Chapter 10: Unaccounted Time

Qing had added a checkbox to the revised intake form.

WAS EVAN RIGHT?

Beneath it, she had provided two choices.

TEMPORARILY

THE QUESTION IS DEFECTIVE

Evan drew a line through the entire field.

"Patient records aren't an opinion survey."

"They have been poorer for it," Qing said.

Su took the form from him and laid it square with the edge of the table. "The joke has been removed. We may now discuss the useful addition."

It was Monday, April thirteenth, after closing. Rain drew slanted threads across White Pine's front windows. The pharmacy lights had been dimmed, the door locked, and Evan had come straight from Harborview in navy scrubs and his rain shell.

He had also brought three pens. White Pine ate them.

The form already covered patient response, referral or escalation, and follow-up contact. Su had written a new line beneath those fields.

UNEXPECTED EFFECT DURING TREATMENT.

"On whom?" Evan asked.

"The person receiving treatment."

"Only the patient?"

Su's left cuff sat lower than her right. The right had caught above a strip of pink skin at her wrist.

Qing leaned over the table. "I suggested a second line for practitioners, but apparently we are a hardy agricultural species."

"Inventory," Su said.

"I finished it."

"Then check it."

"For what?"

"An error."

Qing glanced from Su's wrist to Evan. The humor left her face. "I know where the stairs are."

She went into the rear room. A drawer opened, shut, then opened again.

Evan tapped Friday's date on the form. "Mina said Hana was home after fluids and an exam. Nothing dangerous showed up."

"That is correct."

"You didn't call me back."

"I was occupied."

"Your message said another patient."

"It said I was occupied with another patient."

He read the sentence again on his phone. Su had arranged the truth so neatly that there was nowhere to put a finger under it.

"Was the other patient you?"

Su folded her hands over the form. "The question is imprecise."

"Then help me improve it."

"Hana's fever required time to clear."

"From the room?"

"From me."

The answer came without emphasis. Evan laughed once, too short and too sharp. Su's face did not change, which made it worse.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were making a point."

"I was answering."

He set the phone down. "Start at the beginning."

"Hana arrived with a high fever and vomiting. I reduced both until she could travel for medical assessment."

"I know what you did for her. What happened to the fever?"

"The heat diminished in her body."

"Where did it go?"

"For a time, into me."

Jars lined the wall behind Su, labels facing forward. The rain ticked against the front glass. Nothing in the room had changed. That made the sentence harder to put anywhere.

Evan reached for the explanation that required the fewest impossible things.

"You absorbed heat through contact."

"And the nausea. Some muscle pain."

"Those aren't heat."

"No."

"May I see your wrist?"

Su looked down at the cuff. "For what purpose?"

"You called that a skin reaction. I want to know if it's a burn, a rash, or an injury you aren't naming."

She pushed the sleeve back.

New skin crossed the inside of her wrist in a band two fingers wide. It was smooth in places and split into fine parallel lines in others, as if a layer had lifted away. No blistering. No swelling. No redness beyond the healing edge.

Evan did not touch her.

"May I?"

"Yes."

Her radial pulse moved beneath his fingers, slow and even. Her skin was colder than the room.

"Does this hurt?"

"The skin is tender."

"Any numbness in the hand?"

"No."

"Can you make a fist?"

She did. The tendons shifted cleanly beneath the raw patch.

He released her. "I need to check your eyes. Fever and lost time can mean a neurological problem."

"I am aware."

"That's not consent."

A pause.

"You may examine my eyes."

He took a penlight from his bag and moved his chair closer. Brown irises. Equal pupils. Each contracted under the light and widened again when he moved it away. She followed his finger without hesitation.

Too normal. He had wanted the exam to find a door back into the ordinary.

"When did Hana leave?"

"Shortly after one."

"My first call was at two seventeen."

"I did not answer."

"The second was three forty-six."

"I did not answer that one either."

"When were you able to use the phone?"

"After four."

"Where were you?"

"The basement washroom."

He knew the closed door at the bottom of the stairs. On his first walk-through, Su had redirected him from it before he could touch the knob.

"What happened down there?"

"My body cleared the burden."

"How?"

"That is a larger answer."

"Did you pass out?"

"No."

"Did you know where you were?"

"Yes."

"Your name?"

"Yes."

"The date?"

"Yes."

From the rear room, Qing called, "She knew mine too, which I considered a reassuring display of judgment."

Su turned her head. "The inventory."

"I found eleven errors. Ten are commas."

"Continue."

Evan kept his voice level. "You said lost time."

"Approximately three hours passed before I could resume work. I did not say I was unconscious."

"What changed during those hours?"

Su drew the form toward herself. Her thumb tested the paper's edge.

"One memory became inaccessible."

"What kind of memory?"

"Auditory."

He waited. She offered nothing more.

"Whose voice?"

"It is not relevant."

"That wasn't my question."

Her gaze moved to the shallow drawer beneath the register. Nathan Zhao's plain white card was locked inside with whatever else Su had decided nobody needed to see.

Evan lowered the penlight.

"Whose voice?"

Su's thumb stopped on the paper. "I remember what a person said. I no longer remember his voice."

Rain ticked against the glass.

"Someone you knew."

"Yes."

"Someone alive?"

"No."

"Who was he?"

"It is not relevant."

"It matters to you."

"That does not make his identity medically useful."

She pulled the form close and wrote beneath UNEXPECTED EFFECT DURING TREATMENT.

REFERRED FOR FOLLOW-UP: YES / NO.

A form. She could give him a form. Boxes stayed where she put them.

Evan took out his phone.

He opened a message to May.

I think the trust needs to know Su lost time and part of a memory after treating Hana Park.

He stopped before sending it. May would call Victor. Victor would call the insurer. Someone would use the word impairment, and someone else would ask whether the pharmacy should close.

That was what Evan would have recommended if this were any other practitioner.

He deleted the message.

Marisol's name sat three lines below May's. He opened a new window.

I need a second opinion about a provider who had a fever, skin loss, three hours of impaired function, and a focal memory deficit.

Marisol would tell him to get Su evaluated. If Su refused, Marisol would tell him to step away. She would be right.

Evan deleted that message too.

The drawer beneath the register remained locked. He pictured the man across King Street in the plain coat, and the dry rectangle left under the alley awning after the bus passed.

Then the older picture arrived. A discharge sheet folded into a dead man's coat. Evan's handwriting across the bottom, the bus number in block capitals so nobody could miss the safe route home.

He put the phone face down.

"A seven-year-old lost her fever to you. Her mother has to be told what it could have cost. You tell Mina Park, or I do."

Su held his gaze. "I will tell her."

No date. No time. No method he could verify.

He knew how to fix that. Set a deadline. Copy May. Require documentation. Build a plan tight enough that nobody could fall through it.

Instead he said, "Have dinner with me."

Su blinked.

From the rear room came the faint scrape of a drawer being closed with great care.

"That does not follow," Su said.

"It does for me."

"You have just threatened to report me."

"I gave you a choice."

"You gave me two choices you selected."

"Yes."

Her eyes narrowed. "And now you are asking for dinner."

"I'm asking because I want dinner with you."

"You also want to observe me."

"Probably. I observe everyone. It's unpleasant but consistent."

"That is a poor recommendation."

"I can give you a worse one. I own a label maker."

Her mouth nearly moved.

Evan slid the intake form back to her. "If you were anyone else, I'd have called both those people."

"But I am not."

"No."

He heard the answer after he gave it. He had trusted her promise before he had any means to test it, the same thing he had sworn never to do after the bus shelter.

Su watched his face. "You dislike this decision."

"I dislike that I'm making it with missing information."

"Then why make it?"

"Because missing information isn't the only thing here."

Her attention dropped to the crossed-out checkbox. "When?"

"Now."

"The shop closes at nine."

"Then we have a clock."

"I have inventory."

Evan raised his voice toward the rear room. "Any errors?"

"It was difficult, but I persevered."

Su closed her eyes briefly. Then she untied her charcoal apron and hung it behind the counter.

"There is a noodle shop on Jackson that closes at nine," she said. "The broth is acceptable."

"That's the nicest thing you've said all evening."

"It was not about you."

At the front door, Evan opened the middle umbrella. Su locked White Pine and tested the handle twice.

Across King Street, the bus shelter stood empty. Rain silvered the bench where Nathan had once sat watching the shop.

Su stepped under the umbrella. Her charcoal coat brushed Evan's sleeve.

She turned toward Jackson, and he went with her.

They reached the noodle shop at eight thirty-four.

Su chose a table against the wall beneath a handwritten menu and placed the chopsticks parallel to its edge. Her phone lay beside them, screen up.

Mina Park's contact was open.

Evan took the opposite chair. He said nothing about it.

The server brought tea, two bowls of beef noodles, and a jar of chili oil with a spoon sunk to the handle. Su added half a spoon to her broth. Evan added two.

"You will regret that," she said.

"I spend twelve hours at a time near an emergency department."

"That does not make the decision sound."

"It makes the follow-up convenient."

He ate. He had missed lunch, then called vending-machine crackers a meal. The broth carried star anise and enough salt to make his shoulders loosen before he noticed.

Su ate more slowly. She lifted the noodles clear of the broth so they would not spot her cream blouse. No tremor. No nausea that he could see. No hesitation with the beef.

He hated himself a little for checking.

Her phone dimmed between them.

"What did he say?" Evan asked.

Su set down her chopsticks. "Who?"

"The voice you lost."

She turned the chili oil jar until its label faced the wall. "You are asking the question by another route."

"Yes."

"He told me to remain where I was until he returned."

"Did he?"

"Yes."

Outside, the rain softened to a mist that shone in the shop windows. A Route 7 bus stopped on Jackson, took on three passengers, and pulled away.

Evan finished his bowl. Su ate half of hers and asked for the rest packed.

"Do you come here often?" he asked.

"Often is imprecise."

"Once a week? Once a month?"

"When the broth is necessary."

"That's almost an answer."

"It is a complete answer."

The wall clock reached eight fifty-two.

Su picked up her phone. Mina's name brightened the screen beneath her thumb.

Evan watched the clock advance another minute.

Su turned the phone over.

"The child may be asleep," she said.

"Probably."

"This conversation should not begin with a message."

"No."

He could ask when she would call. He could build another rule before they stood up. Instead he paid the bill and asked, "Would you have dinner with me again?"

Su considered him across the steam between their bowls.

"Perhaps."

"Is that closer to yes or no?"

"It is accurate."

Su's phone lay face down beside the chili oil. Mina Park's number was in it. Neither of them touched it.