Vanish by Tess Gerritsen Read Free Book Online

state police detective nor the Weymouth Fire Department did. Which sounds
    like a mistake.”
    “It can happen. That’s all I can say.”
    “Have you ever made that mistake, Dr. Isles? Declared someone dead who was still alive?”
    She paused, thinking back to her internship years before. To a night on call during internal
    medicine rotation, when the ringing phone had awakened her from a deep sleep. The patient in
    bed 336A had just expired, a nurse told her. Could the intern come pronounce the woman
    dead? As Maura had made her way to the patient’s room, she’d felt no anxiety, no crisis of
    confidence. In medical school, there was no special lesson on how to determine death; it was
    understood that you would recognize it when you saw it. That night, she had walked the
    hospital corridor thinking that she would make quick work of this task, then return to bed. The
    death was not unexpected; the patient had been in the terminal stages of cancer, and her chart
    was clearly labeled NO CODE. No resuscitation.
    Stepping into room 336, she’d been startled to find the bed surrounded by tearful family
    members who’d gathered to say good-bye. Maura had an audience. This was not the calm
    communion with the deceased that she had expected. She was painfully aware of all the eyes
    watching her as she apologized for the intrusion, as she moved to the bedside. The patient lay
    on her back, her face at peace. Maura took out her stethoscope, slipped the diaphragm under the
    hospital gown, and laid it against the frail chest. As she’d bent over the body, she felt the
    family pressing in around her, felt the pressure of their smothering attention. She did not listen
    as long as she should have. The nurses had already determined the woman was dead; calling in
    the doctor to make a pronouncement was merely protocol. A note in a chart, an MD’s
    signature, was all they really needed before a transfer to the morgue. Bent over the chest,
    listening to silence, Maura could not wait to escape the room. She’d straightened, her face
    appropriately sympathetic, and had focused her attention on the man she assumed to be the
    patient’s husband. She’d been about to murmur: I’m sorry but she’s passed away.
    The whisper of a breath had stopped her.
    Startled, she’d looked down, to see the patient’s chest move. Had watched the woman take
    another breath, and then fall still. It was an agonal breathing pattern—not a miracle, just the
    brain’s last electrical impulses, the final twitching of the diaphragm. Every family member in
    the room gave a gasp.
    “Oh my god,” the husband said. “She’s not gone yet.”
    “It . . . will be very soon,” was all Maura managed to say. She had walked out of the room,
    shaken by how close she’d come to making a mistake. Never again had she been so cavalier
    about a pronouncement of death.
    She looked at the journalist. “Everyone makes mistakes,” she said. “Even something as basic as
    declaring death isn’t as easy as you’d think.”
    “So you’re defending the fire crew? And the state police?”
    “I’m saying that mistakes happen. That’s all.” And God knows, I’ve made a few of my own. “I
    can see how it might happen. The woman was found in cold water. She had barbiturates in her
    bloodstream. These factors could give the appearance of death. Under the circumstances, a
    mistake isn’t so far-fetched. The personnel involved were simply trying to do their jobs, and I
    hope you’ll be fair to them when you write your story.” She stood up, a signal that the
    interview was over.
    “I always try to be fair,” he said.
    “Not every journalist can make that claim.”
    He, too, rose to his feet and stood gazing at her across the desk. “Let me know if I’ve failed.
    After you read my column.”
    She escorted him to the door. Watched as he walked past Louise’s desk and out of the office.
    Louise looked up from her keyboard. “How did it go?”
    “I don’t know.