No one seemed aware of the drama that was playing out—least of all the husky chef himself.

To Lou’s left, Dennis was lost in the glory of his perfect burger.

One more slight tic by the boy, and Lou had seen enough.

But it was too late.

The kid seemed to be lost in some sort of hypnotic fugue state, timing his moves like a striking rattlesnake. His latex-gloved hand shot out toward a particular, perfect orange disk.

“Nooooo!” Lou cried out, toppling his tall stool backwards, and diving, arms outstretched, across the counter.

The heavy ten-inch blade snapped down on the boy’s extended thumb with unimaginable force.

Bone cracked like a sniper’s shot.

The boy’s shriek filled the enormous dining room, accompanied moments later by the screams from dozens of others.

Then there were more, unrelenting shrieks.

From the vegetable cutting board in the kitchen came a geyser of blood.

Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

“Oh, Jesus! My thumb! My thumb!”

In an instant, blood was everywhere, spurting into the air from within the tattered rubber glove and cascading across the wooden chopping board onto the floor.

Lou vaulted over the counter and past the waitress, whose expression gave no indication that the startling event had even registered. He slammed into the chaos of the kitchen through a swinging door with an eye-level porthole as a crush of customers and staff closed in behind him.

“It’s Joey!” someone cried out. “Joey’s cut his finger off!”

Lou’s powers of observation were immediately heightened. Seconds passed as minutes. The world around him began moving in slow motion. His tone became firmer, but his speech slowed. What might have been dozens of factors were analyzed and synthesized at once.

Crunch mode.

“I’m a trauma specialist from Eisenhower Memorial,” he heard himself announce calmly. “Please give me room. Give me some room. Someone call nine-one-one and tell me when you’ve done it. One of you bring over some rubber gloves. The rest of you, back away, please.”

Incredibly, the boy was still on his feet, staring down at his hand with what appeared to be little comprehension. Blood had sprayed across his white apron like a macabre piece of spin art. The blade had crunched through the bone just above the metacarpo-phalangeal joint—the knuckle separating the digit from the hand. It had been a vicious cut, requiring almost unimaginably intense force.

The bone had been splintered more than sheared in two. Some soft tissue remained intact at the base—a piece of good fortune that would enable optimum anatomical alignment in preparing the boy for transport. Still, as things stood, two bloody tendons and a bridge of skin were all that kept the digit from dropping into the stack of blood-soaked carrots.