章 44: Chase

It’s a Sunday morning, and so the ward is as quiet as I’ve ever seen it, but Livia still seems a little overwhelmed by the slow bustle of nurses and techs wheeling machines around and the low sound of someone moaning from a room. I’ve been in this ER with my hand clamped over a woman’s gashed artery, I’ve tackled violent drunks who’ve attacked nurses here, I’ve accepted a stale donut from a nurse while we watched the other nurses forcibly catheterize a man who refused to willingly leave a urine sample after he mowed down an elderly man gardening by his sidewalk.

I’m not overwhelmed by the Sunday Morning ER.

We get into her room and the nurse asks her to change into a gown, and then whisks out through the weirdly patterned curtain all ER rooms seem to have. Liv takes a deep breath and then another one, and before she can ask, I put my hand on the curtain to leave too so she can dress in privacy.

"Stay," she says quietly. "Please."