Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter Read Online Free Page A

paramedics. "That's one Happy Meal that didn't do its job."
    "A Happy Meal of Doom," Copeland said.
    "Speaking of which, a Big Mac sounds pretty good right now." Nester looked at his partner. 'What do you say we go back and grab lunch?"
    Mark shook his head and motioned to Teresa Chingas, one of the youngest nurses in the ER. She was also the only person on staff at Community General Hospital who found Mark Sloan intimidating. No matter what he did to rty to put the woman at ease, it never worked.
    She hurried over to them. "Yes, Doctor?"
    "Teresa, please take Mr. Copeland in for X-rays and call Dr. Wiss down for an orthopedic consult," Mark said, making some notes on a chart and handing it to her.
    "Certainly, Dr. Sloan," she said. She took charge of the gurney from the paramedics and rolled it right over Mark's foot.
    He yelped in surprise. Teresa looked back at him, horrorstricken. "Oh my God, are you okay?"
    "I'm fine." Mark winced, hopping on one foot to one of the waiting room chairs. "Hardly felt a thing."
    "I am so sorry." She rushed over to him. "Can I get you some ice?"
    "You want me to take a look at that for you, Doe?" Nestor asked with a grin.
    "No, thanks," Mark said, sitting down and pulling off his tennis shoe.
    Nestor chuckled and headed back outside with his partner.
    "Hey," Copeland called from his gurney, "what about me?"
    Teresa looked back at him, as if noticing him for the first time.
    "He has a point, Teresa. You better get going." Mark tipped his head in the general direction of the radiology department. "I'll be fine."
    Teresa, her face red with shame, went back to the gurney and wheeled the patient away, careful to steer clear of Mark's chair.
    Mark was about to take off his sock and examine his aching toes when Susan Hilliard called out to him from the nurses' station, where she stood at the emergency console, communicating with paramedics in the field.
    "Dr. Sloan," she said, "I need your help."
    Susan was as young as Teresa, but more confident, more skilled, and not the least bit intimidated by Mark or, he suspected, anyone else. Then again, even Teresa would be hard-pressed to be intimidated by a white-haired man in his sixties, hopping over to the nurses' station on one foot.
    "A guy was crossing an intersection when he was hit by a minivan. Paramedics are on the scene," she said. "The victim is male, approximately forty years old, unconscious, with negative vitals. He's in full arrest."
    The voice of one of the paramedics came over the speaker. "We're administering CPR, oh-two via ambu at one hundred percent, and an IV, five percent dextrose in lactated ringers wide open."
    Mark glanced at a monitor that showed the victim's EKG. The pattern of the man's heartbeat looked like a straight line drawn by a trembling hand.
    The patient was in v-fib. His heart was failing.
    Mark took the mike from Susan and gave the paramedics a quick series of orders. "Give him a hundred milligrams of lidocaine. Shock him. Four hundred-watt seconds."
    "Ten-four," the paramedics replied.
    Mark studied the EKG monitor to see if the drugs and cardioversion caused any change in the patient's condition. They didn't. He looked at Susan. "How far away are they?"
    "Five minutes," Susan said.
    Mark spoke into the mike again. "Continue CPR and bring him in." He turned to Susan. "Page Jesse, set up a major trauma room. Call X-ray and the lab. Get a crash cart ready and pulmonary down here so we can get some ABGs done stat."
    Susan hurried away to make the preparations.
    Mark continued giving instructions to the paramedics en route. As soon as he knew they were pulling into the parking lot, he left the nurses' station, hopped back to his seat, and put on his tennis shoe. He didn't think he'd broken any toes—not that there was much he could do about it besides taping the injured toe to the one next to it for support.
    He finished tying his shoelaces just as the paramedics came rushing in with the man on a gurney, nearly running