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  Of course there was also that other minor matter. One she had not shared with anyone. Asha had been halfway in love with Dino Barbieri since the first day she had walked into his office.

  But Dino was a complete and utter professional. If he was even aware that virtually all of his female students were utterly infatuated with him, he gave no sign. So Asha counted herself fortunate to also consider Dino a friend, and pretended that was as much as she ever wanted, because it was all that she would ever gain.

  Asha Meisel was a slow starter. She needed a good half hour and three cups of coffee just to get her brain functioning. What was worse, the phone call had interrupted a dream about her former fiancé. Jeffrey was still down in Los Angeles, as far as Asha knew. But in the dream he had shown up at her doorstep, pleading to give him one more chance. They had split and reunited three times. Eighteen months earlier, Asha had finally accepted that the relationship was broken and could not be fixed. Such nightmares came less often these days, but they still carried a seismic jolt. When the phone rang, she almost didn’t answer, fearing that it was Jeffrey, that he had somehow managed to obtain her new unlisted number and was invading her life. Again.

  Thankfully, her boss was well aware of Asha’s morning routine. “I need you to get up and put on a pot of coffee and then call me back.”

  “Oh . . . Okay.”

  “Don’t go back to sleep, Asha. And hurry. I need you fully alert.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Asha was at least partly connected to the unfinished dawn. “What’s going on?”

  “Luke Benoit.” There was the sound of a car’s motor in the background. “You’ve been acting as his therapist, correct?”

  “For the past two months.” As part of her final term, Asha was assigned several patients. Her sessions were carefully monitored, and she was going through counseling herself with the university’s senior therapist. The intention was to help her learn through direct experience what it meant to separate her own issues, life, emotions, and perspective from those of her patients. “What’s happened?”

  “Last night he committed suicide.”

  “Oh, no.” Asha was glad to be standing by the kitchen counter. It gave her something to grab hold of. “That’s terrible.”

  “This is not his first go at it, correct?”

  “His third.” She found herself leaking tears. It was a thoroughly unprofessional response to the news, but she couldn’t help herself. “The poor kid.”

  “The file shows his age as twenty-one, correct?”

  “Luke turned twenty-two the day before yesterday. He dreaded the birthday. He said it marked another wasted year of a totally futile life.” She cleared her face with the hand not holding the phone. “But there was something utterly childlike about him. I found it easier to reach him if I spoke like I would to a nine-year-old. That’s how I came to see him. I thought we were making progress.”

  Dino gave Asha a moment to regain control, then asked, “Are you able to drive?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Well, not fine, but . . .”

  “He has no living next of kin. Which means you will need to identify the body. The hospital is sending it to the coroner’s. An autopsy is required in all suspect-death cases. You know where that is?”

  She swallowed hard. “No.”

  He gave her the address, then did so a second time. “I’ll meet you there and we’ll start prepping.”

  “Prepping for what?” Asha felt her body go cold. Now she understood the real reason for his urgency. “The peer review.”

  “The hospital board has a session scheduled for this morning. They’ll want to take up this case.”

  She had already played a secondary role in one such review, where the hospital’s senior medical staff examined every crisis or failed surgery. It had been one of the most harrowing experiences of her entire life. “No, Dino, I can’t.”

  His voice was as gentle as it was firm. “You don’t have any choice.”

  * * *

  Asha considered her name to be the one truly Persian aspect of herself.

  Most people, upon seeing her striking dark looks for the first time, assumed Asha was South American. She spoke excellent Spanish and sometimes enjoyed stringing strangers along. That, too, was part of her Persian heritage, Asha knew, this love of secrets and the subtle power of deception.

  Asha was a name that dated back to the Parthian Empire, the eastern kingdom that Rome had considered its most dangerous foe. Two thousand years ago, the Parthians had threatened Roman legions from Damascus to the southern seas. Her name’s origins were woven into the empire’s fire-worshipping heritage. The name Asha meant Truth-Bearer, or Keeper of the Flame, titles once used by the Zoroaster high priestess. All this Asha had learned from her grandmother Sonya, who had emigrated to the United States and married into one of California’s oldest Jewish clans. When the family in Tehran had learned of the marriage, they had spoken prayers of the dead over an open grave.

  A storm had apparently passed through earlier, for the streets glistened in her headlights. As she turned onto the main thoroughfare rimming the town’s southern boundary, her phone chimed. Dino’s voice rang from the car’s speakers. “Where are you?”

  “About a mile out.”

  “Turn around. I need you to meet me at the hospital.” Dino now clipped off the edges of his words. Terseness was a sign of rare tension. When stressed, Dino applied a surgical precision to everything he said. “Your patient has just woken up.”

  Asha swung through a U-turn on the empty street, her tires hissing in the wet. “Dino . . . You said he was dead.”

  “I know I did. Hang on, I’ve got the ER doctor on the other line, let me patch him in.” There followed a series of clicks, then, “Dr. Emeka, can you hear me?”

  A deep and distinctly African voice replied, “Loud and clear.”

  “I have Asha Meisel, the patient’s counselor, on the phone. Please repeat for her what you just told me.”

  “EMV delivered Luke Benoit at three thirty-one this morning.” The doctor’s voice was as resonant as a church organ. “His pulse was unsteady, his breathing almost nil. He had been discovered, wait, let me check . . . Yes, here it is. Eleven minutes before three, his flatmate found Benoit unconscious on the bathroom floor. An open bottle of triazolam was by his side. Did you prescribe the medication, Dr. Meisel?”

  Dino responded for her. “It is Ms. Meisel, and she is a therapist in training. She recently replaced Dr. Weathers.”

  “Ah.” Three months earlier, Alice Weathers had been forced into early retirement, after four failed peer reviews in a row. Of course, no one actually used the word “failed.” Just as no one stated outright that Asha had been granted the internship because Dino wanted her to become Alice Weathers’s replacement. The ER doctor said, “It is clear to me now. I thought I had heard the name before. This is not Benoit’s first suicide attempt, yes?”

  Asha spoke for the first time. “His third.”

  “Right. The hospital computer system is down. I could not access . . . Never mind. That can wait. Back to this morning. The medics inserted a saline drip en route. We were ready with a gastric evac as soon as the patient arrived. When this was completed, we left him in the ER wing because no other bed was available. Or if there was one, we couldn’t find it with the computers not functioning. Benoit was listed as stable but critical.”

  When the ER doctor went silent, Dino pressed, “And then he died.”

  “At four forty-one this morning his heart stopped. Our attempts to restart were unsuccessful. He was declared dead by me, personally, at four fifty-seven.” Dr. Emeka’s words became cautious, measured. As though he, too, saw himself facing his own peer review. “We were quite busy this morning. EMV said it would be a few hours before they could transport the body to the coroner’s. So it was decided to shift the body downstairs. The orderly was just pushing the gurney into the hospital morgue when the patient . . .”

  Din
o supplied, “He woke up.”

  “In an extremely loud and agitated fashion,” Emeka confirmed. “It required a very large orderly and two cleaners to hold him down. I was next on scene, and eventually managed to sedate him.”

  “Where is Benoit now?”

  “In the critical care unit. His vitals show him as stable. CCU needs his bed. I have agreed he should be moved into a ward for non-crisis patients.”

  Dino asked, “Benoit remains strapped in?”

  “Oh, most certainly. I saw to the restraints myself.”

  “Asha, where are you now?”

  To her surprise, she realized she had covered almost the entire distance to the hospital, as though the car had found its way all by itself. “I’m just turning into the lot.”

  “I’m five minutes out.” Dino lived in Morro Bay, half an hour west of San Luis Obispo. “Wait for me in the parking area. Dr. Emeka, how can we connect with you?”

  “Have the receptionist ring me when you arrive. We’ll go see the patient together.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Asha knew very little of Dino Barbieri’s personal background. As was the case with many senior medical personnel, Dino kept what little private life he had distinctly separate from his professional responsibilities. Asha knew he had studied medicine in San Francisco and completed his residency in psychiatry at Boston University. Dino was thirty-eight years old, twelve years older than herself. She knew he had married a woman from San Luis Obispo, but they had divorced some four years back. She knew he now lived in Morro Bay. Little else.

  Of course she also knew he was exceedingly handsome.

  Dino Barbieri had saturnine features, dark and virile and carved from some rich Mediterranean stone. His eyes were an astonishing blue, so dark as to appear almost black in some lights. The photograph on the cover of his textbook showed a younger man with film-star looks and a smile to match. Asha considered it a shame that he revealed his smile so seldom. Instead, Dino met most days with a look of weary surprise, as though the world continued to both astonish and demand more than he had to give. But what endeared him the most to Asha was how children responded to Dino with an instantaneous trust. Asha had observed an almost comatose young girl come alive the moment he ambled into a room. She reached out her arms and begged him to offer a comfort all his own.

  Asha pulled into the hospital lot, cut her motor, and rolled down all four windows. She settled back and listened to the predawn world. The streets remained mostly silent. An ambulance halted by the ER entrance, its lights flashing, but the siren off. The hospital doors slid open, and a male nurse emerged to help pull the gurney from the back. The voices were softly professional. The gurney rattled over the entry and the doors slid shut. A mockingbird started up from one of the neighboring trees, its song as loud as a full-throated bellow. The air was sweet from the rain.

  It was good to be alive.

  Ten minutes later, Dino’s Jeep Cherokee pulled into the spot next to hers. Asha rolled up her windows, took her white hospital coat from the seat beside her, and rose from the car.

  Dino greeted her, “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she replied. And now she was.

  * * *

  They entered the hospital together. Dino asked the duty officer to let Dr. Emeka know they had arrived. He returned to where Asha stood by the front windows and said, “You’ve had five sessions with the patient, correct?”

  “Six. Today would have been seven. Unless . . .”

  “What?”

  “Should I withdraw?”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Come on, Dino. My patient almost succeeded in killing himself.”

  “Luke Benoit is a repeat offender. Plus, he’s been in and out of counseling for how long?”

  “Nineteen months.”

  “With how many different therapists?”

  “Three. I’m number four.”

  “Do you get along with the patient?”

  “I sensed a growing rapport.”

  Dino crossed his arms. “Summarize his case.”

  “Two years ago, his parents were killed in an automobile accident. Benoit was in his fifth semester at Cal Poly. Business and finance, but he had difficulty maintaining his grades long before that incident. He had previously been in and out of two community colleges, his records show barely passing grades. He has taken two leaves of absence from Cal Poly since the accident.”

  “So the incident devastated him,” Dino said. “Benoit is an only child?”

  “There was a sister, sixteen months younger. In our last session he confided something that is not mentioned anywhere in his records. Luke’s sister died when he was seven. He blames himself. They were playing in a tree house. She fell.”

  “Did he cause the accident?”

  “He says no. I believe him.”

  “So. Benoit has carried an unjustified guilt his entire adult life. His most recent decline was set off by yet another traumatic incident. He has no close living relatives. Compounding the initial shock is the fact that he is now effectively an orphan.”

  “He was in counseling after his sister’s death,” Asha added. “He mentioned that in our last session. Since that took place in Canada our own records make no mention of it.”

  “So Benoit has a history of depression stretching back to childhood. A clearly definable pattern, leading up to multiple suicide attempts. The state’s guidelines on institutionalization have been met.”

  Asha wanted to say there was still hope for him, though she knew it was the same dogged stubbornness that she carried into so many of her own personal issues. She struggled to find a foundation for protest, but came up blank.

  Dino seemed to find her silence utterly acceptable. “To answer your question, I absolutely want you to remain this patient’s therapist.” He unwound his arms so as to point behind her. “Here comes the ER doctor.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Lucius was so drugged that waking and sleep were simply two sides of the same coin. It spun in the air, he woke and felt his body held by padded restraints, and then he slipped away again without opening his eyes. Sometime later, he returned once more. The light beyond his closed eyelids had strengthened. He loathed hospitals, but at least he was no longer in that dismal chamber filled with the vile odors and the white-shrouded bodies. The memory of that first horrifying instant, waking with a sheet over his face inside that icy realm of death . . . He had feared the eternal worst.

  “Luke? Can you hear me?”

  He shifted slightly, or tried to. But his arms and legs and waist were all bound. He could feel the padded straps anchoring him to the bed. Hardly a surprise, given his terror-stricken return to life.

  Life.

  “Luke, can you hear me?”

  He could not fathom how he had possibly survived. The heart attack had been massive. The darkness that followed had carried an overwhelming sense of finality . . .

  Jessica.

  He opened his eyes, blinked, and saw . . .

  A dark-haired angel.

  * * *

  Asha stood with the two doctors opposite the patient’s bed. Dino said, “Perhaps we should reduce his meds.”

  Luke Benoit only stayed with them a few moments. Long enough to whisper a woman’s name. “Jessica.” Then he asked for water. He spoke again, more strongly this time, asking where Jessica was. A third time, and then he slipped away.

  “I agree.” Emeka walked over, took Benoit’s pulse, then touched the machine’s controls. From the deeply resonant voice she had heard on the phone, Asha had expected Dr. Emeka to be massively built. Instead, he was almost elfish, an inch or so shorter than her own five-nine, and with delicate birdlike features. His voice was the only large component about him. “Let us see how he responds to a reduction of fifty percent, and a doubling of the interval between doses.”

  Dino turned to Asha. “Who is Jessica?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never heard him mention her before,” she replie
d.

  “Did you bring his file with you?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  “Why don’t you take a moment and review—”

  “I don’t need to. There isn’t any mention of a Jessica.”

  Dino and Emeka both observed her. “You have memorized the patient’s entire file?”

  “I have studied it enough to know all of the major characters and most of the minor.”

  Dino frowned at the patient. “So. No Jessica.”

  “Did you see how he said it?” Asha studied the slumbering young man. “Like he was expecting her to be here in the room.”

  Emeka said, “I have seen and heard many remarkable occurrences tied to near-death experiences.”

  Asha hesitated, then decided she should say it. “Something about him is completely different.”

  Dino said, “What do you mean?”

  Now Asha wished she had not spoken. “It’s hard to put into words.”

  “Try.”

  “In our sessions he rarely meets my gaze. At first I thought perhaps he had a trace of Asperger’s. When I asked him about it, he said sometimes it hurt to be inspected. Like others are seeing things about him that he is afraid to see himself.”

  Dino’s attention was fully on her now. “When did he say that?”

  “Our last session.”

  “You are definitely staying on this case,” Dino said.

  “But did you see how intent he was when he woke up? He focused on each of us. Directly.”

  “Same response,” Emeka said. “Near-death experiences represent an extreme level of emotional and mental trauma.”

  Asha shook her head. “This did not strike me as a response to trauma.”

  “He was heavily sedated,” Dino said. “This following an incident so violent the patient needed to be forcibly restrained.”

  Emeka pointed to the wall monitor, then stepped back over to where Dino and Asha stood. “He is returning.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Lucius put it down to the drugs and the shock, how it took him so long to realize they were referring to him as Luke.