Around ten o’clock, the problems had turned more serious. The cases came in rapid succession, and were the kind Sara hated because they were largely preventable. One child had eaten rat poison he’d found under the kitchen cabinet. Another had gotten third-degree burns from touching a pan on the stove. There was a teenager she’d had to forcibly commit to the lockdown ward because his first hit of marijuana had pushed him into a psychotic break. Then a seventeen-year-old girl had come in with her skull split open. Apparently, she was still drunk when she drove home this morning. The girl had ended up wrapping her car around a parked Greyhound bus. She was still in surgery, but Sara guessed that even if they managed to control the swelling in her brain, she would never be the same person again.

By eleven, Sara wanted to go back to bed and start the day over.

Working at a hospital was a constant negotiation. The job could suck away as much of your life as you permitted. Sara had agreed to work at Grady knowing this truth, embracing it, because she didn’t want a life after her husband had died. Over the last year, she’d been cutting back on her time in the ER. Keeping regular hours was a struggle, but Sara fought the uphill battle every day.

It was really a form of self-preservation. Every doctor carried around a cemetery inside them. The patients she could help—the little girl whose stomach she’d pumped, the burned toddler whose fingers she’d saved—were momentary blips. It was the lost ones that Sara remembered most. The kid who’d slowly, painfully succumbed to leukemia. The nine-year-old who’d taken sixteen hours to die from antifreeze poisoning. The eleven-year-old who’d broken his neck diving headfirst into a shallow swimming pool. They were all inside of her, constant reminders that no matter how hard she worked, sometimes—oftentimes—it was never enough.

Sara sat down on the couch in the doctors’ lounge. She had charts to catch up on, but she needed a minute to herself. She’d gotten less than four hours of sleep last night. Will wasn’t the direct reason her brain would not turn off. She’d kept thinking about Evelyn Mitchell and her corrupt band of brothers. The question of the woman’s guilt weighed heavily on her mind. Will’s words kept coming back to Sara: either Evelyn Mitchell was a bad boss or a dirty cop. There was no in-between.

Which was probably why Sara hadn’t found the time this morning to call Faith Mitchell and check on her. Technically, Faith was Delia Wallace’s patient, but Sara felt an odd sort of responsibility for Will’s partner. It tugged at her the same way Will seemed to tug at her every waking thought these days.

All of the tedium. None of the pleasure.

Nan, one of the student nurses, plopped down on the couch beside Sara. She scrolled through her BlackBerry as she talked. “I want to hear all about your hot date.”

Sara forced a smile onto her face. That morning when she got to the hospital, there’d been a large bouquet of flowers waiting for her in the doctors’ lounge. It seemed Dale Dugan had bought out the entire city’s supply of baby’s breath and pink carnations. Everyone in the ER had made a comment to Sara before she’d even managed to change into her lab coat. They all seemed caught up in the romance of the widow being swept off her feet.

Sara told the girl, “He’s very nice.”

“He thinks you’re nice, too.” Nan gave a sly grin as she typed an email. “I ran into him at the lab. He’s super cool.”

Sara watched the girl’s thumbs move, feeling three hundred years old. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever been that young. Neither could she imagine Dale Dugan sitting down and having a nice gossip with this giddy young nurse.

Nan finally looked up from the device. “He said you’re fascinating, and that you had a great time, and that you shared a very nice kiss.”

“You’re emailing him?”

“No.” She rolled her eyes. “He said that in the lab.”

“Great,” Sara managed. She didn’t know how to deal with Dale, who was either deluded or a pathological liar. Eventually, she would have to talk with him. The flowers alone were a very bad sign. She would have to rip off the Band-Aid quickly. Still, she couldn’t help wondering why the man she wanted was unavailable and the available man was unwanted. Thus continued her quest to turn her life into a television soap opera.

Nan started typing again. “What do you want me to tell him that you said?”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“But you could.”

“Uh …” Sara stood up from the couch. This was much easier when you could just slip a note into somebody’s locker. “I should go get lunch while things are quiet.”

Instead of heading toward the cafeteria, Sara took a left toward the elevators. She almost got mowed down by a gurney flying down the corridor. Stab wound. The knife was still sticking out of the patient’s chest. EMTs screamed vitals. Doctors snapped orders. Sara pressed the elevator down button and waited for the doors to open.

The hospital had been founded in the 1890s, and was housed in four different locations before finding its final home on Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. Constant mismanagement, corruption, and plain incompetence meant that at any given time in its storied history, the hospital was about to go under. The U-shaped building had been added onto, remodeled, torn down, and renovated so many times that Sara was certain no one could keep count anymore. The land around the facility was sloped toward Georgia State University, which shared its parking decks with the hospital. The ambulance bays for the emergency department backed onto the interstate, at what was called the Grady Curve, and were a full story above the main front entrance on the street side. During Jim Crow, the hospital was called the Gradys, because the white wings were on one side, looking onto the city, and the African American wings were on the other, looking onto nothing.

Margaret Mitchell had been rushed here, and died five days later, after being hit by a drunk driver on Peachtree Street. Victims from the Centennial Olympic Park bombing had been treated here. Grady was still the only Level 1 trauma center in the area. Victims with the most serious, life-threatening injuries were all flown here for treatment, which meant the Fulton County medical examiner’s office had a satellite location to process intakes down in the morgue. At any given time, there were two or three bodies waiting for transport. When Sara had first taken the job as Grant County coroner, she had trained at the Pryor Street medical examiner’s office downtown. They were constantly shorthanded. She’d spent many a lunch hour making body runs to Grady.

The elevator doors opened. George, one of the security guards, got off. His girth filled the hall. He had been a football player until a dislocated ankle had convinced him to pursue an alternative career path.

“Dr. Linton.” He held the doors back for her.

“George.”

He winked at her and she smiled.

A young couple was already in the car. They huddled together as the elevator moved down one floor. That was the other thing about working at a hospital. Everywhere you turned, you ran into someone who was having one of the worst days of their life. Maybe this was the change Sara needed in her life—not to sell her apartment and move into a cozy bungalow, but to return to private practice, where the only emergency during the day was deciding which pharmaceutical rep was going to buy lunch.