Critical Judgment (1996) by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online

more thing. She would appreciate it if he told absolutely no one what she was doing.
    Samuel Ives closed his eyes as she widened the narrow, shaved track Bartholomew had made in his beard. Then she cut away the sutures, numbed the edges of the lacerations once again, set a pair of magnifying glasses low on the bridge of her nose, and began a meticulous closure.
    The repair took forty-five minutes. During that time not a word was exchanged between them. When the last knot had been tied and cut, Abby stepped back from the table, working the stiffness from her neck. She called it being “zoned.” For forty-five minutes her brain had been free of all extraneous thoughts. She had probably not moved any muscle except in her hands and forearms through the entire procedure.
Zoned
. It was a joy to have been there.
    She unbuttoned Ives’s work shirt, which was heavy with drying blood. A more careful exam showed his chest and belly were free of discernible injury.
    “Did they give you a tetanus shot?” she asked.
    “They did.”
    “These stitches can come out in five days. Just come in and find me. No need to check in at the desk. I’m going to have the nurse give you a shot of antibiotic and five days’ worth of pills. I’m also going to see if we can find you a shirt to wear home.”
    “I’ve been having a little trouble with my leg,” Ives said. “Pick out some pills that will help that, too.”
    Abby gloved once again, and with Ives’s help, lowered his fetid, bloodied jeans. The infection, covering five or six inches of his right shin, was long-standing and deep—undoubtedly deep enough to include the bone. Almost certainly chronic osteomyelitis, one of the most difficult, recalcitrant of all infections. She grimaced, not so much from the sight of the thick, raw inflammatory tissue, as from her knowledge of how difficult it was going to be to treat. Then she realized that he was watching her.
    “How’d you do this?” she managed.
    “A fall. I hit a rock.”
    “When?”
    “Two, three years ago.”
    “And you can get around okay?”
    “It hurts some.”
    She sighed.
    “Mr. Ives—”
    “Just Ives. That’s what people I like call me. Ives.”
    “Ives, this is a pretty deep and serious infection. I don’t know for sure if it’s gotten into the bone, and I have no idea what germ is causing it. But if we don’t treat it properly, sooner or later you’re going to get very sick from it. You could even lose your leg.”
    “It really doesn’t bother me that much. How about just giving me some medicine now and—”
    “It’s not that simple!” she snapped. She took another calming breath. Fatigue from the long, difficult day was catching up with her. She knew, especially after the debadewith Bartholomew, there wasn’t a chance in the world that Ives would ever willingly be an inpatient. “Ives, listen. Let me at least take a small biopsy to send off for culture and some slides. Then I’ll give you some intravenous antibiotics. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the infectious-disease person and one of the bone specialists. Okay?”
    “I don’t—”
    “Ives, please.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “Thank you.”
    She opened the door and, for the first time in an hour, reconnected with the rest of the ER. Lew Alvarez was writing prescriptions for the last of the patients. She stood some distance away and watched him converse with the woman in fluent, animated Spanish. His English, she had noticed, was accent free. She wondered which was his native language. He was forty or so, and handsomer than any man needed to be. His eyes were dark and lively, and his thick brows and mustache were offset by rich copper skin. Of all the physicians in the ER, he was the one she found the most interesting.
    George Oleander’s description of him as excessively opinionated and not a team player did not easily fit the man she was watching—the man who had responded to her call for assistance without a single quibble.
    He noticed her