The coroner’s report of Clarise Williams’s cause of death came back three days later as a diffuse axonal injury (sheer injury), an injury to the brain that doesn’t cause bleeding but does damage to the brain cells. The coroner determined by the amount of swelling that Clarise lived approximately seven minutes after the sharp object penetrated her brain.
“So, she wasn’t dead immediately?” asked Rowena to her new friend Annie, as they ate nachos over glasses of craft beer at the local pub.
Annie sipped on her amber brew and nodded. “Seems that way. She was alive for five to seven minutes.”
Rowena considered this. “She was in the lobby with a hairpin stuck in her brain for seven minutes before she croaked?”
Annie chewed on a greasy chip. “Yes. That’s what the coroner said.”
“I don’t thin
