It’s a small examination room, thankfully empty. “It’s time,” he says, and as the group starts to unknot, my three seconds are up. The next words he speaks are louder-impossibly loud, in the space and the silence, as though he is shouting them. Their conversation is indecipherable from this distance-they are speaking practically in whispers-and for a second my heart bottoms out and I know that it’s too late, and it has already happened, and Julian is dead. I have only a few seconds until they’ll turn, until they’ll spot me and ask me what I’m doing here. The moment I emerge from the stairwell, I know that I have found it: Fifty feet down the hall, Thomas Fineman is standing outside the door to an examination room, arms crossed, with several bodyguards, speaking in low tones to a doctor and three lab techs. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him. I’m not sure what I’m asking for, exactly. Please, I think, to nobody in particular. I ditch the plastic cup, then pause for a second to catch my breath. My legs are shaking by the time I get to six, and I’m not sure whether it’s nerves, or lack of sleep, or a combination of both. Hillebrand will be presiding over Julian’s death, and if his attendant is on the sixth floor, there’s a good chance that is where he conducts the majority of his work. Their arms and legs are strapped to the furniture.Īt the end of the hall, I push through the doors into the stairwell. Beyond it, I see several patients sitting in armchairs, watching television in white paper gowns. At the end of the hall, I pass a doorway paneled in glass.

The air is dry, overheated, and my throat hurts every time I try to swallow. I can feel their eyes trailing me as I continue down the hall.

Hillebrand’s attendant is on six,” she says. But it is just the influence of the scraped-back hair, the spotless uniforms, the identical look of clinical detachment. Both women look identical, and for a moment I think they are twins. “Can I help you?” one of them asks, as I am passing. They fall silent as I approach, and even though I am deliberately avoiding eye contact, I can feel them staring at me.

Two lab techs, both women, are standing outside one of the examination rooms. I grab one and fill it partially with water, then head back into the hall. There is a tray on the back of the toilet, and a stack of plastic cups meant for urine samples. I take a deep breath, try to focus, try to calm down. I duck quickly into the first door on my right, which turns out to be a bathroom. Here there is more activity: sounds of beeping and murmured conversation, doctors hurrying in and out of examination rooms.

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