15

A+2NORAHA+5

Davídek Hrdlička, 61. At Corvid Hospital for substance abuse treatment, depression worsening. Anhedonia. Non-responsive to modalities/meds. Loves his younger brother and fishing.

 

Dexteras and Daví mimicked one another’s large gestures and volumes in mighty Czech tongues. They carried big, rolling shoulders and soft-spoken demeanors. She wondered if she’d finally deciphered Dex’s heritage in their closeness.

Daví was painted with tawny wrinkles, purple bags beneath his eyes, and a settled droop in his cheeks.

“When was the last time you were happy?” Nor asked.

“I don’t know what happy feels like anymore,” he admitted through Dexteras. The language was sharp and bellowing, like cracks across a frozen pond.

They gently prodded at his feelings until they shuddered to life and unfurled to their fullest height. From there, they could understand them with more accuracy.

Daví’s parents were emotionally and physically abusive towards one another. A countertransference clenched in the therapist’s chest as he shared the woeful narrative.

“Mom would drink and get in Dad’s face. Dad would shove her against walls, sinks, tables. They’d both scream.”

Their mutual pasts panged the heart beneath Norah’s breastbone. She was certain she hid these aches from her client, but Dex’s glance slid knowingly over her.

Daví’s form shook as truth spilled from him in rolling tears and twisted wrinkles.

Nor allowed a quiet reverence so that his story could press against the walls and brush the ceiling with its immensity. But in the silence, she prayed Daví registered it too. This story has always been violent. Devastating. Unspeakable. But now, as it sat, it did not destroy him. It did not tear his breath from his throat as trauma often felt it would. He was weary with the spent adrenaline of survival, but he’d survived.

Despite all he’d known, Daví was still here.

 

a+2

 

After their rooftop cigars and shared fist-bumps, they returned to the conference room to finish documentation. The ugly shadow that had to follow clinical work with each step.

As she typed absent-mindedly, she recalled a strange interaction she’d had earlier in the week.

She’d strode past a nursing station on the fourth floor and heard various mumbles and whispers.

“-in his fifties, maybe? Sixties?”

Exasperated scoffs and snickers followed.

“-so many tattoos.”

“-just weird.”

“…not even professional, I don’t know HR doesn’t…”

The tops of Nor’s ears were hot when she spun on her toes with a horrid laminate squeal. She rushed to the nurse’s island and hopped up on the countertop in a swift, adrenaline-fueled gesture. Sitting above them, she painted on a devilish grin and set her chin in her hands like an eager schoolchild.

“Spill the tea, girls,” she whispered conspiratorially. But her eyes felt wild and wide with unspoken threats.

The nurses went silent with the confrontation. One looked to her clipboard with guilt and the others grinned stupidly. Norah wasn’t surprised by the honking geese specific to this particular gossiping gaggle: Jamie Pidge, Kathleen Dover, and Autumn Tula. Their brows were narrow and judgmental. Their nails were coffin-shaped and clacking. For no reason whatsoever, their ignorant, pristine features made Norah’s blood boil.

This was why she kept her back turned to the whispers of staff. Why her boundaries with colleagues were always firm and formal. If her memory served her, it was in fact Kathleen who’d once worked as her mother’s nurse when Robin’s first bout of stomach cancer became prevalent. It was no secret that Robin lied recklessly to staff regarding her substance use history and illicit drug and alcohol abuse. The staff replied with irritable jabs and shameful eyerolls beyond her mother’s room. It was Kathleen who referred to Robin as “the wino” in the halls. Norah had even heard rumors of the term “Norphan,” in reference to herself along the oncology halls, which Nor quite frankly found resourceful and clever.

But this was vastly different. They weren’t wrong about her and her mother. The Kestrels deserved the shame and sneers. But in this moment, before Dex’s dignity, she found herself armored, hot, and tempted to pummel faces with the many rings along her knuckles.

Say something, say one fucking thing about Dexteras Doe, I dare you… she begged, eyes nearly watering as she grinned like a madman at them.

The trio exchanged shifty glares that reminded her of the bullshit she’d dealt with in grade school. Norah had been small then, meek and terrified. But she wasn’t anymore. She’d barely noticed her father’s quarter speeding up and down her knuckles.

It was Jamie who dared to speak up first, her voice brave, yet breaking. “Oh, we-we were talking about y-your translator actually, D-Dex, Dexter-?”

“Dexteras,” Nor snapped. But in a blink, she masked the fury with feigned curiosity. She was good at lying. She’d watched her father do it to his wife for years. She knew how to keep her features loose and unthreatened. She knew how to wrinkle her brows in surprise and hurt. She knew how to look emotionally distant, yet interested. “Oh really? Anything I should know?” she dared with a syrupy-sweet croon, tilting her head with masked concern.

Their eyes dashed to Jamie beneath their fake eyelashes, breaths held.

“We-we heard the ER staff say they’ve seen him translating for clients through all three shifts, days at a time,” she added with a careful dash of admiration, reading Norah’s face for tells of how she felt for the old man.

But Norah only blinked and dropped her shoulders, offering them nothing. Her chest hurt at the mere thought of Dex working for days on end.

But that wasn’t humanly possible, of course. Nobody could do that for days on end.

Heavy keyboard taps from his inked fingers returned Nor to the present. She considered him while her own hands hovered above her laptop, concern stitched in her brow.

Then, an evident tic seemed pulsed in his cheek. His eyes scrunched with pain. His bandaged hand gripped his head with a scowl as he attempted to rub the wrinkles from his face.

“Headache?”

“No… not quite,” he muttered, seemingly listening to something in the stagnant hospital winds.

Before Nor could prompt him further, the old man was mobile. In seconds, he was spinning on a polished boot, sending his chair aside, and was out the door and down the hall. He rounded corners at a healthy clip.

“What the shit,” she mumbled, scrambling from her seat. “Dex?”

But he wasn’t listening. His head whipped about in search of something beyond them both.

She sought after his heels as he bolted for the elevator.

His massive arm held open the shining door for her but didn’t speak as they ascended. Then, the elevator chimed and pried ajar, he dashed into a new hall, limbs long and reaching.

Norah’s hip vibrated as she gave chase. She snatched her phone from her pocket to see a text from Rosella, Alina’s nurse:

 

AH missing from her bed, alert has been sent.

 

Then, an announcement shook the halls through its booming intercoms:

“A code pink has been placed until further notice. Code pink.”

Well, shit.

Dex’s pace quickened. Jarring turns and hurried shuffles brought him to a fork in the road, where his leather boots squeaked to a halt. His chest heaved, and he tilted an ear to listen.

Before she could inquire, he was ablaze with fresh fire, hot on the trail once more. He stopped, spun, and then shouldered his way through one of the many stairwell doors.

At the top of the stairs, a small gasp escaped him.

Norah peeked around his great, heaving form to behold the steps below.

And there she was.

At the bottom, Alina was burrowed into a corner with her knees to her chest. She was clutching something in her tiny hands.

Dex jumped the remaining few stairs and slid to his knees beside her, cooing to the child with his thunderstorm deep voice.

“Ohh, Lina, Lina. Shh.” Ukrainian saturated his words as he scooped her into his arms.

She wept between hyperventilating breaths, unfolding like a paper crane onto Dex’s chest, sobbing and whimpering.

He inquired with low whispers.

She returned them with broken cries, clutching to his shirt.

“Is she okay?” asked Nor, wide-eyed.

He stood with a groan, holding the child close to him. The nostrils of his crooked nose flared with strain. He nodded slowly, heavy with sadness.

Norah finally saw what Alina clung to in handfuls: clumps of thin, dark hair. Her balled fist was pressed against a pink, balding spot on the side of her skull.

“Oh, Alina,” Nor cooed. She tapped a prompt text to Rosella:

 

Bringing the bird back to the nest.

 

Seconds later, an announcement concluded that the “Code Pink has been lifted.”

They trekked to Alina’s room, Dex carrying her all the way. He spoke warmly until she was limp with sleep, cheeks glistening with tears.

Seeing the weary caravan treading home, Rosella jogged towards them. Anxious moans bobbed from her with each heavy-breasted sigh. She rubbed her face in her hands, tears welling, and embraced Norah.

“She’s safe, no harm done, Ella. She’s safe.”

“Norah,” she whispered, words breaking. “She’d finished treatment and was sleeping like a bear. She was so tired… I got called to cover Eric’s hall a moment and forgot to set her bed alarm, and just...it was my fault. Entirely my fault.”

Norah laughed, squeezing her tighter. “El, stop that. She’s alright. Dex got her.”

Dex rubbed the child’s back. “She’s grieving some big things right now,” he muttered. “But she’s safe.”

Rosella’s eyes sparkled at the old man as she clutched her cheek and smiled up at him.

They laid the child on her purple bed sheets, where she muttered inaudibly and sank into the linens. They slipped rubber-soled socks up her shins and tucked her in snugly. Tiny oxygen hoses were looped around her ears. Her monitors were reset. Her swinging tree vines of tubes and cords were restrung. Dex and Nor hugged her tightly. They wiped away her tears. They told her she was beautiful, because she was. She was asleep before they’d backed softly from the room.

Dex whispered a Ukrainian farewell and followed the triage of professionals into the hall. Rosella snatched him into a massive hug, making him laugh and groan simultaneously. His lashes fell low, and his cheek twitched. His hair was slick with sweat.

 

a+2

 

They returned to their floor to gather their things. He was still huffing, neck shining with effort. His eyes were heavy-lidded and slow.

“Can I get you anything?” Nor tried.

“No, no, but thank you,” he breathed.

He’d be polite to his deathbed.

“But I’d like to get some air.” He threw a nod upwards to the roof.

She gave half a mind to ask if he’d like company but feared she’d only deepen his weariness with the burning questions in her head.

How did he know Alina was lost before everyone else?

How did he find her?

And how the hell did he carry her so far when he struggled to carry himself?

She placed a grateful hand on his large bicep. It was like squeezing a rolled frying pan.

“You’ve helped Alina so so much. You’ve helped all of us here. You’ve helped me.”

He bowed his head.

“You know that, though, right? We cherish you.”

His eyes fell further to his shiny leather boots. “I’m still trying to get used to it, I suppose.”

“I’ll be sure to keep reminding you. You’re incredibly loved.”

His cheeks grew round and rosy like ripe peaches.