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I practiced pediatric emergency medicine and community pediatrics for seventeen years. During that time, I faced rapists, child abusers, gang-bangers who would kill over a pair of shoes, sociopaths, psychotics, narcissists, and even one killer our prosecutor classified as a serial killer.

You know the scary thing about evil? It looks just like you and me.

When I left medicine to fulfill my life-long dream of becoming an author, I knew that I wanted to explore the various faces of evil. Because I've faced it in real-life, I knew how different it was from most of the "bad-guys" portrayed in fiction.

Evil doesn't spend its days plotting dastardly deeds of cunning or intricate, diabolical plots involving red herrings and webs of intrigue.

Rather, the evil I've seen is driven by one simple desire: they know what they want, they want it now, and they don't care what they have to do to get it.

The boy-friend baby-sitting while mom's at work who brutally beat and raped a three year old because she wouldn't go to bed when he told her the first time. He's currently on death row.

The woman who shook her baby so hard the baby hemorrhaged into his brain....because the baby wouldn't stop crying during her favorite TV show.

The gangbanger who shot a kid because he said "hi" to the wrong girl on the wrong street corner while wearing the wrong color of hat.

These are just a few of the faces of evil I've seen.

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Why? Easy. Because my sister wins. Hands down. No contest. Every time.

You see, I'm the oldest. The responsible one. The one who always had the hand-me-downs until I learned to sew and make my own clothes and then started to work and buy them myself. The one who was expected to take care of everything (cooking dinner, babysitting, keeping my room clean) and follow the rules.

I'm not a very good oldest. I was a rebel and fiercely independent, resenting any attempt to force me to follow the rules or pigeon-hole me into a caretaker role before I'd even had a chance to figure out who I was. Left home at 17 and pretty much didn't look back for a long time.

You'd think I'd paid my dues. I earned scholarships to college, then worked all through medical school and became a doctor, taught at a prestigious academic medical center, almost died twice on helicopters flying out to get patients in bad conditions, saved lives, comforted the sick and dying....

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I want to thank Penguin for inviting me to join them here this week. I'm CJ Lyons, a pediatric ER doctor who has turned to a life of crime.

My crimes take place in and around Pittsburgh's Angels of Mercy medical center, a place where no one is immune to danger.

Caught up in my murder and mayhem are four special women:

 Lydia Fiore, a street-smart newly fledged emergency medicine attending who lives her life guided by the first law of the ER: trust no one. She's new to Pittsburgh and quickly overwhelmed not by her new job of saving lives, but rather by the people who invite her to join their family--the men and women of Angels of Mercy whose lives she now feels responsible for. She starts her new life at Angels of Mercy on the most dangerous day of the year, in Lifelines.

Amanda Mason, a medical student, the first in her family to leave her rural home and go to college. Her family means everything to her, yet she's still compelled to break away and find her own path--something they see as a betrayal. Alone in the big city, far from home, Amanda finds friends who become her new family, but more importantly she learns that she is smart enough and strong enough to do anything she wants with her life. But even that knowledge isn't enough to protect her when she begins to investigate patients' mysterious deaths and then experiences their same deadly symptoms in Warning Signs.

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CJ Lyons is our guest blogger during the week of October 26th. If you have any questions for CJ Lyons, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Urgent Care:

CJ Lyons returns to the front lines of the ER and the lives and loves of four very special women. Angels of Mercy Hospital charge nurse Nora Halloran has been living with a painful secret for two long years. When a coworker is assaulted and killed, Nora must face her deepest fears and reveal all her secrets to the man she loves to stop the killer from striking again.

Read a short story by CJ Lyons.