Transport Tracking

It starts at 2:30pm every day, but really there's no beginning to end. You just take over for the brave souls who work the shift before you. After swiping your badge at the gate to the four-story, double-tiered parking garage, you ascend to its roof. You have a choice to make, depending on whether or not you're running late. Usually, you're running late, so you take the stairs since the elevators are a disgrace within the faster elevator community. When you reach the first floor, you come to the hospital entrance. And, like the pitiful elevators, the first set of automatic emergency room doors inch open. As you walk through them on your way to the ground floor (where you moles lurk during your idle time), you think to yourself, "Why does the ER use such slow-moving doors, whose slowness could very well mean someone's death? But it really doesn't matter. You haven't even started work yet.

You pass the break-room door on your way to clock in for the day, but you have to wait your turn behind a mass of housekeepers staring at the clock as its seconds tick. Finally, you backtrack to the door reading Patient Escort and enter the break-room to put away the lunch you made yourself and store in a blue plastic Wal-Mart? bag. You notice no one from first shift loitering inside. This means it's busy. You drop your head in silent protest. But like a drone you walk into the office to grab a pager and some call-sheets. Then it's to your locker to get a pen. As soon as the clock shows 2:30, you trudge to the phones by the door to log into Transport Tracking. You go ahead and enter your ID number, pager ID number, and hospital zone, and wait to get a job. An automated male voice, indifferent, emotionless, begins giving you the details of a job: Room 7-2-1-6, bed two, to X-Ray, by cart. First name, A-G-N-E-S, last name, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. "Oh, god, Agnes," you think. "She'll be ninety-seven and can't walk." You drop your head with a sigh and trudge through the door into the non-descript hallway. Your mind erupts with invectives as soon as you realize you have eight hours of this awaiting you. For now, though, you head for the North building's patient/equipment elevators. They're the fast ones.

You were fooled into taking this job. Brad from Human Resources told you it's ideal for college students. "It works great for them," he said. What a jerk. But it has to be better than the golf course. Here you won't be treated like an underling of an ant by the pompous general manager. Instead, you'll turn into a drone. You never saw it coming. Everyday you come into work wearing your maroon shirt--your lead vest to the radiation of human suffering.

For two weeks you were Maurice's trainee. He was born in the Congo, raised in Paris, and has worked at the hospital for five years. He salutes you often, and when you shake hands, you squeeze hard and vigorously shake your arm up and down for at least ten seconds. "Greg!" he'll shout, leaning against the wall by the clock-in machine. "Seeee ya!" he'll say, saluting you. "You have good weekend!" he says. You grin. He was young when his family moved to Paris. English is his second-and-a-half language. You watch him push through the nearby rubber-bumpered double doors that lead to the loading docks, scratching at his facial stubble with his knuckles. He soon passes the morgue door. You walk away, swinging your lanyard key-chain around your pointer finger. Tomorrow he'll release you to fly solo.

It was fine for awhile. You even stopped being bitter about your early shift; you were fooled again at orientation. Cheryl, one of your four immediate bosses, assigned you to Maurice. "When can you come in tomorrow to start training?" she asked you, looking at you standing there out of place with your shirt and tie. Mom told you to dress up. Your friends still snicker at your ID picture, taken that day. You shrugged at Cheryl indifferently. "Anytime, really," you said, quickly realizing the proverbial string running from your neck to her finger. "Can you come in at seven?" You frowned in your mind but kept your lips smiling. "In the morning?" You're sure she laughed a little inside. She nodded. You came in at 7am the next day to start training. You got there early, and the veteran Escorts came through the door. As soon as Katrina bounced in, grinning, the off-white-walled, speckled-green-floored room brightened. Immediately she introduced herself to you and your two fellow rookies, Becky and Andrew. Some of your nervousness faded. But so did your hope. Maurice was paged down to the office. He had already been at work for an hour.

You had no choice but to match Maurice's schedule. Staggered schedules hinder training. So you came in every day, all summer, at six in the morning, after waking up at 4:30am. Your drive to work was through the morning dark and cold. By the time you came back to your car after work, it was too hot to get into. Of course, between your car and work is a squeaky shuttle that takes you to and from the hospital to one of four parking lots down the road by Kohl's?. But you didn't mind having to allocate another ten minutes to be on time. Drones have emotion.

Fortunately for you, by the next summer your preference for working evening shift finally came across to Cheryl, and she never again made you work in the morning. Little did you know, however, that the growing darkness beyond the hospital windows every evening would quiet the hallways and enhance the worry showing on every patient's face.

***

You hang up the phone with a grin. Ever since Patient Escort absorbed the official lift team for helping lift heavy or open-heart patients between beds and chairs, you occasionally have the privilege of carrying out their former duty. So instead of popping your head out of the elevator on each floor for a quick peek to find a cart, you walk directly to 5 Tower for a patient lift. You exit the North/Tower elevators and pass the plaque that reads Cardiac Care Unit, stepping on the reflections of fluorescent lights as you go. The patient's nurse spots you as you pass by the nurses station. You smile to her without showing your teeth. Ashley is cute, older, engaged or married, and a great nurse. And the moment you step into the patient's room and around the drawn curtain that blocks what you now can see, you understand why the system called for three of you to help little Ashley.

Your rubber gloves snap to your palms. Ashley walks in, grabs washcloths from the linen shelves, and approaches the bed. You stand by the window that holds a view of the hospital's main entrance. Tiny needles of rain sporadically cut the darkness. As two of your fellow Escorts come in to help, you turn around and join them, lining up along the bed opposite of Ashley. Another nurse comes in to help.

"I need you to roll him towards you so I can wash underneath," Ashley says.

You look down upon the patient. His weight consumes him. His eyes are glazed from sedatives. You follow numerous IV tubes from his right arm to the IV pumps tightened to a pole nearby. From the utility console behind the bed, oxygen hisses through a clear green tube to a mask that covers his nose and mouth. All that covers him is a sheet. Barely. To top it off, an NG suction tube, lined with a blackish-green substance, runs from a reservoir on the console down through his nose into his stomach. You want to ask how conscious he is.

"One, two, three," Ashley counts. You grab his far side and help pull him towards you. Your hands mash deeply into his excess existence. The nurses go to work on his backside, wiping, scrubbing, checking. At least once a week you discover a new contraption used to treat patients; Ashley pulls out a small hard-plastic pouch filled with thick brown liquid, and from it runs a chopstick-sized tube that runs into his rectum. Stool softener, you assume. You bury your nose into your left shoulder. You see his face turning purple.

His eyes water. "His tubes are pulling," you think. You pull the IV pole closer to the bed. You stare at him. "He can't breathe! Something's being cut-off," you think. You give him a few reassuring taps as subtly as you can. The blood in his face drains with each breath. His body shoots forward with each thrust of Ashley's arm. His eyes water more each time. You close your eyes and turn your head. You notice your own breathing. You cherish each breath. Your co-workers look indifferent. You glance at Ashley. She isn't alarmed, but you swear the man is crying. "Helpless. Poor guy. Hang in there," is all you can think. You pat him on the shoulder again. His sheet slips off, exposing his bellybutton, which looks like a missile peeking out of its cylindrical chamber. His skin looks paper-thin, like the mineral mica that flakes and crumbles with the lightest touch. His belly bulges outward and stretches as far as it can reach. It isn't floppy and sagging to rest on the bed. Ashley works diligently, placing a folded sheet under him so we can pull out the other half in a minute. You watch his watery eyes. "Why do I endure this?" you ask yourself. No answer materializes.

"Okay," Ashley finally announces. You help ease him back onto his back. His face returns to normal, but glistens under the lights.

"Push him towards me," she says. You roll him onto his left side and pull out the other half of the clean sheet. You help spread it beneath him. You ease him onto his back and finish up. Ashley thanks you. "You're welcome," you chime to her politely. You roll up your rubber gloves and shoot them like rubber bands into the trashcan.

***

You hang up the phone with indifference. Bed calls, jobs that require two people to push the bed, don't require you to find a cart, and there are always two people on the job, but some floors still have carpet, and patient-room doorways are barely wide enough if you put down the side-rails. You approach the North elevators and hit the up arrow. An empty elevator opens. You step inside and press 6. Just as the elevator passes the fifth floor, you bend your knees to prepare to jump. As soon as you feel the elevator start to slow, you cover your scrub-top's breast pocket, which contains your call-sheet, pen, wallet, two germicide wipes, and a backup call-sheet. You launch into the air, hoping to catch the moment of equilibrium. Only Katrina knows about your silly elevator antics.

Upon exiting the elevator, you turn right towards the 6 West nurses station. You pass several patient rooms and round the hallway to the right. Your face wrinkles; the station is swarming with interns. "Oh shit," you mutter. You excuse your way inside to find the patient's chart and nurse. Neither is present. You leave and peer inside the patient's room, only to see a group of white-coats standing around the patient's bed, which is the far bed by the window. You walk in to start clearing a path through the furniture.

"Grog!" says Jimmy, which isn't his real name. He's from Africa, and like many of the Africans who all seem to have come over on the same plane to work there, he adopted an English name to make it easier on us. He always asks you about how school is. You turn around and see him in the doorway with a grin that wrinkles his bald head. "Jimmehhhhh!" you reply.

"How, eh, is school?" he asks. You wonder how long before he forgets again. "Haven't seen you. You are on, eh, break?"

"Yep. Back to make some more pennies," you say. Jimmy nods. "School's good, but the winters are hard." He nods some more.

"You are on, eh, semesters?" he asks.

"Quarters," you reply, shaking your head. He nods some more.

You walk out of the room to stand with him; the doctors are in there talking, and they have the chart. Jimmy goes to the phone to put in a delay code for the call. You lean against the wall across from the door. The nurse comes by and acknowledges the purpose of your presence. You nod to her and watch her enter another patient's room. From the nurses station you hear Jimmy dialing on speakerphone. You shake your head to yourself. "So much for patient privacy," you think. The same automated male voice accepts his delay code: "DOCTOR, OR ANCILLARY DEPARTMENT, WITH PATIENT." Hordes of interns follow-the-leader up and down the hallways. Jimmy comes back. You wait for the doctors to finish yapping.

The interns leave the room, leaving the patient with his doctor. You and Jimmy hurry in to move furniture and clear a path to the doorway. You first push a chair between the bathroom and the bed of the patient's roommate.

"His wife and daughter were in here earlier," his elderly roommate whispers from nearby. You listen half-heartedly and glance at the curtain that divides the two patients. Luckily, it is drawn between them.

"Oh yeah?" you ask.

"They came in with some younger kids and they were being loud and nasty." You finish with the chair and look at him. "His daughter was asking about having his stuff when he dies." You perk up.

"Oh, wow. That's no good." You glance again at the curtain.

"The doctors asked for his family to leave," he continues. "His wife and daughter came back and talked about getting his things and money." You pause in position for a moment, compiling your new empathies into a movie. You're such a sucker. You'll drive by a dead cat, and instead of feeling sorry just for the cat, you feel sorry for its owners.

You nod politely and walk into the hallway to lean up against the wall. As Jimmy moves more furniture, the doctor finally leaves the room. You follow him into the nurses station, but as soon as you see him open up the chart and start scribbling on a Physician's Order sheet, you return to your spot against the wall. Several minutes pass. A woman and a younger girl walk towards you and into the patient's room. You watch them walk right up to his bed and stand there stupidly. The doctor comes by to enter the room. You watch as they talk. Jimmy steps out and waits with you. Waiting is half your job. You do it often and you do it well.

The patient's room becomes loud. His wife seems to be yelling at him. The doctor walks out and hands you the chart. As he walks away, you walk into the room to get the patient ready for transport to 3 Heart in the new heart hospital addition. Jimmy follows. Suddenly the nurse walks in behind him.

"Excuse me," she says. Everyone turns around. "The doctors are limiting his visitation to one visitor at a time." The wife and daughter protest with nonsense, but they both end up walking out. You and Jimmy get to work.

You quickly replace the spot where the patient's family was standing. The patient is middle-aged with sweaty, dark curly hair. His gown and sheet are wet with sweat and only half cover him. He is restless. You put his chart on the bed, and as you and Jimmy start putting down the side-rails and raising the bed to a level suitable for your height, two doctors walk into the room.

"We're going to limit your family to one visitor at a time," one begins. "Your wife and daughter being in here is stressful for your heart. We think this will help us monitor your heart better and keep you calm. We're moving you to another floor for specialized, acute care.

With a few more words exchanged, the doctors leave. You shake your head with an annoyed sigh. As you hold your finger on the button to raise the bed, the patient stares at you with his sweaty, gristly face.

"Am I gonna die?" Your heart detaches and tumbles down into your foot.

"Well we hope not," you shoot out. "We think stress is a big factor for you, and your family seems to cause a lot of it. When we get you to your new room, they'll limit your visitation to keep down your stress."

Jimmy seems oblivious. Of course it's me in this situation. The patient maintains his stare.

"How long do I have?" More organs tumble downward.

"Oh, no, I'm sure if we can keep your stress down, you'll be fine. You're going to a good floor. They'll treat you well." You want to be at home.

A monitor technician finally comes in to help you transport the patient. As you push him out of the room and down the tiled hallway, his wife and daughter follow, but you have to separate. They have to go the long way, through the front. Visitors can't go the back way.

You back him into his new room. The lights are off and the drapes are blocking most of the sunlight. The monitor tech unsnaps the portable monitor leads from his chest and replaces them with the ones from the floor's wireless transmitter. Jimmy lowers the bed while you put up the side-rails.

"Am I gonna make it?" the patient asks, as if you have anything left inside to sink. Your stomach vaporizes. "Am I gonna make it?" you ask yourself.

"Well, that's the plan," you reply. "We need you to avoid stress and keep as calm as possible. If you don't want your family visiting, please tell your nurse." You and Jimmy finish up. You stuff the chart into the nurse's hand and leave the room.

***

You press 1 and hang up the phone. Had it been the end of your shift, you would've rejected the job to ensure a 10:53pm departure from work. Besides, you're already on 4 Tower, and this call will take up nearly an hour. You walk down the hallway and pass under a sign reading Intensive Care Unit. Authorized Personnel Only.

On the way to the nurses station, you pass the room of your patient. Your Second (the other Escort on the job) approaches from the other direction. Upon peering into the room, you see a young patient surrounded by his mom and younger sister. They lean over the side, watching him. You continue walking and greet your co-worker. A random nurse looks up from her paperwork and greets you. "Hey, Greg!" she says. You wave to her.

"Hey, how's it going?" you ask.

"Good," she replies. "How's your mom?"

"Good," you tell her, though you really don't know. You haven't seen her much all week since your schedules are so staggered. But you've never been uncomfortable working in the same place as her. The hospital is big, and many other nurses commend her ability. You like the attention you get for being her son. She even calls you when you're not working just to tell you someone has praised your performance.

"Tell her I said hi," she says. You nod.

You peruse the nurses station for the nurse and chart, but of course they're absent. You mosey back to the patient's room and peer in. After spotting the chart on the table, you quickly scan the patient's hardware. You offer the room a quick sigh of relief. Sometimes a bed-pole isn't an option, especially when a patient has too many IV fluids hanging. When this happens, you have to push the bed while also pushing the IV pole. You've done it countless times, and each time was awful. Most of the poles have lame wheels.

You notice that he needs a bed-pole to make his IV fluids portable. And, like always, his bed is missing its pole. Aside from being good at waiting, Escorts quickly become tremendous thieves. As your co-worker goes about finding the nurse, you venture around the unit, peering into each patient room with an open door and/or an unconscious patient to scout for a bed-pole. You have little luck. Minutes pass.

Finally you find a slightly broken bed-pole in the belongings closet of a patient's room. On your way back, you stop by the equipment room to grab an oxygen tank. "Oh wait," you say to yourself. "Ventilator patient." You correct your feet and walk by.

You walk into the patient's dark room, fiddling with the bed-pole. The latch on the bottom that hooks into the bed is bent inward and won't fit securely. Your Second waits outside the room. Some Escorts don't help prepare patients for transport. As frustrating as it is, you figure it just makes you look better.

You pull on gloves and circle the room. You kick cords away from the bed. The nurse comes in to check on the young man. From his chart you learned that he is 19. You have yet to see his mom or sister without a wet face. The nurse walks out for a moment. As you stand at the head of the bed, trying to insert the bed-pole securely, some young people walk in. The mother suddenly raises her head.

"We're only going to have immediate family in the room," she tells them. They offer strange expressions, but they finally turn around and leave. You walk about the room, acting as indifferently as you can, to find a slender metallic object with which to bend the bed-pole's latch. You walk to the other side of the room, around the bed, behind the crying mother rubbing her unconscious son's arm, and around his weeping sister. The nurse comes in again.

"Oh, hey, do you have hemostats on you?" you ask. "I'm trying to fix this bed-pole."

"Oh, I might," the nurse replies, patting every pocket she's wearing. "I might have my NICU hemostats. They're small, but you can try them." She hands you the tweezers-like device, tiny for use on babies, but they're too small and weak. You give up, hand them back, and put the bed-pole into its hole at the front of the bed's frame. You give the pole a quick test-tap, making it teeter. Settling for a faulty bed-pole, you circle the bed to start transferring his IV fluids. You wheel the IV pole closer to the bed and unscrew the pumps. The mother reaches for another tissue.

The patient is slim in his bed. Short blonde hair, neck-brace, arms tied to the sides of his bed so he can't lash out under his sedative-induced unconsciousness. His eyes are closed and seeping with jelly they dab into patients' eyes to keep them moist. You keep your poise. You remain professional. In the room you are treated like an apparition, like you blend into the hospital's walls. "His mother," you think, "is entrusting me with his life. I'm only two years older." You unhook several fluid bags with one hand and hook them onto the bed-pole. You go to work to untangle the mess of tubes. "I hate seeing young patients," you think. "Old people are supposed to be patients."

You stare at his sister, who wears a thin blue jacket representing her school. She looks about thirteen. Her face glistens red. She holds a box of tissues that she shares with her mom. She has yet to say a word. "I'm trapped in this job," you'd tell her if this were a more appropriate situation. "Be careful after high school."

His mother rubs his face. She sniffles. You picture them at his funeral and wonder if it would be worse. In this room his lungs are breathing, his heart is beating, but he cannot kiss his mom before school every morning. He cannot hug his sister or applaud her in the school play. Instead, his family weeps for him. Here they have hope. At a funeral, nothing is expected of him, except to rest peacefully.

You help push him to CAT scan. As the mother and sister wait outside the room, you sit in the technician room and mingle with your favorite lady techs. "ROUND-TRIP" resounds from the phone nearby at which your Second sits, punching in a delay code. You close your eyes for a second, wishing you had already returned the patient to his room.

***

You enter the break-room and wander over to the fridge. You reach easily into a box of large gloves that rests atop it. After snapping a glove onto your right hand, you turn and grab the morgue keys from a tray hanging from the office door. Your Second isn't there yet, so you sit in a chair and watch the small, dying TV whose picture quality is slowly brightening into a white nothingness. Soon enough, someone walks through the door. You nod to them, wait for them to get gloves, and head to the heavily air-conditioned morgue, which you love. Walking around the hospital works up a sweat.

You turn the key, shove open the door, and drop the keychain onto the cold metal sink. You snap on another glove. You and your fellow Escort grab the morgue cart, remove its covered metal cage, and open both freezer doors in search of an empty tray. You like to go for the middle slot, since it's at the best height for sliding in a body. "Sweet," you say quietly, spotting an empty middle tray. After you slide the tray out onto the morgue cart, you replace the metal-framed canvas cover. As you head out of the door, you grab the morgue keys and toss them on top of the cover.

You exit the North elevators onto the 7th floor and head towards the room, which is at the end of the hallway just before it turns left into the North/Tower elevators. As you near the patient's room, you notice a woman and her young teenage son standing at the large windows where the hallway cuts left. As they stare into the blankness of the night, they hear you coming and approach. "Oh, man," you whisper. Visitors are never around by the time you fetch a body for the morgue. You hesitate at the patient's closed door.

"No, it's fine," the patient's daughter says. The grandson sways in his spot, shy and uncertain.

You head slowly into the room and close the door behind you. It's dark. No need to turn on the lights; there's no room for goofing off this time. Upon looking at the bed, you find a large body-bagged mass lying peacefully. Slowly and expressionless, you look around for a third body tag--one on the toe, one on the bag, and one for the freezer door. After you remove the cart's cover, you line the cart beside the bed and put towels along its edge as you lean forward against it. You help grab the body and lift and pull it until it settles evenly in the tray. Once covered again, you open the door and find the patient's daughter and grandson standing right outside. Nothing but awkward silence between the four--no--five of you. You slowly leave the room and head for the elevators.

"Wait, please," the daughter says, approaching the cart. She lifts some of the cover and reaches inside. Her son's pale white skin contrasts with her reddened cheeks. She sniffles and blinks tears out of her eyes. Your chest tightens, holding back whatever's pulling at it.

"She's still warm," she finally says, removing her hand from the cart. "That's so weird."

Had there been a mirror before your face, embarrassment would've kicked in. How dare you look so vulnerable.

You return the cart to the morgue, slide the body into the freezer, and lock up. "This is awful," you tell yourself. "Once I graduate, I'm gone." As you head back to the break-room, you hold the morgue key between two fingers and let its keychain dangle and clink against the four phony keys trying to hide the real one.

***

"TRAUMA ALERT, CATEGORY 2, E.T.A.: FIVE MINUTES" blares three times through the hospital. As a Patient Escort, you needn't worry much about incoming traumas. As you venture the hospital, fulfilling your duties, those five minutes pass. Then another five pass. You complete your job and call into Transport Tracking.

Abeba has by now switched from 1st to 2nd shift. She's a beautiful young East African. As you enter the break-room, you find her already holding the morgue keys, so you go up to her and poke her side.

"You bad!" she says with a huge smile. You laugh and poke her again.

"No, you're bad!" you say.

You grab some gloves and walk with her towards the morgue. Same routine. You wheel the covered morgue cart down the hallway under the new heart hospital and take the brand new, slowest-in-the-hospital elevators to the first floor. Like all Emergency Room calls, the system never tells you which room you need, so you push the morgue cart to the charge nurse's desk to ask. You and Abeba push the cart as nonchalantly as you can, even though the cart's grey cover blatantly reveals its purpose.

"Observation," the charge nurse says. Your turn around and head away. Soon enough you punch the plate on the wall to open the automatic ER Observation doors. THUNK! The bolts release and the doors jerk once and swing outward.

An Observation nurse points towards the end of the hallway, which is dark and rarely used in the first place. Inside the last room you find a massive body lying in a bag on a cart.

He must be 6'6'' at least!" you declare, though Abeba is too busy adhering to procedure, looking for a third ID tag. You remove the cart's cover and set it down. Moving about the room, you find a sheet of the patient's barcode labels used by phlebotomists to stick on specimen tubes. Abeba finds the third body tag. You both stare at your respective pieces of information. Suddenly you look at each other.

"He's only 15," you say, staring at Abeba with the look people get if, say, a yelping puppy lay dying in a ditch. You stare at each other. She gasps, frowns, clucks her tongue at the unfairness of the world. You glance at the 15-year-old's body before leaving to find the nurse for help. She tells you he had been hit by a car while riding his bike. You help heave the body onto the morgue cart, cover it, and enter the elevator.

"This sad," says Abeba, shaking her head, her face full of disgust. You return to the morgue and slide the patient into the freezer. His mass scrapes against the tray above him.

In the break-room you peer into the office at the person in charge of answering the phones and monitoring Transport Tracking. They're called the Customer Service Coordinator (CSC), but you like to call them overseers of your suffering.

"Can you page Pastoral?" you ask. The CSC nods. You turn around, look at Abeba, and drop the morgue key into its tray on the office door.

***

At night you find yourself taking the North/Tower elevators as high as they go, to the 9th floor. No one ever comes up here. To the left is a utility room whose double doors are always locked. And to the right stand the two sets of double doors securing the back of Behavioral Health. Your ID doesn't work for them, and you're certain no one ever uses them anyway. Instead you have the small space all to yourself. The two small lights behind you, though just enough light to see, offer your reflection in the window.
For a moment you remember why you come up here. One night you had a cart sheeted and proper for a job, but the job had to be canceled. Recognizing the pride you take in dressing your carts, your genius mind made you stash it up on the 9th floor for later use. You parked it perpendicular to the window, whose view towers above the old ER, part of the surgery floor, the smokestack, and the new heart hospital; sometimes you see people on its second floor walking by the Cath labs.

You sit on the end of the cart and prop your feet on the heating register below the window. You gaze out into the darkness. The nights are never different. Chopping helicopter blades occasionally break your concentration, but seeing LifeFlight land always steals your attention.

The pager on your belt vibrates, but it's almost time to go home. You quickly hit a button to silence its plea for you to call into the system. From above you watch trucks drive into the loading dock. Ambulances drive away after making a drop. Pluming smoke from the smokestack. The flashing red light of the antenna dwarfing the woods in which it stands. Commercial-jet lights flickering slowly across the sky. Your reflection.

The pay is too good for the schedule they let you make yourself, but someday you'll get out of here. You look down at the walkways barely lit by the few lights between the buildings, imagining yourself walking away from the hospital for the last time. You check your pager for the time.

You enter the stairwell to begin your nine-flight descent to the ground floor. If you walk slowly enough, you'll kill just enough time to log out of Transport Tracking.