CHAPTER 6BRAIN-DEAD
He didn’t stick around for long, but it probably wasn’t entirely Ernest Nobleman’s fault. Ryan loved all the Carriere neurosurgical residents, and delighted in teaching them, but one or two of them could definitely test his patience, Ernest being the most adept. Ernest, a holder of an MD and a PhD from Harvard, was a brilliant but distractible first-year resident. The guy knew his neuroscience back to front, but sometimes had trouble applying it to the real world. He had called Ryan down to the emergency room shortly after 1:00 a.m., several days after Halloween. A Penn State student had run his car into a tree at seventy miles an hour, reportedly trying to avoid a deer.
“Hey there, Dr. Ryan . . . I mean, Dr. Brenan,” started Ernest. “I think we need to go on this one
