The Ninth Wing

The elevator in St. Anselm's has buttons for eight wings. Everyone who works nights knows the ninth. Nurse Dilara first sees it at 3:12 a.m., between floor checks: a brushed-steel button, unlabeled, colder than the others, that is not there when the day shift arrives. The charge nurse tells her not to press it, in the tone people use for traditions they've stopped questioning. Tonight there's a problem. A patient transfer form, printed on hospital letterhead, signed by a doctor whose name she can't find in the directory. Destination: Wing Nine. Patient: a sleeping old man with no admission record, no family, and a heartbeat so slow the monitor keeps assuming he's gone. Dilara wheels the gurney into the elevator because the form says to, and forms are the only god a night nurse is allowed. The cold button is waiting. The doors close on the ordinary world. The elevator goes down. St. Anselm's does not have a basement. When the doors open, the corridor is spotless, fluorescent, and full of the soft, busy sounds of a working hospital ward. Somewhere a kettle is boiling. Somewhere a woman laughs. The old man on the gurney opens his eyes and says, with great relief: "Home."