The intern had already signed off on the chart when I got to the room. He stood proudly over his work: seven stitches.
"How'd she do that?" I asked him.
The 16-year-old patient answered: "I cut it on the edge of a garbage can. I was putting the trash out."
"No, you didn't," I said.
The intern looked up, startled. The girl turned her face away.
"Look at that cut," I said, folding my arms in front of me.
The bewildered intern peered at it again. An inch and a half long, the cut traced a short course along the underside of the girl's right forearm. Another, well-healed scar nearby, almost twice as long, ended just before her palm crease. The girl turned her hand over to hide the cut and revealed her fingernails, green with polish, bitten down to the quick.
"What am I worried about?" I quizzed the ...
