Borrowed Skin

I'm the cohort joke at Wexler Med.

Dr. Adrian Shaw teaches forensic pathology — Choate, Yale, untouchable. The man I've chased for three years and never landed.

He has a girlfriend. Lindley Brannock. Everyone calls her Lindy.

She's pretty in the Beacon Hill way, soft-voiced, old money. The girl I hate most in the world.

Then there was a wreck on Storrow Drive, and when I woke up, I was inside her.

I opened my eyes wearing her face, and the first thing I saw was Adrian beside the bed, looking at me the way I'd written into my diary for three years and never gotten.

I thought I'd finally won.

Then I moved into his condo, and every night he came home smelling like blood.

Until the afternoon I stood in the records room at the Suffolk County OCME and saw my own autopsy report.

Decedent: TREMAINE, YVONNE M.

Pathologist of Record: Adrian Shaw, MD.

He was behind me. His voice was very soft.

"Sweetheart. How's the new body feeling?"

He reached up and tucked a strand of Lindy's long hair behind my ear, tender, wrong.

"It's all right if you're not used to it. You'll have a brand-new one soon."