Revenge

LAB COATS

“Nephrology, one short. Endocrinology, one long. Emergency Room, one short.”

I take a lab coat from the mountain of dirty ones on the floor and I check the pockets. I read out the size and the name of the department written in magic marker on the back of the collar and then toss it in the cart. She sits next to me, writing down each coat in the register, so that next week, when they come back from the laundry, we can check them against the list to be sure nothing’s missing. Of all the jobs we secretaries at the hospital have to do, this is the one we hate the most. Partly because it’s nasty and boring, but also because the laundry room is next to the morgue.

She and I take an old freight elevator to the basement—just a cold, rattling box, really—and then walk down this long hall that’s so tight I don’t see how they roll the gurneys through. The walls are scuffed up, and the fluorescent light flickers creepily. The floor of the hall slopes down from the elevator, so the laundry cart rolls forward on its own, as though pulled by an invisible hand. Like it’s going to race down the hall and crash through the door of the morgue. That’s creepy, too.

To be honest, the morgue doesn’t scare me much. I don’t really understand why the other girls are so afraid of it. They see people dying all over the hospital, while they type their reports or eat cream puffs in the lounge. The job is even kind of nice, especially when she’s next to me. She’s as beautiful underground as she is in the office, her face all white and pale.

“Dermatology, two short. Cardiology, one long. Oral Surgery, one short…” No matter how long we work, the mountain never seems to get any smaller.

“He should be in the endo lab this afternoon,” she says, without looking up. Endoscopy.

“Right,” I agree, “it’s Monday.” I know the whole schedule by heart. “I can manage here if you want to go.”

“No,” she says, running her finger down the list to Oral Surgery. “No need.”

Her boyfriend is a resident in Respiratory Medicine, and right about now he’s probably putting an endoscope down someone’s throat.

I pick up the next coat, turn it inside out, and shake it. Something falls out of the pocket and rolls across the floor: a dried-up plum. Looks like a testicle.

I’ve given up trying to figure out how this stuff gets in their pockets. And this isn’t even the weirdest thing; I’ve seen flower bulbs, bras, corks, a Bible, a little eggplant, condoms—you name it.

“He was supposed to come see me last night, but he never showed up,” she says.

“Maybe one of his patients took a turn for the worse,” I say, tossing the plum in the trash.

“He went to see his in-laws to tell them about the divorce; he said he’d come and tell me how it went.” The doctor’s wife went home to her family last month to give birth to their third child—first girl. I knew all the details. “He was full of excuses again. Something about the train getting stuck in snow. He claimed he never even got there, that he sat on the train the whole time and had to come back without seeing them. Can you believe the nerve? He expects me to believe a story like that with the cherry trees already in bloom.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He could be telling the truth. Freak snowstorms happen. You should check the weather report. If he was going to lie to you, he would have said it was a patient.” She doesn’t seem to be listening.

Since the day I started my job at the hospital, I’ve always enjoyed working with her. She’s a hard worker and she doesn’t take grief from the doctors or anyone else. And she’s beautiful. I never get tired of looking at her. It must be nice being that pretty.

I especially like to watch her work—the way her eyes light up in front of the computer screen, that cute little ear that sticks out from under her hair when she answers the phone. But best of all is her tongue when she’s licking those blue airmail envelopes. It flicks out, all moist and red, and runs over the gluey edge.

“I wouldn’t mind having a peek down one of those scopes,” I say, just to make conversation. She nods, but she’s still not listening.

The next coat has bloodstains. I wonder whether the patient suffered much—before I toss it in the cart.

“They used one on me when I was a kid,” I add. “A peanut went down the wrong tube and I couldn’t breathe. Nearly suffocated. It’s weird that one peanut could kill you.”

She doesn’t answer, so I go back to reading labels. The room smells like death and disinfectant.

The two of them have been doing it all over the hospital—in the wards, the labs, the broom closet. Maybe he’s even put the endoscope down her throat. Bet she looks as good inside as out—warm, red, inviting, all those little wrinkles tempting you deeper and deeper …

She knows exactly how she wants a job to be done. Twenty pages or fewer gets a paper clip; more than twenty, a binder clip. Sugar packets are for staff meetings; sugar cubes for guests. The surgery schedule is expected to be blown up 150 percent, and copies posted on the bulletin board (upper left-hand corner), on the side of the equipment locker, and on the door to the lounge. If a patient gives you cookies or other food, it goes on the middle shelf in the cupboard.

Not long after I started working here, some bigwig in Neurology asked us to help with a presentation he was going to give at a conference. It had all these graphs and charts, and he wanted it back in just two days. She split the work with me and we typed up labels for the slides.

“Use the number 508 stickers for the slides,” she told me. “They’re for conferences.” No. 508 was a dull gray.

I did the job just the way she had asked, but when the doctor returned to pick up the presentation, he took one look at it and threw it back on the desk. It all tumbled down onto the floor.

“This color won’t show up on the projector,” he said.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, stepping in before I had the chance to say anything. Her apology was really smooth. “I told her to use number 608 as usual, but it’s my fault for not checking. She’s new and I think she’s a little color-blind. I’m very sorry. We’ll get it redone by the end of the day.”

The doctor said he’d be back later and stormed out.

Color-blind? For a moment I wasn’t sure what she’d said—just that she’d sounded really charming when she’d said it. No. 608 was bright blue.

She had definitely told me no. 508. I knew because it was the same number as her apartment. I wasn’t likely to make a mistake about something like that. And she had given the presentation one more pass before the doctor had come to get it. I started picking up the papers.

“It’s your mistake,” she said. “You fix it.”

I didn’t finish until way after midnight. I felt like I was sinking in some kind of gray swamp.

The next morning she handed the new slides to the doctor as if she’d done them herself. He seemed really embarrassed he’d made such a fuss and he asked her out to lunch to apologize. I was not invited.

I never said a word of what happened, not to anyone. I was willing to be color-blind if it would keep her perfect.

“I told you she got pregnant just when he was about to ask her for the divorce.” I shake the next coat and two cafeteria tickets fall out of the pocket: one for spaghetti with meatballs and one for a cream soda. “I bet she did it on purpose, part of her evil scheme.”

She isn’t looking at me, but she doesn’t seem to be writing in the register anymore either. She’s usually such a perfectionist, but she can get pretty sloppy if she’s thinking about her doctor.

“When I asked him if he’d even told her, he got defensive and came up with all these excuses: they’re worried about the boy getting into the right elementary school; his wife could go into premature labor; he’s got some experiment running at the lab and can’t be distracted; the train got stuck in the snow … a load of crap!”

She stops for a moment and I read the label on the next coat. She writes it down in the register—I think.

The coats are in a pretty sorry state, all wrinkled and stained. Blood, spit, urine, tears. You can tell by the color, and the smell. It’s amazing all the stuff that can ooze out of a body.

“‘One lie leads to another,’” I say. She should know.

“He finally showed up past ten last night. Dog-tired—from being stuck on the train for five hours, he said. But I was the one who was tired. Tired of waiting all that time, of running to the door at every little noise, watching the dinner I’d made get cold.”

She runs her hand through her hair and looks down again. Her skin is so white. Her shoulders are really beautiful. The pen rolls across the desk.

“Do you know what he told me? He said he’d ‘had a lot of time to think’ on the train. That he felt like ‘some invisible force’ was holding him back. That it ‘wasn’t the right time,’ and that was why it had snowed. He said he wanted me to be patient, to wait just a little longer. ‘Just a little longer…’ And then we screwed, just like we always do. That’s all we have left.”

I imagine her naked. The doctor’s fingers running over her skin, her hair, the wet places. I picture her tongue licking the edge of the blue envelope. Who wouldn’t want her?

“Gastrointestinal Med., two long. Ophthalmology, one short. Neurosurgery, one long. Pediatrics, four short.” I pick up the pace, trying to distract her, but she’s not paying attention anymore. The pen’s still on the desk.

“How could he be so cruel? How could he tell me to wait? No, I couldn’t wait any longer. Not one more day, not one more second.”

I take the register and begin checking in the coats myself, trying to be as neat as she is.

“That’s why I killed him,” she says. Her voice is low and cold.

I feel a scream rising out of me, but somehow I stop it, hold it back, and instead I calmly imagine the scene: the knife in her pretty hand; the blade slicing into him again and again; skin ripping, blood spurting. But she’s spotless. I pick up the next coat.

“Respiratory Medicine, one long.”

It’s his. I shake it and out falls a tongue. It’s still soft. Maybe even warm.