She looked down at my chest, split open and impossible to close, and angled a mirror so I could see it for myself.
"See? A thoracotomy can be done with one hand.
"Why did you have to make things so hard for Chad?
"If I'd stopped him back then, he'd be the one standing where I am now."
Rage seized my heart. I coughed up blood and died.
When I opened my eyes again, I was watching my girlfriend charge into battle on Chad Armstrong's behalf.
She didn't know that the patient was the brother of a tycoon.
And that tycoon had an almost obsessive devotion to her brother.
The moment I realized I'd come back to the day Chad performed his one-handed thoracotomy stunt, the first thing I did was power off my phone.
I slept straight through until morning.
The next day, I turned my phone back on. Sure enough: ninety-nine missed calls.
In my previous life, Chad had known the second he screwed up. He'd called me all night, begging me to clean up his mess.
I hadn't cared that I'd just finished three back-to-back surgeries and had barely slept an hour.
I drove through a snowstorm back to the hospital and worked from dusk until dawn.
I saved the patient's life.