Critical Judgment
Michael Palmer
Language: English
Pages: 450
ISBN: 0553574086
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the tiny town of Patience, California, newcomer Dr. Abby Dolan has noticed a frightening syndrome among her emergency room patients. It begins with a baffling, seemingly minor set of symptoms, but builds relentlessly until it plunges its victims into insane, murderous rages. As she searches for clues to this deadly mystery, Abby's superiors make it clear her probing is unwelcome.
Soon Abby will learn just how high the cost of the truth may be--and how far someone will go to keep a lethal secret. But she may not find the answer until it's too late to save her patients, her career...her life.
man did not seem to recognize her, which was somewhat strange. There was a two-hour health-and-safety talk she gave to each shift every four months dealing with various topics including toxin containment, evacuation procedures, and even first aid. And although she had no way of knowing all the twenty-four hundred or so Colstar employees, they almost all had reason to know her. She moved close enough to see the man’s ID badge and to give him a look at hers. Jeff Kidd, Warehouseman. “I’m Kelly
She went back up to the first floor and pulled open the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen, sensing this wasn’t the spot either. Next, she bypassed the dining room and headed to the den—the room where the Alliance meeting had been held. In the hallway she stopped, drawn, as she had been the first time she saw them, to the dozen or more framed photographs of a country … and a woman. Paraguay, Lew had said. Paraguay and his late wife. During the many hours Abby had spent with him, he had not
Quinn and subsequent tour of Colstar with Kelly Franklin. But could she do that without firmly committing herself to the Alliance? She was in a very shaky position at PRH. Openly joining the Alliance would almost certainly put her on the unemployment line. She wasn’t certain anymore how she felt about helping Josh get to the bottom of his problem. But losing her job at the hospital would effectively relieve her of the chance to decide, as well as the opportunity to determine whether her efforts
fatigue, and still others, a chronic cough that was unresponsive to antibiotics. By the time Abby arrived home, the best theory she had come up with was that she had stumbled by accident on a scam to raise revenues for the hospital or justify its MRI unit by ordering an excessive number of tests. What did the scam have to do with the NIWWs? Probably nothing. Upon her hurried return home from the computer room at the community-college bookstore, Abby had searched for a spot to hide the
well. In fact, during training there was a certain cachet that surrounded “doing a thirty-six.” But now she knew there was nothing heroic about long stretches without sleep, and a lot that was not only stupid, but for a physician, downright dangerous. The Patience town hall, located on the small village green not far from the police station, was the only granite building in town. Like most everything else in the valley, it was postcard perfect, with a manicured lawn and a tree-lined duck pond in