CHAPTER 8STORIES
Untroubled leaf piles disappeared from Ryan’s top ten list of concerns the second he entered the Monday morning fray of the hospital. By the afternoon, they would have been lucky to make the top hundred. Now in first place had to be Benjamin Rush University junior Ann Hodges, and her boyfriend Jonathan Brandis. By report, Ann had just turned twenty-one. She and Jonathan had planned to go out that evening to a bona fide restaurant—one with tablecloths, fawning waiters, and wine lists—once she was cleaned up from three hours of field hockey practice. But Jonathan had painstakingly arranged something else altogether. A huge surprise party awaited Ann at the apartment she shared with four other women. Jonathan had apparently timed the event to the second. He had stationed a f
