Another stroke of luck: no missing buttons, which meant she wouldn’t have to rewear her disgusting, sodden underwear. Still, even though it was too big, the coat didn’t close past Compton’s upper thighs. She’d have to sit with her legs pressed together on the subway and avoid those gusty drafts on the platforms when other trains zipped by. But she wouldn’t have to ride home soiled or nude, and that was the main thing.

Compton sleepwalked to the hospital exit and waited for the mechanical doors to whoosh open. She stepped forward and blinked a few times, her eyes recoiling from the flashbulb brightness of the day but also unable to process what she saw.

Overhead, rays from a brilliant August sun streamed down at a westerly angle, cutting through the skyscrapers on the east-west-aligned streets. She’d walked out expecting it to be still dark, or perhaps a muted pink predawn. Dazed, she reached for her phone, which she usually kept clipped to the waistband of her scrubs. Her hand brushed against her naked thigh, startling her, before she remembered she was wearing M. Trey’s coat and had placed her phone in the pocket.

She pulled it out and tapped it. The time came up . . . 3:58 p.m.—3:58 p.m.? That couldn’t be right. She’d arrived at 7:00 p.m. last night, and usually she left the hospital by 5:00 a.m., or 7:00 a.m. on a bad shift. Had she really worked twenty-one straight hours? Or had she gone home and come back and forgotten about it? This thought, somehow, was more frightening than every other terror hammering at her consciousness. She must be losing her mind.

But the other thing that struck her, besides the unfathomable passage of hours, was the near emptiness of the street. Compton’s hospital was located in lower Manhattan, and at four o’clock on a typical afternoon, the streets would be thronged with guys in suits and women in navy skirts and tourist families pushing strollers and people shuffling along talking to themselves and other people striding along yelling in Noo Yawk accents into their Bluetooths. Where were all the people? Even in these early pandemic days, the streets of New York had still hummed and bustled. Had everyone in the city died while she worked through the night? At most, there were a half dozen people in eyesight.

A gust of wind caught the edge of her makeshift dress and she shivered. Underneath her feet she could feel the faint vibration of the subway. Good; the subway was running, so someone down there must be alive. Or maybe it ran on some sort of automated schedule independent of people? She didn’t know. Very much against her will, more tears crept from the corners of her eyes and plinked down onto the stolen coat of M. Trey Garnett III.