Chapter 24: Room 4-112

Supply room 4-112 smells like clean cotton and cardboard.

The long shelves of towels run back into the dark, with gowns on the left and saline on the right.

I hadn't been inside since the night of the panel.

It was Saturday, midnight, six weeks after Grand Rounds.

The new Policy 9 was posted in the hall, with my name in the footnotes.

Dolores had a bowl of popcorn at the desk and a radio on the counter, tuned to a station that played old soul.

"I'm not doing anything," she had said, when I walked past. "I'm on my break."

"Dolores."

"Go on."

"You'll hear us."

"Honey, I've been hearing things since 1994. I'll turn up the radio."

I walked down the corridor with Kurt behind me.

He had a chair in his hand, one of the hard orange ones from the waiting room.

I stopped at the closet door.

The badge reader beeped as it recognized my card, and the light turned green.

I pushed the door wide.

"Chair," I said.

He set it in the doorway, and the door stood open to the hall.

Light from the corridor fell across the floor in a long pale slab.

The radio drifted down from the desk, soft at first, then louder.

"That's the open door," he said.

"Yes."

"Anyone could walk past."

"Yes. And nobody's going to stop them. And I don't care."

He looked at the chair, and at the hall, and at me.

"Come here, Fairweather."

I went.

He backed me against the shelves, the way he had the first time, and the towels shifted behind my shoulders.

He kissed me.

It was the same kiss, the same beard, the same butterscotch.

But I wasn't shaking.

"Do you remember what I said?" I asked, against his mouth. "That first night."

"You said I didn't have to be fine in front of you."

"I meant it."

"I know. That's why I fell."

I pulled his scrub top over his head and dropped it on the floor.

He took mine off, too, and my bra, and kissed my breasts, hungrily, one then the other, until I was clutching his shoulders.