What’s going on?
Lisa’s blunt features, framed by a pale blue surgical cap that corralled her curly black hair, registered equal parts astonishment and concern.
Standing behind her, and to one side, was another woman, also an OR nurse—
(Wendy)
—a skinny young woman with a long face. A single tuft of blond hair, glowing with a peroxide lacquer, poked out from underneath her blue cap and tumbled halfway down her forehead. With her puffy, bouffant surgical cap and emaciated frame, she looked like a mop standing on end. She was carrying some folded white blankets, tucked under one of her arms.
Wendy looked just as astonished as Lisa but not nearly as concerned.
In fact, something less seemly seemed to flicker behind Wendy’s eyes (pleasure? glee?), which were as blue as her surgical cap and ringed by turquoise eye shadow. Both women were dressed in dark blue scrubs.
Just like the scrubs we wear in the operating room.
“Lisa?” God, she could barely form the word. Her tongue was concrete.
Where am I?
Without sitting up, Rita turned her head to one side and spotted dark floor tiles lying about three feet below her. She turned her head to the other side and saw the same thing. She concluded, dully, that she was lying on some kind of padded surface suspended off the floor at about waist height.
She started to sit up …
… but something circling her chest, something flat and broad, seized her and yanked her back down again.
“Hey.”
The rear of her head snapped down on the padded mat. Ouch! The impact worsened her headache, and she moved her hands up to cradle her aching forehead.
Or tried to.
But she couldn’t.
Because her arms were pinned to her sides.
“Hey!”
A new emotion. Not panic—her senses were still too blunted to generate panic—but Rita felt an abrupt unease that raised her from one level of semiconsciousness to a slightly-less-semi one; and she perceived, for the first time, that she lacked all control over her current situation. Rita hated not being in control. Ever. She struggled to free her arms.
“Here,” Lisa said. “Let me help you, Dr. Wu.”
She watched as Lisa, in one smooth motion, reached down to Rita’s side and grasped a shiny metallic buckle through which wound a black band. It looked like an enormous seat belt. Lisa lifted the buckle and loosened the black band, which was pinning Rita’s torso and arms to the foam pads she was lying on.
Funny, Rita thought, as Lisa pulled the band free from the buckle and freed her from the pads. It looks just like the restraining straps we use to secure patients to our operating-room tables.
Another coincidence. Like the blue scrubs.
A moment later, as Lisa loosened a second black strap binding her thighs, Rita realized, with an uneasy swirl of emotions, that it was one of the restraining straps for an operating-room table.
The same table on which she was now lying.
“What?” Rita straightened her head and tipped her chin to her chest to stare at her feet.
That was when she noticed she wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Dr. Rita Wu, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California, was strapped to an operating-room table.
Naked as the day she was born.
Without the faintest idea of how she’d gotten there.
SPENCER
Spencer Cameron stepped outside, closed his front door, and breathed in the early-morning air of late November in coastal San Diego. It was still dark, but faint red-and-orange embers licked the sky behind the mountains to the east.
The predawn temperatures were cool, and Spencer wore black, full-length running tights with fluorescent-yellow reflectors stitched down the sides and a lightweight, black athletic shirt equipped with similar reflectors along its long sleeves. The skintight fabric strained against his massive chest, shoulders, and thighs as he stretched out his limbs and torso. He slipped headphones in his ears, tuned his iPod to NPR, and adjusted his knit running beanie over his curly, dark brown hair so as to shield the exposed portions of his ears and scalp from the mild chill. He took off at an easy jog down the street.
A stout, middle-aged woman walking a small brown dog of indeterminate breed appeared, heading in the opposite direction. She jumped back and froze as Spencer lumbered toward her. The dog, in contrast, seemed to decide that the best defense was a good offense: No larger than a good-sized rabbit, it lunged at him, drawing its leash taunt and yipping in the high, piercing frequency of small dogs.
Spencer stifled a scowl—he didn’t love dogs, especially microscopic ones that disturbed the peace of his early-morning runs—but waved gamely.
See? I’m friendly!