The Ex: An Annabelle Schwartzman Story by Danielle Girard

Author:Danielle Girard [Girard, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saddle Peak Entertainment
Published: 2022-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Please turn the page for a preview of book one of the Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman Series, Exhume.

1

San Francisco, California

Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman threaded her half-circle number-five suture needle, the kind normally used in orthopedic surgery. Pinching together the edges of the Y-incision she’d made an hour earlier, she began the process of closing the victim’s chest.

The chest and torso had been badly burned, and the fire left the skin fragile. Since there wasn’t going to be an open casket, the standard protocol was to use staples to close the incision. Schwartzman preferred sutures. Staples were effective but seemed too industrial. The sutures were slower, and she enjoyed these last minutes with the victim, the time to fully process the death before contacting the investigator.

Both the intensity and the reward of the medical examiner’s job were in being the final voice for a victim. Schwartzman was the last person to have access to the body, the one who decided if death was from natural causes or at the hand of another. It was intense and quiet work, the hours spent studying each piece in a puzzle that needed to be worked out.

In medical school, many of her peers chose specialties in order to interact with patients—gynecology for the joys of birth, or pediatrics for the children.

But those jobs came with sadness, too. Fetuses didn’t always make it to full term. Children developed diseases and died.

As an ME, Schwartzman interacted with patients in the most intimate way—limitless in the depths she could go to diagnose a death. For many, forensic pathology would seem like an impossible choice. For her, it was the only one. People chose medicine for the heroics—to cure disease, save lives. In forensic pathology, there were no heroics. Just unanswered questions.

The overhead light shut off. She waved her arm in the air to trigger the motion sensor. After 7:00 p.m., the lights automatically turned off after ten minutes. The halogen in the corner crackled angrily as it flickered on and off before settling into a solid glow. The hallways were dark, the room silent.

Some of the department’s other medical examiners worked with loud music, but Schwartzman appreciated the silence. One reason she enjoyed being in the morgue at odd hours.

She had been heading home from a dinner with some women from the police force when the morgue called to her, left her energized, ready for work.

She didn’t go to the morgue because there was work—the work was always there. What she loved about the morgue was the space. The smell of the grapefruit lotion she used after she’d washed up and before she donned gloves, the vinegar scent of the clean instruments and table.

She always smelled these before the body.

The girls’ night out with her coworkers on the force had given her a chance to talk to Homicide Inspector Hailey Wyatt, to get to know her away from the crime scenes they had worked together. Schwartzman had surprised herself by opening up about Spencer.

How long since she had done that?

Melanie

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