Chapter 11: Borrowed Warmth

At seven forty on Thursday, Evan ate vending-machine crackers in the stairwell behind the ambulance bay and found a message from Su. The noodle shop on Jackson has changed its hours. It now closes at nine thirty. I mention this only as information. He read it twice. Is this a perhaps? It is a revised closing time. He was smiling when another message arrived from a number he had not saved. He did not know how the sender had his. The only place he had written it in the district was on a packet of Su's supplement in March. This is Nathan Zhao. I would like you to meet a patient tonight. First Hill, the hospice residence on Boren, room 417. This is not a threat. Evan put down the crackers. Three days ago, Su had shown him new skin where the old layer had come away. She had admitted…