THE ROUNDS
In Which Elias Rigg Performs Vitals on a Man Who Is Already Dead
These are the serialized accounts for the novella, Working Terms. All tasks are mandatory. All emotions are optional. Welcome to your role in the system.
Let us begin with the badge.
Or rather, with the mis-scanned badge, dangling off a retractable cord affixed to the beltloop of one Elias Rigg (Nurse Technician I, Provisional), whose laminated smile, captured three jobs ago at a job fair booth lit primarily by a malfunctioning vending machine, now functions less as identification than as a talisman because it should be said at the outset, and perhaps never said again: Elias Rigg does not know what he is doing.
This is not false modesty. This is not impostor syndrome. This is not the circulatory self-doubt of the overcredentialed weighing the precise milligrams of “burnout” they are allowed to feel before HR refers them to the Employee Resilience Webinar (Session 3: “You’ve Got This”).
No. This is different.
This is not knowing how to take vitals.
This is forgetting whether the blood pressure cuff goes over or under the gown and deciding, based on a dream he once had about horses, that it probably doesn’t matter. This is tapping a pulse-oximeter twice like a Magic 8-Ball and interpreting “Error” as “Stable.” This is writing 98.6 for every possible temperature entry for three months straight, not from malice but from hope, and also, perhaps, from pattern recognition, the same kind that allows people to intuitively know when a microwave has one second left, or when a manager is coming.
The patient’s name is Mr. Harrow. Or maybe Hollow. The chart has been edited several times in different dry erase markers, and the nameplate outside the door (Room 214B) reads → VITALS BID ←, which Elias assumes must be Latin for “someone else will fix this.”
Elias knocks, though the door is open. He always knocks. The knock is a ritual more than a courtesy, a little performance that says: I Am Here, I Am Doing the Thing, You Cannot Blame Me. There is no response. Good. Better. Most of the patients in this ward are asleep, sedated, or watching The Price is Right with the volume off, which Elias believes is how most Americans will experience death anyway.
Inside, there is silence. Filtered light. That particular smell of warm plastic, boiled linens, something faintly vegetal. Elias approaches the bed with the briskness of a man on a mission. The mission: to appear brisk.
Mr. Harrow is very still. He is also very pale, but people here often are. Elias has developed a private taxonomy of paleness, ranging from Marshmallow (healthy) to Soy Milk (watch list) to Xerox Paper (uh-oh). Mr. Harrow is somewhere between porcelain and antique porcelain, with an expression like he’s trying to remember a dream.
Elias does what he always does: he pretends. He writes “BP stable,” “RR WNL,” “SpO₂ 96%” with the calm detachment of a man copying someone else’s homework. He reaches to take a pulse and places two fingers against the wrist, not pressing so much as hovering. He waits.
Nothing.
He presses again. Still, nothing. But Elias is not a man to panic. Not outwardly. Panic is inefficient. Panic is traceable. Panic is what gets written up in Incident Reports.
He glances at the monitor. It is off. This is not unusual. Some patients have DNR orders. Some have families that refuse machines. Some have unplugged the monitors themselves because it wouldn’t stop beeping. But something else nags at him, a kind of stillness so complete it stops being peaceful and starts being accusatory.
He checks again.
Still no pulse.
The body is warm, but not warm-warm. The kind of warm that could go either way. An ambiguous warmth; Schrodinger-warm.
And it is here, right here, that something in Elias begins to crack. Not a loud crack, not obviously, but inwardly, like a hairline fracture under drywall, audible only to dogs and conscience.
This is not a man asleep. This is not a man watching game shows with his eyes closed. This is a dead man. A dead man Elias has just charted as stable.
What happens next is a slow-motion internal audit of guilt.
Elias steps out of the room casually—carefully casual, like someone pretending not to smell smoke in a theater—and walks to the nearest workstation-on-wheels. There, in a maneuver that would later be described in the unofficial oral histories of Night Shift as “pure genius” or “probable liability,” he opens the vitals chart, deletes his entries, and closes the tab.
No one stops him.
Mr. Harrow is found an hour later by the real nurse, who screams. A code is called. Elias is not mentioned. The chart has no vitals recorded for the past twelve hours. A systems error, someone says. A documentation glitch. It happens all the time.
Elias nods with the others, a perfect simulation of concern.
But from that night on, something is different. Not in his performance—he still fakes. But in the way he carries the faking. Not with pride. Not even with fear. But with a strange kind of reverence, like someone asked to pretend to be a priest, only to find himself accidentally praying.
UP NEXT → A DIGRESSION ON THE EDUCATION AND FORGING OF ONE ELIAS RIGG: Being a Recollection of How One Becomes Entrusted with Latex Gloves, Thermometers, and the Hourly Intimacy of Strangers