Mend the Living Read Online Free

the previous shift is a thirty-year-old fellow, sturdy, with thick hair and muscled arms. Exhausted, he glows. Details the situation of the patients present in the unit – for example, the absence of any notable change in the eighty-four-year-old man, still unconscious after sixty days of intensive care, whereas the neurological status of the young woman admitted two months ago after an overdose has deteriorated – before giving a longer description of the new patients: a fifty-seven-year-old woman with no fixed address, advanced cirrhosis, admitted after having convulsions at the shelter, remains hemodynamically unstable; a forty-year-old man, admitted that evening after a heart attack, with cerebral edema – a jogger, he was running on the seafront toward Cape de la Hève, luxury cross-trainers on his feet, head encircled with a neon-orange bandana, when he collapsed near the Café de l’Estacade and even though they wrapped him in a thermal blanket, he was blue when he arrived, soaked in sweat, features hollow. Where are we at with him? Revol asks in a neutral tone, leaning against the window. A nurse answers, specifies that the vitals (pulse rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration rate) are normal, urine output is low, the PIV (peripheral intravenous line) has been placed. Revol doesn’t know this woman, inquires about the patient’s blood test results, she answers that they are in process. Revol looks at his watch, okay, we’re good to go. The team disperses.
    This same nurse lingers in the room, intercepts Revol and holds out her hand: Cordelia Owl, I’m new, I was in the O.R. before. Revol nods, okay, welcome – if he looked more closely, he would have seen that there was something a little odd about her, eyes clear but marks on her neck, swollen lips, knots in her hair, bruises on her knees; he might wonder where this floating smile came from, this Mona Lisa smile that doesn’t leave even when she leans over patients to clean their eyes and mouths, inserts breathing tubes, checks vital signs, administers treatments, and maybe if he did he would be able to guess that she had seen her lover again last night, that he had phoned her after weeks of silence, the dog, and that she showed up on an empty stomach, beauteous, decorated like a reliquary, lids smoky, hair shining, breasts warm, resolved to an amicable distance, but she was a rather mezzo actor, whispering distantly how are you? it’s good to see you, while inside her whole body was diffusing its turmoil, incubating its tumult, a hot ember, so they drank one beer and then two, attempted conversations that didn’t take, and then she went outside to smoke, telling herself over and over I should go now, I should go this is stupid, but he came outside to find her, I’m not gonna stay long, I don’t want to be up too late, a feint, and then he got out his lighter to light her cigarette, she sheltered the flame with her hands, tilting her head, curls falling across her face and threatening to become a wick, he tucked them automatically behind her ear again, the pads of his fingers brushing her temple, so automatically that she went weak, the backs of her knees turning to jelly – all of this, by the way, threadbare and old as the hills – and bang, a few seconds later the two of them were knocking about beneath a neighbouring porch, held inside the darkness and the smell of cheap wine, smashing into garbage cans, offering up a range of pale skin, upper thighs emerging from jeans or tights, bellies appearing beneath lifted shirts or unbuckled belts, buttocks, everything boiling and freezing all at once as their mutual and violent desire collided – yes, if Revol looked at her more closely, he would see in Cordelia Owl a girl who was curiously bright-eyed, even though she was beginning her shift on a sleepless night, a girl in much better shape than he was, someone he would be able to count on.

W e have someone for you. A call at 10:12.