Mortal Remains Read Free Page A

him.”
    J.S. connected her needlework to one of the overhanging bags of blood. “Femoral line’s in,” she said, her tone breezily calm.
    “Still the best hands in the business,” Earl told her as he stepped to the counter and scribbled medication orders.
    Susanne moved in with the tube.
    One of her older colleagues, a speedy, gray-haired woman who wore colorful leg warmers and Reeboks, stepped up to help her. “Now you just swallow this down, Mr. Brady…”
    Other voices reported.
    “… monitors on; patient wired…”
    “… BP and pulse holding…”
    Earl relaxed a notch as he always did once a patient was lined and they were ready for any sudden nasty turns for the worse. He glanced up at the clock. “Wow! Congratulations, everyone. A hundred-and-fifteen-point-five seconds. My buy at the next party.” He gave the dazed-looking Mr. Brady a reassuring pat on the arm. “You’re invited, too, sir, except I’m afraid you’ll be drinking milk shakes.”
    Once Susanne and he were out in the hallway, he asked, “Any other surprises to start the day?”
    “None. You still got fifteen minutes until rounds. If you promise to be good, I’ll give you my copy of the
New York Herald
, let you use our cappuccino machine, and not disturb you until eight.”
    “Susanne, I love you.”
    “Watch it, or I’ll tell Janet.”
    “Hey, she knows I go gaga over anyone who offers me a cappuccino, a
Herald
, and the time to savor them.”
    Turning back toward triage, she said, “You just used up fifteen of your seconds.”
    Behind the closed door of his office – a spartan shoe box painted institutional green – he put his feet up on a hospital-issue gray metal desk, leaned back in the high-backed, maroon Naugahyde-covered chair that came with it, and savored the first sip of a cinnamon-tinged coffee. Some days it was great to be chief.
    He felt at the top of his game. Fifty years old, lean in body and mind, he could withstand the physical rigors of emergency better than any of the Young Turks, and very few of the veterans could match him mentally. Susanne once told him her nurses had nicknamed him “The Thief” because of all the times he reached right up to the pearly gates and robbed Saint Peter of a soul already settled in for a grilling from the book of deeds. Even the departmental chaplains, she said, admitted that both God and the devil had to get up early if they wanted to beat Garnet to the punch.
    He smiled at the recollection, having learned long ago not to take what people said about him too seriously. He knew his talent – the ability to read an unfolding ER scenario three steps ahead of trouble and jump-start his team accordingly. “Proactive” the more youthful members of his staff called it. “Goddamn teaching” was the term he used. Those who couldn’t keep up, especially the administrators, had less-kind words. But they were the first to seek him out when a child, spouse, sibling, or parent was gravely ill, and a life was on the line.
    He opened the paper. Page one gave the latest details about the interminable war on terror. Yet another Homeland Security alert took up most of page two. At the bottom were adds with pouty-looking boys modeling tuxedos for sale. Real men mustn’t be a worthwhile consumer group anymore, he mused, savoring yet another sip of coffee. Then he read the lead story on page three.
    Skeletal remains found fifteen days ago in Trout Lake, adjacent to the idyllic resort community of Hampton Junction, twenty miles north of Saratoga Springs, have been identified as those of a socially prominent fourth-year medical student who disappeared over twenty-seven years ago. Retrieval of the remains was a protracted affair requiring a special team of forensic divers to sift through mud at great depth in cold temperatures. Dental records and preliminary DNA results based on a lock of the victim’s hair established that she was Kelly McShane Braden, twenty-nine years old at the time of