Public Anatomy Read Online Free PDF

the female medical students grimaced at the blood that covered Branch’s arms and legs and had sprayed about his face. “If the patient has hepatitis or AIDS,” she said, “that doctor’s hosed.”
    Like spectators at the eighteenth hole, the crowd closed in around the elevator as the cardiac surgery team maneuvered the stretcher with Eli still straddling the patient. The emergency department became quiet as the doors closed and the elevator ascended to the third floor operating rooms.
    Ten minutes later, the cardiac surgeons took over the care of Eli’spatient. After washing the dried blood off his arms and face at the scrub sink, Dr. Eli Branch entered the surgeons’ lounge. He felt strange doing so, having been terminated from the medical center only two months earlier. Except for a resident lying face down on the couch, the lounge was empty. He relived the brief time as a new faculty member when he was greeted here by his fellow surgical colleagues as they congregated in the lounge between surgical cases.
    Without rising from his stupor, the sleeping resident flopped sideways on the couch. Eli remembered how exhausted he’d felt during surgical residency at the end of a thirty-six-hour shift. In many ways, it was a good feeling—to be physically depleted after successfully accomplishing the task. Problem was, as a resident, the task came every third night. You were either pre-call, post-call, or on-call all the time. At times, after a particularly grueling shift, he had made it as far as his apartment and lain down for the night on the floor just inside his door. Once, he fell asleep in his car in the hospital garage, his forehead against the steering wheel for several hours until a security guard knocked on the window.
    The adrenaline rush that comes with trying to save a life had now subsided, and Eli felt the familiar drag of exhaustion. He saw the piles of fresh scrubs in the linen rack. That’s all he wanted, a nonbloodied pair. He planned to change from his scrubs and leave quietly down the back stairwell. He had done all he could do for the injured boy. The cardiac surgery team would take care of him, Eli told himself. But before he could grab a pair of scrubs, two men, dressed most inappropriately for the surgical suite in dark suits, entered the room and stood between him and the clean surgical attire. And they weren’t moving.
    “Dr. Branch, we need a moment with you.”
    The words brought Eli an instance of déjà vu. Maybe it was the time of night or the wake of a trauma resuscitation thrill ride. But when the man removed a leather wallet from inside his coat pocket and flipped it open to show Federal Bureau of Investigation, Eli’s déjà vu turned to stark reality.
    These were the same men who’d helped close the corporate biotechnology scandal, a weeklong nightmare that cost Eli his job, the use of his left hand, and possibly his surgical career.
    “It’s good to see you again, doctor. Looks like you’re up to your elbows again.”
    At this comment, the larger of the two men snorted.
    Eli failed to see the humor. “I thought we were done. The biotech investigation is over.”
    “Nothing is ever completely over, Dr. Branch. We informed you last time that we would call on your services again.” The man looked at Eli’s blood-covered scrubs. “This time, you practically came to us,” he said. “Go change clothes, we’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
    What Eli wanted was a bed in a dark room of his apartment with the air conditioner on full blast. Not a cup of coffee. After his job demotion and the dramatic cut in his salary, he no longer lived in plush Harbor Town. His new apartment was a little farther south and not in the best part of town, but it would do for now. At least he still lived by the Mississippi River. He longed now for a view of the water from his tiny balcony. He would fry a couple of eggs, maybe a half pound of bacon, and then hit the sack.
    Instead, he had two suits