Read Online 24 Hours by Greg Iles - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Greg Iles
Tags: Fiction, LEGAL, Suspense, Psychological fiction, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Large Type Books, Psychopaths, Physicians, Kidnapping, Jackson (Miss.)
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stopped Stein in midsentence. Five hundred doctors simultaneously reached for their belts, Will included. General laughter rolled through the huge room as most of the physicians remembered that they were on vacation, their pagers back in their hometowns. Will was wearing his, but it had not produced the offending beep. Still, he moved the switch on the SkyTel from BEEP to VIBRATE.
“Who the hell’s on call down here?” Stein barked from the podium. “There’s no getting away from those damn things.” As the laughter died away, he said, “I could easily talk about our speaker for another hour, but I won’t. Dessert is coming, and I want to let Will get started. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Will Jennings.”
Applause filled the darkened ballroom. Will rose, speech in hand, and walked to the podium, where his notebook computer glowed softly. He sensed the expectation in the crowd.
“They tell me you should begin a speech with a joke,” he said. “My wife tells me I’m not much of a comedian, so I shouldn’t risk it. But flying down here today, I was reminded of a story an old paramedic told me about Hurricane Camille.”
Everybody thought about Camille when they came to the coast. You could still see trees that had been twisted into eerie contortions by the mother of all hurricanes.
“This guy was driving an ambulance down here in sixty-nine, and he was one of the first to go out on call after the storm surge receded. There were dead animals everywhere, and it was still raining like hell. On his second call, he and his partner saw a young woman lying beside the road in a formal dress. They thought she might be one of those fools who tried to ride out the hurricane by throwing a party. Anyway, he figures the girl is dead, but he doesn’t want to let her go without a fight, so he starts CPR, mouth-to-mouth, the whole bit. Nothing works, and he finally gives up. The next day, they’re hearing who died in the hurricane, because relatives of the missing are coming back to view the bodies in the morgue. The EMT asks about the girl he tried to save, but nobody’s come forward to identify her. A week goes by, and he still can’t forget her. Then the word comes down from the morgue. The girl’s mother finally ID’ed her. She’d been dead for two years. The hurricane had washed her up from the cemetery.”
Squeals of revulsion were drowned by a wave of male laughter. No one appreciated morbid humor more than a bunch of docs with a couple of drinks under their belts.
“My presentation will be brief and to the point. The emergency physicians and anesthesiologists should find it provocative, and I hope the rest of you find it interesting. I’m going to try something new tonight, a bit of high-tech wizardry I’ve been toying with.” Will had videotaped his past year ’s clinical work on a Canon XL-1, a broadcast-quality digital video camera that Karen had tried to talk him out of buying. He’d worked dozens of hours on his computer, editing it all down to the program that would accompany tonight’s talk. The finished product was seamless. But any time you worked with hard drives and video, glitches lurked in the wings. “If it doesn’t work,” he added, “at least nobody dies.”
More laughter, wry this time.
“Lights, please.”
The lights dimmed. With a last flutter of nerves, Will clicked a file icon with his trackball, and the 61-inch Hitachi television behind him flashed up a high-resolution image of an operating room. A patient lay unconscious on the table as the OR team prepared for surgery. Wonder lit the faces in the crowd, most of them doctors with minimal computer knowledge. Their ages varied widely, with couples in their sixties seated beside others in their thirties. Some of the younger wives looked a lot like Karen.
Will glanced at his large-font script and said, “This patient looks thoroughly prepped for surgery, doesn’t he? Twenty minutes before this picture was taken, he assaulted a
“Who the hell’s on call down here?” Stein barked from the podium. “There’s no getting away from those damn things.” As the laughter died away, he said, “I could easily talk about our speaker for another hour, but I won’t. Dessert is coming, and I want to let Will get started. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Will Jennings.”
Applause filled the darkened ballroom. Will rose, speech in hand, and walked to the podium, where his notebook computer glowed softly. He sensed the expectation in the crowd.
“They tell me you should begin a speech with a joke,” he said. “My wife tells me I’m not much of a comedian, so I shouldn’t risk it. But flying down here today, I was reminded of a story an old paramedic told me about Hurricane Camille.”
Everybody thought about Camille when they came to the coast. You could still see trees that had been twisted into eerie contortions by the mother of all hurricanes.
“This guy was driving an ambulance down here in sixty-nine, and he was one of the first to go out on call after the storm surge receded. There were dead animals everywhere, and it was still raining like hell. On his second call, he and his partner saw a young woman lying beside the road in a formal dress. They thought she might be one of those fools who tried to ride out the hurricane by throwing a party. Anyway, he figures the girl is dead, but he doesn’t want to let her go without a fight, so he starts CPR, mouth-to-mouth, the whole bit. Nothing works, and he finally gives up. The next day, they’re hearing who died in the hurricane, because relatives of the missing are coming back to view the bodies in the morgue. The EMT asks about the girl he tried to save, but nobody’s come forward to identify her. A week goes by, and he still can’t forget her. Then the word comes down from the morgue. The girl’s mother finally ID’ed her. She’d been dead for two years. The hurricane had washed her up from the cemetery.”
Squeals of revulsion were drowned by a wave of male laughter. No one appreciated morbid humor more than a bunch of docs with a couple of drinks under their belts.
“My presentation will be brief and to the point. The emergency physicians and anesthesiologists should find it provocative, and I hope the rest of you find it interesting. I’m going to try something new tonight, a bit of high-tech wizardry I’ve been toying with.” Will had videotaped his past year ’s clinical work on a Canon XL-1, a broadcast-quality digital video camera that Karen had tried to talk him out of buying. He’d worked dozens of hours on his computer, editing it all down to the program that would accompany tonight’s talk. The finished product was seamless. But any time you worked with hard drives and video, glitches lurked in the wings. “If it doesn’t work,” he added, “at least nobody dies.”
More laughter, wry this time.
“Lights, please.”
The lights dimmed. With a last flutter of nerves, Will clicked a file icon with his trackball, and the 61-inch Hitachi television behind him flashed up a high-resolution image of an operating room. A patient lay unconscious on the table as the OR team prepared for surgery. Wonder lit the faces in the crowd, most of them doctors with minimal computer knowledge. Their ages varied widely, with couples in their sixties seated beside others in their thirties. Some of the younger wives looked a lot like Karen.
Will glanced at his large-font script and said, “This patient looks thoroughly prepped for surgery, doesn’t he? Twenty minutes before this picture was taken, he assaulted a
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