“So what’s so…I mean, why is everybody talking about it?” asked Dr. Theresa Mendavey.

Dr. Mendavey, the soon to be head of neurosurgery at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, and her operating team were on a coffee break between operations in the doctors’ lounge. Theresa stood leaning against a cabinet, sipping a cup of hot black coffee, thinking. Myth had it that Dr. Mendavey could think of ten different subjects at the same time. Even when she spoke she was also thinking. At that moment in time, along with the new television show The Big Question, Dr. Mendavey was thinking about the the female construction worker with the nail accidentally shot into her skull that had pierced her brain and whom she would be operating on next, yet another life-or-death situation.

Dr. Theresa Mendavey was thirty-nine years old. She had evolved from a beautiful teenager into a beautiful woman. From a druggie dropout to graduating with honors from Stanford University and Johns Hopkins Medical School. Theresa had never been married. Her friends said she never would be. They said the woman was extremely content with her life as it was and hadn’t any desire to change it.

Working with Dr. Mendavey came with an extremely dark side. The doctor was an arrogant, tough leader who neither brooked mistakes nor tolerated stupidity. Any occasion for either and more often than not the culprit was thrown not only off her team but often out of the hospital as well. Such was the deep-seated ill will a coworker might incur from Mendavey. And she was a sometimes vicious, Captain Queeg–like taskmaster. She berated underlings in front of others and tended to shout at them when angry. Her favorite expression was, “You’re not listening.” The phrase was melodically spoken, starting low and ending high (YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!). Dr. Mendavey would not have a man on her team and operated only on female patients. Exacting and dictatorial, Dr. Mendavey was one of the very best brain surgeons in Manhattan, and her associates knew it. There was rarely an opening on her operating team. The odd thing about Dr. Theresa Mendavey was this: Even though most of her colleagues couldn’t stand her, they were all proud to work beside her. It was a feather in a woman’s cap and an excellent career move to be connected with the doctor.

One afternoon ten years before, Theresa’s mother, Edna Mendavey, lay down on the bed in a guest room of the Love Apple Mansion and died from an overdose of barbiturates. No one was sure whether it was a suicide or an accident. Theresa’s father, Hector Mendavey, became a billionaire in 2009. While celebrating the event in Las Vegas, Hector suffered a fatal heart attack playing craps and fell onto the table, his head landing in a pile of his one-hundred-dollar chips.