Harsh whispers circulated among the morning nurses during shift change at 6:30 a.m. Doctors huddled in the hall. By the time Darryl got to work, the bad news spread throughout the hospital.

The child died during the night.

That innocent child.

That poor little boy.

That beautiful black baby.

Children die in the hospital, Darryl said to the emergency room head nurse. What makes this one so special?

Not many youngsters die after a reckless cop leaves his gun in the open so his three-year-old son can shoot himself in the head.

Fighting a rush of panic, Darryl politely excused himself and headed to one of the supply closets. Jimmy’s cellphone rang and rang. A voicemail eventually told Darryl the mail box was full. Chanise didn’t answer her phone so Darryl left a soft message asking her to call.

During his two days off, Darryl had lived incommunicado. Pressure from his shift pushed him to the edge. The madman who confronted him on the street pushed him over the edge. Darryl needed to regroup, get better organized for a long few months or longer if he hoped to come through this pandemic as unscathed as possible. He needed protection, comfort and inner strength. No phone, TV, computer or human contact. Darryl cooked a couple of real vegetarian meals for himself, read the better part of a spiritual novel set in Africa and tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Listening to the best of Marvin Gaye didn’t even help.

Checking his phone he saw Jimmy called three times during his self-imposed exile.

Chanise once.

Running back to the ER, Darryl spotted George, a big, gentle orderly with red hair and the build of a professional wrestler. George stopped in the middle of mopping up a pool of blood under what was left of a stabbing victim.

I came by your apartment, George said.

I called.

I’m sorry.

Against his better judgment, Darryl raced the long hallway to the morgue. Nobody was working when he got there so he stepped into the cold empty room and walked to the heavy metal door that led to where they stored the bodies for pick-up. No matter how many corpses waited, his nephew’s tiny figure should be easy to spot.

The smallest corpse rested between two bundled bodies with COVID-19 written across the white sheets in black marker. That was where Darryl stopped and drew his own line, sure he could not unwrap, could not cradle, could not look into the baby face with the gaping head wound to further identify his loss.

Turning fast, he fled the morgue, quickly looking toward the small office.

Darryl stopped.

Dozens of color photos of nude women stared from the wall where the morgue attendant taped them after cutting graphic sex scenes from adult porn magazines. Women in the throes of exploitation watched his agony as they endured their own suffering. Maybe the women saw themselves as stars or actresses or successful models.

Darryl knew better.

Societal business-as-usual degrades the living and the dead when ignorance wears the crown of king.

Darryl did his job the best he could that day, as he did every day, finishing his shift because his colleagues needed him maybe even more than Jimmy and Chanise did.

Here he might help save a life.

Darryl couldn’t do anything to save Mahlik.

Nobody could.