The near miss enshrouded her in a veil of self-reproach as she left the hospital. It embedded itself into her pores, seeping out in a cloud that announced her as a failure to everyone in the vicinity. Could you literally off-gas shame? Apparently, you could.

She rode home on the 6, the other commuters giving her a wide berth even though the train was crowded. They could detect the shame shroud, obviously, and wanted no part of it. Compton glanced around at all the usual suspects: depleted shift workers, like her; sprawl-legged, earbudded young males; leering middle-aged weirdos; old ladies in outdated shoes; soulfully sighing couples who apparently couldn’t wait ten more minutes to touch each other; and the inevitable dude picking his teeth. Ah, humanity! Normally she took some enjoyment from riding the subway. It wasn’t that she availed herself of public transport in some virtue-signaling effort at keepin’ it real—nothing was more real than an emergency department, after all—but that it was such a stupid waste of both time and money to take a car home. She could get home faster on the 6, assuming the trains weren’t down.

In an attempt to war-game the rest of the time remaining to her before she missed her flight, Compton consulted her phone. Priority number one: get off this train and obtain a shower. The thought of an overnight flight to Europe while still emanating the stench of remorse—not to mention the usual post-shift ER funk—was too much to bear, even if it meant not finishing her half-assed attempt at packing. She could buy toiletries in Spain if she had to.

More problematic was the issue of what she’d be leaving behind. She’d failed to complete the forty-page scheduling manifesto required to keep the family functional during her absence. Even though the Winfield-Comptons employed a part-time sitter, some of the kid-related tasks and household maintenance would fall on Ellis when she left, and he sucked at everything even remotely domestic. You had to break it down for him, step by step; hence the manifesto. But now there would be no t—

Compton aborted this line of thought. It wasn’t productive. The subway car doors slid open and everyone attempted to bolt out simultaneously, while at the same time some jackass carrying a cello tried to board. There was a brief skirmish, which the cello wielder won by virtue of his greater mass. Everyone else had to wait, and by the time she made it, the doors were closing. No! She could not ride to the next stop. She wrenched the doors apart and flung herself off.