Page 148 of Gone Before Goodbye

“So Marc is gone,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Forever.”

“Forever.”

“How do we accept that, Porkchop?”

“We don’t,” he says. “We can’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Before Maggie puts on her surgical gown, gloves, and goggles, Ivan Brovski enters the room and collapses into a chair.

“All okay?” Maggie asks.

“I need to deliver a message.”

Maggie waits.

“Oleg Ragoravich has given us clear instructions: If he doesn’t make it out of the surgery, neither do you.”

He looks up at her.

“Hell of an incentive,” Maggie says, because sometimes humor is the best defense mechanism.

Brovski stands. “I’ll see you in the OR.”

He leaves.

Half an hour later, Maggie is in the operating room and ready to go. Beads of sweat coat her forehead before she even starts.

“Doctor?”

It’s the nurse to her right.

Deep breaths, Maggie tells herself.

“Scalpel.”

Maggie begins by performing a median sternotomy to access the thoracic cavity. With the scalpel, she makes a vertical incision down the sternum and then, using the surgical saw, she divides the sternumto gain access. Maggie opens the pericardium, the membrane protecting the heart. They’ve already run the flexible tube down Oleg Ragoravich’s throat and into the esophagus and now, using sound waves from the transesophageal echocardiogram, Maggie can see the heart on his monitor.

It’s a mess.

The heart is gray and enlarged. She can see scars on the surface.

Man, this surgery is happening just in time.

The operating theater is, no question, fully stocked. The staff seems first-rate so far, even though Maggie did not meet any of them ahead of time. They, like Maggie, wear full-face masks and opaque goggles. Ivan Brovski, who, as promised/threatened, is also in the operating room, ominously explained that discretion is paramount in this strange hidden lair they vaguely call The Vineyard:

“They can’t know your identity—and you can’t know theirs.”

Oleg Ragoravich lies beneath a sea of blue drape. His rib cage is split wide open now, held in place by retractors. It’s gross to most, but Maggie finds it oddly beautiful, and yeah, she knows that’s weird. Right now, only one assistant surgeon is in the room with her. She—yes, the other surgeon is a woman too—clearly knows her stuff. The third surgeon, Maggie is told, is in the adjacent theater with the brain-dead heart donor. That surgeon has opened the chest and will extract the donor heart at the same time Maggie removes Ragoravich’s native heart and attaches the THUMPR7 in its place.

Beneath the glare from the surgical lights, Oleg’s heart pulses in a weak, spastic rhythm. The tubes from the cardiopulmonary bypass twist away from the venae cavae and aorta. Maggie nods to the perfusionist, and the bypass takes over.

Oleg’s heart sputters, slows, and then stops completely.