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.