Dead med, p.1
Dead Med, page 1
DEAD MED
FREIDA MCFADDEN
Copyright © 2024 by Freida McFadden
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For my anatomy lab partners. We’re all lucky to still be alive.
Especially you, Megan.
CONTENTS
Prologue
I. Heather
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
II. Abe
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
III. Rachel
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
IV. Mason
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
V. Sasha
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
VI. Dr. Conlon
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
VII. Abe
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Afterword
The Teacher
Also by Freida McFadden
About the Author
PROLOGUE
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ANATOMY FINAL EXAM
DANIELLE
“I wish I had become an astronaut instead.”
I use the back of my forearm to swipe at strands of dark hair that have come loose from the tight bun at the back of my head. The attempt fails, and the escaped locks fall back into my field of vision. This is getting annoying—I wish I could use my hands to clear my hair from my face. Unfortunately, my hands are clad in two pairs of latex gloves that are covered in preserved bits of Agatha’s insides.
Agatha is dead.
“Or maybe a boxer…”
I try to tune out the ramblings of my lab partner, Victor Pereira. Victor’s jittery voice has been a soundtrack to every dissection I have ever done. It might have been more tolerable if Victor offered to help. Instead, he sits perched on a stool, intently watching my handiwork. I’m tempted to rub my dirty gloves on his face.
“Anything but a doctor,” Victor concludes.
You’re not a doctor yet, I nearly point out, but I hold my tongue. I need to focus right now, and the last thing I want to do is get drawn into an argument.
It’s close to midnight on a Sunday night, and Victor and I are the only two medical students in the first-year cadaver lab. I specifically chose this time because I knew the lab would be quiet and free from any distractions. I was right—all I can see are rows and rows of dead bodies covered in a layer of clear, thick plastic to prevent desiccation; all I can hear is the whir of the fans working above my head. This would have been the perfect studying atmosphere if Victor hadn’t insisted on coming along.
“I’ll miss Agatha,” Victor says. “I mean, when the class is over.”
During the first week of anatomy class, we named our cadaver Agatha. I hadn’t wanted to name her—after all, this had once been a real person who had a real name of her own. But I felt silly voicing my objections, so I stayed quiet as the other members of my lab group tossed around name suggestions. It had eventually come down to Agatha or Medusa. I was relieved when the group settled on Agatha.
Agatha does seem like an appropriate name, somehow. “Agatha” is a frail old woman who has metal rings around her sternum and blood vessels grafted onto her heart. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure, but I can make an educated guess that Agatha died of heart problems.
I try to imagine what sort of woman would make the decision to dedicate her body to a medical school. After everything I’ve seen this year, that’s one thing I myself would never do. The last thing I want is a bunch of snotty twenty-two-year-olds making fun of all my subcutaneous fat.
I hold up the musculocutaneous nerve between my forceps. The nerve is thick and yellow.
“I’m hungry,” Victor announces. “Are you hungry?”
“You’re joking.”
When I’m in the anatomy lab, food is the last thing on my mind. The smell of formaldehyde combined with the image of lacerated flesh is enough to kill any appetite I might have had. A few times, I’ve seen one of my classmates popping candy in their mouth, and I’m always in awe.
“Of course I wouldn’t eat in here.” Victor snorts, even though it wouldn’t have been the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done in the anatomy lab. For example, he once wore a hoodie in the lab and then wore it home, despite it being stained with cadaver juice.
“I’m going to the vending machines,” Victor says. “You want something?”
“No, thanks.”
Take your time, I’m tempted to add.
Victor hops off the stool and sprints out of the lab. That guy never does anything at less than ninety miles per hour. The heavy metal door slams behind me, and the room is plunged into complete silence.
It’s heavenly.
Our final exam in anatomy is tomorrow. It’s the biggest exam we’ve taken so far in the short course of our medical school career, and I want to do well because I hope to land a position in a good dermatology program when I graduate. As part of our exam, we have to go around this very lab, identifying labeled structures on different cadavers. I have to know every identifiable structure back and forth if I want to do well.
It’s not that Victor is a bad person or anything, but I’ve always considered myself a loner. I prefer solitary activities, and I hate when solitary activities turn into group activities. Studying is a solitary activity.
“Now it’s just you and me, Agatha,” I whisper. I add apologetically, “Although I know that’s not your real name.”
I dig my fingers into Agatha’s forearm, attempting to separate the muscles. When I tug on the muscle I’m holding, Agatha’s fingers curl into a partial fist. I shiver slightly.
And that’s when I hear the sound.
It’s a loud noise that comes from outside the lab. It’s a crash or… No, not really a crash. It’s more like…
A bang.
What was that? Even though the sound originated outside the heavy metal doors of the anatomy lab, it still resounded through the room, loud and clear. And then, while the echo of the noise is still in my ears, I hear it again a second time.
What could have made a bang that loud? The only thing I could think of is…
A gun.
But it couldn’t have been a gun. Why would there be a gunshot in the hospital? Much less two gunshots. It doesn’t make sense.
Where are you, Victor? How long does it take to pick out a bag of chips?
While I’m contemplating my next move, a noise from across the room grabs my attention. It’s the heavy door to the anatomy lab swinging open, squealing on its hinges. Thank God—Victor has finally selected his snack and has returned. Maybe he’ll be able to tell me what that unsettling noise was.
I squint through my thick lenses at the doorway, and I feel a rush of relief at the sight of the familiar face of my classmate.
“Hey!” I call out. “Did you hear that noise a minute ago?”
He doesn’t answer me, which I find a bit odd. It’s also odd that there’s something splattered on his scrubs. His dark-brown jacket i s hanging open, and his hands are shoved deep into the pockets. He walks toward me, the expression on his unshaven face completely blank. A drop of saltwater trickles down the side of his face.
“Is everything okay?” I ask him.
Again, he is silent. He just stares at me.
Now that he’s closer, I get a better look at the splatter across his chest. It’s dark red and still slightly damp. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it looks almost like…
Oh God.
I take a step back. “What—”
Before I can complete my sentence, something dark obstructs my vision. It takes me several beats to realize there’s a gun pointed at my face.
My knees go weak. I grab onto the edge of the table, trying to keep myself upright. I lower my eyes to Agatha’s mutilated corpse, clearly unable to offer anything in the way of aid. The gun is inches from my forehead, and I can feel the heat radiating from it. There’s no doubt in my head anymore about what that bang was.
He’s already fired this gun tonight.
Oh God. I don’t want to die like this. Not here, not now. It can’t end this way. I’ve done some bad things in my life, but I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve this…
All I can think about is how pathetic it would be to die in the anatomy lab. The janitor will probably discover me here tomorrow morning. Will he even notice that I’m a medical student and not one of the bodies?
“Please…” I whisper.
His eyes are as black and impassive as the barrel of the gun. When he speaks, his voice is flat and toneless: “Do exactly as I say if you don’t want to die.”
PART I
HEATHER
1
THE FIRST DAY
“Look to your left and look to your right.”
My eyes lift at the words of our dean of students at DeWitt Medical School, Dr. Marvin Bushnell. He has a huge, Santa Claus-esque belly and sweats with the mere effort of speaking. He’s been talking to us for about five minutes, and he’s already got a shiny forehead and huge pit stains. But he barrels on, totally oblivious to the amount of fluid his pores are secreting.
I obligingly look to my left because it’s clear everyone else in the auditorium is doing it. Two seats over is a male student with a messy brown ponytail and ratty leather jacket that smells of cigarettes and possibly some illegal substance. I can understand not dressing up in a suit and tie for your first day of medical school, but I’d think at least you’d want to shower.
And now for the look to the right: that one is my new roommate, Rachel Bingham. Rachel is not looking left or right. Rachel is rolling her eyes quite dramatically.
I had this fantasy in my head that my med school roommate and I would become BFFs and we’d braid each other’s hair and have pillow fights, et cetera. So far, I’m ninety-nine percent sure Rachel hates me. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it’s something about the way she’s looked at me since she arrived a week ago in our shared suite, her stringy brown hair falling in her face, ripped jeans held together by the grace of God, and only a single suitcase to her name. She even mocked my long-distance relationship with my boyfriend and soulmate, Landon. Hey, you might last a few months. Maybe.
I turn my attention back to Dr. Bushnell, who is about one passionate speech away from a serious cardiac event.
“In four years,” he says to the hushed crowd, “both of these people will be physicians.”
Rachel snorts audibly now. I try to flash a friendly smile in her direction, but she’s having none of that. She rewards me with another eye roll, and I focus my attention back at the dean. Fine. Rachel won’t be my friend. I’ll find another friend in the class.
Probably.
“It’s not true anyway,” Rachel stage whispers in my direction.
I raise my eyebrows at her. I’m so pleased she’s talking to me that I don’t even care that she’s speaking over the dean on our first day of medical school.
“What isn’t true?” I ask.
“We won’t all be doctors,” she says. She tucks her dark-brown hair behind her ear so that I can get my first good look at her deep-brown eyes.
“We won’t?”
Rachel laughs. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
Her lips curl into a slightly evil grin. My roommate may be genuinely evil. Are people really evil in real life? Or just in comic books?
“In every class,” she says, “ten people flunk and need to repeat the year. Five drop out, never to return. And, of course, in the last few years, there’s always one who…”
Now she pauses and draws an ominous line across her thin white neck with a well-chewed fingernail.
“One who what?” I prompt her.
Rachel frowns at me. “You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
She shakes her head. “Why do you think the school is nicknamed Dead Med?”
I did not know that nickname.
She can’t be serious. She’s just messing with me. She’s just pissed off that I left too many bottles of moisturizer in our bathroom. (I have really dry skin.)
Dean Bushnell is saying something that I completely missed, which is followed by a round of applause. I need to start paying attention and quit my doomed attempts to befriend my roommate. The dean shifts away from the podium, and another man walks up to take his place. This man is far younger than the dean, maybe fortyish, but he carries an old-man cane in his right hand and walks with a pronounced limp.
“Hello,” the man says, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. I can’t help but notice he’s wearing a bowtie. Who wears a bowtie in everyday life? “I’m Matt Conlon, your anatomy professor.”
Right—Dr. Conlon. When I interviewed here at DeWitt, the first-years had been singing praises about this guy. “Dorky but really fun,” they’d said. “He’s the best thing about the first year.”
Up on the stage, Dr. Conlon is now gesturing wildly as he describes how totally awesome anatomy is.
“The human body makes perfect sense,” he explains. “It’s the most intricately constructed machine in the world. And after you finish my class, you’re going to understand how that machine works, inside and out. And you’re going to realize how amazing it is.”
I don’t even need to look at Rachel to know that she’s rolling her eyes.
“Thank you for letting me act as your guide on this incredible journey,” Dr. Conlon says, and he gives a little bow.
Really, he bows. God, could this guy be any dorkier?
Following Dr. Conlon is a string of other professors: an elderly guy with a monotonic voice who will be teaching us biochemistry, a wild-haired female epidemiology professor, and a short, dapper man who will be jointly teaching physiology and histology. Lastly, a thin fortyish woman wearing a sharp blue dress suit steps up to the podium.
“My name is Dr. Patrice Winters,” she says. “But you can call me Patrice. I’ve been acting as the school’s wellness counselor for the last four years.”
