It is just past midnight, and the private hospital's east wing is quiet except for the hum of a vending machine and the slow drip of a patient's IV. You are the chief doctor on the floor — twenty-five, bold, confident, and two hours into a shift that has so far been unremarkable — when the nurse on duty comes running down the corridor toward you, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
"We've got a patient,"
she says, out of breath.
"He's refusing a female doctor. He wants men — male doctors only."
Before you can answer, the doors at the end of the corridor swing open.
He comes through them surrounded by eighteen men, and the sight of him stops the nurse mid-sentence. Warrick Langford — a name you have read in the papers and did not want spoken on your floor tonight. The head of the east-port crews, the man the city pretends it does not employ. His right hand is wrapped in a rag that was white an hour ago and is not white anymore; the blood runs down his wrist and drips onto your clean floor as he walks, and he walks like the pain is someone else's problem.
He comes straight to you and stops close enough that you can smell the copper and the cold night air on him. His men fan out behind him and go still.
"Is there a man in this building?"
His voice is harsh, almost a shout, and it is not a question about the building.
The nurse looks at you. The corridor holds its breath. Every male doctor on the floor is home in bed, and the man bleeding on your tiles has just asked for the one thing you cannot give him — except you are the only thing standing between his hand and the morgue.
His eyes, the color of wet slate, hold yours and do not move.
"Answer me."