He found the elevators and pressed the button for the fourth floor.
A nurse stepped in beside him, holding a cup of coffee. She glanced at him, then at the stethoscope around his neck. Her brows furrowed slightly.
Dustin's heart stuttered.
“You new?” She asked. “I don't think I've seen you before.”
“Not new,” Dustin said, reaching for a casual tone. “They're just bouncing me around.”
“Ugh, I hate when they do that. Good luck.”
The elevator dinged. Fourth floor.
“Thanks,” Dustin said, and stepped out before she could ask any more questions.
The doors opened onto a central junction where three corridors branched off. A sign hung from the ceiling, the kind with little colored arrows pointing in different directions. East Wing — 4E. North Wing — 4N. West Wing — 4W.
Dustin turned left.
The hallway stretched ahead of him, room numbers on small plaques beside each door. 4W-01. 4W-03. 4W-05.
He kept walking, past a supply cart and a half-open door he didn't look into.
The corridor turned at a nurses' station and he followed it around without slowing.
4W-11. 4W-09.
The door was closed. A small whiteboard beside it readReyes-Ybarra, M.in blue marker.
Dustin looked up and down the hallway. A nurse wastyping at a station about thirty feet away, her back to him. Another was pushing a cart in the opposite direction.
He opened the door and slipped inside.
With the blinds half-closed, the room was dim.
Machines beeped in a slow, steady rhythm, and the air had that typical hospital smell.
Marco Reyes-Ybarra lay in the bed, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. He looked smaller than he had in his Facebook photo, somehow.
There were no flowers on the windowsill and no cards on the table beside the bed. No jacket draped over a chair to suggest someone had been here recently and would be back soon.
Nothing here but a man in a bed, hooked up to machines that kept watch over his remaining time.
Dustin moved closer, scanning the room, not even really sure what he was looking for.
A medication bag hung from an IV pole, dripping steadily into a line that snaked into Marco's arm. Dustin checked the label.
Since he didn't actually have medical training, it didn't tell him much, but nothing seemed obviously wrong.
So he looked at the monitors instead. What were they measuring? Heart rate? Oxygen levels?
None of it meant anything to him, but the machines weren't screaming, at least.
He found the call button so he'd know where to reach if something did happen.
Then he spent another minute examining the floor around the bed, half-expecting to find a loose cable someone might trip over—or a spill that might cause a fall. Something he could fix. Something hecould point to and saythere, that's the thing that was going to kill him, and I stopped it.
There was nothing.
