The Inner Circle

86

"Nippy out today, huh?” a young guard with a big gold class ring asks as I shove my way out of the wind and into the toasty lobby of the redbrick RMB Building.

“I’m from Wisconsin. This is summer for us,” I say, working extra hard to keep it light as I approach the desk and yet again scribble my name in a sign-in book. “So who’d you play for?” I add, motioning to the gold football that’s engraved into his ring.

“Floyd County High School. Out in Virginia,” he says. “It’s class A, not AAA, but still… state champs.”

“State champs,” I say with a nod, well aware that there’s only one thing I really care about from high school.

“So you’re the Nico guy?” the guard asks.

“Pardon?”

“They called me from the other side-said you’d be coming. You’re the one looking for Nico, right?” Before I can answer, a lanky black woman with bright red statement glasses shoves open the locked metal door that leads to the rest of the building. After finding me outside Nico’s room, they’re not letting me get in this building unattended.

“Vivian can take you back,” the guard says, motioning me through what looks like a brand-new metal detector. But as the red-glasses nurse swipes her ID against a snazzy new scanner to open the metal door, I’m all too aware that this building has a far more high-tech security system than the ancient giant key ring that the nurses rely on in the other one.

“So you a reporter?” Red Glasses asks as she tugs the door open and invites me inside.

“No… no… just… I’m doing some research,” I say, following behind her.

“Like I said-a reporter,” she teases as I notice a sign on the wall that says:

Gero-Psych Unit

In the hallway, there’s an empty gurney, an empty wheelchair and a state-of-the-art rolling cart. Everything’s scrubbed neat as can be. Outrageously neat. Even without the industrial hand sanitizer dispensers along the walls, I know a hospital when I see one.

“I didn’t realize you had a full medical unit back here,” I say as we pass an open room and I spot an elderly man in a hospital bed, hooked to various monitors and staring blankly at a TV.

“Our population’s aging. We need someplace to take care of them. You should put that in one of your articles, rather than all the usual stuff you write about us.” She’s about to say something else, but as we reach our destination-the nurses’ desk that sits like an island at the center of the long suite-she stops and arches an eyebrow, looking confused.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I just… Nico was just mopping back here.”

I follow her gaze down to the floor. Sure enough, the tiles are still shiny and wet.

“Gimme half a sec,” the nurse says, picking up the desk phone and quickly dialing a number. As she waits for it to ring, I trace the wet streaks on the floor to…

There.

Just a few feet ahead, along the tile, there’re two parallel streaks-from the wheels of a mop bucket rolling along the wet floor-that run like train tracks, then make a sharp right into one of the patient rooms.

“Pam, you see Nico up there?” the nurse says into the phone.

As she waits for an answer, I follow the streaks a few steps toward the open room. Inside, the lights are off, but there’s sunlight coming in from the window. Stretching my neck, I peek around the corner, into the room, and…

Nothing. No mop bucket… no Nico… nothing but another patient hooked up to another set of machines.

“Great-he’s up there?” the nurse says behind me, still talking on the phone. “Perfect. Great. Sure, please send him down.”

As she hangs up the phone, I take one last glance at the patient in the bed. He’s maybe sixty or so, and propped on his side, facing me. It’s not by his choice. There are pillows stuffed behind his back. His body’s frozen, and his hands rest like a corpse’s at the center of his chest. They did the same thing when my mom had her heart surgery: turning him to prevent bedsores.

The oddest part are the man’s eyes, which are small and red like a bat’s. As I step in the room, he’s staring right at me. I raise my hand to apologize for interrupting, but I quickly realize… he’s barely blinking.

I tighten my own gaze. There’s nothing behind his eyes. He’s not seeing anything at all. He just lies there, his whole body as stiff as his arms on his-

Wait.

His arm. There’s something on his arm.

My face goes hot, flushing with blood. Every bone in my body feels paper-thin and brittle, like a fishbone that’s easily snapped.

I didn’t see it when I first walked in-I was too busy looking at his empty eyes-but there it is, faded and withered on the lower part of his forearm:

A tattoo.

A sagging, faded black tattoo.

Of an eight-ball.