He raised his voice for the room.
« Folks, I apologize for the disruption. This is exactly what I’ve been telling the board for months. We cannot run an emergency room on sentiment. »
Nobody laughed.
He didn’t seem to notice.
« Twenty-two years, » he said, loud and bright, looking at me with the Rolex flashing in the light. « Twenty-two years, Marsha, and you still can’t tell a hospital from a charity. »
A commissioner in the second row looked down at his shoes.
The reporter’s red light blinked steadily.
« I’ve been patient, » Gilbert said. « I know it’s been hard since your husband passed. I know you’ve leaned on this desk because you’ve got nothing else. But I can’t keep paying a salary for feelings. »
It landed in my chest like a stone.
Six years.
I had come back to work eleven days after the fun*ral because the house was too quiet to stand in.
Everyone in that room knew it.
Not one of them looked at me.
Lillian Rusk, in the front row, had gone very still, with her hands folded on her navy skirt.
She was watching Gilbert.
Not me.
Gilbert.
« Badge, » he said, and held out his palm.
Behind me, the lobby had stopped breathing.
Sixty people.
A reporter with her camera up.
The smell of lemon frosting and floor wax, and, from the corridor, very faintly, the sound of a very small baby crying.
« Gilbert, » I said quietly. « You don’t want to do this today. »
« I want to do it exactly today. »
« Then you’ll want to know what’s on account number… »
« Badge. Now. »
I lifted the lanyard from around my neck.
My hands, I noticed, were steady.
I had thought they’d shake.
I turned the little plastic card over and looked at my own picture on it, smiling, twenty-two years younger.
And that was when I felt a tug at my scrub top.
Ginger stood beside me, pale, with Maisie Voigt’s hand in hers.
« I’m sorry, Marsha, » Ginger whispered. « She won’t stop asking for you. She says she has to give you something. »
The girl looked up at me with her big gray eyes.
In her other hand, she was holding a laminated index card, creased down the middle, soft at the corners from being handled.
« Are you Marsha? » she asked.
« Yes, baby. »
