Page 126 of Dead Med

His words cause Danielle’s sobs to intensify. She buries her face in her hands, swaying as if she might faint.

“Shut up!” Mason screams at her.

Please stop crying, Danielle. You’re just making things worse.

“Mason, you need to put down that gun,” I say quietly, knowing it’s already too late. Patrice is dead, and I’m scared Dr. Conlon is too. “Seriously, put down the gun, and we’ll figure this out.”

Mason just stares at me. Wow, he looksreallybad, like he’s been sleeping in the gutter. How did this all happen right under my nose?

“You trust me, don’t you, Mason?” I say. I very slowly move toward him, careful not to make any sudden moves.

“I… I guess so…”

“You need to put down that gun,” I repeat.

Mason’s shoulders relax, and his hand lowers as I continue to move closer. Thank God, it’s working—Mason is calming down.

At that moment, there’s a sound from right outside the anatomy lab, and Mason turns his head in the direction of the noise. Even though I’ve got the gun in my pocket and I have time to use it, I don’t want to hold Mason at gunpoint. It won’t stop him, and the last thing I want to do is kill my roommate. I don’t want to kill anyone ever again.

So I take a risk. I lunge forward and tackle Mason, putting all two hundred and fifty pounds of my weight behind the effort. I may be a clumsy oaf, but I can be fast when I want to be, and before Mason can react, he goes down hard, the gun falling from his right hand. I pin him down before he has a chance to try to get away.

“Abe… what the hell?” Mason manages as he stares up at me. “Are… are you in on it too?”

I don’t reply, although I’m not sure what I could have said. I keep him restrained until the police arrive and help me to my feet, and Danielle breathlessly tells them everything that happened. Mason is taken away in handcuffs, mumbling to himself the whole time.

He’ll never be a doctor.

EPILOGUE

KIERA

Seven Years Later

I’ve beenon my emergency medicine rotation for over two weeks, and I officially hate my life.

It’s the third rotation of my third year of medical school. For your third rotation, you’re supposed to schedule the specialty you’re interested in doing for the rest of your life. That way, you have enough time in the hospital that you don’t look like a complete idiot, but you take the rotation early enough that you have plenty of time to get letters of recommendation or change your mind in case you end up hating it. The latter is the case for me.

Actually, I like the pace, the patients, the procedures, and even most of the staff. But what I hate is the senior resident, Dr. Sasha Zaleski. And somehow, that’s enough to make me completely miserable.

“Kiera!”

I look up from the computer monitor at the sound of Dr. Zaleski’s voice. Most residents allow me to call them by theirfirst name, but Dr. Zaleski does not. I groan inwardly and brace myself.

“What are youdoing?” Dr. Zaleski demands to know.

“I was just writing up the last patient,” I explain. I silently curse the fact that Dr. Zaleski is working during nearly all of my shifts in the ER. I checked the schedule last week, hoping maybe it had changed. It hadn’t. Somehow, I have angered the scheduling gods.

“Itoldyou to see the woman with suspected appendicitis in Room 3,” Dr. Zaleski says accusingly.

Yes, but she also told me that I had to write up patients I’d seen before moving on to the next one. Mixed messages, seriously.

“Sorry,” is all I say.

“Well, because you were so slow,” Dr. Zaleski says snippily, “I already saw that patient myself. Why don’t you make yourself useful and call Surgery to come see her?” She pauses. “And after that, go get me a cup of coffee.”

I nod, afraid to say anything to further incur her wrath, even though technically, the residents have been scolded for sending medical students to perform menial tasks like fetching coffee or doing laundry. I don’t mind grabbing her some coffee, though. At least it’s something I’m less likely to screw up. I know exactly how she likes it after two weeks on this rotation. (Black—like her soul.)

I heard Dr. Zaleski is bad-tempered because she matched for a residency spot at the lowly DeWitt. Apparently, stellar grades don’t make up for mediocre evaluations from attendings on rotations. Dr. Zaleski can’t even be nice to the people she’s sucking up to.