It was bluff talk. But he believed it with every fiber of his body. You've gotta believe, right?
Come on, Ally, get lucky. Find out who that mystery patient was. The way things look now, you 're the only shot I've got left.
[Chapter 15]
Tuesday, April 7
8:13 p.m.
What a day! When Ally finally settled onto her couch, after giving Knickers a long walk, she was exhausted. She leaned back and kicked off her shoes. There had been a few moments of tightness in her chest—maybe it was psychological, anxiety‑induced—but that was gone now. She thought about calling New Jersey to ask how Nina was doing, but she doubted they would tell her anything.
She'd spent the latter part of the afternoon getting yet another heart exam. After driving to northern New Jersey and back, she'd had a formal (and exhausting) stress test for her heart at the New York University Faculty Practice. God, she was sick of examining rooms and those blue paper shifts you put on backwards, as though it was okay for doctors and nurses to see your bare ass. Then she put on shorts and sneakers and an Israeli physician stuck wired suction cups all over her chest and put her on a treadmill for seventeen minutes, boosting her pulse to over 150, which was as high as he dared to go. Then he called Van de Vliet, faxed him the charts, and they reviewed the squiggly lines for another ten minutes. Finally she had a high‑speed CT scan, whose results were then sent directly to Karl Van de Vliet's lab computer.
The bottom line was, the damaged valve in her aortic ventricle was deteriorating even more rapidly than her regular physician, Dr. Ekelman, had thought, but her heart was still strong enough for the procedure.
She wondered if she had gone this far because she was letting hope outweigh a sober evaluation of the risks. Was this the sign of complete desperation? Whatever she decided, tomorrow was the day, D day, decision day.