Triggers

“They’re relocating most of the White House staff to a facility in Virginia, I’m told,” said Griffin. Mount Weather was an underground city there, built during the Cold War; there were contingency plans for running most of the executive branch from it.

“Take me…there,” said Seth.

“Not yet, sir. It’s not safe to move you. But your chief of staff will be at the Virginia facility soon. He can be your eyes and ears there; we’ll get you a secure line to him.” A pause. “Mr. President, how do you feel?”

Seth closed his eyes; everything went pink as the overhead light filtered through his eyelids. He tried to breathe, tried to hold on to his sanity, tried not to let go—not to let go again. At last, he managed to speak. “Were…were my…injuries…life-threatening?”

“Yes, sir, to be honest. We almost lost you on the operating table.”

Seth forced his eyes open. To one side, he saw Susan Dawson and another Secret Service agent whose name he didn’t know. He felt weak, still parched, emotional agony layered atop all the physical pain. “Did you…open my chest?”

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“Did my heart stop?”

“Sir, yes. For a time.”

“They say…if you’re about to die…your life…flashes in front of your eyes.”

Griffin, still looming over him, nodded. “I’ve heard that, sir, yes.”

Seth was silent for a few moments, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide if he wanted to confide in this man—but it had been the damnedest thing. “And, well,” he said at last, “something like that happened to me.”

Griffin’s tone was neutral. “Oh?”

“Yes. Except…” He looked at the doctor for a moment, then turned his head toward the windows. “Except it wasn’t my life that I saw.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Someone else’s memories,” said the president. “Not mine.”

Griffin said nothing.

“You don’t believe me,” Seth said, with effort.

“All sorts of weird things can happen when the brain is starved for oxygen, Mr. President,” Griffin said.

Seth briefly closed his eyes—but the images were still there. “That’s…not it. I…have someone else’s…memories.”

Griffin was quiet for a moment, then said, “Well, you’re in luck, sir. As it happens, we’ve got one of the world’s top memory experts here—a fellow from Canada. I can ask him—”

Griffin’s BlackBerry must have vibrated because he fished it out and looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” he said to Jerrison, then into the phone: “Yes, Professor Singh? Um, yes, yes. Wait.” He lowered the handset and turned to Susan Dawson. “Is your middle name Marie?”

Susan’s eyebrows went up. “Yes.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Griffin said into the phone. “What? Um, okay. Sure, I guess. I’ll tell her. Bye.”

Griffin put the BlackBerry away and turned to face Susan. “Our resident memory expert would like to speak to you up in his office.”

Chapter 8

Eric Redekop continued down the hospital corridor, accompanied by Dr. Jurgen Sturgess. They were both still a bit rattled from their encounter with the distraught woman named Nikki, and Eric was exhausted from the hours of performing surgery on the president. Sturgess soon headed off in another direction, leaving Eric walking alone. In the middle of the corridor was the nurses’ station, and he smiled as he saw Janis Falconi there. She was thirty-two, and she was a knockout: leggy, stacked, with long straight platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes.

He normally saw her only in her nurse’s uniform, but he’d run into her on the street once during the summer when she’d been wearing a tank top, and he’d been surprised to discover she had a large, intricate tattoo of a striped tiger stretching its way up her left arm onto her shoulder. As a doctor, Eric had an instinctive dislike for tattoos, but this one had been so elaborate, with such subtle shading and vibrant coloring, he’d had to admire it; he admired it even more when Janis told him that she herself had done the original art it had been made from.

Of course, right now, he could see no sign of the tattoo as he approached, but his memories of her on that summer day, arms and shoulders exposed, came to the fore, and—

And—ouch!

Getting a tattoo hurt!

And getting one as elaborate as Janis’s really hurt.

Eric found himself looking for a way to steady himself. An empty gurney had been pushed against the corridor wall next to him; he grabbed one of its tubular metal railings, and—

And he couldn’t take his eyes off Janis.

She hadn’t looked up yet, hadn’t noticed him, but—

But he found himself reliving that summer’s day—that August day, standing outside Filomena, a restaurant he’d never heard of or even noticed, he was sure, but he knew that was its name.

His grip on the tubular railing tightened.

Cute.

Yes, yes, she was—very. But it wasn’t just the word “cute” that had popped into Eric’s brain. No, no, no, there was a pronoun in front of it.

He’s cute.