Undone Read Free Page B

beds, some sitting in wheelchairs, all looking more miserable than they probably had when they’d first arrived for treatment. Most of them had probably come here right after work because they couldn’t afford to miss a day’s wages. They saw Sara’s white coat and called to her, but she ignored them as she read through the chart.
    Mary said, “I’ll catch up with you. She’s in three,” before letting herself get pulled away by an elderly woman on a stretcher.
    Sara knocked on the open door of exam room 3—privacy: another perk afforded cops. A petite blonde woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and clearly irritated. Mary was good at her job, but a blind person could see that Faith Mitchell was unwell. She was as pale as the sheet on the bed; even from a distance, her skin looked clammy.
    Her husband did not seem to be helping matters as he paced the room. He was an attractive man, well over six feet, with sandy blond hair cut close to his head. A jagged scar ran down the side of his face, probably from a childhood accident where his jaw slid across theasphalt under his bicycle or along the hard-packed dirt to home plate. He was thin and lean, probably a runner, and his three-piece suit showed the broad chest and shoulders of someone who spent a lot of time in the gym.
    He stopped pacing, his gaze going from Sara to his wife and back again. “Where’s the other doctor?”
    “He got called away on an emergency.” She walked to the sink and washed her hands, saying, “I’m Dr. Linton. Can you catch me up to speed here? What happened?”
    “She passed out,” the man said, nervously twisting his wedding ring around his finger. He seemed to realize he was coming off as a bit frantic, and moderated his tone. “She’s never passed out before.”
    Faith Mitchell seemed aggravated by his concern. “I’m fine,” she insisted, then told Sara, “It’s the same thing I said to the other doctor. I feel like I’ve been coming down with a cold. That’s all.”
    Sara pressed her fingers to Faith’s wrist, checking her pulse. “How are you feeling now?”
    She glanced at her husband. “Annoyed.”
    Sara smiled, shining her penlight into Faith’s eyes, checking her throat, running through the usual physical exam and finding nothing alarming. She agreed with Krakauer’s initial evaluation: Faith was probably a little dehydrated. Her heart sounded good, though, and it didn’t seem like she’d suffered from a seizure. “Did you hit your head when you fell?”
    She started to answer, but the man interjected, “It was in the parking lot. Her head hit the pavement.”
    Sara asked the woman, “Any other problems?”
    Faith answered, “Just a few headaches.” She seemed to be holding something back, even as she revealed, “I haven’t really eaten today. I was feeling a little sick to my stomach this morning. And yesterday morning.”
    Sara opened one of the drawers for a neuro-hammer to check reflexes, only to find nothing there. “Have you had any recent weight loss or gain?”
    Faith said “No” just as her husband said “Yes.”
    The man looked contrite, but tried, “I think it looks good on you.”
    Faith took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Sara studied the man again, thinking he was probably an accountant or lawyer. His head was turned toward his wife, and Sara noticed another, lighter scar lining his upper lip—obviously not a surgical incision. The skin had been sewn together crookedly, so that the scar running vertically between his lip and nose was slightly uneven. He had probably boxed in college, or maybe just been hit in the head one too many times, because he obviously didn’t seem to know that the only way out of a hole was to stop digging. “Faith, I think the extra weight looks great on you. You could stand to gain—”
    She shut him up with a look.
    “All right.” Sara flipped open the chart, writing down some orders. “We’ll need to do an X-ray of your