The Bone Garden: A Novel (34 page)

1888

And so, Margaret, you have now heard it all, and I am at peace that the tale will not die with me.

Though your aunt Rose never married or had children of her own, believe me, dear Margaret, you gave her enough joy for several lifetimes. Aldous Grenville lived only a brief time beyond these events, but he took such pleasure from the few years he had with you. I hope you will not hold it against him that he never publicly acknowledged you as his daughter. Remember instead how generously he provided for you and Rose, bequeathing to you his country estate in Weston, on which you have now built your home. How proud he would have been of your keen and inquisitive mind! How proud to know that his daughter was among the first to graduate from the new female medical college! What a startling world this has become, where women are allowed, at last, to achieve so much.

Now the future belongs to our grandchildren. You wrote that your grandson Samuel has already shown a remarkable aptitude for science. You must be delighted, as you, better than anyone, know that there is no nobler profession than that of a healer. I dearly hope young Samuel will pursue that calling, and continue the tradition of his most talented fore-bearers. Those who save lives achieve a form of immortality of their own, in the generations they preserve, in the descendants who would not otherwise be born. To heal is to leave your stamp on the future.

And so, dear Margaret, I end this final letter with a blessing to your grandson. It is the highest blessing I could wish upon him, or upon anyone.

May he be a physician.

Yours faithfully,
O.W.H.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

In March 1833, Oliver Wendell Holmes left Boston and sailed to France, where he would spend the next two years completing his medical studies. At the renowned École de Médicine in Paris, young Holmes had access to an unlimited number of anatomical specimens, and he studied under some of the finest medical and scientific minds in the world. He returned to Boston a far more accomplished physician than most of his American peers.

In 1843, at the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, he presented a paper titled “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever.” It would prove to be his greatest contribution to American medicine. It introduced a new practice that now seems obvious, but which, in Holmes’s day, was a radical new idea. Countless lives were saved, and miseries avoided, by his simple yet revolutionary suggestion: that physicians should simply
wash their hands.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

T
ESS
G
ERRITSEN
is a physician and an internationally bestselling author. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the
New York Times
bestseller
Harvest.
She is also the author of the bestsellers
The Mephisto Club, Vanish, Body Double, The Sinner, The Apprentice, The Surgeon, Life Support, Bloodstream,
and
Gravity.
Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine. Visit her website at
www.tessgerritsen.com
.

A
LSO BY
T
ESS
G
ERRITSEN

Harvest

Life Support

Bloodstream

Gravity

The Surgeon

The Apprentice

The Sinner

Body Double

Vanish

The Mephisto Club

The Bone Garden
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Tess Gerritsen

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gerritsen, Tess.

The bone garden: a novel / Tess Gerritsen.

p.                           cm.

1. Medical examiners (Law)—Fiction. 2. Forensic pathologists—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3557.E687B66 2007                                             813'.54—dc22                                              2007029888

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50222-3

v3.0