as a semiarid Western child, she had not been prepared for the rank lushness of it all. Everything here was alive. Not just the rhododendron and dogwood and moss-speckled pine, but the rocks, the soil, the rivers—all were choked with life. Even her shabby Georgian apartment, with its high ceilings and sloping wood floors, seemed to breathe and grow, and it wasn’t just because of the cockroaches, or because of the mold in the bathroom, which she had renamed the Terrarium. For on steamy August nights, when she lay awake and naked beneath a rattling metal fan, the walls would sweat and groan as if they too felt the heat.
During her four years of medical school, Grace displayed a hunger for knowledge that disturbed her professors as often as it impressed them. While other students dissected human cadavers with delicate disgust, she dug into hers with such intensity, determined to discover how every bit of bone and tissue and nerve was strung together, that one of the anatomy professors dubbed her Michelangela. She merely gave him a tight-lipped smile and kept cutting. When she graduated, it was eleventh in her class, not first. To rank higher required someone more personable, someone less intelligentand disarming. Of course, not all specialties required bedside manner, and her advisor, Dr. Jason Briggs, had expected her to place well. Then she informed him she had turned down an internship in radiology, the dream specialty of every medical student with country club aspirations, and had accepted one in emergency medicine instead, at a public hospital to make it worse. Furious, he had told her she was making a foolish mistake. Grace had nodded, then had returned to her apartment, packed her belongings—everything still fit neatly inside her old Mustang—and had headed back to Colorado. Saying good-bye had been easy enough. She had made no true friends, and she would not miss the roaches.
Now she was in the third year of her residency at Denver Memorial Hospital, and the occasional letters from Dr. Briggs had dwindled and, finally, stopped. Of course, Briggs had been as dead wrong about Grace as Ms. Adara of the
Denver Post
. Not that she cared. This was where she had to be, and that was all anybody needed to know. Healing was a strange and bittersweet revenge.
Grace left the rest room and headed down the hallway to the ED’s admitting area. It was nearly deserted. A few people attempted to doze on plastic chairs while they waited to hear news of a friend or relative. A heavyset nurse floated by, silent in her angel-white crepe-soled shoes. Grace checked, but there were no charts—no more patients to see. She moved through the door near the ambulance entrance, taking a shortcut to the lounge, then she saw a crumpled form on a gurney. There was one more who needed her after all. She took a step forward.
A hand closed on her shoulder to stop her.
“That one is mine, Grace.”
Startled, she turned and found herself looking into quiet brown eyes. They belonged to a lean black man with a salt-and-pepper beard.
If Grace had anything resembling a friend at Denver Memorial, then it was Leon Arlington. Leon was the swing shift manager of the hospital’s morgue. He had been working with dead people so long that, over the years, he had picked up a number of their habits, from his slow calm to his placid and slightly disconnected gaze. These days few of Grace’s patientsmade the final elevator ride down to see Leon. She was shooting for none.
Leon nodded toward the gurney in the corner, and Grace glanced over her shoulder to see a nurse pull a sheet over the still shape. She let out a shuddering breath. The adrenaline rush that always propelled her without thought from patient to patient evaporated and left her weak and empty.
“Come on,” Leon said in his husky voice. “Let’s get some coffee.”
“I remember her now,” Grace said a few minutes later. The two sat in a bank of green vinyl chairs. She took a sip from
During her four years of medical school, Grace displayed a hunger for knowledge that disturbed her professors as often as it impressed them. While other students dissected human cadavers with delicate disgust, she dug into hers with such intensity, determined to discover how every bit of bone and tissue and nerve was strung together, that one of the anatomy professors dubbed her Michelangela. She merely gave him a tight-lipped smile and kept cutting. When she graduated, it was eleventh in her class, not first. To rank higher required someone more personable, someone less intelligentand disarming. Of course, not all specialties required bedside manner, and her advisor, Dr. Jason Briggs, had expected her to place well. Then she informed him she had turned down an internship in radiology, the dream specialty of every medical student with country club aspirations, and had accepted one in emergency medicine instead, at a public hospital to make it worse. Furious, he had told her she was making a foolish mistake. Grace had nodded, then had returned to her apartment, packed her belongings—everything still fit neatly inside her old Mustang—and had headed back to Colorado. Saying good-bye had been easy enough. She had made no true friends, and she would not miss the roaches.
Now she was in the third year of her residency at Denver Memorial Hospital, and the occasional letters from Dr. Briggs had dwindled and, finally, stopped. Of course, Briggs had been as dead wrong about Grace as Ms. Adara of the
Denver Post
. Not that she cared. This was where she had to be, and that was all anybody needed to know. Healing was a strange and bittersweet revenge.
Grace left the rest room and headed down the hallway to the ED’s admitting area. It was nearly deserted. A few people attempted to doze on plastic chairs while they waited to hear news of a friend or relative. A heavyset nurse floated by, silent in her angel-white crepe-soled shoes. Grace checked, but there were no charts—no more patients to see. She moved through the door near the ambulance entrance, taking a shortcut to the lounge, then she saw a crumpled form on a gurney. There was one more who needed her after all. She took a step forward.
A hand closed on her shoulder to stop her.
“That one is mine, Grace.”
Startled, she turned and found herself looking into quiet brown eyes. They belonged to a lean black man with a salt-and-pepper beard.
If Grace had anything resembling a friend at Denver Memorial, then it was Leon Arlington. Leon was the swing shift manager of the hospital’s morgue. He had been working with dead people so long that, over the years, he had picked up a number of their habits, from his slow calm to his placid and slightly disconnected gaze. These days few of Grace’s patientsmade the final elevator ride down to see Leon. She was shooting for none.
Leon nodded toward the gurney in the corner, and Grace glanced over her shoulder to see a nurse pull a sheet over the still shape. She let out a shuddering breath. The adrenaline rush that always propelled her without thought from patient to patient evaporated and left her weak and empty.
“Come on,” Leon said in his husky voice. “Let’s get some coffee.”
“I remember her now,” Grace said a few minutes later. The two sat in a bank of green vinyl chairs. She took a sip from
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