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  LUCIDITY

  CJ Lyons

  PRAISE FOR CJ LYONS:

  "Adrenalin pumping." ~The Mystery Gazette

  "Riveting." ~Publishers Weekly Beyond Her Book

  "Smart and intriguing, and her character development is so incredible that she leaves me literally breathless waiting to see what will happen next." ~Becky Lejeune, Bookbitch.com

  Lyons "is a master within the genre." ~Pittsburgh Magazine

  "Breathtakingly fast-paced." ~Publishers Weekly

  "A winner!" ~Romantic Times, Top Pick

  "Simply superb…riveting drama…a perfect ten." ~Romance Reviews Today

  "Characters with beating hearts and three dimensions." ~Newsday

  "A pulse-pounding adrenalin rush!" ~Lisa Gardner

  "Packed with adrenalin." ~David Morrell

  "Engrossing, intriguing..." ~Heather Graham

  "An adrenalin rush and an all-around great read." ~Allison Brennan

  "…Harrowing, emotional, action-packed and brilliantly realized. CJ Lyons writes with the authority only a trained physician can bring to a story, blending suspense, passion and friendship into an irresistible read." ~Susan Wiggs

  "Simply exceptional. The action never lets up…keeps you on the edge of your seat." ~Roundtable Reviews

  "Explodes on the page…I absolutely could not put it down." ~Romance Readers' Connection

  "A perfect blend of romance and suspense. My kind of read." ~#1 New York Times Bestselling author Sandra Brown

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2010, CJ Lyons

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Library of Congress Case # 1-273031561

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  LUCIDITY

  CJ Lyons

  CHAPTER 1

  Wrestling with Angels

  Operating Room 6, case 3, to follow

  Surgeon: Helman

  Patient: Moran

  Anesth: Warden

  Procedure: temporal lobe biopsy

  Equip: cranio tray, Lucidine protocol

  Most of us only die once.

  Death is something we fear, we avoid, we struggle against, denying its inevitability. Not so for Grace D'Angelo Moran. For Grace, dying held no fear.

  Rather, it offered hope.

  She had danced with Death, cheated Death, even stolen from its all-consuming greedy grasp. Now, finally, Grace knew her time had come. She was Death. Why else the paralysis of her limbs, the eerie disconnected feeling as if she floated outside her body?

  She heard Jimmy's voice and began to struggle, impatient, desperate to return to him. All those years of her taunting Death, it should come as no surprise when Death chose to return the favor.

  As always, it was Jimmy who provided her with much needed patience and solace. "Our love," his voice rang through her mind, his Irish lilt as crisp as fresh-bloomed jonquils, "will live forever."

  He had used those same words, in both English and Gaelic, when he toasted her on the night they became engaged, drinking Guinness from champagne flutes, their glasses meeting with a sparkling chime.

  "Promise?" Grace had asked, reaching her hand with its new shimmering emerald to wipe foam from his lip.

  "Promise. Our love's too strong to die."

  That had been four and a half years ago. Now Jimmy's voice rang clear once more, pealing like church bells on Easter morn.

  And so Grace struggled. Where was he?

  Grace fought. Harder than she ever had in life.

  She gagged and retched, struggling with the unseen forces keeping her from Jimmy. She felt pain. First it was faint. Distant pins and needles in her toes. Then a stabbing spiraling into her chest as she tried to force her lungs to expand.

  If her head had been less muddled, she might have remembered that corpses don't fight to breathe.

  But her entire being was focused on finding Jimmy. It had been so very long. His voice was so clear in her mind, he had to be near.

  As a final cacophony ricocheted through her head, she wrestled her eyes open, anticipating being greeted by Jimmy's wide grin.

  A bright white light flooded over her, drowning her in its brilliance. Grace did not close her eyes against the radiance. Damned if she would. Not after fighting so hard to get here.

  "What the--Eve, get her back under!" A man's voice thundered through Grace's awareness, shattering the silence.

  "I'm working on it, Dr. Helman." The silhouette of a woman's head eclipsed the light filling Grace's vision. "It's a reaction to the Lucidine. Give me a second."

  Grace's body bucked as an invisible force drove air into her trachea just as she was trying to breathe out. Her throat spasmed against the sneak attack. Tears seeped from her eyes.

  Corpses didn't cry.

  The woman turned toward her, revealing deep grey eyes above a surgical mask, wisps of blonde hair escaping from the paper cap that covered her head.

  "Hurry up! I'm drilling into her brain for chrissakes!" The unseen man's voice roared like a lion, dissolving into nonsense syllables as it penetrated the mists shrouding Grace. He sounded nothing like Jimmy. Where was Jimmy?

  "You're at Angels of Mercy Medical Center," the woman told Grace in the chipper tones of a disk jockey announcing top ten hits. Her hands flew in and out of Grace's peripheral vision, revealing fluttering glimpses of shiny glass ampules. "I'm Dr. Warden. I'm going to put you back to sleep and when you wake up again everything will be all right."

  Grace no longer fought the tears. She closed her eyes, surrendering the light.

  The woman lied. Jimmy was dead. And she was still very much alive.

  Everything would not be all right.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Escape

  "Grace Moran. Thirty-two-year-old white female presenting with new onset seizures. Yesterday, biopsy revealed a fast growing, high grade glioma originating in the right temporal lobe," Dr. Jonas Helman, Chief of Neurosurgery, was saying when Vincent Emberek entered the conference room.

  According to Vincent's watch, he was right on time for the Tuesday afternoon Neurosurgical Case Conference, but obviously his watch and Dr. Helman's did not agree. Vincent shuffled his stack of files and sidled toward the rear of the room, hoping to go unnoticed.

  The six neurosurgery attendings, each flanked by their own residents, surgical fellows and medical students, all turned to stare at Vincent as if he trespassed on hallowed ground.

  "Can I help you?" Helman asked in a frosty tone, obviously irritated at having his presentation interrupted.

  So much for a low profile. Helman was the last person Vincent wanted to piss off, not now when he needed the surgeon's support. "Dr. Emberek, Pediatric Chief Resident," Vincent introduced himself. "I was invited--"

  "Right, the pygmy doctor."

  Vincent ignored the insult. Helman probably would have called him a "flea" if Vincent had introduced himself as a Medical Resident. What would the neurosurgeon call him if he knew Vincent had completed both residencies? He was
saved from replying by the entrance of a smiling blonde who breezed in with no apologies for being late.

  "Vincent, you made it." Dr. Eve Warden greeted him with enthusiasm, taking his hand and leading him to a chair. "Jonas, you remember Dr. Emberek," she called to Helman, ignoring the surgeon's glower. "I invited Vincent to present Katherine Jellicle's case."

  The surgeon grunted his acknowledgment. "We'll get to her in a minute." Helman gestured for the lights to be dimmed and the three dimensional projector turned on. The air shimmered with a violent glow of color. "You can see the extent of the tumor. It involves the hypothalamus and amygdala, wrapping around the optic nerve."

  Someone in the back gave a low whistle. "That's one nasty sonofabitch," came a murmur of appreciation from the audience.

  Vincent glanced up from his papers. Suddenly, he was inside the patient's brain.

  Her optic pathway shimmered in yellow, the hypothalamic nuclei and limbic system in blue. And, in the sickly sweet purple of spilled Kool-Aid, the tumor sprawled across the vital areas that controlled emotions, language, memory--in short, everything that made Grace Moran human.

  "A perfect candidate for my new procedure," Helman announced. He strutted before the screen like a proud father, as if he'd given birth to the massive tumor himself.

  "It'll be a tricky one, Jonas," a grey-haired surgeon said with authority. Senior in years but not in prestige, Vincent thought, noting Helman's bemused expression. At forty-eight, Helman was young to be Chairman of Neurosurgery, a fact that rankled his colleagues and caused him no small amount of satisfaction. The fact that he was also tall, still had a full head of hair, drove a new Porsche every year, and was an excellent surgeon didn't help him win any popularity contests among his fellow surgeons. "Are you certain you want her to be the first?"

  "Oh, yeah. This bastard is mine," Helman replied with a grin. "And get this--the subject has a history of anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and agoraphobia."

  "Caused by the tumor?"

  "No, pre-existing. Post traumatic stress disorder. She hadn't left her house in nearly four years. We got her after her housekeeper found her unconscious on the floor and called 911."

  "Lucky for us."

  Helman smiled, his perfectly aligned teeth gleaming violet in the reflection of the projected image. "Right. If not for that, she'd probably have gone peacefully in her sleep."

  "How will you get psych on board?" another surgeon asked.

  "Don't have to. If she refuses the surgery, the tumor will kill her in a matter of weeks. Her past psych history gives me an out. I can have her committed and get a court order to operate if need be."

  "Think they'll go for that? It is an experimental procedure and awfully risky," the first surgeon argued.

  "If you were the one holding the scalpel, I'd agree." Helman's reply was joined by the amused chuckles of his compatriots. "But no one's gonna let us sit back and watch this girl die. Not when I can save her life."

  "And make medical history by doing so."

  "Exactly," Helman concluded, his smile widening until it binged the PT Barnum end of the spectrum.

  A sucker born every minute—only this time the "sucker" in question was a woman fighting for her life. Vincent marveled at the way the surgeons diminished a woman's life to another challenge for their already overblown egos. Personally, he was more interested in what kind of trauma would have kept the patient, Grace Moran, imprisoned by her own fears and anxieties for so long. Four years, Helman had said.

  Now that the tumor had forced her from her sanctuary, how would she respond? Would she retreat again? Or fight to return to what most people regarded as the "real world"?

  Of course, with a tumor that pervasive, she could be lying in her bed a vegetable—or worse. Hardly human. No conception of reality….maybe she'd already found her escape.

  Helman brought the lights back up, a flick of his finger vanquishing the hungry mass devouring the woman's brain. "I'm transferring her to the Extended Care Unit today to begin brain mapping. If everything goes well, we'll operate on Friday--Saturday if we have to get the court order." He jerked his chin at Vincent. "The next case is Jellicle, my Rasmussen's Syndrome. Emberek, would you like to present her medical history?"

  Vincent got to his feet, gathering his files. As he passed her, Eve Warden reached out a hand and squeezed his arm in encouragement. She was well aware he needed to score points with Helman and had arranged for him to present Katherine Jellicle's case here this morning.

  "Rasmussen's Syndrome is a viral encephalitis which systematically destroys brain tissue," he began after clearing his throat. "If detected in its early stages, when still confined to one hemisphere of the brain, radical and aggressive surgical removal of the affected tissue has been shown to cure the disease. Otherwise, death is inevitable."

  "Have you got everything?" The grey-haired nurse bustled around Grace's room like a mother robin preparing a fledgling for flight.

  Spring doesn't start for two days. Too early for robins, Grace thought, staring out the window. Grey clouds threatened to smother Pittsburgh beneath their blanket of sleet and rain.

  She sighed, dreading venturing into the streets where the wind would whip off the rivers and drive the rain into whirling daggers to slice through every seam of her clothing. The chill would creep into her marrow and take up residence there, bringing with it a brittle ache rivaling the constant throbbing reverberating in her head.

  Pressure from the tumor, the pimple-faced surgery resident had told her after she woke from her brain biopsy. Not much they could do about it. Just get on with life and ignore it best you can, he and his comrades instructed Grace.

  Like they knew anything about life. Like they knew anything about anything. She scratched the tiny area of shaved skin around the seven staples holding her scalp together.

  "You don't have very much, do you?" the nurse prattled on, thrusting the changes of underwear and socks Ingrid had brought Grace into a plastic bag labeled Patient Belongings. "No coat? At least you've got your own shoes. There's some I've had to wheel out of here wearing paper booties from the OR."

  Grace looked down at the white Reeboks on her feet. Never had two feet been so lucky. Wouldn't last long out there without shoes.

  Out there. A shudder hijacked her body.

  "Of course," the nurse continued, "you're only going over to the Extended Care Unit. You'll like it. It's in the new Tower--everything's new over there. And fancy. I tell you, you won't even feel like you're still in the hospital while you're in the ECU."

  Grace ignored the nurse. She had no intention of staying anywhere in this hospital. Certainly she wasn't going to join the other lab rats in the research unit, no matter what new name they gave it. She smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her green fleece top and jeans, then turned away from the window. For the thousandth time she cursed Ingrid's sister for going into pre-term labor, forcing the housekeeper to abandon Grace.

  An immediate flush of shame warmed her face. But how was she going to make it out of here without Ingrid? How was she going to make it home on her own?

  "If you just leave that on the bed, I'll get it," she told the nurse, anxious to escape before her courage fled.

  "No bother at all. I'm just glad Dr. Helman can help you. You gave us all a scare, I'll have you know. It's amazing someone can be up and walking around with a tumor like that growing in their brain. I'll go get the chart ready and send the volunteer down with the wheelchair." She clasped Grace's limp hand between hers. "Good luck, dear."

  Grace fought not to jerk away from the uninvited contact. Don't touch, don't touch, insects buzzed as they swarmed through her body. The nurse held on, her lips moving, but the words could not penetrate the haze of panic. Wasps tunneled under her skin, crawling down each nerve ending, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

  "Remember, we're all praying for you." The nurse mercifully released Grace. "I'll see you after your surgery in a few days."

  Once the nurs
e was gone, Grace fled to the bathroom and began washing her hands in scalding water and Hibiclens, the ubiquitous pink hospital soap. She washed them ten times, counting each cycle out loud as she took deep, cleansing breaths from her belly.

  Slowly, the buzzing subsided. Grace dried her hands on a paper towel, taking care not to touch the metal dispenser. She grabbed the plastic bag from her bed and fled before the nurse could return.

  Free at last, she told herself, gritting her teeth and crossing the threshold.

  She caught Jimmy's grin from the corner of her eye. Have a care for what you wish, he said, as rain pelted the window behind his transparent image.

  "Going to join your girlfriends for tea?" Kat Jellicle asked Alex Weiss when she caught up to him outside the glass windows of the pediatric playroom on the third floor.

  Alex shook his head, leaning forward in his wheelchair, his blue eyes never wavering as he watched the three bald girls pour pretend tea into their plastic cups. Pink lace elastic headbands adorned their naked scalps. They each wore white dresses that swirled and ruffled when they skipped down the hall.

  Behind their chairs stood IV poles with noxious potions running through clear plastic tubing. Poison delivered directly into in-dwelling needles positioned above each girl's heart.

  Between two of the girls sat an emesis basin, ignored now that the daily afternoon tea party had begun in earnest. One of them, her scalp as smooth as melted chocolate, turned and flashed Alex a merry smile of invitation.