In the StoryThe Surgeon
The operation starts in an hour. Elias remembers his patient dying. In Boston, Elias Cormier knows the steps, the checks, and the decisions awaiting him in the operating room. He also carries another operation: the one this woman did not survive. Nothing entitles him to treat his memory as a medical finding. Nothing makes it easy to forget.
Open the novel ↗A moment in the opening pages
Elias Cormier placed his coffee on the edge of the nursing counter, far enough from the files to avoid Margaret O’Connell’s look reserved for uncovered liquids. He enlarged the aortic image on the wall screen. The ward’s blue light drained color from faces; beyond the seventh-floor windows, Boston still hesitated between night and a gray September morning.Read the excerpt ↗