Nothing's quite right when I go back to work. Not that I was expecting sunshine and roses; it's scary, what happened to Mauricio Quinoñes, and so I understand the extra security around the morgue. And I've always thought that trauma should be a bit better guarded, given the reasons that so many people—women especially—are there. But they've buttoned up the blood reserve as well. Apparently there have been irregularities in the inventory. Meena tells me that the usual blood shortage has been getting worse—not so much because of the inventory, but because trauma needs more of it.

I get headaches every time I see armed guards in the hallway, and then when I don't. The pain is like bright streaks flashing by my head, white and blue and silver, like lasers just missing my scalp and temples. I start to see them in my dreams, only in my dreams they don't hurt, or if they do the pain is suffocated by a beautiful vertigo, a careening sense of forward motion, of weightlessness, of purpose, savage and smug and joyous. I would almost love these dreams if they didn't insist on coming during work. I lose minutes, find myself in strange places far from my usual paths. You don't know shame until you've woken up a bunch of terminally ill kids. The ped-onc nurses have eyes like scalpels. I'm so mortified I lean into every cut.

No one dies for a few days, at least. I don't see much of Meena, but when I do, she looks drawn and haggard, haunted.