Anxiously she fastened her gaze on the door that led to the examining rooms. Why was it taking so long to remove Robin’s stitches? she wondered. Could there be complications?

A moment later the door opened. Kerry looked up expectantly. Instead of Robin, however, there emerged a young woman who seemed to be in her mid-twenties, a cloud of dark hair framing the petulant beauty of her face.

I wonder if she always looked like that, Kerry mused, as she studied the high cheekbones, straight nose, exquisitely shaped pouty lips, luminous eyes, arched brows.

Perhaps sensing her gaze, the young woman looked quizzically at Kerry as she passed her.

Kerry’s throat tightened. I know you, she thought. But from where? She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. That face-I’ve seen her before.

Once the woman had left, Kerry went over to the receptionist and explained that she thought she might know the lady who just came out of the doctor’s office. Who was she?

The name Barbara Tompkins, however, meant nothing to her. She must have been mistaken. Still, when she sat down again, an overwhelming sense of d’j… vu filled her mind. The effect was so chilling, she actually shivered.

2

Kate Carpenter regarded the patients in the doctor’s waiting room with something of a jaundiced eye. She had been with Dr. Charles Smith as a surgical nurse for four years, working with him on the operations he performed in the office. Quite simply, she considered him a genius.

She herself had never been tempted to have him work on her. Fiftyish, sturdily built with a pleasant face and graying hair, she described herself to her friends as a plastic surgery counterrevolutionary: “What you see is what you get.”