Pain shoved the memories aside . . . pain and fear ... Where was her mama and who were these strange people bustling around her? Who was this big doctor bending over her and pressing his fingers into her tummy? Some deep part of her subconscious must have felt her life slipping away. She remembered asking him if she was going to die, and how he'd looked so shocked that she was conscious. Most of all she remembered the giant doctor going down on one knee beside the gurney so that his face was only inches from hers, squeezing her hand and saying, "Not if I've got anything to say about it. And around here, what I say goes." Something about his supreme confidence soothe her. She believed him.

She closed her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness .

That big doctor had been Duncan Lathram. And Duncan Lathram had been a vascular surgeon then. Not just a run-of the-mill type who spent his days doing varicose-vein strippings, but a gonzo with a scalpel, unafraid to take on any vascular catastrophe, the messier the better.

Like hers. The impact with the truck had ruptured her spleen and torn her renal artery. Duncan had removed her spleen and repaired The gushing artery, saving her kidney and her life.

Gin remembered being absolutely infatuated with the man. He became a demigod in her eyes. From age ten on she sent him a card every Christmas. Even went to work for him at sixteen as a part-time clerk in the record room of his office in Alexandria. She learned how hard he worked, putting in fourteen- and sixteen-hour days in the hospital and office, and often being called to the emergency at one or two in the morning to repair leaking or severed arteries damaged by everything from atherosclerosis to car wrecks to knife fights. He could be gruff, self-absorbed, even arrogant at times, but Gin didn't mind. After all, wasn't that part of being a demigod? His stamina amazed her, his dedication and boundless enthusiasm for his work inspired her so much that when she registered as a freshman at Princeton, she chose premed biology as her major. The course of her life had been set.