When I get back, I hear that another patient's died in trauma. This one was a gangbanger who stepped on the wrong turf at the wrong time. He never woke up. Bled out like the DV Meena couldn't save yesterday, quiet as could be. Someone shows me a picture of his face, snapped when he was alive; it looks like a sea creature, swollen with oddly placed wells of fluid, spangled with rich, striking color. The nurses are betting on a Kevorkian; they've started what they're calling a "ghoul pool."

Meena pulls me aside to show me a spreadsheet on her tablet. There are several columns of what look like times, the first sparse and in bold red text, the others coded with long alphanumeric strings in blue, orange, and green. "Times of record entries," she explains, passing her finger over the latter columns. "Names in code; docs are orange, nurses green. These are times of death on the trauma ward," she says, pointing to the red column.

"Meena," I say, "why would a Kevorkian put in a record entry?"

"He needs a reason to be in the room," says Meena. "People notice this stuff. If we saw you around the ward all the time, but nothing in the records, we'd start wondering why."

"Don't look at me. Your docs couldn't tell a vasoconstrictor from a vasodilator if the bottles had name tags and funny hats. I'm all over the records."

"My point," Meena says. "So if you're the culprit, saddle up. It's only a matter of time."

My hands are under her shirt by this point, my mouth descending for her neck. I draw her closer and she says "Hel-lo, nurse," and I know she's not talking about my hands, or my mouth. "It's been a while since one of those came knocking."

"Sorry," I say. "Long shifts. Lot on my mind."

"Too much thinking," she murmurs. "No spare blood for love? Ah!"

I don't know what I've squeezed or twisted to make her yelp like that, but she doesn't seem to mind. The bottles of bleach begin to thump in rhythm on the shelves. She's gotten lighter in recent weeks. The percussion falls silent; we finish free-standing, her biceps tense on my collarbones, my fingers dimpling her thighs. She's damp and gasping by the end. I have to remember to breathe.