She flipped the phone closed, put it back in her purse, and continued walking. At the corner she threw the banana peel in the dented wire trash can. The sunlight felt warm on her face, the morning air tasted fresh. After a couple blocks she pulled a pad and pen from her purse and wrote something. Tearing the paper from the pad she waved it in the air until a cab slowed to a stop. Getting in, she handed the paper to the cabbie and settled back in the seat, looking straight ahead.

The ride took a little over an hour, through the tunnel and out into the bright New Jersey sunlight, sheening from the smooth surface of the highway.

The cab pulled up at the entrance to St. James Hospital and stopped under the canopy, out of the glare of the afternoon sun. An old man, smoking, was standing on the sidewalk, leaning on the handle of an oxygen tank, the thin hose draped from the bulging pocket of his white pajamas. The windows of the cab reflected the rough and bulky hospital walls, cream white and laced with gridded green windows the color of sea glass. A large revolving door turned flaccidly, opening into a cool and shadowed space that extended the full height of the building.

Memo paid her fare and got out of the taxi, the pajama'd man's eyes intent on her legs as she stretched them, her feet feeling for the pavement. As Memo's cab pulled away, blowing smoke and rolling past the stop sign at the curb another car stopped under the canopy, the doors opened and a squabbling family got out, everyone except the driver, who sat waiting for the doors to close behind them, his hands on the wheel, his eyes fixed on something out ahead of him. Or back behind him, lost in time, lost even to his memory.

Memo walked through the revolving door with purpose, looking only to the left and right after her eyes adjusted to the dimness in the atrium. She saw a small information desk set in an alcove to the left, granite and rosewood, inlaid with a sinuous stainless steel pattern. There was a very fat woman sitting very comfortably behind the desk; arrayed in front of her was an elaborate phone, a log book, a small computer terminal, two boxes for visitor badges -- used and unused -- and a newspaper folded to a crossword puzzle which she was working with a short green pencil. Memo walked up to the desk and stood very straight. Putting her purse on the counter she opened it and got her pen and pad out and wrote Echo's name at the top, then underneath it she wrote, "room number?"

She handed the note to the woman who studied it for a moment, clicked some keys on her computer keyboard, then took her pencil and wrote on the paper, "Room 314," then she handed Memo the paper and turned the log book for her to sign in. Memo wrote carefully in the book, a different name and room number, in a handwriting different from her usual one. Covering what she had written with her left hand she took the badge the woman was offering her, and collected her purse. Mounted on the wall nearby the desk there were orientation plans of the hospital made in the same stainless steel inlaid rosewood, framed on a granite square that matched the counter of the greeting desk. While she pinned the badge on her sweater, Memo studied these for a long minute before making her way to the elevator.

As she arrived at the elevator bay the indicator dinged and she stood back to let a group of nurses past. She took the elevator up. She was alone in the cab. She reached in her purse and took out her phone, turned it off and put it away. She got out at the fourth floor and walked purposefully down a long windowed corridor to a door with a slit window that let into a fire stair. She went quietly down the steps, turning at the landing, her long fingers lightly on the painted metal railing. She reached the third floor and stopped at the door, breathing slowly. She closed her eyes for three heartbeats and then opened them. Before opening the door she looked right and left in the hallway, and waited while a man in a business suit, preoccupied with pressing buttons on his blue phone, passed the door on his way to the elevators. When he had gone she opened the door carefully, stepped through it and quietly shut it behind her. Room 314 was around a corner to her right and two doors down the hall. The door was open and there were curtains, an incongruous periwinkle with little white flowers in a diamond pattern, hanging limply under mesh tops suspended from tracks between the fluorescent lights. She went in. The first bed was empty. The air in her nose was unhealthy, it burned with disinfectant sweetened with ozone. The room had a window that overlooked an interior rooftop courtyard dotted with air conditioning equipment. There was a worn reclining chair in the far corner of the room, olive vinyl.

Echo was sleeping. There was a monitor and a drip that fed into his left arm, beeping quietly, a red light dimly blinking with each beep, vertically then horizontally.

Memo stood next to the bed and studied him, leaning over, her face inches from his. A puffy white bandage was wrapped around his head, a few black curls of his hair escaping from it over his ears. His right eye was black and his face was swollen and pale. His mouth was open and he breathed with an uneven rasp. Spit ran from the corner of his mouth, and some had dried, leaving whitish flakes in the stubble on his cheek. His breath was foul. She reached to touch his face, but as her hand was about to make contact, she stopped and straightened herself.

She walked the door to the room and closed it. She turned off the lights. She walked to the empty bed next to Echo and stepped out of her shoes, pushing them underneath. Drawing the curtain around the bed, she laid down in it and tucked her legs under the blanket. She listened to his ragged breathing for a moment and then Memo closed her eyes and she was asleep.



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