CODE WHITE
He knew the boiler room would be unlocked just as surely as he’d known, from his first day on the job, that something was living inside.
He was sitting in a brightly lit meeting room when he noticed the Breath. It hit him like a stomach cramp; a sudden, panicked awareness of the gargantuan noise coming from the ducts, roaring into every corner of the room, carrying the slight sweetness of decay. His dozen or so new colleagues, dressed in escalating tiers of Banana Republic office chic and collectively staring into the grille of a black conference phone, didn’t seem fazed. Beth, Lydia, Adelaide, Jeff; Beth, Lydia, Adelaide, Jeff: Jakub assigned to each of them one of the four names he knew belonged to someone in the group. They were acolytes in a sacred ring, leaning in to listen to the Director, Karyn, speaking over the line.
“‘The best way to find yourself,” she said in a crackly voice, “is to lose yourself in the service of others’… That’s Gandhi. Metrics show he beats The Dalai Lama for inspirational almost four to one.”
“Better clickthrough,” said a Jeff, nodding and tapping at his phone.
Jakub had gone through six interviews to get this job in the Strategy and Communications department of the Bethel-Day Health Centre. He thought about what his father would say, frowning out from under his impeccably trimmed grey moustache, if he knew that, on Jakub’s first day, in his first meeting, when he should have been alert and professional—grateful for steady work, in these times—Jakub was distracted to near panic by the deafening bellows of the Breath filling the office suites of the Health Centre’s Executive-Admin building, so huge as to become the air.
Am I crazy? he thought. Can no one else hear this?
For the rest of the meeting, he sat fiddling with a loose button on his green gingham shirt, feeling the heat of hives starting to colour his chest, acutely aware of a Lydia who’d noticed him daubing beads of sweat from his temple.
♦
Curiosity got the better of him, is what he told himself. That it was of his own volition that he ended up, a week and a half later, at the door of the boiler room on the first subfloor, ear pressed to the cold metal, listening. That he couldn’t be sure it was unlocked, even though he’d already turned the knob, twisted it all the way to termination.
He stood, holding it like that, feeling the low vibration in the metal. Just a push, now. Slight pressure. Walk right in. See what’s breathing.
There was still time for him to turn around. Leave it alone.
Avoid a Code of uncertain proportions.
Code Blue: Cardiac Arrest/Medical Emergency. Life hangs in the balance between death and salvation. The email, however, is rote, automated. A flat statement of circumstance, of which dozens of identical versions flood Jakub’s inbox every day, along with their rainbow of variations, the colours of disaster that bleed from the health centre’s white walls.
Code Yellow: Missing Person. A patient disappeared, wandered off into the halls or out to the parking garage. Jakub’s cubicle-mate, a sprightly blond woman named Kelly, told him there’d been a jumper the week before he started, off the P6 railing right across from the EA Building’s fifth floor window.
“Like a flying squirrel,” she said. “The way his gown spread out around him.”
Kelly tosses stories like this over her shoulder while Jakub sits, deleting hundreds of Code emails between bouts of clicking out numbers on his keyboard. For the most part, the Codes don’t affect him. He’s here to crunch data, to predict the extent of the winter surge two years hence. His work will affect how the hospital treats people who are not yet sick, but who will be; his data guarantees their illness.
After four years of dealing at the casino to fund his statistics degree, Jakub isn’t sure if it’s fair to say it’s paid off. He could do a lot worse than the Strategy department at BDHC. Some of his friends are still wiping down tables at the Pickle Barrel.
Code Grey: System Failure/External Air Contamination.
As a side hustle, Kelly runs a YouTube channel that has 90,000 subscribers.
Code Green: Evacuate.
Because he’d known the Breathing Man was there, because his Breath was ubiquitous, his presence in the boiler room did not surprise Jakub. In a room that was colder and clammier than the sterile hallways, a huge man-shaped figure crouched by the Air Handling Unit, pale as a parsnip, eyes closed, red-rimmed lips pursed up against the grille, breathing the steady, crushing sound that filtered up through the entire building.
At first, Jakub just stood and watched. The door eased shut behind him, leaving him alone with the Breathing Man. He thought he hadn’t been noticed, until the Breathing Man’s lips sucked together into a seal, cutting off his flow, and his eyes popped open to reveal huge pupils that shone with a glassy, opalescent light. He turned jerkily toward Jakub and opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words there came a brutalized rasp, like dusty cloth bandages being shredded to ribbons.
Jakub swung between disgust, pity, terror, and a hovering unreality that placed him behind his body, observing their encounter from someplace safe, where it was inconceivable for such things to happen. The Breathing Man again tried to speak, but the same sound hissed out. Then, like a hurt animal—a great hairless goat, thought Jakub, or an enormous white grub, writhing in salty air—the Breathing Man twitched and cowered back, his body wracked with a spasm. Acid churned in Jakub’s guts. He was no hero; just a numbers guy, more machine than man. Somehow, realizing this caused a surge of irrational bravery that moved him to speak:
“What are you?”
The Breathing Man swallowed and sighed. He turned to face Jakub, adjusting his crouch, wedging himself deeper beneath the Air Handling Unit he’d usurped.
“Ghud,” said the man, and blinked. It was no word, but a strangled grunt, as though the man was gagging on his name. Jakub heard ‘God’ and almost laughed; this creature was too real, too present in the room, to be a manifestation of pure belief.
The Breathing Man turned and pursed his lips and pressed them against the grille, unleashing a sudden hiss of sour air. The sound of Breath again filled the cavity of Jakub’s chest, blanketed the ceiling of his skull.
“What do you want from me?” said Jakub, voice thick with dread.
Only Breath answered, steady and consuming.
♦
Later, inside the Centre, Jakub walked the yellowed halls of D-wing. This section had purple wayfinding decals; he stepped on every one he passed, making his way along the path he took daily at lunch, a wending loop that only ever took him back to his desk. D-wing, which housed the ER and the critical and urgent care units, was over capacity. Beds lined the hall, housing the withered and elderly wrapped in sheets, plastic tubes running from their noises and needle-spiked forearms.
He turned a corner into the newer G-wing, whose upper floors were home to the palliative and ortho units. Here on the main floor, a bright windowed corridor led down to the clinical library and the auditorium where, next week, they would Gather Round—perform the monthly ritual of receiving the latest BDHC news from its dashing CEO, Deborah Merchant. Gather Round, Gather Round with Deb. Jakub imagined the Breathing Man siphoning huge gulps from the ducts of the auditorium, savouring the blended life-force of a hundred loyal employees in corporate rapture, rolling it around his tongue to try and find the strong, bitter tang of Deb Merchant’s faith-borne exhalations as she emphasized for the hundredth time that they were In It for Life™.
Winter sunlight spilled in along the corridor, reflecting off the polished concrete floor. Down the hall, a man in a motorized wheelchair sat looking out the window, gazing at the grassy slope beside the parking lot and the fringe of trees visible beyond. Jakub had seen him here before, during his daily walks or on event days. Today, the corridor was empty, quiet. Jakub went over and stood beside the man, who turned his head slightly, then looked back outside, smiling.
“Beautiful day,” he said.
The winter sun cast a silver haze over the trees. In the distance, a crow flapped in to perch on top of a dark spruce. Jakub studied the man’s grey hair and the lines around the corners of his eyes and mouth, which seemed a diagram of confusion at what had become of him.
“It’s nice to see the sun,” said Jakub. He offered the man his hand. “Jakub.”
The man smiled. He reached his left hand over, grasped the wrist of his right, and lifted it to place in Jakub’s.
“Amir,” he said. He glanced down at his hand. “ALS.”
Jakub didn’t know whether to squeeze the man’s hand or not, whether he’d feel it. He gave the lightest clasp, for comfort or sympathy. Not that it would matter: this man’s brain was losing the ability to control his muscles, his body slowly paralyzing itself. He was the colour and shape of sadness; yet he defied it by placing himself before the sun, breathing in light for as long as his ravaged neurons would allow.
“You’re here often,” Jakub said.
“Yes,” said Amir. “I like talking to people. When you get sick, some of the people you know… they stop. Coming to visit. It makes them uncomfortable. To see how I’ve changed. Know what’s coming. Even my wife. She tries to come every day. But it’s too much for her.” He waved his good hand through the air in a rough circle. “Now, the nurses. They’re my family. This is home.”
Jakub nodded. Amir sighed.
“First, you want more time,” he said. “But time becomes a prison. Then, you wish for another body. Another self.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jakub.
Amir smiled again.
“Why?” he said. “You’re here, now. Listening. It can mean a lot of things—to care.”
The crow was gone. Jakub had to get back to his desk. Lunch was almost over and he hadn’t eaten.
“There’s a man in the boiler room,” he said, staring out the window. “Sucking the life from everyone.”
Amir nodded slowly, savoring the movement, his head almost floating.
“That’s one way to look at it,” he said.
♦
Code Purple: Hostage Situation. Code Pink: Cardiac Arrest/Medical Emergency – Infant or Child. Code Aqua: Flood.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
“I heard that last week,” said Kelly behind him, “some nurse rolled a guy outside so he could die in the open air. Think about that.”
Jakub fought the growing sense that he had always been at work and always would be—that he no longer left the office at night, but simply went dormant, hunched at his desk, breathing in half-time, his trips home now just brief, cushiony dreams.
It was World Progeria Day. Everything had a hashtag; you could die by hashtag. The Breath maintained its constancy, hovering around Jakub like plastic sheeting come to life. To drown it out, in his head, he listed off fatal conditions and emergencies. Heart disease. Lung cancer. Mouth cancer. Diabetes. Mental illness: schizophrenia, suicidal tendencies. Stroke. Parkinson’s. Celiac. ALS. Each had its own dedicated foundation, an organization to fight it, educate the public, raise awareness. Each had its own day—its own thirst for engagement, to be spoken aloud and so rendered a bit less lethal.
A ping alerted him to the presence of two new emails in his inbox. The first was from a Monica in Human Resources.
I am trying to locate a delivery of 6 boxes of paper to the EA Bldg. today. It should have been delivered to the 5th Floor, but was delivered to another floor by mistake, can you please let me know if this was received on your floor. Thanks very much.
The second was Code White. Unsafe situation. Aggression. A patient or visitor presents a violent threat towards self or others.
Please remain calm. Please remain calm.
♦
One day, he went to stand beside Karyn’s desk to wait for her to stop chewing on her shirt, which was protocol on EA5 when you had a question or request. After a few minutes of staring intently at her screen, Karyn turned, lowered the moistened hem of a wraparound sweater, and said, “What’s up?”
There’s a man in the boiler room. Sucking the life from everyone.
“The server is being funny,” Jakub said. Can’t you hear it?
“’Kay,” she said. “I.T.?”
Jakub nodded and went back to his desk. Query made; open a ticket.
Find the man in the boiler room. Determine his intentions. Find out if he’s a threat.
“In It for Life!,” Kelly chirped behind him. The clacking of fingernails on keys.
♦
On the roof of the parking garage, he calculated the variables: the height of the structure, his weight, the angle of his body against the wind and against the pavement. A gust rocked him forward, closer to the brick barrier that was low enough for a six-year-old to climb. Below him, the wings of the health centre sprawled out toward a heavily treed enclave of mansions. The highway ran beside it, carrying the common people past the sick and dying in a silent, oblivious parade. Jakub realized he was grinding his teeth. His stomach and his jaw were in a clench. The wind rushed past his ears, raw blasts of uncontrollable sound. Only wind could drown out the Breath. The rushing of gravity’s wind. The last sensation, wet and explosive. A sharp introduction of silence.
Kelly, watching from EA5. Mouthing to him across the void:
Code Orange… Disaster!
♦
He knew he would have to go back to the boiler room. The Breath was an answer to everything and nothing. It was up to Jakub to interpret the grotesquerie. But he needed someone to talk to about it.
On a day when crisp, miniscule granules of ice fell slowly from the grey sky, Jakub walked the windowed hall of G-wing, the wooden soles of his black dress shoes knocking on the concrete. The light made everything the colour of old bone. He expected to see Amir there at the end, sitting in his usual spot, but the hallway was empty, save for a lone nurse fussing with a tray of bottles and steel instruments. Jakub smiled at her to catch her eye, made sure his badge was visible.
“Excuse me,” he said. Acknowledge. “My name is Jakub.” Introduce. “Quick question for you.” Duration. “Do you know a patient named Amir? He often sits here, in his chair.” Explanation.
The nurse’s all-business mask softened when she heard the name, becoming somber.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“I know this is well beyond protocol, but do you know where I might find him? I work in the EA building. For the centre. It’s, ah, a communications question.”
She refocused on Jakub, a sad look in her eyes.
“He—he passed,” she said. “Yesterday.”
Jakub stood silent.
She glanced down at his badge.
“You’re in communications,” she said. “Thought you’d have known.”
He couldn’t hide the question that showed on his face: why would I know that the man I’m asking after is dead?
“It was MAID,” said the nurse. “Only the second case at the Centre. Big kerfuffle, attracted a lot of media.”
“I was just talking to him,” said Jakub. “Not… long ago. What’s MAID?”
The nurse gave him a strange look and went back to fiddling with bottles. “Medical Assistance in Dying,” she said. She stood back, wiped her hands on her scrubs. “With some diseases, it’s hard to see how much a person is suffering. Imagine, being you, with your own brain working just fine, but your body can’t hear you anymore? It just stops responding. That’s what ALS does to you. It’s brutal. Sorry… if you knew him, I mean.”
Code Yellow: Missing Person.
Jakub nodded weakly. The ducts above roared to life and began to issue their low-frequency moan. The Breathing Man had joined the conversation, offering lament or confession, threat or plea.
♦
The Breath told him where to go. Back up the corridor of G-wing. Past the elevator bay, down the hallway leading away from the cafeteria. Occasionally, other sounds impinged: the din of nurses chatting together on their break. The wheels of a cart rumbling over linoleum. Bells and chimes sounding over the public address system, preceding the declaration of different codes. But, at base, the great bellows of Breath ploughed ever-outward and inward, driving him around corners, down passages, past the tiny nook of the Spiritual Care office and the locked double doors of the Adult Mental Health unit—the most shameful inadequacies tucked away in the deepest regions of the hospital—until he reached the inconspicuous sign that read MORGUE.
There was no one inside. The Breath welcomed him with monstrous amplitude, as though its waves had surged in and cleared everyone from the stark, windowless space. The hospital morgue was at once simpler and ghastlier than he’d imagined, a trio of nondescript beige offices bordering a hallway that led to a polished steel door, beyond which he found the row of metal embalming tables, the pulleys and braces hanging above each, the shelves crowded with tubs full of silver hooks, needles, spigots. The broad, walk-in closet at the back, where white plastic buckets were stacked like pagoda towers, housing their brined extractions. Each conveniently labeled by date, name and specimen, so that it took Jakub no time at all to find what he needed.
You wish for another body.
It should have been delivered to the 5th Floor, but was delivered to another
The best way to find yourself—
♦
10% buffered formalin. A half dozen toxicity labels. The liquid sloshed as Jakub placed the bucket down on the concrete, so he could prepare his gift before opening the door. There was formality to be observed, for both donor and host.
The bucket’s lid popped off with a wet plok! Threatening vapors wafted up. He breathed them in, keeping time with the greater Breath, his guide and master.
What is it, thought Jakub, that makes us nurture what consumes us?
He lifted the pale, wet lungs from the bucket and cradled them, so that they lay like a butchered fawn across his forearms, one sallow lobe draped over each wrist. With his foot, he pushed the boiler room door, and walked forward into the murk.
The Breathing Man took no notice of Jakub, fixed as he was on the task of recycling the air of the EA building through lungs choked with scurf, anguish, abandonment, decay. The shuddering frequencies of the Breath made the room vibrate, sending tiny flakes of skin from his contorted body to join the motes drifting in the murk. Jakub knelt before the man, head bowed. Volatile liquid seeped into Jakub’s khaki trousers, the scent of formalin hovering, miasmic, around the lungs they held like a sacred altar.
“I brought these,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the Breath. “For you.”
It was only a hiccup. A catch in the cascade of noise. Yet there was no mistake: Jakub’s words had, however briefly, caught the Breathing Man’s attention. Maybe they could still find a way through the fear. Maybe they could take care of each other.
When the Breath stopped suddenly, the silence rang in Jakub’s ears like a wine glass struck with a stray tooth.
The Breathing Man had turned to face Jakub, the swampy cataracts of his eyes focusing on this penitent and his gift. Small, shallow rasps had replaced the Breath. His chest rose and fell like that of a dying calf; the skin of his belly was like parchment, revealing the bowels underneath. His ribs were a haunted circus tent of crooked slats and drooping skin.
With a ropy, white finger, he reached down slowly, and tapped Jakub once, twice, three times on the chest, in time with the rise and fall of Jakub’s lungs, which he realized were operating at a skewed pant, nothing like his normal rhythm, as though a dial were being turned up to test their compatibility with an unfamiliar system.
Not enough, he thought, feeling the damp weight on his knees, the pickled organs that were not his gift to give. From across the divide, Amir’s ghost smiled at him. It can mean many things, to care.
As the Breathing Man’s fingers sunk into his chest, pushing through skin, suctioning through blood and digging at the fascia to get to the ribcage and the living lungs underneath, Jakub tried as he could, but could think of no code to declare. §