Jennifer stared out the Mercedes’s window. She was so embroiled in her own thoughts she didn’t even notice the traffic. The reality was that she had been what she called “pissed” far sooner than she’d admitted. There was no doubt Queen Victoria Hospital was jerking her around, and having been a victim long enough in her relatively short life, she didn’t relish the role. Breaking out of the role had been her major challenge. The seminal event had occurred in middle school, where truancy and fighting had become the rule for her. At loose ends, her grandmother, who had been a particularly proud woman, did something she normally would not have done: She begged for someone’s help. The person she turned to was Dr. Laurie Montgomery, a New York medical examiner whom the grandmother had practically raised from age one to age thirteen as her nanny.

At the time Jennifer had found it big-time weird to meet a stranger who called her own grandmother “Granny.” But Granny had been Laurie Montgomery’s nanny for twelve years. Not surprisingly, Dr. Montgomery had fallen in love with Granny and considered her family. So when Jennifer’s demons drove her over the cliff, Granny pleaded with Laurie Montgomery to try to stop Jennifer’s downward spiral.

With as much love and respect as Laurie held for Maria, she was happy to help. What she did was invite the wayward Jennifer to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner after school for one week to follow her around and see what her job was all about. The other medical examiners had been skeptical of a twelve-year-old girl having a career week at the morgue, but Laurie had prevailed, and the result beat expectations. The situation had been sufficiently “weird” and “yucky,” in Jennifer’s own terms, to capture her adolescent imagination, especially since it was the first academic career to which she’d been even slightly exposed. Jennifer took it all in stride—until the third day. That day, a girl just her age was brought in with a perfectly clean, round red dot in her forehead. She’d been shot by a rival gang.

Fortunately, Jennifer’s story went on to have a happy ending. Jennifer and Laurie had clicked more than either would have imagined, prompting Laurie to check with both her philanthropic mother and her own private school as to the possibility of Jennifer’s getting a scholarship. A month later, Jennifer found herself in a demanding academic environment with no gang affiliations, and the rest was history.

“Of course!” Jennifer said loud enough to startle the driver.

“Is there a problem, madam?” the driver asked, while looking at Jennifer through the rearview mirror.