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possibly be overcome, she was determined to be the one to do it. As long as she was aware and moving about, she had precisely the same gift as did everyone else in the world—this day.
    But she had insisted that this time Jessie perform the operation. And Gilbride, clumsily masking his relief, had turned over the reins.
    Jessie and Sara were in room 748, one of ten private rooms on the neurosurgical floor, which occupied the seventh of eight stories of the Surgical Tower. Over the five years since its grand opening, the forty-five rooms and offices on Surgical Seven had been more of a home to Jessie than her Back Bay apartment.
    It was nearing four in the afternoon. Jessie had just arrived on Surgical Seven for patient rounds, following an hour in pathology during which she had helped extract ARTIE from the late Pete Roslanski’s head. Tech Skip Porter, his jaw swollen like a plum from his dental encounter, had taken the tiny robot to their lab for a painstaking, under-microscope dissection. Jessie suspected that it wouldn’t be long before they had some answers. Upset though she was over ARTIE’s failure to complete the operation, she was pleased with the way it had performed in the early going, and totally relieved that she had gone with a trial run on a cadaver. From the early work guiding the robot through watermelons, to testing on pigs, then finally primates, she and Carl Gilbride had improved their technique just as she and Skip had improved ARTIE’s. Now, as soon as Skip had made a diagnosis, they would consider gearing up ARTIE-2 for another cadaver trial. Then, who knew? Maybe Gilbride would be ready to make a presentation to the human experimentation committee.
    For the moment, though, ARTIE had to be Skip’s problem. Sara Devereau was just the first of twenty-two patients on the two file cards Emily had prepared for afternoon rounds. Jessie, locking in a commitment that would force her to leave the hospital before eleven for the first time this week, had agreed to meet her friend Eileen at a duplicate bridge game at seven forty-five. But Sara was also a friend, and the only one of the twenty-two who was pre-op for tomorrow. If there was any rushing to be done, it would not be in room 748. If Jessie couldn’t make it to the Cavendish Club, Eileen could always drag her husband, Kenny, away from his computer for the evening to play with her.
    Emily’s extensive training, years of experience, and superb clinical judgment made it easy for Jessie to delegate responsibility to her. After sending her off to see the first few patients, she closed the door and returned to her spot on the edge of Sara’s bed. In a little more than twelve hours, their lives would be joined in a mortal struggle against a virulent, resilient cancer, that was eating away at Sara’s ability to move and think. There were things that needed to be said between them.
    “Tomorrow’s going to be tough,” Jessie began.
    Sara’s eyes held none of their usual playfulness.
    “I’m running out of steam, Jess.”
    “I know you are. I would have cracked long ago. You’ve been a titan. Everyone around here has gotten stronger from watching the way you’ve handled things—especially me. Sara, you and I both know I’m not God. But I promise you I’m going to do everything in my power to make this third one the charm.”
    “I never questioned that, but it’s good to hear anyhow. You know, it’s funny. I’m ready—at least as ready as I’m ever going to be—for the surgery. But I keep having this weird, unanswerable question running through my head. How am I ever going to know that I didn’t wake up from the anesthesia? Isn’t that silly?”
    “No. It’s hardly silly. It’s the ultimate question in every surgical patient’s mind. They just don’t always express it as eloquently as you did. But in your case, at least, the question’s not unanswerable.”
    “It’s not?”
    Jessie shook her head.
    “No. Because you’re not