1

PEYTON SHIELDS COULD FEEL IT COMING. NO ONE HAD TIPPED HER off. No neon lights were blinking. But her sixth sense was in high gear.

Peyton was in her first year of residency in pediatric medicine at Children's Hospital, Boston, one of an elite thirty-seven interns chosen from premier medical schools around the world. She'd vaulted to the top through relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School. Good instincts, too, were part of the successful package, and at the moment they were telling her that something strange lay ahead.

She parked her car in the space marked PHYSICIAN outside the North Shore clinic, about thirty miles north of Boston in the city of Haverhill. Peyton was at that stage of her professional training where pediatric residents spent three or four days each month at an outlying clinic to broaden their experience. Haverhill was somewhat of a plum as far as clinical assignments went, situated in the affluent Merrimack Valley. Driving out in any direction, you were virtually guaranteed to run smack into a quaint, three-hundred-year-old town whose 98 percent white population earned more than double the state's median annual income. Though not the most charming in the valley, the city was an interesting mix of one of the finest Queen Anne–style streetscapes in America and blue-collar housing that had grown from the once-prominent shoe industry. With roughly 10 percent of its population living below the poverty level, the routine medical needs of its Medicaid children were served primarily by the clinic. Today, that meant primarily by Peyton.

"What are you two doing outside?" asked Peyton as she stepped out of the car.

It was a fair question. Even though it was a sunny fifty-six degrees—a heat wave for late February—it was highly irregular for Felicia and Leticia Browning to be caught chitchatting outside the front door at nine-thirty in the morning. The clinic's two full-time nurses were identical twins with polar-opposite personalities. Felicia was the more serious sister and a frequent pain in the neck.

"Power's out," said Leticia, giggling as usual.

"That's weird. All the traffic lights were working on my way over here."

"Cuz you was coming from the south," said Felicia. "Power's out from here north."

"What happened?"

"Earthquake," said Leticia. More giggles.

"Very funny."

"No joke," said Felicia. "We're on the southern edge of what they call the active zone, thirty miles north of Boston and on up to Clinton. Two dozen quakes in the last twenty-one years. Usually little bitty ones, like this."

"How do you know all that?"

"We'll always know more than you," said Felicia, only half-kidding. "We're nurses."

Leticia pulled a battery-powered radio from her sister's coat pocket. "They just interviewed a Boston College seismologist on the air."

"Shut up, fool," said Felicia.

"Ah," said Peyton, seeing they really weren't yanking her chain.

"I take it there's no backup generator for this place."

Leticia just laughed. Her sister said, "Dr. Simons canceled his morning appointments and went home over an hour ago."

Good ol' Doc Simons. He ran the clinic, but hands-on he was not. To him, carpe diem meant "seize the day off."

The three women looked at each other in silence, as if soliciting ideas on how to keep busy. Peyton was about to walk inside when a car sped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The driver's-side door flew open and a teenage girl jumped out with a baby in her arms.

Copyright © 2007 by James Grippando.