Crashers Read Online Free

They argued and drew over one another’s chicken scratches.
    â€œThere seems no doubt whatsoever,” said the most scholarly of the group, a professor of emergency surgery at the Truman Center, University of Missouri. “Concussive damage is the most dangerous, period. The studies have been done again and again.”
    Which is when Tommy finished off the last of his seltzer and did the wadding-up-and-throwing thing.
    â€œTommy! How can you argue with the facts?”
    â€œI’m not,” Tommy drawled. He was leaning back, the front legs of his chair off the floor, his cowboy boots on the edge of the table. “I’m arguing with a guy who hasn’t seen a real, live patient since Reagan was in office. Y’all got the American studies, sure, but the WHO stuff that’s out right now points to the linear shearing of deceleration trauma. That there’s your real killer.”
    The professor removed his glasses and smiled kindly. “For a pathologist, you seem to hold an awful lot of interest in live patients, Tommy.”
    Tommy brushed back an unruly hank of hair that fell near his left eyebrow. He wasn’t really dressed for the professional lecture circuit, favoring khaki trousers, cowboy boots, and a blue denim shirt with a red-and-white-striped tie, loosened, the top shirt button undone. He also didn’t make any effort to hide his Texas twang. “A whole lotta dead folks get carted into my operating room, Prof. I’m the guy digging around inside these folks. You can trust me on this.”
    One of the trauma specialists—a woman who’d come down from Seattle for the conference—watched Tommy carefully and tried not to make it obvious. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he had a tight, leathery roughness to his skin, as if he had spent a lot of time working or playing in the sun. His hair was black but turning gray around his neckline, and it was cut poorly, a straight, black hank hanging over his forehead and occasionally scraping his eyebrows. Five-eight and wiry. Also, no wedding ring. The Seattle trauma specialist checked her watch and wondered when this confab would end. She definitely planned to ask him out for a drink.
    Before the argument could come around—for the fifth time—to the same points, a pediatric trauma specialist from New Orleans stepped out of the women’s restroom, her eyes darting to the TV screen behind the bar. She stepped closer, peered up at the screen. She waved down the bartender,asked him to turn up the audio, then turned to the debate. “Tommy? You better see this.”
    Tommy craned his neck around, wondering why they always put TVs so damn high in bars. The picture was grainy, a bouncy image taken from the air, probably from a helicopter. A banner in the upper corner read SPECIAL REPORT , along with the station’s call letters.
    Tommy squinted; he wasn’t wearing the glasses he needed to drive and play golf. But he could make out the image well enough. The helicopter was hovering over a scorched, burning field of grass. A long, rough trench had been gouged into the earth. The camera shifted to the right and revealed the smoldering tail of a jetliner.
    The front legs of Tommy’s chair hit the floor with a thunk. “Ah, shit.”
    The peds expert at the bar took the remote from the bartender, upped the audio even more. “It just happened,” she said. “It’s near Salem, south of here. I know you’re with those air-crash people, I figured—”
    Tommy’s face reddened. “I was. I quit.”
    One of the doctors at the table turned to him. “Crash people?”
    â€œNTSB, yeah.”
    Someone said, “NT . . . ?” and the peds specialist said, “National Transportation Safety Board.”
    A neurosurgeon from Shanghai said, “When did you quit? I hadn’t heard that.”
    Tommy watched the screen. “Three, four months