Bad Hair Day (2 page)

“You sure you’re okay?” he said, his breath warm against my ear. “Your hands are all dirty, and you look like you swallowed a lemon.”

“I’m just tense today. And some moron dumped my books.” I scrubbed the grime off my fingers and leaned back against him. I could hear the steady beat of his heart. It was the kind of thing I could have listened to forever, although I would have died before I admitted that out loud.

“You know I trust you to take care of yourself, but I’d really love to beat him up for you. Could I? Pretty please?”

“You better not. It would ruin your squeaky-clean reputation. But thanks for the offer.”

“Man, you never let me have any fun,” he said. I felt his grin against my cheek and smiled despite myself. “We should probably move. Mrs. Gilbert’s going to have a cardiovascular event if we don’t get on the bus.”

“God, yes. I’m not much better than she is. The suspense is going to make me piddle.”

He laughed and nuzzled my neck before releasing me. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t kidding about the piddling thing. This program was totally sweet; they selected a few seniors from area schools and paired us up with a bunch of physicians. We only got to shadow them for four half days, and I had a crazy
huge stack of make-up work from my morning classes, but it was so worth it. If I was lucky, maybe they’d let me sit in on a few surgeries.

A few minutes later the bus pulled up to the health department, a squat brick building dwarfed by the medical complex surrounding it. I wanted to sprint inside but had to wait for Mrs. Gilbert, who clapped a lot faster than she walked.

The health department conference room was the exact color of Silly Putty, and it smelled like the inside of my gym locker. This failed to dull my excitement, though; I practically bounded into a seat. There were about ten other seniors there from St. Michael’s and St. Joe’s, the local Catholic schools. A few of them glared at the seven of us, like it was our fault that we were twenty minutes late.

The doctors waited at the front of the room in a single-file line of awesome; I barely restrained myself from falling at their feet and salaaming. As a distraction technique, I tried to figure out which ones were the surgeons. My two best bets were the woman with the razor-blade cheekbones and the man on the verge of hair gel overdose. Definitely not the hulking guy who reminded me of a shaved bear in a lab coat.

It probably wasn’t smart to judge them based on appearance. I, for instance, was destined to be a world-renowned surgeon, but between my long brown braid, square-framed glasses, and boyish figure, I looked more like the kind of girl who works in a library and spends Friday nights having deep, meaningful conversations with her cats.

Of course, it didn’t really matter. I didn’t care which surgeon I got matched with, even if it was the hair-impaired bear. I was just looking forward to a week when I could babble about how cool medicine is without anyone looking at me funny. Aaron was usually the only person I could do that with, and even he had his limits.

Aaron sat on one side of me, chatting with Trey about basketball; the seat on my other side was empty until the bear man took it. He had to be almost seven feet tall and wasn’t exactly thin. The folding chair creaked under the strain as he turned in my direction.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m Dr. Burr.”

“Kate Grable.”

His hand engulfed mine. His fingers had approximately the same circumference as my thighs, but his grip was surprisingly gentle. I began to reevaluate my earlier assessment. He totally had surgeon’s hands.

His name didn’t ring any bells, and I’d memorized the surgery listings on the Bayview Hospital website. I was just about to ask what kind of medicine he practiced when Mrs. Gilbert said, “Shall we start?”

I instantly developed butterflies in my stomach, along with an intense urge to throw my arms wide and scream “Finally! I’ve found my people!” I couldn’t decide how that would be received, though, so I restrained myself and acted all blasé instead. I wasn’t fooling anyone, but no one could say I wasn’t trying my best.

“We all know why we’re here,” Mrs. Gilbert said, “and we’re running a little late, so let’s skip the formalities and get right on
to the matches, shall we? Elle Dickensheets, Aaron Kingsman, and Trey Black, you’ll be working with Dr. Dickensheets in orthopedics. Dr. Dickensheets?”

The hair gel addict stood up, displaying his laser-bleached teeth in what I assumed was supposed to be a smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. But I could tell that Aaron was thrilled, because orthopedics was his first choice. He squeezed my hand and followed Dr. Dickensheets out of the room without looking back.

And the process went on. Pretty soon everyone was gone. Everyone except me, Mrs. Gilbert, and Dr. Burr.

“Kate,” Mrs. Gilbert said, practically bouncing with excitement, “since you’ve got such a special background, we’ve got something unique planned for you that will give you more hands-on experience. Have you met Dr. Burr?”

I nodded, and Dr. Burr rumbled. Mrs. Gilbert took it as an affirmative response.

“Oh, good,” she gushed. “Then I’ll let you two get further acquainted. You don’t need me, right? Of course you don’t. Toodles.”

She wiggled her fingers at us and hurried to the door.

“Excitable, isn’t she?” Dr. Burr said after it closed behind her.

“Uh … yeah.” I knew I should wait for him to explain, but I had all the patience of a hyperactive squirrel. “So what kind of medicine do you practice?”

He scooted his chair around to face me and leaned over with his elbows on his knees. Now I could actually look him in the eyes instead of having to crank my neck back like I had a flip-top head. It was a definite improvement.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll be completely honest with you, Kate. I’m not in surgery. The surgeons tried to claim you based on your … ahem … clearly stated preferences. But I haven’t had a student in two years, so I got first pick. I’d be honored to work with the girl who cured the zombie virus.”

I felt both flattered at the compliment and disappointed at the lack of surgery in my future, and I knew that both showed on my face.

“All I ask is that you give me one day to introduce you to my work, and if you’re not interested in staying, I’ll let you go with Dr. Gonzalez,” he told me. “She’s head of surgery.”

I couldn’t turn down the offer without offending the giant physician with ursine tendencies, and that didn’t seem like such a good idea. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “That sounds fair. What kind of medicine do you practice?”

He stood and smiled down at me from a ridiculous height. “I’m the county medical examiner.”

Dr. Burr and I descended into the underbelly of the health department. We lived in a fairly small county, so the morgue was tucked into the basement instead of having its own building. Strangely enough, in all my medical-related stalking, I’d never been there, probably because you had to go through a labyrinth to find the darned thing. All our medical buildings were linked underground. This seemed like a great idea until you were alone in the tunnels at night and convinced that the corpses from the morgue were chasing you. Not that this had ever happened to
me; I just had an overactive imagination and a history of random zombie attacks.

I scurried alongside Dr. Burr, taking about three steps to every one of his, while he kept up a steady stream of patter about how he was excited to have a student who wasn’t going to puke for once. He wanted me to watch an autopsy, and if I was interested in staying, I could gown up and assist later in the week. I knew he was trying to bribe me, but with each second that passed, I minded this less and less. Any bribery that resulted in a scalpel in my hand was good bribery.

We reached the morgue doors; he walked up to the card swipe and started patting his pockets. All I could do was wait while he emptied a huge pile of gum wrappers and bits of paper onto the floor.

“Sorry,” he said with a sheepish expression. “I think I lost my ID again.”

He leaned on the intercom button until finally someone buzzed us in. We emerged into a huge chlorine-scented room covered floor to ceiling with tile. Four autopsy tables lined the back wall, and to our left stood a sink flanked by about seven hundred boxes of gloves and face masks. A guy was prepping a body in a closed autopsy suite to my right; I could see him through the oversized viewing window. He wore one of those supercool protective suits that made you look like a blueberry-flavored astronaut.

I wondered if they’d ever let me wear one. If so, I was definitely staying.

Dr. Burr held up a finger in my direction. “Just one second.” Then he toggled the intercom so he could talk to the blueberry astronaut without opening the door.

I found it difficult to tear my eyes away from the body on the table. It was a man. He looked a little like my dad, only about ten years older and with an overgrown salt-and-pepper beard. His arms and legs stuck up in the air like he was just playing dead and might at any moment jump up and yell “Fooled ya!” The corpses on television were always arranged so prettily at autopsy. Either this one was defective or television had gotten things wrong again.

“This is Sebastian Black. Sebastian, Kate Grable,” said Dr. Burr into the intercom. “Sorry we’re late. I misplaced my card. I’ll be there in about ten minutes if that works for you.”

“No problem,” came the reedy-voiced reply through the speaker. “This should be a quick one. I think it’s Grable’s disease. There’s the usual dehydration of the extremities, and he’s missing the tips of two fingers.”

Sebastian’s comment got my attention pretty quick. Grable’s disease was the technical name for the zombie virus. It was named after me, so I felt a certain ownership of it. It had been three months since I’d found the cure and turned into instant-celebrity-just-add-zombie, but that kind of thing tends to stick with you. People treat you differently once you’ve been on CNN. Stupid but true.

“Grable’s?” I asked. “But it’s curable. Why is he working in the infectious suite?”

I could tell by his grin that Dr. Burr was impressed with my deductive abilities, but he didn’t realize what a big geek I was. I knew lab procedures and basic equipment by heart.

“Oh, it’s completely unnecessary from a medical standpoint. But sometimes we have to make concessions. We’re still working against the fear factor,” he said, waving a farewell to Sebastian and steering me toward a bank of offices at the far end of the room. “It’s pretty customary for pathology assistants to insist on extreme precautions when dealing with a new disease. He’ll chill out after a while.”

The idea of more Grable’s-related deaths made my stomach sink. I thought I’d saved the world, but that wasn’t entirely true. The virus that had zombified our varsity football team hadn’t been completely eradicated. The health department had made the cure widely available, but not everyone had come forward for treatment. For a while there, it hadn’t been all that uncommon to see undead homeless people lurching down the street, and one of our cheerleaders had bitten three spectators and the opposing school’s mascot at a basketball game a month earlier. But we hadn’t had any new cases since she’d been treated. I had hoped it was finally over.

Dr. Burr read my expression all too easily. He reached under his paper-strewn desk, pulled out a can of Dr Pepper, and cracked it open.

“Here. You look like you could use a drink,” he said.

It was lukewarm, and I didn’t usually drink soda before ten, but this seemed like an ideal time to make an exception. I slugged
down about half the can and imagined the caffeine whirling through my veins. It was an instant if imaginary high.

“All right.” He started flipping through a tottering stack of three-ring binders. “Let’s get you through the procedure manual pronto so we can move on to the interesting stuff. Do you want to watch the Grable’s postmortem, or would you rather start with something that hits a little less close to home?”

“I absolutely want that one. I feel kind of obligated to observe, if you know what I mean.”

He nodded. I honestly thought he got it. I also thought I’d end up spending my week with a bunch of dead people instead of in a surgery suite, and I was surprisingly excited about that. By all rights, I should have been rolling around on the floor in an ocean of surgery-deprived tears.

I heard a muted buzz from the main room and the doors swung open. Two uniformed police officers sauntered into the morgue. I wasn’t surprised to see them; they were probably here to exchange witty banter and theories about their murder cases with the medical examiner.

“Dr. Burr?” one of the cops asked. He looked from the infectious suite to the office, trying to decide which way to go. Dr. Burr made it easy on him by walking out to meet them.

“I’m William Burr,” he said agreeably. “What can I do for you?”

The cop held out a pair of handcuffs that glinted in the glare of the fluorescent lights like some wacked-out disco ball.

“You’re under arrest for murder.”

I
t all happened so quickly. One minute I was sitting in Dr. Burr’s office, planning all kinds of autopsy-related awesomeness. The next, he was in handcuffs and one of the cops was speeding through his Miranda rights like an auctioneer on uppers. It felt very Movie of the Week, but minus the sound track and scary Botoxed faces.