I stood on the corner of the hospital waving for the Uber to pick me up at the curb in the snowstorm, hoping Lew was cooking his grandmother’s recipe for lasagna, trying not to think about the woman in the emergency room who held my hand, not wanting to walk away from her cries, not reporting the doctor who’d prescribed the wrong medication.
The Uber driver rolled down his tinted window. “Yvette?” I looked at the back of his neck, “Marcus?” I slid on the back seat, and turned off my cell phone that was vibrating in my pocket.
“You have a good day?” He pulled into the street.
I answered with a word that means nothing. “Fine.”
The snow had covered parked cars in a suit of white. I found snow storms hypnotic, could almost imagine what it felt like to freeze as hypothermia shuts down the brain, which is not supposed to be an altogether unpleasant experience. I pressed my forehead to the window and closed my eyes. The cold felt good. But shortly afterward, the car spun to the right almost hitting a lamppost. “Watch out!”
Orange traffic cones blocked the car from driving entering the freeway. “First big storm of the season. People don’t know how to handle snow around here, but we get it often enough. They should be salting soon.”
I was thinking about the tracks my boots make in the snow, also about the Trojan Horse, a gift that threw the Romans off balance, or in my immediate experience, how certain medications can cause rashes, set blood pressures to overdrive. I’d seen it happen. The body doesn’t easily make transitions. My patient, a woman nearly as thin as a bedrail, was having an allergic reaction to drugs. The intern hadn’t carefully checked the particulars of her chart. I made her comfortable and gave her an antihistamine on my way out and updated the front desk about her condition. I was tired, but sorry that in my hurry I’d taken an anti-depressant. Maybe more than one. Everything felt off, too many admissions today and interns who didn’t know what they were doing.
“I’ve been thinking about snow,” came Marcus’ voice. I leaned toward the front seat, wanting to hear what he had to say. “One of my pleasures as a child was pretending to be a snow angel. My brother lived with me then. He does not miss the snow. Did you know that a fast-moving snowmobile can move over water?”
I didn’t answer, was tired from a long shift, and up until now, only had a view of Marcus’ back, slim with a full head of black hair that touched his shoulders. He was wearing a jean jacket decorated with a patch of embroidered wings like a biker. “Blizzard,” he said. “White-out conditions. But I’ll get you home.”
I strained to hear him, leaned forward toward his seat as he chewed on something that left a red smear on his fingers and covered the wheel. I watched outside for signs of the mall, the school, the movie theater, familiar landmarks, but all I saw were pine trees.
“Where are we? Is the right way?”
“According to GPS, we should be at your place in twenty minutes, give or take.”
I leaned back and tried to relax, sat on my hands in an effort to keep them warm. Where were my gloves? I kept thinking about Lew’s dinner, warm tomato sauce cooked with pork bones and a hunk of sour dough bread to sop everything up. Lew would pour a glass of red wine for my birthday, the one I kept trying to forget—forty years old, years that wouldn’t stop accumulating like the snow drifts outside the window until everything turned into slush.
“You a nurse?” Marcus asked.
“How’d you know?’
“I picked you up near the hospital and you’ve got on those clunky nurse shoes, so I figured.” For the first time, he turned around and I was startled, his eyes, cavernous and sunk into his face which was a topography of the Canadian Rockies. I was more surprised than repelled. “I could use your help with something bothering me.”
Friends and family often asked for my medical opinion. Why ask a doctor, especially just out of med school, and not a nurse who’d seen hundreds of patients? Headaches, numb fingers, blood tests, dizziness, I’d diagnosed them all and people thanked me.
“I am trying to forgive myself for killing people.”
“You what?”
“I’m trying to forgive myself. Shouldn’t I be able to forgive myself? Wives forgive their husband’s killers every day.”
I didn’t know what kind of nutcase I was driving with sitting in a black foreign car that was polished inside to an obsidian shine. But figured that the safest thing was to humor him.
“That depends,” I tried to keep my voice steady, “on how many people you’ve killed.”
“Just today or a cumulative figure?” I was stunned by the question. He sounded like a serial killer who was playing with me before opening the trunk. “Thousands,” he said. “I’m a vampire.”
I tried not to gasp. Marcus needed help, but not from me. I was more interested in getting home safely. Turning forty suddenly seemed like a spectacular achievement. So did lasagna.
“That’s a lot of people,” I said.
“What about people killed in wars—men, women, young children.” He waited for a traffic light to turn green.
“That’s different.”
“How? I’m not a killer, just an animal who has to eat. Do you hate your cat for dropping a bird in your lap? Of course not, because that’s what cat’s do—they hunt.”
I saw my house and Lew’s profile in the kitchen. “You’re right. Some animals could live on that kind of carnage for years.” I jumped out of the car. “But I don’t think I can help you,” and I ran to the door.