She and Walker had dated during his first year of residency, and things had gotten serious very quickly. She’d gotten pregnant that fall. At twenty-nine, Walker had harbored no delusions of blundering into fatherhood. His suggestion at the time was that Lana get an abortion, an idea that she responded to by quitting the hospital not long afterward, returning home to her parents’ house in Dayton, Ohio, to have the child and raise it without him. It was the last he’d heard from her for three years, until Lana, whose last name had been Snow, had called and said that she was coming back through Pennsylvania on her way to New York, and would Walker like to meet his young son?

They had met, ultimately, in the Peds ICU, after the crash.

Walker had never told anyone that the boy in the corner room was his illegitimate son. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t quite believe no one had questioned the bond that had formed so blatantly between himself and Frank Snow. Apparently, such gross outward displays of personal commitment were par for the course for residents. The nurses all thought he was sweet; his attendings thought he was ridiculous and soft, too much of an idealist.

But Walker had not been able to let his son slip away.

“Frank?” Walker said, looking down the length of the flashlight beam. “Are you still out there?”

“What…do you…want?”

“The same thing I wanted before,” Walker said. “To tell you what you really are.”

“You know what I am. This is… what I am.”

“Before all that.”

Snow nearly entered the room now, not comprehending. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re my son.”

Snow stopped.

“Come on. It’s not only possible, it’s true.”

The impending significance of this revelation struck a discordant note in Snow’s face, and his expression burst wide open in a wasp’s nest of bitterness and fury.

“You know it’s true.” Walker’s voice was almost tender.

“You know where I came from,” he shouted. “I am no one’s son!”

Snow charged inside. From Walker’s vantage point, he barely glimpsed Mike pull himself up on his haunches beside the desk, and peer in through the glass. Walker knew the magnetic field of the scanner, what they called the Gauss line, extended in a six-foot circle from the bore. Snow was just entering that radius when a great invisible hand seemed to grab hold of the steel-bladed ax imbedded in his back, spinning him around like a top and yanking him off his feet, pulling him toward the center of the magnet.

“Mike!” Walker shouted. “Now!”

CHAPTER 54

54.

On the other side, Mike leaped up, slammed the door of the room behind Snow, and hit the red button with the palm of his right hand.

For the first second or two, nothing happened.