Vanish Read Free Page B

shoved open the rear doors and
    stood squinting against flashing lights as the vehicle backed up to the dock. Two EMTs jumped
    out, hauling their kits.
    “She’s in here!” Maura called.
    “Still in respiratory arrest?”
    “No, she’s breathing now. And I can feel a pulse.”
    The two men trotted into the building and halted, staring at the woman on the gurney. “Jesus,”
    one of them murmured. “Is that a body bag?”
    “I found her in the cold room,” said Maura. “By now, she’s probably hypothermic.”
    “Oh, man. If this isn’t your worst nightmare.”
    Out came the oxygen mask and IV lines. They slapped on EKG leads. On the monitor, a slow
    sinus rhythm blipped like a lazy cartoonist’s pen. The woman had a heartbeat and she was
    breathing, yet she still looked dead.
    Looping a tourniquet around one flaccid arm, the EMT asked: “What’s her story? How did she
    get here?”
    “I don’t know anything about her,” said Maura. “I came down to check on another body in the
    cold room and I heard this one moving.”
    “Does this, uh, happen very often here?”
    “This is a first time for me.” And she hoped to God it was the last.
    “How long has she been in your refrigerator?”
    Maura glanced at the hanging clipboard, where the day’s deliveries were recorded, and saw that
    a Jane Doe had arrived at the morgue around noon. Eight hours ago. Eight hours zipped in a
    shroud. What if she’d ended up on my table? What if I had sliced into her chest? Rummaging
    through the receiving in-basket, she found the envelope containing the woman’s paperwork.
    “Weymouth Fire and Rescue brought her in,” she said. “An apparent drowning . . .”
    “Whoa, Nelly!” The EMT had just stabbed an IV needle into a vein and the patient suddenly
    jerked to life, her torso bucking on the gurney. The IV site magically puffed blue as the
    punctured vein hemorrhaged into the skin.
    “Shit, lost the site. Help me hold her down!”
    “Man, this gal’s gonna get up and walk away.”
    “She’s really fighting now. I can’t get the IV started.”
    “Then let’s just get her on the stretcher and move her.”
    “Where are you taking her?” Maura said.
    “Right across the street. The ER. If you have any paperwork they’ll want a copy.”
    She nodded. “I’ll meet you there.”
    A long line of patients stood waiting to register at the ER window, and the triage nurse behind
    the desk refused to meet Maura’s attempts to catch her eye. On this busy night, it would take a
    severed limb and spurting blood to justify cutting to the front of the line, but Maura ignored the
    nasty looks of other patients and pushed straight to the window. She rapped on the glass.
    “You’ll have to wait your turn,” the triage nurse said.
    “I’m Dr. Isles. I have a patient’s transfer papers. The doctor will want them.”
    “Which patient?”
    “The woman they just brought in from across the street.”
    “You mean that lady from the morgue?”
    Maura paused, suddenly aware that the other patients in line could hear every word. “Yes,”
    was all she said.
    “Come on through, then. They want to talk to you. They’re having trouble with her.”
    The door lock buzzed open, and Maura pushed through, into the treatment area. She saw
    immediately what the triage nurse had meant by trouble. Jane Doe had not yet been moved into
    a treatment room, but was still lying in the hallway, her body now draped with a heating
    blanket. The two EMTs and a nurse struggled to control her.
    “Tighten that strap!”
    “Shit—her hand’s out again—”
    “Forget the oxygen mask. She doesn’t need it.”
    “Watch that IV! We’re going to lose it!”
    Maura lunged toward the stretcher and grabbed the patient’s wrist before she could pull out the
    intravenous catheter. Long black hair lashed Maura’s face as the woman tried to twist free.
    Only twenty minutes ago, this had been a blue-lipped corpse in a body bag. Now they could
    barely