Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

He turned to the last page from Hair and Fiber, and stopped. It was an analysis of yet another hair, this one human but never identified. It had been found on the pillow. In any home, a variety of stray hairs can be found. Humans shed dozens of hairs a day, and depending on how fastidious a housekeeper you are and how often you vacuum, blankets and carpets and couches accumulate a microscopic record of every visitor who has ever spent significant time in your home. This single hair, found on the pillow, could have come from a lover, a houseguest, a relative. It was not Andrew Capra’s.

Single human head hair, light brown, A0 (curved), shaft length: 5 centimeters. Telogen phase. Trichorrhexis invaginata noted. Unidentified origin.

Trichorrhexis invaginata. Bamboo hair.

The Surgeon was there.

He sat back, stunned. Earlier that day he had read the Savannah lab reports for Fox, Voorhees, Torregrossa, and Cordell. In none of those crime scenes had a hair with Trichorrhexis invaginata been found.

But Capra’s partner had been there all along. He had remained invisible, leaving no semen, no DNA, behind. The only evidence of his presence was this single strand of hair, and Catherine’s buried memory of his voice.

Their partnership began with the very first killing. In Atlanta.

Peter Falco was up to his elbows in blood. He glanced up from the table as Catherine pushed into the trauma room. Whatever tensions had grown between them, whatever uneasiness she felt in Peter’s presence, were instantly shoved aside. They had assumed the roles of two professionals working together in the heat of battle.

“Another one coming in!” said Peter. “That makes four. They’re still cutting him out of the car.”

Blood spurted from the incision. He grabbed a clamp from the tray and thrust it into the open abdomen.

“I’ll assist,” said Catherine, and broke the tape seal on a sterile gown.

“No, I can handle this. Kimball needs you in Room Two.”

As if to emphasize his statement, an ambulance wail pierced the hubbub of the room.

“That one’s yours,” said Falco. “Have fun.”

Catherine ran out to the ambulance loading dock. Already, Dr. Kimball and two nurses were waiting outside as the beeping vehicle backed up. Even before Kimball yanked the ambulance door open, they could hear the patient screaming.

He was a young man, tattoos mapping his arms and shoulders. He thrashed and cursed as the crew rolled out his stretcher. Catherine took one glance at the blood-soaked sheet covering his lower extremities and knew why he was shrieking.

“We gave him a ton of morphine at the scene,” said the paramedic as they wheeled him into Trauma Two. “Didn’t seem to touch him!”

“How much?” said Catherine.

“Forty, forty-five milligrams IV. We stopped when his BP started dropping.”

“Transfer on my count!” said a nurse. “One, two, three!”

“Jesus fucking CHRIST! IT HURTS !”

“I know, sweetie; I know.”

“You don’t know a FUCKING THING!”

“You’ll feel better in a minute. What’s your name, son?”

“Rick… Oh Jesus, my leg—”

“Rick what?”

“Roland!”

“Do you have any allergies, Rick?”

“What’s wrong with you FUCKING PEOPLE ?”

“We have vitals?” cut in Catherine as she pulled on gloves.

“BP one-oh-two over sixty. Pulse a hundred thirty.”

“Ten milligrams morphine, IV push,” said Kimball.

“SHIT! GIMME A HUNDRED!”

As the rest of the staff scurried around drawing bloods and hanging IV bags, Catherine peeled back the blood-soaked sheet and caught her breath when she saw the emergency tourniquet tied around what was barely recognizable as a limb. “Give him thirty,” she said. The lower right leg was attached by only a few shreds of skin. The nearly severed limb was a pulpy red mass, the foot twisted nearly backward.

She touched the toes and they were stone cold; of course there would be no pulse.

“They said the artery was pumping out,” said the paramedic. “First cop on the scene put on the tourniquet.”

“That cop saved his life.”

“Morphine’s in!”

Catherine directed the light onto the wound. “Looks like the popliteal nerve and artery are both severed. He’s lost vascular supply to this leg.” She looked at Kimball, and they both understood what had to be done.

“Let’s get him to O.R.,” said Catherine. “He’s stable enough to be moved. That’ll free up this trauma room.”

“Just in time,” said Kimball as they heard another ambulance siren wailing closer. He turned to leave.

“Hey. Hey! ” The patient grabbed Kimball’s arm. “Aren’t you the doctor? It fucking hurts ! Tell these bitches to do something !”

Kimball shot Catherine a wry look. And he said, “Be nice to ’em, bud. These bitches are running the show.”

Amputation was not a choice Catherine ever made lightly. If a limb could be saved, she would do everything in her power to reattach it. But when she stood in the O.R. a half hour later, scalpel in hand, and looked down at what remained of her patient’s right leg, the choice was obvious. The calf was macerated and both the tibia and fibula crushed to splinters. Judging by the uninjured left leg, his right limb had once been well formed and muscular, a leg deeply bronzed by the sun. The bare foot — strangely intact despite the shocking angle at which it pointed — had the tan lines of sandal straps, and there was sand under the toenails. She did not like this patient and had not appreciated his cursing or the insults he’d hurled in his pain at her and the other women on the hospital staff, but as her scalpel sliced through his flesh, shaping a posterior skin flap, as she sawed off the sharp edges of the fractured tibia and fibula, she worked with a sense of sadness.

The O.R. nurse removed the severed leg from the table and wrapped a drape over it. A foot that had once savored the warmth of beach sand would soon be reduced to ash, cremated with all the other sacrificed organs and limbs that found their way to the hospital’s pathology department.

The operation left Catherine depressed and drained. When at last she stripped off her gloves and gown and walked out of the O.R., she was not in any mood to see Jane Rizzoli waiting for her.

She went to the sink to wash the smell of talc and latex from her hands. “It’s midnight, Detective. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Probably about as much as you do. I have some questions for you.”

“I thought you were no longer on the case.”

“I’ll never be off this case. No matter what anyone says.”

Catherine dried her hands and turned to look at Rizzoli. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

“Whether or not I like you isn’t important.”

“Was it something I said to you? Something I did?”

“Look, are you finished up here for the night?”

“It’s because of Moore, isn’t it? That’s why you resent me.”

Rizzoli’s jaw squared. “Detective Moore’s personal life is his business.”

“But you don’t approve.”

“He never asked my opinion.”

“Your opinion’s clear enough.”

Rizzoli eyed her with undisguised distaste. “I used to admire Moore. I thought he was one of a kind. A cop who never crossed the line. It turns out he’s no better than anyone else. What I can’t believe is that the reason he messed up was a woman.”

Catherine pulled off her O.R. cap and dropped it in the rubbish bin. “He knows it was a mistake,” she said, and she pushed out of the O.R. wing, into the hallway.

Rizzoli followed her. “Since when?”