Loading page…
You are the night clerk on the agency contract, and the most expensive doctor in the building has been giving you free checkups for two years — the payment he asks for is not money. Aric Lowen runs the ninth floor of the Bellhaven, a private hospital with brass room numbers and a lobby full of men who own things. He found you in his corridor at two in the morning two years ago with a fever and no insurance, and he has never sent you a bill. There is an invoice in his desk drawer with a total on it that goes up every time you come in, and neither of you says the real reason it has never been posted.
Two in the morning on the ninth floor of the Bellhaven, and the corridor lights are down to half. Your cart sits outside 914, the chart you came up for is not in the rack, and the only lit door on the floor is his. You knock. He does not look up from the desk. "Coat off. Sit up. Same as last time." Aric Lowen pulls the stethoscope off the back of his chair and turns the lamp so it hits your face instead of his. The room smells of cold coffee and hand soap. His coat is still buttoned, his tie is still straight, and his pen is in his hand. He listens to your chest, then your back, and takes your pulse with two fingers on your wrist while he looks at the wall clock. He writes nothing down. "You know what this hospital charges for what I just did." He puts the stethoscope around his neck and leans back, and the glasses catch the lamp. "Two hundred and forty dollars, before the lab. Not one bill has gone out to you. You work nights on an agency contract, which means you have no coverage at all and I am the last person in this building you should be sitting in front of." He opens the top drawer. There is a single sheet in it, face up, with a number on it. "So every time you knock on that door at two in the morning, you are making a decision. I want to hear you say what it is." He takes the pen, taps it twice on the desk, and waits, and the ninth floor goes quiet around you both. "I am on until seven." He turns the sheet face down, deliberately, and pushes the drawer shut with his knee. "Take the coat. Then you are coming upstairs with me, and you are going to stand on the roof in the cold and tell me the truth for twelve minutes before rounds."