Chapter 11: Futile

The medical record system had a screen it showed to doctors who looked at charts they had no right to.

It was gray and square, and it asked for a reason.

Matthias sat in his dark office on the ninth floor at ten past eleven at night.

The city lights lay on the glass behind him.

His phone buzzed face down on the desk.

Clarissa, again.

"Where are you? I can't sleep. Come home."

He turned the phone over and left it.

In the box marked Reason for Access, he typed, "Family."

It was a lie in one way.

In another it was the only true thing he'd typed all week.

The system logged him in with a flat electronic chirp.

THORNLEY, ESME M. 29 F. Employee, 6 West.

The first thing he saw was the date of her biopsy.

October 9.

Thursday.

Their anniversary.

He stopped breathing and then made himself start again.

He read the way he'd been taught to read, from the bottom up, because the newest line was the truest.

The last note was Ezra Kimball's, from Saturday night.

"Pt left for hospice care at Harbor House, Rockport, at her request. Declines further outpatient therapy at this time. Prognosis as discussed."

Above it was the infusion calendar, two lines of marker-dark entries.

Fri Oct 10. Fri Oct 17.

Above that, the pathology.

Adenocarcinoma, colon.

Metastatic to the liver, both lobes.

Stage IV.

The words stood on the screen, small, black, ordinary.

His chest felt like a hand had closed around it from the inside.

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