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She sighed “I know”
As she checked the last suture, she rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck to one side then the other to get the kinks out She’d been in the OR since 5:00 AM, which meant she had been bent over patients for eleven hours Sad to say, that wasn’t a record for her
She felt wrung out and stiff and sore A good run around the park would get those y
“You knoould help you get rid of a stiff neck?” Andrews said
“Let uess A trip to heaven?”
One of the nurses snorted with laughter “He’s awfully persistent, Dr Sullivan Maybe you should give in”
Ellie re by the OR doors “Thanks, Megan, but I think I’ll just go for a run instead” As she pushed the doors wide, she untied her surgicalher blond hair loose to fall to her shoulders
Twenty ed into her workout clothes, a pair of faded red shorts and a white tank top She double-tied her beat-up running shoes, grabbed a rubber band and swept her hair up in a ponytail, slipped her iPod into one pocket and her cell phone into the other, and she was ready Walking a et outside, she avoided the direct route through the ER for fear she’d get waylaid with another case
There was never a lack of patients rolling through the doors Along with the usual eencies—the car accidents, the heart attacks, the work injuries—the ER saw a steady streaone another seeest trauma center in St Louis, all the serious cases caht the hot suurneys lined the halls of the ER with patients handcuffed to the railings while they waited to go into surgery Additional police had to be routinely called in tomember hadn’t been placed too close to a rival
Ellie became a member of the One Hundred Club when she removed her one hundredth bullet It wasn’t a club she wanted to join, but she would always re man was only twenty years old, and it was the third tiet his insolence and his cold, empty eyes They were al up these boys so that they could return to the streets and the sa, and she prayed, with every surgery, that this ti, that this time they would find a new life It was a naive hope, but she clung to it anyway
Like the other overworked and underpaid residents and fellows, Ellie operated on broken bodies, the consequence of violence But she had never actually witnessed a crimeuntil today
It was a hot and huht up with Ellie just as she began her run on the onee Park, a vast area that sat adjacent to the hospital Heavy rain clouds hung over them, and all three panted for air After the first et in at least oneit quits She s to do before heading home to Winston Falls
Dear God, it was h she were running through a sauna Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her drenched clothes clung to her body Her friend Jennifer, a nurse in pediatrics, as taking a shortcut across the track to get to the ER entrance, shouted to Ellie that she was crazy to run in this heat Ellie waved and continued on She probably was crazy, but getting any time to work out was such a luxury, she couldn’t afford to be choosy about the weather
Ellie could hear faint cheering co from the new soccer field across the street to the north, and as she rounded the curve, she saw the players—high school – age girls—sprinting across the field Frouessed it was an iame
The administrator of the hospital, the board, and a plethora of attorneys had fought the soccer field They wanted to purchase the land to build another huge parking garage, and Ellie was happy they had lost their bid Like the track and sh away from the hospital that, no matter how much noise the teams and fans made, the patients weren’t disturbed
Ellie was a football, basketball, and soccer fan, in that order She loved to watch race, skill, and finesse of the players, probably because she didn’t possess any of those attributes herself She had been such an aard child, her ot to play a sport When she wasn’t tripping over her own feet trying to do a plié, she was reading She was much more comfortable with her books Her aunt Vivien liked to call her a bookworm
No tiht She had way too s to be acco Oh God, how she dreaded that She wished she had another week to get ready for the ordeal; then admitted to herself that no amount of time would prepare her for the whispers and the sympathetic smiles from her friends and family Who could bla Ellie’s ex-fiancé It was going to be a week of h She could handle it
“Yeah, right,” she whispered
And then there was Evan Patterson Just thinking about him made her stomach hurt Would he dare show up in Winston Falls? God, she hoped not But if he did, would she need to get another restraining order, even if she was going to be ho worked up and had to force herself to cal that came her way Even a maniac, she told herself Besides, she was sure Evan wasn’t back in Winston Falls If he had returned, her father would have alerted her
Ellie didn’t want to worry about Patterson now or think about the wedding Instead, she chose to focus on the task at hand Just a little o, then a lovely cold shower She took her earphones from her pocket and was about to turn on her iPod to listen to a lecture on new thoracotomy procedures when she heard a loud pop
Ellie stopped running Lightning? She looked up at the ominous sky just as another pop echoed, then a third and a fourth in rapid succession Had lightning hit a tran
sformer? That would explain the burstsexcept there hadn’t been any lightning
Gunshots? Had to be As unshot victi The noise caht toward the soccer field No panic there The gaunshotsthen what?
Five or six seconds had passed since the first popping sound Ellie reached for her earphones again Okay, she’d been mistaken
Then the screa started
Everything happened so fast In the span of just a few more seconds, Ellie observed the chaotic scene unfold in front of her as though it were happening in slow motion
In the distance, severalnavy blue T-shirts and vests with FBI in bold yellow letters printed on the back, appeared almost out of nowhere and fanned out as they raced toward the trees in the center of the park People were scattering every which way Screaled with the cheers from the soccer field, the fans and players apparently oblivious to as happening A father ran froround toward the street with two little boys The children weren’t able to keep up, so the father scooped the Several people who had been strolling through the park also scra a Frisbee One of the boys ran into the street, directly in front of an a to the hospital The vehicle ca halt, and the boy rushed around to the openshouting so to the paramedic as he pointed toward the trees
Suddenly, a man and a woman, linked arm in arm, drew her attention They walked briskly toward her on the running path There was so off about both of thelasses, a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead, and a brown, hooded windbreaker zipped up to his neck, a peculiar choice in the 90-degree weather Was he all bundled up to keep his clothes dry when the stor with sweat The woman looked directly at Ellie Her bizarre appearance was startling A short black wig sat slightly askew on her head with a few long hairs hanging down the side of her neck Her eyes were such an intense, unnatural shade of green, she looked as though she earing novelty contacts, the ones you’d buy for a Halloween party When the couple was about thirty feet away from Ellie, they veered toward the street