstairs, where, theoretically, it’s safer, but a few need access to various lifesaving machines and minimal germs.
    We hand out trays to kids who look miserable, a few of whom have parents on the wrong side of the hospital door. Where they are is unknown, although we all could take a wild guess. I set a tray on the table of a dark-haired boy who looks to be around ten. He greets me pleasantly, but his eyes are dull in his unnaturally puffy face.
    “You get half a chocolate bar,” I say.
    “I like chocolate.”
    “You’d be crazy not to.”
    “I don’t think I’m allowed.” He wants it, though; that’s clear enough by the way he gazes at the bar.
    “Let me go find out. I’ll be right back.”
    The grandmotherly nurse in the hall gives a sad nod when I ask. “It’s okay. I’m sure his mother would agree.”
    “She’s not here?”
    “She had to go to work or else lose her job and his health coverage. She always came back in the evenings, but she didn’t… Usually we’d say no, but we can’t do anything for him.”
    It takes a moment for the words to sink in, and then they end up somewhere in my chest, chipping at my heart. “He’s that sick?”
    “Without dialysis, he only has a few days, maybe a week. The doctor didn’t think it was permanent, but if we can’t support him through the renal failure, he’ll die. We’re making him as comfortable as possible.”
    I stare at her, unable to come up with a response. That kid is going to die. It’s unfair that people like my mother—people who don’t give a shit—get to live for fifty years, and little boys who want to live don’t get to.
    I clench my hands by my sides. “Are dialysis machines portable? Can we bring one here?”
    The nurse shakes her head. “They are, but that part of the floor has…infected on it.”
    “What floor?”
    “Third.”
    I nod and return to his room. “What’s your name, kiddo?”
    “Manny.”
    “Well, Manny, it’s your lucky day. You can have chocolate.”
    He wastes no time stuffing it in his mouth. He doesn’t look like a kid who knows he’s dying, but he’s going to figure it out sooner or later. The thought of that moment is in the running for something worse than what waits outside.
    I dig in my bag for one of the chocolate bars I bought on