“You go, girl,” Marna laughed. “Don’t miss any of the folds. That goop can hide pretty well, and then it would start to decompose and ferment and with it come all kinds of infections.”
“Stop,” Abbie said. “I don’t know why I listen to your hospital stories.”
“Not a story,” Marna corrected as she pressed down on the gas pedal as the lane picked up speed, “a hypothetical with a possibly useful technique, you know, for when push comes to shove.”
“I’d imagine that push did come to shove, but that’s when things fell apart,” Sommer said with a grin.
“I wish I could remove the images like Abbie’s doing,” Marna said. “Because now if I’m on a date and my guysuggests spooning, this hypothetical will forever have changed the meaning of that phrase in my mind.”
“Okay,” Sommer laughed. “That’s going too far, even for me.” She turned her gaze toward Abbie. “You doing okay with scrubbing those images?”
“I’m using steel wool,” Abbie mumbled.
“It was better than last month’s full moon,” Marna said, “when my patient came in after falling off a ladder. He had been naked and, very unfortunately, landed on a lightbulb which then became unretractable from his nether regions.”
“Glass, that’s definitely surgical,” Sommer said. “Yeah, I guess it’s your hospital. Nothing like that has ever landed in one of my beds. Your night was definitely worse than mine.” Sommer reached for the water bottle she’d brought for the ride up and took a sip.
“How was your shift?” Marna asked.
“Closest I come to your story, a hypothetical six-year-old came in with a bead up her nose, freaking out. The doctor said to give it the ‘mother’s kiss technique,’ and if that didn’t help, he’d run in, but knife wounds and car accidents would take precedence so that it might be a few hours.”
“Triage is triage,” Marna said.
“Mother’s kiss?” Abbie asked.
“You block the functioning side of the nose, then you seal your mouth around the kid’s mouth and give a quick exhale. Basically, you blast some air from the backside of the bead, and the pressure pops it out. It usually works for hard objects. I tried it once on modeling dough, and it didn’t go very well. That kid ended up needing sedation. Personally, I think sedating the mother would have solved most of the issues.”
“So that was the worst of your full moon stories?” Abbie asked.
“Don’t sound so disappointed. Remember, I left at ten when Shoshana showed up. But I have to say, this full moon affected me, too. After I got home, I was wiped out. I took a shower, climbed into bed, and I lay there wired. I think that my system is so used to working twelve-hour shifts that if I start at seven at night, my body thinks I won’t finish until seven in the morning, and it stays primed for the fight.”
“Did you get up and clean your house?” Marna asked.
“Perish the thought. No, I was telling Abbie about stimulating the Vagus nerve with sound, and thought I’d try it out. So I did some vocal warm-ups then sang some opera.”
Abbie turned around so Sommer could see her wrinkle her nose. “What did you choose?”
“Addio del Passatofrom La Traviata.” Sommer hummed a bit so Abbie could recall the tune.
“Yeah, I remember that one. And now I remember why I hated your singing opera. You always liked the death songs. It was like going home to a funeral every day.”
“They’re easier for me.”
“It must have worked,” Abbie said. “When I called you to come help find the babies, you were deep into Lala land.”
“You should know, Marna, that before my Shoshana shift, Abbie was giving me a hard time about my living by the graveyard and full moons. Understand that she put spookies into my brain and had even promised to come up with some good woo-woo intervention to keep me safe. That was my mindset. Imagine I’m up, and I’m singing, no neighbors to bother, and there I am enjoying this beautiful soaring passage, when up out at the graveyard I hear a howl. It wasn’t just a howl. It was as if a phantom was singing along just a bit behind me.”
“Howl like wind?” Abbie asked.
“More like a wolf.”
Abbie turned and grabbed the headrest, eyes wide and unblinking. “What did you do?”
“I kept singing while I went to a window to look out.”
“Did you see a ghost?” Marna asked, switching lanes as a lead-footed driver roared up behind them.
“I saw nothing from the downstairs window because of the rose bushes. So I went upstairs and tried looking out those windows, and still nothing.”
