Free Patient by Michael Palmer

shaking her hand and contracting the muscles in her arm. If she waited any longer, there was no telling what she would feel like.
    You can do it. There are no judges. Just do a decent vault. Nothing special. Go for it.
    The silence in the arena was replaced by a nervous buzz.
    It had to be now.
    Marci rose on her toes and began her sprint toward the horse, arms pumping. She knew her speed was down, but it was too late now. She could pull it off. Even feeling lousy, she could pull it off.
    A step before the take-off ramp, her right leg seemed to disappear. When she planted it, there was almost nothing there. She was airborne, but not nearly high enough to complete a vault. Panicked, she reached out reflexively for the horse, but her right arm failed her completely. She did an awkward, clumsy turn in the air and fell heavily on the horse. Air exploded from her lungs. She toppled forward helplessly. Her consciousness began to fade. The last sound Marci heard before blacking out was the cracking of bone in her wrist.

Chapter 7
    “JESSIE, DEL MURPHY HERE. ARE YOU FREE TO MEET ME in the ER?”
    It was just after nine when Jessie answered the page from Murphy, the neurologist on call. She was taking a short break in her office, but for much of the past five hours she had been in the neurosurgical ICU. Sara Devereau had shown no signs of regaining consciousness following what had turned into a ten-hour battle to remove enough tumor from her brain to give her a chance at a cure. Jessie had a dreadful sensation that her friend was not going to awaken with intact neurologic function if, in fact, she woke up at all.
    “I can be down in just a few minutes,” she said. “What do you have?”
    “I have Marci Sheprow.”
    “The gymnast?”
    “She blacked out during an exhibition at the Fleet Center tonight, fell, and broke her wrist. The fracture’s been set and casted by Bill Shea. But he didn’t like her story of passing out, and called me. I’ve gone over her. She’s stable, but she’s got some neurologic findings, and I just got a look at her MRI.”
    “I don’t like the sound of that.”
    “Probably not as bad as it could have been. Come on down.”
    Jessie splashed some cold water on her face and made another quick stop in the unit. Sara, her eyes taped shut, was hooked to a ventilator by a clear polystyrene tube that ran up her nose, down the back of her throat, and between her vocal cords. In addition, the usual array of catheters, monitor cables, and other tubes were connected to her.
    “She looks so peaceful,” Barry Devereau said.
    “She is, in a way. Certainly, she’s in no pain.”
    “But there’s a battle going on.”
    “There’s a battle going on, all right,” Jessie echoed flatly. “I don’t expect there to be any change tonight, Barry.”
    “I’m going to stay just the same. I have someone with the kids.”
    “The nurses’ll take good care of you. I’m backing up the residents and covering for all private cases tonight. I take calls from home, but at night I can get back here in no time at all.”
    “I don’t know how you do it.”
    Jessie rubbed at the fatigue stinging her eyes.
    “It’s not all that hard,” she said, “as long as you don’t look in the mirror.”
    f f f
    “NO, I WILL not have a resident touching my daughter, and that’s final. I want this ... this Dr. Copeland down here now.”
    Jessie stood outside the doorway to room 6 in the ER, vainly searching for a way to avoid having to deal with Marci Sheprow’s mother. Del Murphy had warned her about the woman as they were reviewing the MRIs. Aggressive, entitled, smart, protective, and very suspicious.
    “Not frightened?” Jessie had asked.
    “Not that I can tell. At least not that she lets on.”
    Del had correctly read the MRIs as showing a very localized, well—defined tumor—almost certainly a low-grade meningioma-pressing between the inner skull and Marci’s brain on the left side, directly over the areas