A gloved, fat man’s hand buries the needle upward, stretching the skin into a puckered bruise.

The plunger depresses, and a wheeze precedes an inch of amber fluid draining into the arm.

A digital screen beams spiking vital numbers and shrieks.

A hairy, bulging arm swings at the ICU tower and attacks plastic buttons until the warnings stop.

Dr. Paul Birgen, white smocked, pouts. Mask-less, his grey beard presses against his barrel chest and he holds a burp back. He aims the used hypodermic at a medical waste container, tosses and misses. The hypodermic skitters across the floor.

A masked black woman in purple scrubs bends to the floor. She gathers the hypo and the used wrappings and drops them in the waste container. She shakes her head and mutters under her mask.

Birgen coughs at the woman’s disagreement. “You can go make yourself useful somewhere else, NOW.”

He nods to his medical partner, Jeff Keller. He is a masked, willowy man with a brown rattail and steamed round glasses.

Keller’s long fingers brush back the patient’s oily red bangs. “She’s on fire.”

“Yeah, I know.” Birgen wipes his hands on his whites and parts the curtains, shielding them from the rest of the interns. “Make sure Pat keeps an eye on her tonight. She’s going to have a rough one.”

A clutch of eager interns surrounds Birgen. He parts his way down the aisle of curtains. The entourage snakes around the nursing station.

Birgen escaping, turns to his interns at the double metal doors. “I need to take a shit, do you mind?”

Keller remains by the patient’s side. He studies her slight body dissolving into the hospital bed. An ocean of velveteen covers and crocheted throws does little to add to her bony profile.

When she first came under care, Sister Brittany was a curvy, full-bosomed, young woman. Back then, her feminine bloom belied her shocking suicide attempt.

The Catholic cross hanging over Brittany’s head hasn’t helped her.

Keller’s and Birgen’s medicine hasn’t helped her.

The daily visits from Sister Jean Patrick, the Josephite nun...well, she might be helping.

Keller, unlike Birgen, believes in the Spirit, Holy and Human.

The daily kindness old Sister Jean gives Brittany—holding her limp hand, reading the bible and crime fiction e books— Keller thinks it must help, otherwise Birgen would have stepped Brittany out of ICU.

Despite Birgen’s rough manners, Keller believes he too is hopeful for Brittany.

But Brittany has been in a coma for weeks

Keller stares out a lozenge-shaped window, at the opposing curved cement hospital tower. He watches people, like ants tunneling in the glass bridge. They walk from one bed tower to the other over a pond filled with geese. Nothing stops, life moves on.

Keller thinks he should return to his rounds, but he doesn’t move.

He recalls Brittany’s emergency arrival. The blood soaking her wrapped wrists. Her shallow breathing. Her dull green eyes.

Unconscious, Brittany couldn’t explain what had happened to her.

Sister Jean evaded details. Brittany was a troubled girl found on her bed in the nunnery, bleeding and out of it. She was a recent novice with an unknown history. She was kind, soft-spoken and well educated. Who knew why she took to the New Orleans streets?

Sister Jean reminded Keller of the 80s movie Beetlejuice. Her ever stretched smile reveals moss-covered teeth, her twinkling eyes hide secrets.

Keller likes Sister Jean and delays his rounds, hoping she will visit soon. He also likes to watch how Brittany responds to her. He believes Brittany’s body senses Jean’s presence. That means Brittany is not a lost case. Not yet anyway.

Why was she nervous? She couldn’t see anyone’s face. She flipped her head and cleared her throat again and heard glassware clatter in the kitchen. There was an annoying hum of people talk.

Where was Curtis? The oaf sat her on stage like a sack of potatoes and disappeared.

Faith didn’t expect a Las Vegas introduction, but she deserved something. She cocked her hip and spat into the mic. “So you wanna hear some singing or do you just wanna shoot the shit?”

“We want to see your tits, baby!”

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And now the South gots something to say.

She hummed the first lines of her song and adjusted the black lace girdle, pushing her breasts up. The wire cups cut into her skin. She ran her sparkled, fuschia nail extensions through her purple bobbed hair. Then she greased it with coconut oil. The bleached streaks darke…

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All of the paperwork Kali generated in Ms. England’s caseload caused Ms. England’s hands to bleed with paper cuts. Ms. England didn’t have fingers and she grabbed at Kali’s files with her knuckles.

Kali supposed she felt sorry for her social worker’s disability. Yet she hated looking at the raw chapped skin stretched over the nubs where her fingers used to be.

It was like Ms. England wore swollen bloody mittens.

Kali held her legs up in the chair and rested her chin on her knees. She wrapped her arms around her legs and stared across the round kid’s desk and waited for Ms. England to stop crying.

“I don’t know what we are going to do with you baby. The police want to put you in prison. Honey I don’t know— how could you have stabbed that poor boy?”

“He ain’t no poor boy.” Kali said. She lowered her mouth into her knees and blew on them, hiding her eyes from Ms. England’s stare. “He came after me with a shiv. He said he was gonna cut me.”

“But you stabbed him with a fork. The boy didn’t have a weapon on him. What were you doing with a fork? And why were both of you in the basement? Were you trying to escape?”

Kali rolled her eyes. Adults. What could she say to make them all stop? She buried her face further into her knees and let the tears and sobs begin.

“Kali dear, honey? Talk to me.” Ms. England said.

Kali rolled further into herself. Her hot breath choked her words. “I can’t explain it.”

“Explain what, baby?”

Kali shook her head “no” and let her body quiver. She wasn’t going to let anyone in. “I want to talk to Faith.”

Ms. England leaned back in her kid’s chair and sighed. Not Faith again. She lined up her paperwork into a one clean pile. She ran her calloused knuckles along the papers’ edge. Oh my, what now? She sighed and shook her head at the crunched-up form of the 13 year old kid named Kali.

Heaven’s no, not a kid, not this one. Ms. England recalled how Kali hissed and bit like a wild cat when she and two burly CPS women rescued Kali and her two younger sisters from an abandoned house, mid-winter nearly two years ago.

The three sisters — the youngest five years old, the middle, seven, and Kali, she was going on eleven—they were feeding out of dumpsters and hustling. Kali was the mom and protector.

Ms. England leaned across the table and nudged Kali’s foot. Kali withdrew with a jolt. “All right girl. Let’s talk to Faith. How about it? You wanna talk sugar?”

Kali adjusted her weight in the chair. Her legs cramped and she wanted to unfold herself, but if she did she would have to look at Ms. England. She huddled tighter. “Kali didn’t do it, I did. I was protecting her from that black kid Jamal. He was going to have some of her. So I cut him.”

Ms. England wedged a ball point pen in her knuckles and wrote what Kali/Faith said. “Okay Faith, That’s good. You were protecting Kali, then?”

Kali released her knees and sat up in the chair. Eyes narrowed, Kali/Faith, lifted her chin and sneered. “Yah bitch. That f*cker was goin’ to get down on my girl. So I stopped him.” Kali/Faith swiped her left hand across her face and jabbed into the air, right where Ms. England imagined Jamal’s throat to be.

“Okay Faith, no need to swear, okay? Thank you for protecting Kali.” Ms. England got up, her knees quivering. She pressed the door buzzer and held the door handle, anticipating, no praying it would open soon.

Kali/Faith leaned back in the chair, smug defiance bloomed in her face. She looked old, Ms. England thought. So old. And she used her left hand to swipe at the air. Kali was right handed. Perhaps this time the psychiatrists would believe her when she reported Kali did not just suffer dissociative identity disorder.

The door opened and Ms. England exhaled. Safe for now. She left the room leaving Kali alone with Faith. “I’ll be right back okay babies?”

Jamal’s whips his left arm around his front and grabs Kali's wrist.

"Ow stop!"

"Bitch, don’t dump that shit on!" He yanks her hand off his head and grips it so tight he could crush her puny white wrist in his dark thick fingers. He wrenches his head side to side, the air in his joints popping.

He throws her hand away from him in disgust. The boar brush flies across the linoleum floor, skittering under the cot.

Kali backs away from the chair and Jamal’s hooded body.

"Sorry."

"Go on get the f*ck outta here.” He grinds his teeth and holds his scarred chin up on one palm. He darts his little red eyes around the room. “Man, I gotta get the hell outta here.”

Kali stoops by the bed and kneels on the floor grabbing the brush. The dust tickles her nose and she sneezes. The careful purposeful cut knees on her jeans, rip wider. She lowers her eyes and whips past Jamal, afraid he might hurt her again.

She stands upright, smoothing her jeans, her tie died tee shirt, her dirty blonde bob. She steps to the door then stops. She listens. “Maybe I can help.” She stands quivering like prey.

What do you mean bitch? You just a kid.”

“I’m fourteen.”

"Yah, you JB all right." Jamal’s drops his head between both hands and rocks.

"So you ain’t much older than me!" Kali returns to Jamal’s side and rubs her hand on his arm.

"Don’t be touchin’ me. I don’t need no trouble.”

Kali squats next to him. “I know when the shifts are. I know who’s always late. I know where the cameras don’t see.” She places her hand on Jamal’s beefy thigh. His black nylon pants are hot to her touch.

Jamal lets her hand stay and he turns his sweated face to check her out for the first time. This white girl has followed him around like a puppy since he landed in this shit hole this morning. He’s not interested in stray pussy especially white, cause he has a serious girl outside the pen.

Yeah, He needs to get out. Maybe this bitch knows something. He doubts it, but he’ll play along for while. "So talk."

"There’s a hole in the fence past the pond. About a month ago, a tree branch fell and covered it up and no one notices it. At 9pm they lock us up for the night but lights aren't out until ten. Sometimes the lights don’t go out right away on Thursdays because the overnight guy is always late. So lights are on and no one is watching the cameras for about ten minutes."

Jamal’s sat upright in the chair. He sniffed and looked at Kali's small white hand on his knee. He thought of letting it stay there then thought better and moved his leg so it slipped off. He got up and loped around the room. "So you sayin the doors ain’t locked either?"

"No they’re locked."

"So how the f*ck do I get out?"

"You need a little bit of magic." She puts her hands on her hips and coy, wiggled her body for him.

Jamal gags, his face twists. "What shit are you talkin'?"

Kali prances to the door and looks back at him. "I’ve got the magic card that will let us free."

"Us?"

Kali nods. "Tonight is Thursday. Are you in?"