Izzy was cold. She curled her knees to her chest, subconsciously seeking warmth and found none. She moaned, dreaming of snow. She was outside in a brisk Reno winter. She was naked, lying in the snow. Her teeth were chattering, she was powerless to stop it.
She had to pee and now she was in one of the campgrounds on Highway 49, between Susanville and Shasta City in Northern California. She was in front of an outhouse, but the door was jammed. She had to get in, couldn’t. She had clothes on now and she wet herself and all of a sudden she knew she was dreaming and that she’d just wet the bed.
“ No,” she muttered, awake or in her dream, she didn’t know. Her throat was dry, like she hadn’t had a drink in forever. “No,” she muttered again. She had a headache, like she’d had too much wine, but the deep pain she’d been living with for the last few months was gone. She had to be dreaming, otherwise it would be front and center, reminding her of the cancer that was going to take her life in a few month’s time.
But it didn’t feel like a dream. The hangover was real, but she couldn’t remember drinking enough last night to cause it. The cold was real, too. She’d never been cold in a dream before, not like this. And the warm wet between her legs, that was real.
She opened her eyes to a hazy, green, cocooned kind of place. She was under the covers and the light was on, filtering through a green sheet.
She didn’t have green sheets.
She wasn’t in her bed.
She pulled the sheet back and gasped.
She knew where she was straightaway. She’d been here before, several times, though it had been years. She recognized the fans whirring above her head, the green room, the sterility of it. She looked right, saw that familiar door. She looked left, saw a body covered in a twin of the sheet which covered her.
She sat up in a panic, threw the sheet aside. She was naked and her right toe had been tagged. She was in the hospital morgue at St. Catherine’s, waiting to be transferred to the county morgue. She didn’t feel dead. On the contrary, she felt more alive than she had in years. Then she saw her legs and gasped.
“ What the-”
These were not old lady legs. She looked down at her breasts. They’d been sagging for the last three decades, but they were jutting out now, like a teenager’s. And her nipples were hard, like she was sexually excited.
She was excited, alright.
And she had to be dreaming.
But the puddle of warm urine she was sitting in felt real.
She pinched her cheek. That felt real. She pinched her thigh. That felt real. She took a deep breath, waiting for the pain to shoot through her lungs. Didn’t happen.
She bent forward, surprised to find she could reach the toe tag without bending her knees. She’d studied ballet when she was young. Back then she could touch her head to the ground without bending her knees. She pulled off the tag, instinctively knowing her body was in that kind of shape now.
There was a case number on the tag. That she expected. Date and time of death too, she also expected. Cause of death: Gunshot wound to the heart. That was a shocker, she’d expected cancer.
She looked down again at her breasts. Beautiful and perfect, no sign of a gunshot wound.
She shook her head, testing the hangover, which seemed to be gone now, but something not gone was the mane of hair that swished around her shoulders. She tugged on it, expecting the wig, but the hair was real.
“ Okay, Isadora, let’s figure this out.” She got off the gurney, half expecting her legs to buckle. They didn’t. She picked the sheet up off the floor, went to the deep sink, ran some water on a dry part of it, cleaned the urine away.
She wanted a mirror, wanted to see her face, but that would have to wait. She needed to get out of here before someone discovered she wasn’t dead, before they discovered that something very strange had happened. She’d been around long enough to know if she were found-dare she even think it, with her youth restored-that they’d lock her away. Then they’d poke, prod, test and retest her till they found the secret.
She didn’t want to be poked and prodded.
She didn’t know why this had happened, but it had. She’d always taken things as they’d come, played the hand she was dealt. Lately she’d gotten some bad cards, now she’d been dealt a royal flush. These were her cards now and she was going to bet them like there was no tomorrow.
To do that she had get out of this room, away from this hospital. But first she needed clothes. Fortunately she knew the hospital as well as she knew her own home. She padded to the door, opened it. The office was empty. She went to the door, checked the hallway. Not a soul, but for how long?
She jogged down the corridor to the stairway. Safely inside the stairwell, she went up two flights, opened the door a crack, saw an intern with blood on her scrubs enter the intern’s locker room. That was her goal.
She counted to thirty, guessing that would be enough time for the woman to shed her scrubs and get into the shower. Then she gave herself a count to fifteen, before stepping out of the stairway and crossing to the locker room. Inside, she heard the shower running and she found the woman’s locker open.
Izzy pulled out a pair of scrubs, stepped into them. She spotted a couple pair of grey Nikes, one pair well worn, one pair obviously new. She grabbed a pair of socks, put them on, then slid her feet into the new pair. Her new body demanded the new shoes, but unfortunately they were a little tight. Beggars can’t be choosers, she thought as she laced them up. In less than a minute after she’d entered the locker room, she left it and was back in the hall, heading this time for the elevator, which would take her to the ground floor and freedom.
She decided to leave the hospital through the emergency room exit, but when she got there she saw attendings, interns and nurses galore, standing at the ready. Something bad had happened and they were waiting to try and right some of the wrongs.
“ What happened?” Izzy heard a young nurse ask.
“ Gangbanger shot into a car full of people, caused a major accident at the Spaghetti Bowl,” a much older nurse answered.
She couldn’t leave with them standing there, not dressed the way she was. And she couldn’t turn her back and walk away either. She was wearing scrubs and though she had no name tag around her neck, she looked like a doctor. All she could do was stand and wait till the casualties arrived, then make her way out of the hospital during the confusion.
She heard sirens. Any minute the ER was going to be a beehive of activity. She couldn’t stand around unnoticed. She’d be required to do something. She looked around, headed for the restrooms. She’d hide out in the women’s till it was safe for her to make her exit.
Inside the restroom, she picked a stall, went in, closed the door, sat on the toilet to wait and her mind went straight to the fact that not only was she not dead, but she wasn’t old anymore. This was impossible. How could such a thing have happened? God, aliens, a youth ray turned on her by some genius scientist? Whatever, it couldn’t last, could it?
She closed her eyes, watched psychedelic images swirl around on the inside of her eyelids. Reds and greens and blues like she’d never seen before. Was she on drugs? Was this whole thing an hallucination? Whatever it was, she had to figure it out.
And she had to get ahold of Amy and warn her about Lila Booth. Maybe she already had, but maybe Amy hadn’t been at that ball last night.
Was it only last night? Or had she been in some kind of suspended animation? No, it wasn’t that. She’d been in the hospital morgue, that she knew for sure. And there was only one reason she’d’ve been there with a toe tag. She’d been dead.
Thinking about it was giving her a headache. She had to do something. It was time to go. She got off the toilet. She’d be home soon, then she could figure it all out.
When she left the restroom, she was confronted with orderly chaos. Everybody seemed to be busy saving lives, doing what doctors and nurses did in an emergency. She started for the exit.
“ Where’s Dr. Shaffer!” the young intern Izzy had seen earlier shouted. “If he doesn’t get here quick we’re gonna lose this one.”
“ What is it?” an older doctor, one Izzy didn’t know, one who looked like he had a foot in the grave, said.
“ Look at this X-ray, she’s got a bullet in her heart.” She was sweating bullets. “It’s beyond me.”
“ Me too,” the old guy said.
“ Shaffer’s halfway between here and Carson City,” a woman in black said, black skirt, black blouse. “He’s twenty minutes away.”
“ Shit,” Izzy muttered. Then, “I’m a heart surgeon, maybe I can help.” She moved passed them. The patient was a young woman, she was on her side, nude from the waist up. There was an entrance would in her back, no exit would. “Let me see that.” She snatched the CXR out of the intern’s hands, looked at the chest X-ray. “Double shit.”
“ Who are you?” the older doctor, named Irwin Shaw, according to his nametag, said.
“ I’m going to need an OR,” Izzy said. “OR 3 would be good.” She gave the older guy a look. “You any good?”
“ Who’s asking?” His hands were shaking.
“ You shouldn’t be here.” She recognized the symptoms. He was a drunk in need of a drink. “I don’t want you anywhere near my OR.”
“ How about you?” She turned to the intern. “Who are you and have you ever assisted in open heart surgery?”
“ Kathy Wells, and yes, I’ve assisted Dr. Shaffer several times.”
“ If you’re good enough for Aaron, you’re good enough for me,” Izzy said.
“ Wait a minute!” Shaw said.
“ I don’t have a minute.” Izzy turned to the woman in black. “You must be Aaron’s right hand woman, Belinda Quinn, right?”
“ Yes.”
“ Fine, get me a perfusionist, an anesthesiologist, the best two surgical nurses you can muster up and get them all into OR 3.”
“ I don’t know, Dr. Shaffer will be here in twenty minutes.”
“ And this young woman will have been ten minutes dead.” Izzy turned to the intern. “We’re going now.” Back to Quinn. “Do your job.” To an orderly who was watching. “Let’s move her on up.” She clapped her hands. “Now, do it now!”
“ Yes, ma’am.” The orderly went to the gurney.
“ Dr. Shaffer’s not answering his cell,” Shaw said.
“ I said move it, Belinda.” Izzy felt the walls closing in.
“ Okay, okay,” Quinn said.
“ There’s a bullet in my heart?”
“ What?” Izzy said. “She’s conscious?”
“ Where’s my daughter? Is she okay?”
“ She has a daughter?” Izzy said. “Where?”
“ Your little girl is fine.” Kathy Wells pointed and all heads turned to the other side of the glass wall. There was a little girl there, four or maybe five years old. She was alone.
“ For God’s sake, get her!” Izzy said. “Bring her here.” She turned to Shaw. “You do it!”
“ Who are you?” Shaw was getting to be a real pain.
“ Get the girl,” Quinn said. Then to Izzy, “Well, who are you?”
Izzy was stuck. She’d stuck herself in where she didn’t belong, but she hadn’t any choice. She had to say something, had to make it believable.
“ I’m Dr. Linda Eisenhower. My mother is Dr. Isadora Eisenhower,” she said, making up a fictional daughter. “I’m sure you’ve heard of her, because she practiced here for years.”
“ I came after she left,” Quinn said.
Shaw was approaching with the girl.
“ What are you doing here?” Quinn said.
“ I practice in London, at St. Thomas,” Izzy lied. “Aaron’s trying to recruit me. I was going to observe him today and talk after.”
“ Good enough for me.” Shaw was back with the girl.
“ So, you’re not licensed here?”
“ Mommy!” The child was frightened.
“ Is it true? Am I going to die if I don’t get an operation right away,” the woman on the gurney said.
“ Yes,” Izzy said.
“ Then do it.” She was very weak. It was a miracle she was conscious.
“ Blood pressure is 84 over 42, down from 95 over 55,” Kathy Wells said. “We have to do something!”
“ She’s passed out,” Shaw said.
“ Save my mom,” the child said.
“ We will,” Izzy said.
“ You can’t operate in this hospital,” Belinda Quinn said.
“ Heart rate is up from 110 to 120.”
“ Shit, we’re going now,” Izzy said. “We’ll worry about the legal after.”
“ Okay.” Quinn nodded to the orderly. “Take her up.”
“ Are you gonna make my mommy better?” the child said.
“ I am,” Izzy said.
“ Promise?”
“ Yeah, I promise.”
The orderly and Wells started moving toward the elevator with the patient.
“ I’ve paged Dr. Stanley, he’s the best perfusionist in Reno,” Quinn said. She had a Blackberry in her hand. “He’s in the hospital and on his way to the OR. I’m paging Dr. Seger now.”
“ Ralph Seger,” Izzy said. “He’s good.” He was the best anesthesiologist she’d ever worked with. He had to be in his seventies. She didn’t know he was still working. He’d recognize her. Damn. Still, she’d said she was her daughter and she’d kept her family life to herself. Ralph wouldn’t know she didn’t have a daughter. Maybe she could pull it off. She had to pull it off.
By the time she’d prepped and got to the OR, the patient had been prepped and the perfusionist was there and ready.
“ I’m Dr. Eisenhower.” She introduced herself.
“ I’m Dr. Stanley, call me Stan.”
“ Your parents didn’t?”
“ They did.”
“ A Performer, good, gotta love Medtronic,” Izzy said, referring to the heart lung machine. It was a third the size of what she’d been used to, so it could be used closer to the patient and at table height. She’d heard a lot about it, had been waiting for it when she’d retired years ago. She’d never used one. Still, she was a heart surgeon. If Dr. Stanley could do his job, so could she. She’d be alright. She had to be alright, she’d promised a little girl.
“ She’s tachypneaic and her breathing is decreasing,” Kathy Wells said.
“ Then we’d better get going,” Dr. Stanley said.
“ I’m set here.” It was the anesthesiologist, Ralph Seger.
“ I believe you knew my mother,” Izzy said, continuing the lie.
“ You look like her, though a younger version.”
“ Thanks, I think,” she said. “She’s ready, the patient?”
“ She is,” Seger said.
“ Then let’s do it.” To Kathy Wells. “We’re going to do a median sternotomy and we don’t have the luxury of time.”
Izzy made a six inch incision down the middle of the chest and all of a sudden she was home. She’d done this more times than she could count. This is what she’d been born to do and she did it well.
It was as if she were on automatic pilot when she cut along the breast bone and set the retractor. Once the heart was exposed she sighed.
“ Are you ready, Stan?”
“ Yes.”
“ Good.” Izzy cannulated the ascending aorta and venae cava, then cross clamped the aorta as Seger administered the cardioplegia, which would stop the heart.
“ Okay, Kathy Wells. The patient is on bypass and is doing fine. We can slow down now.”
“ That was fast,” Seger said. “You’re good.”
Once the heart was drained of blood, Izzy stepped aside.
“ You have good hands.” Izzy said to Wells.
“ You noticed, with all you were doing?”
“ It’s my job.” She smiled beneath the surgical mask. “I’d like you to palpate the heart.”
“ Me?”
“ This is a teaching hospital. You’re here to learn and I’m a teacher.”
“ Okay.” Kathy Wells slid her hands under the heart.
Aaron Shaffer burst into the OR.
“ What’s going on here?”
“ Not now, Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’ve a student with a heart in her hands.”
“ You what?”
“ Aaron, calm down or leave the OR.”
“ Nobody talks to me like that in my hospital.”
“ It’s my OR. Built with money I brought into this hospital.”
“ Who are you?”
“ I’m the first girl you ever loved. The one you couldn’t have, because the stars weren’t aligned. Because the time and place were wrong. God has given us a second chance. Don’t blow it. Stand back and let us save this young woman’s life.”
“ Iz?”
“ Don’t say a word. If you ever loved me, don’t say a word.”
“ Right.” Aaron stepped back, stunned.
“ I feel something,” Wells said. “In the distal septum.”
“ That’ll be the bullet,” Izzy said. “You’ll need to make a transverse incision-”
“ In the apex of the left atrium,” Wells said, finishing Izzy’s sentence
“ Right,” Izzy said.
“ Okay, I got it.”
“ Can you close, or do you want me to do it?”
“ I’ll do it with a running 3–0 Prolene suture.”
“ Good, then reinforce the entry wound with a 3–0 pleggeted Prolene suture. Can you do that?”
“ Piece of cake,” Wells said.
“ Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’m feeling a little faint. Can you close up after she’s finished with the heart.” She turned to face him, met his eyes and though they were both wearing surgical masks, she could see the astonishment painted all over his face.
“ Ha, ha, how?”
“ Don’t stutter. I’ve told you about that.” She smiled.
“ You were-”
“ Not now. You have a patient.”
“ But-”
“ It’s a miracle.” She started for the door. “We’ll talk when you finish.”
Outside the OR, she pulled off her gloves, then made for the stairs. It would take them an hour or so to finish and she had to be long gone by then.