Read Do No Harm for Free Online

should have grown desensitized to medical emergencies. Suicide attempts where the bullet blows out the cheekbone but leaves the brain intact; motorcycle wrecks ending in near-decapitation-by-stop-sign; children beaten so frequently about the mouth that their frenula are torn, the stringy halters no longer connecting the upper lips to the gums. But every time he thought he'd seen it all, something found its way through the swinging ER doors to push the limits of his experience a few inches further. His experience was his strongest ally and darkest companion, a pupil ever dilating. Yesterday morning had once again proven that the world had an inexhaustible hoard of surprises. What kind of sickness had to fester in the coralline whorls of a human's brain to cause him to direct a viciously corrosive substance into another human being's face?
    Heading into the shower, David scrubbed methodically from his forehead to his toes, washed his hair, and let the hot water steam him for a few minutes before getting out. His feet perfectly centered on the white bath mat, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. By most estimations, he was a handsome man--the kind of handsome that comes not from distinctive or striking looks, but from features that are even and predictable, and therefore pleasing. A square, masculine jaw, light brown hair cropped short and worn slightly mussed, not-too-thin lips with a pronounced Cupid's bow, and two eyes that were a light shade of blue, just short of interesting. His crow's-feet were not quite visible from this distance unless he squinted. His neck seemed less firm and muscular than it had been five years ago, but he wasn't sure if that was based on a glorified remembrance. He decided he was holding up okay. Still attractive, if a little ordinary.
    Drying his back, he headed into his bedroom and placed his pajamas neatly in their drawer before dressing in his scrubs. He lifted his white coat off the chair in the corner and pulled it on, then removed his stethoscope from the inside pocket, and laid it across his shoulders. Until he felt the weight of the stethoscope around his neck each morning, he felt partially unclothed.
    Walking into the study, he admired the perfectly even shelves, the rows of books organized by size and genre. Diplomas lined the far wall, framed in a cherry wood. Harvard undergrad and medical school, equally pompous with their scrolled Latin, started the row, followed by his UCSF residency certificate and board certification for Emergency Medicine. One of his Outstanding Clinical Instructor plaques hung slightly crooked. He straightened it with the edge of his thumb.
    Turning to the large brass birdcage in one corner, he sighed before removing the drape. The Moluccan cockatoo awakened instantly on its perch, shifting from one black claw to the other. A bright salmon-pink crest protruded from behind its head, a flair of color on its otherwise cream body.
    "Hello, Stanley," David said flatly.
    "Elisabeth?" it squawked. "Where's Elisabeth?" David's wife had spent three painstaking weeks one summer training the cockatoo to ask for her when it wanted to be fed. Stanley's repertoire of comments had not since been expanded.
    "On vacation in the south of France," David said.
    It nodded its head to gnaw at something in its breast feathers, the long erectile crest spreading behind its head like an exotic fan.
    David sprinkled some birdseed into the small cup secured to the cage bars, grimacing when some fell to the hardwood floor.
    "M&M's," the cockatoo squawked. "Where's Elisabeth?"
    "Took off for Mexico with embezzled funds."
    The cockatoo regarded him suspiciously with a glassy black eye. "Where's Elisabeth?"
    "Training Lipizzans in Vienna," David said.
    His mother, were she still alive, would not have been pleased with the fact that David drove a Mercedes. Along with Doberman pinschers and von Karajan, they were, in his mother's mind, forever associated with the Third Reich. And though