Chapter 2 - The Awakening at Mount Sinai
I woke at Mount Sinai Hospital with an IV line taped to the back of my hand and an irritated cardiologist standing at the foot of my bed.
His name was Dr. Paul Kaplan. He was in his late fifties, wore rimless glasses, and had apparently reached that stage in his career where fear of wealthy, powerful patients had been entirely replaced by profound disappointment in their stupidity.
“You’re lucky,” Dr. Kaplan said, not looking up from his clipboard.
I turned my head slowly, my mouth tasting like dry metal, and looked toward the rhythmic green spikes of the heart monitor beside the bed.
“I’ve been told,” I rasped, my voice sounding like gravel.
“No, Mr. Moretti. You’re not just lucky. You’re alive because someone called 911 within forty seconds of your collapse and performed baseline observation while EMS was dispatched.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, the memory of the yellow dress flickering in the dark behind my eyelids. “What happened?”
“Ventricular fibrillation. Severe dehydration. And you also have an underlying congenital electrical conduction abnormality—Long QT syndrome—that you appear to have spent the better part of your adult life completely ignoring.”
“I didn't know I had it,” I muttered.
Dr. Kaplan gave me a skeptical look over the rim of his glasses. “You didn't know you had dizzy spells? Palpitations? Episodes of sudden fatigue?”
I said nothing.
He nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought. Men in your position think your bodies are made of the same concrete and steel as your corporate portfolios. They aren't.”
Outside the glass wall of my private room, two men from my corporate security detail stood rigidly, trying very hard not to look inside. I hated hospitals. Not the blood or the needles, but the total surrender of control. The dependency.
“Who called?” I asked, cutting straight to the point.
The nurse standing beside Dr. Kaplan offered a faint, sympathetic smile. “A little girl.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“Maybe six years old. Wearing a yellow dress. She stayed right beside you on the hot pavement until the ambulance arrived.”
“Where is she?”
“Gone, Mr. Moretti. The paramedics were focused on saving your life. By the time they looked around, she had disappeared.”
“Her name?”
“Nobody got it.”
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I stared up at the sterile white ceiling as the hum of the heart monitor ticked on. A six-year-old child had saved my life on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk while hundreds of grown men and women walked past or pulled out their phones.
And she had left behind a mystery I knew I couldn't ignore.
