I know one of you does it, she thinks, twisting the bent bobby pin just a little to the right.

Emily jiggles it. The padlock pops open. She threads the lock out of the handle and pushes up, pulling open the locker door.

Her eyes move over the chamber. She sees clean scrubs, bubblegum pink Crocs, the coiled tubing of a hot pink stethoscope, an empty water bottle, a dog-eared paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code. A white turtleneck hangs from a hook. She reaches in and takes it down. Hanging behind it, on the hook, is a blue lanyard weighted down and decorated with a collection of cloisonné pins. Swinging from the bottom of it is a plastic ID badge.

She grins. Bingo.

Emily lifts the badge up to eye level, watching it move in circles. She leans closer, peering at the owner’s face: Bonnie Silverman, RN.

Bonnie is a white woman who looks about twenty-five. She’s brown-eyed, smiling wide in her picture, wearing too much eye makeup and a small silver crucifix around her neck. Emily glances over at the Crocs as she slips the lanyard around her neck. Bonnie has dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Emily reaches behind and touches her own nape. She can’t feel the wisps of her hair through the fingertips of her nitrile gloves but she imagines the sensation, like fine silk embedded in the skin. She loops the stethoscope around her neck. She takes the Crocs off the shelf. With a shrug she kicks off her flip-flops and drops the pink shoes onto the floor.

Emily steps into them. The foam, pre-molded to the shape of Bonnie’s feet, protests the invasion of her toes.
Emily puts a palm on the inside of the locker door. She pushes it all the way open, looks at herself in Bonnie’s small mirror. Cold light bounces off her white skin and penetrates the bruised-looking skin under her eyes. Her mouth looks swollen and red. Her cheekbones and chin are prominent, like she’s got too much face.

Emily closes the locker. She changes out of her clothes.

She looks around. Carpets cover the floors, absorbing footfalls and the clang of metal. Prints of lighthouses decorate the walls. There’s a big mirror at one end, the kind that belongs in a dance studio. She looks sidelong at her reflection and glimpses the unguarded expression on her face before it changes: the dark eyes trapped behind cunning eyelids, the mouth like an old-fashioned vampire’s. Her FBI-earned confidence is gone, replaced with a nocturnal grace full of instinct. The knife hangs in her pocket. The white turtleneck covers the bandage on her neck. A canvas bag leans against her feet. She turns and faces herself, watches the Emily in the mirror move, Emily-as-Bonnie, all that pink cotton skin hanging.

Her eyes slip out of focus. Her boundaries blend into the background.

Emily picks up the bag and walks through the locker room, pushes open the door, and steps out into the dimmed hallway. As she enters the stairwell and climbs to the third floor, she envisions the layout: elevator at one end and the stairs at the other, the nurses’ station in between with its tiny lounge, and the shades of green, all of them like being underwater, cold currents moving along the walls and bearing up painted pictures of leaves.

She pushes the stairwell door open. George’s room down at this end, one unfamiliar member of Nantucket’s finest posted outside of it for the night, looking tired and slumped in his chair.

The nurses’ station is empty. Emily walks around the desk and sits for a moment, pushing the chair back so it glides to a rear cabinet. She swivels around and turns her back to the hallway. The sound of the television wafts out of the lounge. Emily opens one of the drawers, counting to five in her head, then closes it and gets up and carries the bag into the bathroom across the hall. She leaves it under the sink and braces herself against the white porcelain, taking a deep breath. She lets it out through pursed lips. Her sweat ferments in the faint scent of fabric softener. Her heart pounds. The air in her lungs is thin and cold. She flushes the toilet and runs the water and steps out into the hallway. She glances at the back wall of the nurses’ station.

A large markerboard hangs there. Its white surface is drawn into a grid of room numbers. There are abbreviations crammed alongside jotted-down times and magnetic dots moved into various slots. Beside each room number, someone with a steady hand has used a red marker to print the last names of its occupants: Meredith/Smith, Lowell/Preston, Granger/Gatwick, Foyet. One room is empty. She looks up and down the hall, glancing at the room numbers. A burst of canned laughter breaks out of the lounge, overlaid by the live chuckles of the nurses inside. Emily ducks back into the bathroom to retrieve the bag and carries it into the empty room. She hides it in the patient bathroom, under the sink and beside the wastebasket.

Emily takes a pen out of her pocket. She pushes up the sleeve of Bonnie’s white turtleneck, turns up the inside of her forearm, and puts the point to the inside of her elbow. She starts to write. When she runs out of skin, she pushes up the sleeve on her other arm. She writes with care, going slow, biting her bottom lip as she prints clear letters that slant toward her wrists.

What if he’s still on telemetry?

Emily blows on her skin for a moment. She inches the cuffs back down.

So what if he is. He’ll figure it out. He’s done it before.

Emily reaches into her pocket. She holds the pin in her fingers until the metal gets warm. She reaches over, flicks off the bathroom light.

She opens the door, pulls off her gloves and tosses them into the trash. She steps out and turns the corner into the hallway. The nurses’ station is still deserted. She moves toward George’s room and the cop shifts in his chair. She gives the cop’s weary eyes a modest smile. He glances at her ID badge. She loops the stethoscope up off her neck.

“Vitals,” she says.

He nods and goes back to his book.

Emily steps over the threshold. The back of her throat goes dry, then her mouth, a drought spreading from her silent vocal cords to her lips. The room is dark. George is asleep. There are no machines, no steady beeps. She reaches up to a cardboard box mounted beside the door and pulls out a fresh pair of gloves.

Emily moves to the head of the bed. She pulls on the gloves and puts a hand on her pocket, taking hold of the pin, her heart pounding and her fingers wet inside their thin barriers. Bonnie’s Crocs make no sound on the gleaming floor tiles. Emily leaves the pin in her pocket and works her sleeves up past the elbows before the sweat can creep all over her body. She steps closer, her thighs pressing against the rail, and with the pin between her fingers she reaches over and rests her hand on his locked wrist. His breath rises up out of sleep. She watches at his face as she feels the links, the awareness filtering into sleeping flesh. Her thumb presses the smooth cold metal around the slot. His eyes open and the blood comes up in her face. Her knuckles bend, navigating the pin into the locking mechanism. Twilight wells up in his eyes. The tendons flex along the underside of his wrist.

“Mr. Foyet, you need to wake up.” Emily masks the click with her voice. “It’s time for me to take your vital signs.”

He looks into her eyes. The cuff opens. She nudges it apart with the side of her wrist. Emily leans over and turns on the over-bed light.

He reaches up, molds his hand to the shape of her breast. Her fluttering breath brushes the silence. Cold fluorescence flickers and hums into life. He hooks his hand into the neckline of her scrub top and pulls her down. She reaches over him and her fingertips land on the curved edge of the opposite cuff. He touches his tongue to the corner of her mouth. Her thumb moves over the lock. At the soft press of his lips, she lets out a tight breath. The pin turns within her fingers. His breath floods her mouth. The click echoes through her. Her eyes close, lips parting. He moves a hand up over her nape, slipping his tongue into her mouth. She shivers. He lifts up the turtleneck, trails his fingers along her flank. Goosebumps wrack her skin. He swallows her tiny whimper. She reaches into her pocket and he slides his fingers down her forearm, pulling out the knife. Emily touches his wet mouth, listening to the acceleration of his breath.

She moves away. His head turns on the pillow, hooded eyes following her face. She holds up her forearm.

Room 5 is empty. Second door down on your right side. In the bathroom there is a white canvas bag with blue handles. Inside it are street clothes, shoes, other things. There is another exit on the ground floor near the front door.

She pulls down her sleeve and holds up the other forearm.
It has no cameras. I’ll leave this ID badge with you. You’ll need it to open the door. I’ll wait for you.

He makes a gesture and she passes him the pen. He takes her hand, turns it palm-up, and begins to write:

Go to the boat basin.

He tucks the pen in the crook of her thumb and folds her fingers over his neat handwriting. She nods, lifting the badge up over her head. She reaches under the covers and places it on his lower belly. His hand moves over the shape of her arm, the rough weave of the blanket trapped between his palm and her skin. The fibers scrape her skin. He holds her hand against the rapid rise and fall of his breath. Her eyes close and she breathes through parted lips, her cheeks hot.

“Go,” he whispers.