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Adam waited in silence with Iris and Grant on uncomfortable chairs. Eventually, the Sheriff excused himself for a phone call. He hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when a man in scrubs arrived to let Iris know Harlan was out of surgery. Dark-skinned and dark-haired, not much taller than Iris, the doctor had an earnest but no-nonsense way of speaking to her. Adam hovered at her elbow, but kept missing words. More likely, he was simply incapable of taking them in.
The doctor explained that the skull wasn’t solid, but rather was made up of many fused bones. “Mr. Miller had a depressed fracture of one of the parietal bones—”
Adam’s hands started to shake as the doctor pointed to that portion of his own skull, toward the back on one side.
“—meaning pieces of bone were pushed in.” Th
