The Wrong Ink

You fall asleep at some point after three with the phone on your chest, and when you wake up at ten, the last thing on the screen is from her.

You are asleep. I can tell because you stopped answering mid-sentence. Goodnight, Ethan.

You read it four times. You don't know what to do with how it makes you feel, so you make coffee and burn the toast.

She's waiting at Station 6 when you pull in for shift. Sitting on the bumper of Medic 14 in the rain, gray coat, hands folded, as if she's been there for hours. She probably has.

Trudie gets out of her car, sees her, and stops dead in the middle of the lot.

"Is that her?"

"That's her."

Trudie walks over very slowly. Zephyrine stands. They look at each other. Trudie is five-foot-two and has stared down drunk linebackers; she tilts her head back a long way.

"Hi," Trudie says. "I'm Trudie. Who the hell is the supermodel at my scene?"

"Zephyrine Dray." She offers her hand with grave formality. Trudie shakes it, then holds onto it a second too long, frowning, and you know she's feeling for a pulse.

"Huh," Trudie says.

"Yes," says Zephyrine.

"Okay." Trudie lets go and wipes her hand on her jacket, then looks almost guilty about it. "Okay. You want to ride along? Because he says things keep trying to kill him, and if something's trying to kill my partner I want the girl with the bionic arms in the back of my truck."

Zephyrine looks at you. Asking.

"Get in," you say.

It's a strange shift.

She sits on the bench in the back of the rig with her hands on her knees and watches everything: the monitor, the drug box, the way you brace when Trudie takes a corner. She asks questions like a kid on a field trip, solemn and specific.

"What does that do?"

"It's a bag valve mask. Breathes for people."

"You breathe for people." She considers this. "That's very rude of you. To the Registry, I mean. We have schedules."

You laugh before you can help it. She looks startled, then pleased, and turns her face toward the window so you won't see.

On calls, people react to her the way the cop on the bridge did. A man with a dislocated shoulder forgets to scream. A woman at a fender-bender asks if she's a model, then can't describe her to the police five minutes later. A drunk at a bus shelter says, "You're the lady," and Zephyrine says, quietly, "Not tonight, Fenimore," and the drunk nods like that makes sense and goes back to sleep.

Twice, between calls, things reach.

A cyclist's front wheel locks and he skids straight at you in a crosswalk, and her hand is on your elbow, moving you half a step, and he misses you by an inch. A sign falls off a scaffold on Ferris Avenue, a big steel one, and lands where you were about to step, except you didn't step there, because she said your name sharply from the rig and you turned around.

"That's five," Trudie says, very pale. "I'm counting now. That's five."

"Six," says Zephyrine. "The cable on the bridge."

Trudie looks at her in the rearview mirror.

"Why does everything in this city suddenly want my partner dead?"

"I don't know," Zephyrine says. "It's as if he's slipping. As if something's pulling on him from the far end."

At 9:30 you bring a chest-pain call into Rivermouth General: a sixty-year-old fisherman who's going to be fine. The ER is a zoo, every bay full, someone yelling in Spanish, a toddler's wail rising above everything. You hand off to the charge nurse, and while you're cleaning the stretcher, a voice says, "Look who's on nights again."

Dr. Ivetta Haverstock is leaning against the counter with a tablet. She's the kind of ER attending every medic in Rivermouth prays for: fast, sharp, never makes you feel stupid. She's also, objectively, stunning. Dark auburn hair twisted up in a clip, green eyes, a face that belongs on a magazine cover and wastes itself on a hospital that smells like bleach. Half the residents are in love with her. She knows. She doesn't care.

"Dr. Haverstock."

"I've told you to call me Ivetta, Ethan." She smiles, slow. "I heard you got launched by a van."

"News travels."

"Alphonse showed everyone the footage. You fly like a sack of flour." Her eyes drift past you, to the woman standing by the rig in the bay doors, and her smile sharpens a fraction. "And who's your friend?"

"She's... riding along."

"Is she." Ivetta looks Zephyrine up and down with frank, professional appreciation and a flicker of something less professional. "Hm. Nice coat." She turns back to you. "You look terrible, by the way. When did you last eat something that wasn't from a gas station?"

"Define 'eat.'"

"That's what I thought." She taps the tablet against your chest, lightly. "I'm off at six. There's a place on the waterfront that does real eggs."

You're aware, very aware, of Zephyrine watching from the doorway. You can't read her face.

"I'm on till seven," you say.

"Pity." Ivetta doesn't look like she thinks it's a pity. She looks like she's planning a second attempt. "Anyway. Can't. I've got to go upstairs and check on my father before I go home. You heard about my father?"

"Mr. Haverstock? Haverstock Maritime?"

"The very same." She rolls her eyes, but there's something raw under it. "He's been up on six since September. End-stage heart failure. They gave him a week, two weeks ago. We had the hospice people in. I said goodbye to him on Saturday night." She laughs, short and disbelieving. "And on Sunday morning he sat up and asked for a steak. His ejection fraction has doubled. Cardiology's writing a paper. My father, the miracle."

"That's great," you say. "Ivetta, that's really great."

"It's insane, is what it is." She pushes off the counter. "Go eat something. Bring your tall friend if you have to."

She walks off toward the elevators, white coat swinging.

You turn around. Zephyrine is still in the bay doorway, and she hasn't moved. Not a muscle. She's so still that rain has collected in a little line along the shoulders of her coat and she hasn't shaken it off.

"Hey," you say, walking over. "You okay?"

She doesn't answer. She's looking at the elevator doors where Ivetta disappeared.

"Haverstock," she says.

"Yeah. Emrys Haverstock. Shipping guy. Owns half the waterfront." You frown. "Actually, I've met him. I worked him two years ago. He coded at some gala, we got him back. Why?"

Zephyrine turns her head and looks at you, and her face has gone the color of paper.

"Sunday," she says. "He got better on Sunday. And on Monday, I could see you. Days early."

"Zephyrine, what..."

She pulls something from inside her coat. A narrow book bound in gray cloth, no bigger than a paperback, with a silver thread for a bookmark. She opens it to a page near the end, and you see your own name in a hand that's elegant and old-fashioned, and a time beside it: Friday, 11:52 p.m.

She runs her thumb along the letters of your name, as gently as she touched Barnabas's shoulder at the ferry terminal. In the bay lights, the ink shimmers. Not black. A strange, oily brown, like old blood under glass.

"I didn't see it before," she whispers. "I didn't look. Why would I look?"

"See what?"

She closes the book and holds it against her chest, and when she speaks, her voice is very quiet and very sure.

"There's something wrong with your name, Ethan. It's written in the wrong ink."