Coincidence is a tricksy bitch, and it so happened that Brady was transported to Kiner Memorial by Unit 23 out of Firehouse 3. Rob Martin wasn’t on the scene—he was at that time touring Afghanistan, all expenses paid by the United States ­government—but Jason Rapsis was the paramedic onboard, trying to keep Brady alive as 23 raced toward the hospital. If offered a bet on his chances, Rapsis would have bet against. The young man was seizing violently. His heart rate was 175, his blood pressure alternately spiking and falling. Yet he was still in the land of the living when 23 reached Kiner.

There he was examined by Dr. Emory Winston, an old hand in the patch-em-up, fix-em-up wing of the hospital some vets called the Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club. Winston collared a med student who happened to be hanging around the ER and chatting up nurses. Winston invited him to do a quick-and-dirty evaluation of the new patient. The student reported depressed reflexes, a dilated and fixed left pupil, and a positive right Babinski.

“Meaning?” Winston asked.

“Meaning this guy is suffering an irreparable brain injury,” said the student. “He’s a gork.”

“Very good, we may make a doctor of you yet. Prognosis?”

“Dead by morning,” said the student.

“You’re probably right,” Winston said. “I hope so, because he’s never coming back from this. We’ll give him a CAT scan, though.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s protocol, son. And because I’m curious to see how much damage there actually is while he’s still alive.”

He was still alive seven hours later, when Dr. Annu Singh, ably assisted by Dr. Felix Babineau, performed a craniotomy to evacuate the massive blood clot that was pressing on Brady’s brain and increasing the damage minute by minute, strangling divinely specialized cells in their millions. When the operation was finished, Babineau turned to Singh and offered him a hand that was still encased in a blood-stippled glove.

“That,” he said, “was amazing.”

Singh shook Babineau’s hand, but he did so with a deprecating smile. “That was routine,” he said. “Done a thousand of them. Well . . . a couple of hundred. What’s amazing is this patient’s constitution. I can’t believe he lived through the operation. The damage to his poor old chump . . .” Singh shook his head. “Iy-yi-yi.”

“You know what he was trying to do, I take it?”

“Yes, I was informed. Terrorism on a grand scale. He may live for awhile, but he will never be tried for his crime, and he will be no great loss to the world when he goes.”