Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

had emailed a silly joke about snails that he’d heard at the Waffle House. Her mother had forwarded a recipe that was never going to happen. There was a long email from her sister with a picture of Sara’s niece attached. She marked this unread and saved it for later. The next message was a text from Sara’s boyfriend. An hour ago, he’d sent her a photo of his breakfast: six mini chocolate doughnuts, an egg and cheese biscuit, and a large Coke.
    Sara didn’t know which one of them was going to have a heart attack first.
    The door popped open. Dr. Felix Connor stuck his head into the stairwell. He eyed Sara suspiciously. “Why do you look so happy?”
    “Because I can go home now that you’re finally here?”
    “Gimme a minute to hit the can.”
    Sara dropped the phone back into her pocket as she stood. Oliver wasn’t the only one who wanted to get out of here. Sara had pulled several night shifts in a row courtesy of a stomach flu that was running rampant through the hospital. She was beginning to feel punished for her own good health.
    Home. Sleep. Silence. She was already making plans as she walked through the ER. Thanks to her crazy work schedule, Sara had four full days of freedom ahead of her. She could read a book. Take a run with her dogs. Remind her boyfriend why they were together.
    This last bit widened her smile considerably. She got some curious looks in return. Not many people were happy to find themselves at Grady, which was the only publicly funded hospital left in Atlanta. The staff tended to take on the hardened demeanor of combat veterans. If practicing medicine was an uphillbattle, working at Grady was on par with Guadalcanal. Stabbings, beatings, poisonings, rapes, shootings, murders, drug overdoses.
    And that was just pediatrics.
    Sara stopped at the computer by the nurses’ station. She pulled up Oliver’s patient on the monitor. The X-ray clearly showed where the child’s right humerus had been twisted. Either the mom was being truthful about what had happened on the stairs or she was savvy enough to fabricate a believable lie.
    Sara looked up, scanning the open-curtain area, which was predictably filled with repeat customers. Several drunks were sleeping off benders. There was a junkie who threatened to kill himself every time he got arrested and an older homeless woman who belonged in a mental hospital but knew how to game the system so she could stay on the streets. Oliver’s little girl was curled up asleep on the last gurney. Her mother was in a chair beside her. She was sleeping, too, but her hand was laced through her daughter’s. She hadn’t yet noticed the security guard standing a few feet away.
    Not for the first time, Sara wished that nature had devised a system to alert the rest of the world to people who were abusing children. A scarlet letter. A mark of the beast. Some sign that let decent people know these monsters couldn’t be trusted.
    Up until a few years ago, Sara had lived in a small town four hours south of Atlanta. She’d done double duty as the county’s pediatrician and medical examiner. Her father liked to joke that between Sara’s two jobs, she got them coming and going. While this was certainly true, too many times, Sara had been put in the position of witnessing firsthand the awful things people could do to children. The X-rays that showed repeatedly broken bones. The dental records revealing teeth that had rotted from neglect. The skin that was forever marked from burns and beatings.
    Now that she was living in Atlanta, Sara had the additional knowledge that came from dating a man who’d grown up in statecare. Sara’s boyfriend didn’t like to talk about his childhood. When she touched her fingers to the healed cigarette burns on his chest, or kissed the jagged scar on his upper lip where the skin had been punched in two, she could only imagine the hell he’d survived.
    Still, there were far worse things that could happen to a child. The system was flawed in many ways, but it was also there for a reason.
    “I wish you’d stop smiling.” Felix Connor dried his hands with a paper towel as he walked toward Sara. “I gotta say, I’m still having a hard time shaking this flu.”
    Sara made her voice chipper. “Better sick at work than sick at home.”
    “Is that what you tell your patients?”
    “Just the babies.” Before Felix could come up with an excuse to leave, Sara started running down her cases. She was wrapping up the details