Two GUH maintenance men and two residents begin to attack the ancient MRI machine with screwdrivers and electric saws, to detach the bed from its base, while Dr. Sarkar is literally on top of the machine’s bed with Katra, straddling her knees and pushing down on her stomach. If this was not all so horrible, it would look almost ridiculous—a grown man on top of a woman in a blood-drenched hospital gown, surrounded by a highly agitated crowd.

Then a gurney appears. Someone has—perhaps wisely—vetoed my suggestion that Katra not be moved.

“Lucy, you hold her neck,” Sarkar says as he climbs off the MRI bed. ER staff slide Katra onto what is called a sponge gurney, a stretcher thick with a great deal of absorption material. It’s used a lot at accident scenes. Right now it’s ready to suck up Katra’s blood. It’s been a few million hours, but Katra is now quickly being wheeled toward the elevator. Sarkar hurries along beside the gurney, his hands red and slimy with blood.

I am shaking.

I remember what my mother always told herself when a procedure wasn’t going smoothly. “We must rise to the occasion, Lucy. We must rise to the occasion.”

Five minutes later, Dr. Sarkar, along with two surgeons—one general, one gynecologic—begins trying to put Katra Kovac back together.

And two rooms away, with a muted CNN report on the television and a stack of old Good Housekeeping magazines on a table nearby, sits a trio brought together by unlucky chance: Detective Leon Blumenthal, CEO Dr. Barrett Katz, and me. Blumenthal and I are sick, scared, and spattered with blood. Katz looks rich, beautifully groomed, and very much on edge.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

SIMPLY PUT, DR. BARRETT Katz is a big mess of crazy nerves at the moment. I should not take pleasure in his pain, especially at an awful time like this, but I can’t help it. I watch him closely. The guy just can’t sit still. Every few minutes he moves from his chair to the thick glass window that separates our room from the pre-surgical scrub room. The next room over from the scrub room is the operating room itself. Katz squints each time he looks through the glass, as if he believes that if he tries hard enough, he will get x-ray vision and then actually see through and into the operating room. But no one, not even the hospital CEO, is ever allowed an unscheduled visit to the operating room. In fact, so cautious is NYPD now about the discovery of near-dead Katra and her brutal delivery that a detective and two officers have had an antiseptic shower, changed into scrubs, and joined the surgical team in the OR.

The only thing we all know is that Katra Kovac’s condition is dire.