Mira couldn’t figure out how to turn up the volume on the cell phone she’d bought to replace the one Clark had taken with him when he left. It was a cheaper model, but it had even more buttons and games and gadgets than the older, more expensive one.
During Kurt’s spiel about the autopsy room, and while the first group of students were putting on their surgical booties and gowns, Mira had noticed a new voice mail—the little cartoon envelope on her cell phone window—although she’d never heard the phone ring. She called for her messages immediately, worried it might be Jeff, that the twins needed something, or he needed to know something, or something worse. (Andy had taken to crawling on the back of the couch, and Mira had taken on terrors that he’d fall off and hit his head on the window behind it.)
At some point, Mira had stopped expecting Clark to call, and she figured that if he came home while Jeff was there, Jeff could handle it. Jeff was far too affable to pose any threat to Clark.
But the message wasn’t from Jeff. The call was from the college (Mira recognized the first three numbers on the caller ID as the university’s prefix), but she could barely hear the message, and couldn’t figure out how to turn the volume up. It seemed miraculous that she was managing to get any reception at all, there in the morgue, deep in the basement of the hospital—all cinderblocks and heavy fire doors—but reception didn’t do any good if she couldn’t make out the message:
“Mira, this is . . .” (Dean Fleming?) “. . . after all . . . within the next couple of . . . absolutely imperative that . . .”
It surprised and alarmed her that he already had this new phone number. She’d left it with his secretary only two hours earlier. She didn’t recall his ever dialing her cell or home number before, always casually leaving his messages on the voice mail in her office, or scrawled on sticky notes and left on her office door.
Mira hit Return Call, but as soon as she did, the phone went dead in her hand.
Perry Edwards walked past then, made eye contact with her, and Mira flipped her phone closed, held up a hand for him to stop.
“Perry,” she said. “I’ve got a call I’ve got to return. I’m going out to the alley, or maybe up to street level if I have to, can you—?”
He was nodding before she’d had her request articulated. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll come get you if we need you.”
“Yeah,” Mira said. “If, God forbid, someone faints, or—?”
“We’ll be fine,” Perry said. “You go ahead.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, hurrying out. He was such a good kid. Mira had thought they’d stopped making his kind around 1962.
She’d had an urge to kiss his cheek before she hurried out with her phone, the way she might have kissed Andy or Matty’s cheeks, but she didn’t. She just said thank you again for a fourth time, long after he could have heard her.