Toby is eight years old. He had a routine operation. It was fine. Now he's gone home to terror. Months have passed. But Toby still bursts into tortured screams. Because something is very wrong. Toby can remember evey moment of the operation. All the trauma. All the pain. He relives evrey horrifying detail of surgery while he's awake. Now someone must expose the unspeakable truth about this hospital. Or else an innocent child will die. And he won't be the last. The next victim is being wheeled into surgery right now. Toby is eight years old. He had a routine operation. It was fine. Now he's gone home to terror. Months have passed. But Toby still bursts into tortured screams. Because something is very wrong. Toby can remember evey moment of the operation. All the trauma. All the pain. He relives evrey horrifying detail of surgery while he's awake. Now someone must expose the unspeakable truth about this hospital. Or else an innocent child will die. And he won't be the last. The next victim is being wheeled into surgery right now. t years old. He had a routine operation. It was fine. Now he's gone home to terror. Months have passed. But Toby still bursts into tortured screams. Because something is very wrong. Toby can remember evey moment of the operation. All the trauma. All the pain. He relives evrey horrifying detail of surgery while he's awake. Now someone must expose the unspeakable truth about this hospital. Or else an innocent child will die. And he won't be the last. The next victim is being wheeled into surgery right now. Toby is eight years old. He had a routine operation. It was fine. Now he's gone home to terror. Months have passed. But Toby still bursts into tortured screams. Because something is very wrong. Toby can remember evey moment of the operation. All the trauma. All the pain. He relives evrey horrifying detail of surgery while he's awake. Now someone must expose the unspeakable truth about this hospital. Or else an innocent child will die. And he won't be the last. The next victim is being wheeled into surgery right now. Michael Palmer, MD,  (1942–2013) was the author of  Miracle Cure ,  Critical Judgment ,  Silent Treatment ,  Natural Causes ,  Extreme Measures ,  Flashback ,  Side Effects , and  The Sisterhood. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and served as an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program. 1   The day, Sunday, June 30, was warm and torpid. On New Hampshire 16, the serpentine roadway from Portsmouth almost to the Canadian border, light traffic wound lazily through waves of heated air. Far to the west, a border of heavy, violet storm clouds rimmed the horizon. The drive north, especially on afternoons like this, was one Zack Iverson had loved for as long as he could remember. He had made the trip perhaps a hundred times, but each pass through the pastureland to the south, the villages and rolling hills, and finally, the White Mountains themselves, brought new visions, new feelings.   His van, a battered orange VW camper, was packed solid with boxes, clothes, and odd pieces of furniture. Perched on the passenger seat, Cheapdog rested his muzzle on the windowsill, savoring the infrequent opportunity to view the world with his hair blown back from in front of his eyes.   Zack reached across as he drove and scratched the animal behind one ear. With Connie gone from his life, and most of his furniture sold, Cheapdog was a rock—an island in a sea of change and uncertainty.   Change and uncertainty. Zack smiled tensely. For so many years, June the thirtieth and July the first had been synonymous with those words. Summer jobs in high school; four separate years in college, and four more in medical school; internship; eight years of surgical, then neurosurgical, residency—so many changes, so many significant June-the-thirtieths. Now, this day would be the last in that string—a clear slash between the first and second halves of his life.   Next year, the date would, in all likelihood, slip past as just another day.   Highway 16 narrowed and began its rollercoaster passage into the mountains. Zack glanced at his watch. Two-thirty. Frank and the Judge were at their club, probably on the fourth or fifth hole by now. Dinner wasn’t until six. There was no need to hurry. He pulled off into a rest area.   Cheapdog, sensing that this was to be a stop of substance, shifted anxiously in his seat. “That’s right, mop-face,” Zack said. “You get to escape for a while. But first…”   He took a frayed paperback from between the seats and propped it up on the dash. Instantly, the dog’s squirming stopped. His head tilted.   “You appreciate, I can see, the price that must be paid for the freedom you are about to enjoy. Yes, dogs and girls, it’s time for”—