Vanish by Tess Gerritsen

to the old man.
    Don’t look at him, she thought. Don’t even glance in his direction.
    “What, you too stuck up to talk to me?” he said.
    Pretend he’s not there.
    “Huh. So now you’re pretending I’m not even here.”
    She looked up, relieved, as a door opened and a woman technician in a blue scrub suit came
    into the waiting room. “Jane Rizzoli?”
    “That’s me.”
    “Dr. Tam will be down here in a few minutes. I’ll bring you back to the room now.”
    “What about me?” the old man whined.
    “We’re not quite ready for you, Mr. Bodine,” the woman said, as she swiveled Jane’s
    wheelchair through the doorway. “You just be patient.”
    “But I gotta piss, goddammit.”
    “Yes, I know, I know.”
    “You don’t know nothing.”
    “Know enough not to waste my breath,” the woman muttered as she pushed Jane’s chair down
    the hallway.
    “I’m gonna wet your carpet!” he yelled.
    “One of your favorite patients?” Jane asked.
    “Oh, yeah.” The technician sighed. “He’s everyone’s favorite.”
    “You think he really has to pee?”
    “All the time. Got a prostate as big as my fist, and won’t let the surgeons touch it.”
    The woman wheeled Jane into a procedure room and locked the wheelchair in place. “Let me
    help you onto the table.”
    “I can manage.”
    “Honey, with a belly that big, you could use a hand up.” The woman grasped Jane’s arm and
    pulled her out of the chair. She stood by as Jane climbed the footstool and settled onto the table.
    “Now, you just relax here, okay?” she said, rehanging Jane’s IV bottle. “When Dr. Tam comes
    down, we’ll get started on your sonogram.” The woman walked out, leaving Jane alone in the
    room. There was nothing to look at but imaging equipment. No windows, no posters on the
    walls, no magazines. Not even a boring issue of Golf Digest.
    Jane settled back on the table and stared at the bare ceiling. Placing her hands on her bulging
    abdomen, she waited for the familiar jab of a tiny foot or elbow, but she felt nothing. Come on,
    baby, she thought. Talk to me. Tell me you’re going to be okay.
    Cold air wafted from the AC vent, and she shivered in the flimsy gown. She glanced at her
    watch and found herself gazing, instead, at the plastic band around her wrist. Patient’s name:
    Rizzoli, Jane. Well, this patient is not particularly patient, she thought. Let’s get on with it,
    people!
    The skin on her abdomen suddenly prickled, and she felt her womb tighten. The muscles gently
    squeezed, held for a moment, then eased off. At last, a contraction.
    She looked at the time. 11:50 A.M.

    SIX
    By noon, the temperature had soared into the nineties, baking sidewalks into griddles, and a
    sulfurous summer haze hung over the city. Outside the medical examiner’s building, no
    reporters still lingered in the parking lot; Maura was able to cross Albany Street unaccosted and
    walk into the medical center. She shared an elevator with half a dozen freshly minted interns,
    now on their first month’s rotation, and she remembered the lesson she’d learned in medical
    school: Don’t get sick in July. They’re all so young, she thought, looking at smooth faces, at
    hair not yet streaked with gray. She seemed to be noticing that more often these days, about
    cops, about doctors. How young they all looked. And what do these interns see when they
    look at me? she wondered. Just a woman pushing middle age, wearing no uniform, no name
    tag with MD on my lapel. Perhaps they assumed she was a patient’s relative, scarcely worth
    more than a glance. Once, she’d been like these interns, young and cocky in her white coat.
    Before she’d learned the lessons of defeat.
    The elevator opened and she followed the interns into the medical unit. They breezed right past
    the nurses’ station, untouchable in their white coats. It was Maura, in her civilian clothes,
    whom the ward clerk immediately stopped with a frown, a brisk question: “Excuse