Code White (53 page)

The sun was dying in a blaze of crimson and purple clouds, but she did not fear the coming night. She held her arms out to the future. Never again would she mistrust it as before. She would submit herself to whatever happened, not as to unalterable fate, but as weft glides through warp in a vast tapestry of meaning. Unshakeable peace came upon her—peace more pervasive than she had ever thought possible. It was this that she had sought in yoga, and at the right hand of Helvelius in the operating room—but it had always eluded her. Now it possessed her, so deeply rooted that she was sure it would never go away.

Serenity! It seemed miraculous, wonderful, an inexplicable gift. How astonished she was when she realized that, just as she had given Odin the power to feel, there was something that Odin in turn had given her.…

And through her tears, she smiled.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Britz-Cunningham, M.D., Ph.D., is the son of a police officer and a commercial artist, and was born and raised in the Chicago area. He completed post-graduate training in anatomic pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and at the Harvard Medical School Joint Program in Nuclear Medicine. He works as a staff radiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and is an assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Britz-Cunningham lives in Quincy, Massachusetts, with his artist wife, Evelyn, and his son, Alexander. After a long day of reading PET scans, he likes to unwind by picking a few Scruggs-style licks on his favorite five-string banjo.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CODE WHITE

Copyright © 2013 by Scott Britz-Cunningham

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Jupiterimages

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Britz-Cunningham, Scott.

    Code white / Scott Britz-Cunningham.—1st ed.

        p. cm.

    “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

    ISBN 978-0-7653-3192-2 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4299-4852-4 (e-book)

    1.  Women surgeons—Fiction.   2.  Neurosurgeons—Fiction.   3.  Bomb threats—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3602.R5348C63 2013

813'.6—dc23

2012027568

e-ISBN 9781429948524

First Edition: April 2013