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outside the ER doors, the wood rough but warm, usually a pleasant place to finish up a chart. Trent’s EMT partner redressed the gurney behind their ambulance parked next to ours.
    Trent nodded. “ ’Sup, dude.”
    “Hey. Busy day, huh?”
    “Tell me about it. All bull too.”
    I pulled out a pen for the chart’s narrative section.
    Medic Two arrived on scene to find a forty-year-old male awake, alert, and oriented, three-point restrained and suspended in the driver’s seat of . . .
    A horn blared. Light traffic halted by a crosswalk on Mill Street. I glanced at Trent. “So what’d you guys bring in?”
    He stared across the street. “Seizure.”
    “And you don’t consider that a bona fide call?”
    He turned to me with a condescending look. “Dude. Really? How many seizures do we go on every day? It’s not even an emergency.” He took a pointed drag and shook his head.
    Even from the far side of the bench his ego was edging me out. But I expected that attitude from him. I shrugged it off and quipped, “That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”
    The glass doors slid open and Bones walked through, Styrofoam coffee cup in hand. I still had half of my charting left.
    Rolled-over sedan with moderate damage to the roof and passenger side.
    The acrid stench of cigarette smoke wafted past the bench.
    Trent watched his partner clean the back of their rig. “And they wonder why they can’t keep medics around here. Pay them scrap to do what? Haul around drunks that aren’t going to pay for the ride anyway.”
    I’d given up on coherent reasoning with Trent. A breeze flipped my chart. I flattened it out.
    Positive ETOH, complaining of minor cervical and thoracic spinal pain.
    The radio beeped. “Medic Two or Medic Nine, can you clear County for a call downtown?”
    Nine had arrived a solid ten minutes before us. I waited for Trent to answer. He blew smoke and cracked his neck.
    “Medic Two or Medic Nine, Aprisa.”
    I shook my head. Forget it. We’ll take it. I tossed the chart in the metal clipboard and stood.
    Trent flicked the cigarette on the concrete and depressed the transmit button. “Aprisa, Medic Nine’s available.” He ran his tongue under his lip. “See you, Jonathan.” He pounded the side of the ambulance and shouted at his partner, “Dude, come on. Let’s go.”
    The Washoe County Morgue was not one of Bones’s favorite establishments.
    But several rigs came available after Medic Nine took the downtown call, so I managed to talk dispatch into allowing us an extended stay on the hospital grounds to follow up on Simon Letell and visit an old friend.
    The morgue was its own separate but small building, set out on a far corner of the hospital’s parking area. We greeted the receptionist in the lobby and descended the stairs into the basement. A glass wall, interspersed with steel support members, separated a small vestibule from the large exam room. Through the glass at the far end of the room I saw Dr. Eliezer Petrov’s stocky frame operating the crematory oven.
    His curly white hair stuck out from under the surgical cap he wore. He noticed us standing there, waved, and walked over. Pulling off a pair of latex gloves, he opened the door.
    “Jonathan, great to see you again.”
    I shook his hand and patted his shoulder. “It’s good to see you too, Doc.”
    Fog bordered his spectacles. He turned to Bones. “Hello, Thaddeus.”
    Bones couldn’t stand that Eli used his proper Christian name. “Hello there, Dr. Petrov.”
    Eli wiped beads of sweat from the sides of his nose. “Takes a bit to fire that thing up, but once it gets going . . . You know we’re one of the last morgues to still operate a crematory?” He leaned on the door and exhaled. “What brings you two down to the dungeon?”
    My radio squawked. I turned down the volume. “There’s a couple things, actually.”
    “Do tell.”
    “Well, for one, I’ve been awarded that full-ride scholarship to UNR Med School.”
    His face