Description: CHAPTER 1 Monday, July 1, 6:15 a.m. When Michael Fuller''s phone alarm woke him with its insistent jangle, he literally leaped out of bed in a near panic while fumbling to turn the damn thing off. He''d been in the middle of a disturbing nightmare of being chased down endless yellow-tan corridors without the slightest idea of what or who was chasing him or why. All he knew was that he had been panicked out of his mind and as a result his heart was still racing. With the back of his hand, he wiped his damp brow and took a deep breath to calm down. He''d never before experienced such a uniquely frightening dream. Certainly, he''d had his share of nightmares while growing up, but nothing like what he''d just endured. Although he''d had some minor difficulty getting to sleep the night before, due to his mixed emotions about the upcoming day, he certainly didn''t expect first-day jitters to have caused such a dream. For twenty-three-year-old Michael Fuller, this first day of July was going to be momentous, marking the beginning of a whole new chapter in his life. Today was the first day of his surgical residency at Langone Medical Center, known colloquially as NYU, and he was going to be specifically starting at the renowned Bellevue Hospital. Although he''d felt definite anticipatory excitement, he''d also experienced a measure of anxiety. Certainly more than he realized, as was clearly evidenced by the bad dream. When he''d been on duty in the hospital as a medical student, there''d always been a resident available when an emergency happened. Suddenly now he was the resident, meaning from today on, there''d be no immediate backup. He would have to handle whatever emergency he might face when he was alone in the middle of the night on the hospital''s surgical ward, a circumstance that was very scary. His fear was that he wasn''t ready, that medical school hadn''t prepared him adequately. But at the same time Michael felt uneasy, he also felt decidedly fortunate. As one of seven first-year NYU surgical residents, a position formerly known as an internship, he''d been chosen by chance to start at Bellevue along with another first-year resident, Andrea Intiso. Even being assigned with Andrea was a lucky twist of fate as far as he was concerned, because they were both graduates of Columbia University''s historic College of Physicians and Surgeons. There, purely by chance, they''d been teamed up as medical students for their clinical pathology, physical diagnosis, and internal medicine rotations. Consequently, he knew her to be a friendly, dependable, smart, and plucky woman, and he liked her. The other five first-year surgical residents, three men and two women, had been assigned to the various other hospitals in the sprawling NYU Langone Health complex for their first two-month rotation. Mitt, a nickname Michael had been given as a toddler and still preferred, would also be assigned to these other hospitals in due course, after his first rotation at Bellevue. For him it was akin to having won a lottery because it was Bellevue Hospital that had attracted him to apply to NYU for his residency training for two major reasons. The first reason was its distinguished history, including three centuries of fostering many major medical advances. He knew that Bellevue Hospital had even established the very first residency in surgery way back in 1883, which was still the model for surgical training worldwide. The second reason was personal. Mitt descended on his paternal side from a long and impressive medical pedigree. Way back in the seventeenth century a direct ancestor of his named Samuel Fuller had been on the Mayflower and served as the Plymouth Colony''s medical doctor. But more to the point from Mitt''s perspective, he was a direct descendant of four consecutive generations of celebrated Bellevue physicians, three surgeons-the latest of whom had also done a Bellevue surgical residency-and a psychiatrist. All four of these physicians had been contemporary leaders in their fields, particularly his closest relative, Dr. Clarence Fuller, his paternal great-grandfather. Mitt had made it a point to read a number of Clarence''s lauded research papers, in which he championed and helped develop methods of psychotherapy and even anticipated groundbreaking behavioral therapy. Mitt had been impressed enough with what he''d read of Clarence''s Bellevue career to consider specializing in psychiatry himself, but Mitt''s father, Benjamin, a highly successful Boston-based hedge fund manager who was in secret a frustrated surgeon after deciding against medical school despite his own father''s encouragement, prevailed upon Mitt to follow in the renowned footsteps of his surgical forebearers, particularly Dr. Benjamin Fuller, Mitt''s father''s namesake. Mitt was the first to admit-with deserved appreciation-that his father''s generous economic inducements had played an outsized role in getting Mitt to apply to medical school and then choose a surgical subspecialty at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. One of the inducements was the fully furnished and professionally decorated apartment Mitt was now occupying on the fourth floor of 326 East 30th Street, which he knew was beyond anything a first-year surgical resident could typically afford. Same with the fancy Mercedes-AMG parked in a nearby garage. After dashing into his posh, newly renovated bathroom, Mitt lathered himself in preparation to quickly shave. As he''d learned during the first week that he''d occupied the apartment to attend his NYU residency orientation, he had to scrunch down to take advantage of the magnifying shaving mirror. It had been positioned at a height significantly lower than appropriate for Mitt''s lanky six-foot-four frame. With his coordination and considerable stature, which he''d reached at a youthful age, he''d been pressured as early as the sixth grade to play basketball. Mitt had declined and continued to do so through high school and college. He''d never appreciated what he labeled as the "marginal utility" of organized sports, much preferring to concentrate his extracurricular activities and attention on mental exercise rather than physical. His preferences leaned toward debating, playing chess, and music, particularly the piano. Ever since he could remember and maybe as early as age two, Mitt had been more cerebral than physical. Working quickly to navigate the disposable razor around and over his angular and pale face, Mitt was conscious of the time. He was due in the fifteenth-floor surgical conference room at Bellevue Hospital at 7:30 a.m. sharp. Luckily the hospital was a mere five-minute walk away. After a quick rinse and dry, Mitt paused to study his reflection. He was worrying anew about how he was going to hold up under the stresses of being a newbie resident, especially if and when he had to face medical emergencies alone. Although he had hardly been a polymath in high school and college, he''d done extremely well grade-wise, such that he was confident in his basic intelligence. Due to his interest in academics, Mitt had advanced more quickly than his peers and graduated high school at sixteen, college at nineteen, and medical school at twenty-three, making him the youngest of the current batch of first-year surgical residents at NYU. None of his academic accomplishments had been a surprise to his proud parents, who''d recognized Mitt''s precocity from an early age. But there was more to Mitt''s intelligence than a high IQ. He wasn''t sure exactly when he first became aware of the capacity, but he had a kind of precognitive ability that he secretly labeled his "sixth sense." It wasn''t constant, and he had no idea how to provoke it. When he''d applied to boarding school, college, and even medical school and then surgical residency, the moment he sent off his applications, he knew he would be accepted. He''d been so confident in his belief that he''d never experienced the anxiety that all his friends did, and on all four occasions, unlike his friends, he''d only applied to one school or program, not the usual dozen or more. Adding to this unusual precognition, Mitt had on occasion the ability to sense what people were thinking. Again, it wasn''t a constant capability, and he didn''t know how to encourage its manifestation other than recognizing that it required concentrated mental effort and a clear mind. Curiously enough, when he was able to predict the future or tell what someone was thinking, it was almost always accompanied by varying degrees of tactile sensations along the insides of his arms or thighs, the back of his neck, or across the front of his chest. He likened these sensations, which he called paresthesia, the technical term, after taking neurology in medical school, to something like the "pins and needles" he''d feel when his extremities'' circulation was compromised. In contrast to his precognitive faculty, which there was no way he could explain, he believed his ability to sense what people were thinking was probably based on an acute and unconscious sensitivity to a wide variety of idiosyncratic clues people unknowingly projected by their posture, expressions, and choice of syntax. Although the possibility that he possessed some rare psychic power had occurred to him on occasion, he''d dismissed the idea out of hand as being entirely anti-scientific. In college he had majored in math, physics, and chemistry and believed he could have pursued any one of those scientific fields if he''d been so inclined, which didn''t leave a lot of room for believing in the supernatural. Mitt had never told anyone about these special talents, not even his parents, even though as an only child he had a rel

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