“What do we have here? A bit of a conundrum, I hear. A patient who seemed to be dead and now can’t wait to get out of our ER.” His eyes scanned the ER chart, which was essentially blank. He turned to Pia. “I’m Dr. Paul Caldwell. You found him, I understand.”

“Yes, my name is Pia.”

“And you’re a physician, I’ve been told.”

“Sorta,” Pia said, not wanting to misrepresent herself. “I graduated from Columbia Medical School, but I put off my residency to do research.”

“Okay,” said Paul. “Tell me about the patient.”

“I found him while out jogging. Apparently he was running as well when he collapsed. When I came upon him, he wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t feel a pulse. Not knowing how long he had been in that state, I did CPR. The only things I noticed were that his skin was very warm to the touch, and it looked like he had some urticaria on his forearms. After a few minutes of CPR he came to, and it was an extraordinarily rapid recovery. One minute he was unconscious and the next he was wide awake. He has been agitated ever since.”

“So there’s no history whatsoever?”

“None. He doesn’t speak English, and my Mandarin, which is what I think he is speaking, is nonexistent.”

Paul smiled. He found Pia intriguing, especially because she was one of the most exotically beautiful women he had ever seen. He tried to guess her genealogy but couldn’t. His best guess was a North African and French mixture.

“Columbia University. Interesting. I’m an East Coast transplant myself. I went to Harvard but came out here to the University of Colorado for my residency. I even did a rotation here at Boulder Memorial. So what do you think is going on here with our patient, Miss . . . Ms. . . . Mrs. . . . ?”

“Pia Grazdani,” Pia said, not willing to rise to the obvious bait. “Beats me what’s wrong with him, but I’m telling you, as far as I was able to see, he was in full cardiopulmonary arrest when I found him. I thought about heat stroke because he felt so hot, with no perspiration. There was also a question of a seizure. I also thought of septic shock. But none of those goes along with the other thing I noticed: he had hives on his forearms, so maybe it was an allergic reaction of some sort.”

“Well, the best part is he seems to be doing quite well,” Paul said. “Let’s just run some tests on this fellow if we can.”

Paul then tried to talk to the man, but he stayed silent, glaring at Paul as if to dare him to come closer. Paul took an ear thermometer out of his pocket and found a cover for the probe. The only positive finding on the nascent chart was the elevated temperature.

“I just want to . . . wow, easy there, friend!” As Paul had lent over the man to take his temperature, the man angrily swatted Caldwell’s hand away.