Doctor Vance stood by the high metal bed, flipping through a thick folder. The overhead fluorescent lights hummed, casting a pale, cold glare across the linoleum floor.
“The ring wasn’t in her things,” I said.
Vance did not look up from the page. “The police sometimes miss small items during the initial intake, John. You should check with the deputy who logged the scene.”
“The deputy told me everything was in the bag,” I said.
Vance turned the chart toward me, pointing his silver pen at the red ink drawings that marked the skeletal diagrams. He did not look sympathetic, his face staying as flat and gray as the hospital walls.
“We have thirty-one distinct bone breaks,” he said, tapping the pen against the plastic sleeve. “Ribs, collarbone, both wrists, and the left fibula. The head trauma is what concerns us most right now.”
I rubbed my bare left wrist, my fingers finding the pale strip of skin where my watch used to sit before the strap broke on the flight from the terminal.
