Genesis Read Free Page A

mother was no fool, and they both knew that the possibility of Sara
ending up on a pew this Easter Sunday was highly unlikely, but
Cathy didn't press.
    Sara looked at the stack of charts in front of her. She was at the
end of her shift and needed to call in her dictation. "Mama, I'm
sorry, but I need to go."
    Cathy exacted a promise of another phone call next week, then
rang off. Sara kept her cell phone in her hand for a few minutes,
looking at the faded numbers, her thumb tracing the seven and five,
dialing out a familiar number but not sending through the call. She
dropped the phone into her pocket and felt the letter brush against
the back of her hand.
    The Letter. She thought of it as its own entity.
    Sara normally checked her mail after work so she didn't have to
drag it around with her, but one morning, for some unknown reason,
she had checked her mail as she was heading out. A cold sweat
had come over her as she recognized the return address on the plain
white envelope. She had tucked the unopened envelope into the
pocket of her lab coat as she left for work, thinking she would read it
at lunch. Lunch had come and gone, and the letter had remained unopened,
traveling back home, then out to work again the next day.
Months passed, and the letter went everywhere with Sara, sometimes
in her coat, sometimes in her purse to the grocery store or on errands.
It became a talisman, and often, she would reach her hand in her
pocket and touch it, just to remind herself that it was there.
    Over time, the corners of the sealed envelope had become dog-eared
and the Grant County postmark had started to fade. Every day
pushed Sara farther away from opening it and discovering what the
woman who had killed her husband could possibly have to say.
    "Dr. Linton?" Mary Schroder, one of the nurses, knocked on
the door. She spoke in the practiced code of the ER. "We've got a
P-O-P-T-A female, thirty-three, weak and thready."
    Sara glanced at the charts, then her watch. A thirty-three-year old
woman who had passed out prior to admission was a puzzle that
would take time to solve. It was almost seven o'clock. Sara's shift was
over in ten minutes. "Can Krakauer take her?"
    "Krakauer did take her," Mary countered. "He ordered a CMP,
then went to get coffee with the new bimbo." She was obviously
perturbed by this, and added, "The patient's a cop."
    Mary was married to a cop; hardly shocking considering she had
worked in the emergency room at Grady Hospital for almost twenty
years. Even without that, it was understood at every hospital in the
world that anyone in law enforcement got the best and quickest
treatment. Apparently, Otto Krakauer hadn't gotten the memo.
    Sara relented. "How long did she lose consciousness?"
    "She says about a minute." Mary shook her head, because patients
were hardly the most honest reporters when it came to their health.
"She doesn't look right."
    That last part was what got Sara out of her chair. Grady was the
only Level One trauma center in the region, as well as one of the few
remaining public hospitals in Georgia. The nurses at Grady saw car
wrecks, shootings, stabbings, overdoses, and any number of crimes
against humanity on an almost daily basis. They had a practiced eye
for spotting serious problems. And, of course, cops usually didn't admit
themselves to the hospital unless they were at death's door.
    Sara skimmed the woman's chart as she walked through the emergency
department. Otto Krakauer hadn't done more than take a
medical history and order the usual bloodwork, which told Sara
there was no obvious diagnosis. Faith Mitchell was an otherwise
healthy thirty-three-year-old woman with no previous conditions
and no recent trauma. Her test results would hopefully give them a
better idea about what was going on.
    Sara mumbled an apology as she bumped into a gurney in the
hallway. As usual, the rooms were overflowing and patients were
stacked in the halls, some in