Strangers

Everything was fading but the sink, which appeared to grow larger and more solid, super-real. A sense of mortal danger settled over her. But it was just an ordinary scrub sink, for God's sake, and she had to hold on to that truth, clutch at the cliff of reality and resist the forces pulling her over the edge. Just a sink. Just an ordinary drain. Just-
        She ran. From every side, the mist closed around her, and she lost all conscious awareness of her actions.
        

    ***
        
        The first thing she became aware of was the snow. Large white flakes sifted past her face, gently turning, lazily eddying toward the ground in the manner of fluffy airborne dandelion seeds, for there was no wind to drive them. She raised her head, looked up beyond the towering walls of the old highrise buildings that shouldered in around her, and saw a rectangular patch of low gray sky, from which the snow descended. As she stared into the winter heavens, momentarily confused as to her whereabouts and condition, her hair and eyebrows grew white. Flakes melted on her face, but she slowly realized that her cheeks were already wet with tears and that she was still weeping quietly.
        Gradually, the cold impinged upon her. In spite of the absence of wind, the air was sharp-toothed; it bit her cheeks, nipped her chin, and her hands were numb from the cold venom of countless bites. The chill penetrated her hospital greens, and she was shivering uncontrollably.
        Next she became aware of the freezing concrete beneath her and the ice-cold brick wall against her back. She was squeezed into a corner, facing out, knees drawn up to her chin, arms locked around her legs - a posture of defense and terror. Her body heat was being leeched away through every contact point with pavement and masonry, but she did not have the strength or will to get to her feet and go inside.
        She remembered fixating upon the drain of the scrub sink. With unmitigated despair, she recalled the mindless panic, her collision with Agatha Tandy, the startled look on George Hannaby's face as he had reacted to her screams. Although the rest was a blank, she supposed she had then taken flight from imaginary dangers, like some madwoman, to the shock of her colleagues - and to the certain destruction of her career.
        She pressed harder against the brick wall, wishing that it would suck away her body heat even faster.
        She was sitting at the end of a wide alley, a blind serviceway that led into the core of the hospital complex. To her left, double metal doors led into the furnace room, and beyond those was the exit from the emergency stairs.
        Inevitably, she was reminded of her encounter with a mugger during her internship at Columbia Presbyterian in New York. That night, he had dragged her into an alleyway much like this. However, in the New York alleyway, she had been in command, victorious - while here she was a loser, descendant rather than ascendant, weak and lost. She perceived a bleak irony and a frightening symmetry in having been brought to the lowest point of her life in such a place as this.
        Premed, medical school, the long hours and hardships of her intern year, all the work and sacrifices, all the hopes and dreams had been for nothing. At the last minute, with a surgical career almost within her grasp, she had failed George, Anna, Jacob, and herself. She could no longer deny the truth or ignore the obvious: Something was wrong with her, something so desperately wrong that it would surely preclude the resumption of a life in medicine. Psychosis? A brain tumor?
        Perhaps an aneurysm in the brain?
        The door to the emergency stairs was flung open with a rattle and a screech of unoiled hinges, and George Hannaby came out into the snow, breathing hard. He took several quick steps into the alley, heedless of the risk posed by the quarter-inch skin of slippery new snow. The sight of her was sufficiently shocking to bring him to a lurching halt. A ghastly expression lined his face, and Ginger supposed he was regretting the extra time and attention and special guidance that he had given her. He had thought she was especially bright and good and worthy, but now she had proved him wrong. He had been so kind to her and so supportive that her betrayal of his trust, although beyond her control, filled her with self-loathing and brought more hot tears to her eyes.
        "Ginger?" he said shakily.