Page 17 of Guess Again
Madison, Wisconsin Thursday, July 10, 2025
ETHAN WALKED INTO ER ROOM 6 AND SMILED AT THE YOUNG MAN sitting in bed.
The kid was twelve and wore a dusty baseball uniform.
He had an icepack pressed to the right side of his face.
“Fastball or curveball?”
Ethan asked.
“Fastball,”
the kid said.
“I figured.
Hang a curveball and they’ll take it to left field.
Leave a fastball in the heart of the plate and it comes back up the middle.
Let me take a look.”
Ethan pulled down the lamp that hung from the ceiling.
The kid took the icepack from his face to reveal that his right eye was swollen shut with a significant laceration to his upper cheek.
“Nasty,”
Ethan said.
“But the good news is that the X-rays and CT scan show no orbital fracture.
So as bad as you look now, you’ll be good as new in no time.
No permanent damage.”
“And the gash?”
Mom asked.
Ethan pulled the lamp closer to get a better look.
“Nice and clean.
I’ll sew it up using subcutaneous sutures.
It’ll heal without a scar.
In a year you’ll never know it happened.
But put a little movement on your fastball. If you turn it into a cutter, they’ll dribble it to short.”
The kid smiled.
“I’ll work on it.”
When Ethan was finished suturing the laceration, he said his goodbyes and allowed the discharge nurse to finish up.
His shift was over and his board of patients clear.
He headed to the doctor’s lounge to complete his charts before going home.
As he started his final chart, he heard a knock and saw Chip Carter, the CEO of the hospital, standing in the doorway of the lounge.
Chip had started his career in emergency medicine before jumping ship to hospital administration. In addition to his medical degree, Chip held an MBA. Ethan suspected he made over a million dollars a year running the busiest hospital in Madison.
“Chip,”
Ethan said, looking at his watch.
“Burning the midnight oil?”
Ethan was on days this week, working the 3:00 p.m.
to 11:00 p.m. shift.
Chip smiled.
“Just finished at a fundraiser and thought I’d stop by to chat.”
Ethan logged out of the computer.
“What’s up?”
Chip produced a copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which had been folded under his arm.
He dropped it on the desk.
The paper was opened to the article about Callie Jones.
“With the election of Governor Jones,”
Chip said, quoting the article verbatim, “a new investigation is being launched into his daughter’s 2015 disappearance.
Adding to the intrigue about the reboot of the case is that Ethan Hall—a former renegade investigator with Wisconsin’s Department of Criminal Investigation turned ER doctor—has been tapped to lead the investigation.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
The government boys sure knew how to tighten a tourniquet.
There had been soft murmurs about the Callie Jones case being reopened ever since Ethan had met with Governor Jones back in late spring.
Ethan had agreed only to review the file and offer his thoughts—a task he had yet to complete.
He was procrastinating and stalling and doing everything he could to avoid a formal commitment because he was weary about backtracking in life and dabbling in something that had nearly ruined him once. So, to put pressure on him and set the clock ticking, the higher-ups leaked the story to the press.
Ethan had seen the articles in the Journal and the Capital Times.
Word was spreading fast, and Cherryview, the small town from where Callie Jones had disappeared, was buzzing with anticipation about a potential break in the ten-year-old cold case that had left the community dazed.
One of the area’s biggest missing persons cases in the last twenty years—now made even larger by the election of Mark Jones—was about to take center stage and had all the makings of a sensational summer news story.
The newly elected governor, with the state’s justice department at his disposal, was desperate to find answers about what happened to his daughter years earlier.
Somehow, Ethan found himself in the middle of it all.
He had planned to talk to the hospital administration about the news, but Chip Carter beat him to it.
“Plus two full paragraphs about how you work at my ER and where you went to medical school and speculation about why you left your old profession.
And a lot about your father, too.”
“I read it,”
Ethan said.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you this.
But you’re either a doctor here at my hospital, or you’re an investigator with the Department of Criminal Investigation.
Not both.”
“I’m not investigating anything, Chip.
I was asked to review the file, that’s it.”
“And you agreed?”
“Well, when the governor asks you for a favor, you typically say yes.”
“I don’t want it interfering with your work here, Ethan.”
“It won’t.”
“There’re liability issues that we need to consider.
If you’re preoccupied with a missing persons case, it could cloud your judgment in the ER.
Say you send someone home and they stroke out an hour later because you missed something on their scans.
The hospital would be on the hook for that.”
“Probably something my malpractice insurance would cover, but I understand your point, Chip.”
“Either way, it’s a nightmare waiting to happen, and I’ve got people barking in my ear about it.”
“I’m reviewing the case in my spare time.
That’s it, Chip.
There’s nothing more to it, despite the sensational headlines.”
Chip thought a moment and then nodded.
“Make sure it doesn’t overlap with what you do here.
If it does, I’ll have to rethink your position with us.”
“Understood.”
Chip nodded before he turned and left the doctor’s lounge.
When he was gone, Ethan pulled the newspaper over to him.
Adding to the intrigue about the reboot of the case is that Ethan Hall—a former renegade investigator with Wisconsin’s Department of Criminal Investigation turned ER doctor—has been tapped to lead the investigation into the disappearance of Callie Jones.
Mr.
Hall comes from a long line of law enforcement.
His father, Henry Hall, was a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department.
Detective Hall was killed in the line of duty while investigating the Lake Michigan Massacres in 1993.
Ethan tossed the paper in the trash.
Strangely, the Callie Jones case and his reluctant return to the DCI were not the main distractions in his life.
That honor went to Francis Bernard—the man who had killed his father—and the idea that Ethan was about to be face-to-face with him.